I’ve been away for a while…

Sorry everyone! I know that Fire Represents Your Life is your favorite weekly read and I’ve let you down for the past two weeks. Two explanations here:

I spent 5 days down in New Orleans and Mobile right after episode 3, and was eating my weight in food and unable to get a post out pre-episode 4. My bad, I was busy with hurricanes, jambalaya, weddings, and having wine on the balcony of a haunted restaurant:

For episode 4, I had the awesome experience of going to a live viewing party of Survivor, the first time I’ve been able to do that! Gabby put on an awesome event in Arlington, Virginia and it was a great time being able to meet other fans of the show. OH YEAH I also got to meet Gabby herself, and Survivor alums Brendan Shapiro (who shared our picture on his Instagram story) and Candace and John Cody! As a lifelong Survivor fan, that was a super cool moment to be able to meet and talk with people who have actually lived my own dream of playing the game we all love.

SO here we are, and from now on I will be shifting away from a full recap post to a more succinct format in which I lay out my five key takeaways from the previous episode. I’ll still be doing power rankings at the end, so scroll down for those too! I assume everyone reading this post is caught up, so I think this will be more fun and easier to read!

5 Key Takeaways – Episode 5

1. Napalm Natalie was incredible TV and it’s sad to see her go, but this was the RIGHT move in this situation.

Jacket-gate will go down in history as one of the best moments of all time, and Natalie Cole is one of the most entertaining castaways we’ve seen in years. Those are the facts. I don’t have much to say about jacket-gate, except that Angelina overplayed and potentially isolated Lyrsa who will feel like a jacket was valued over her. However, being entertaining doesn’t necessarily make you a good Survivor player, and Natalie was proof of that.

Her inability to be adaptable and understand how she was being received, along was general irritability, was behind her slow decline in this game. For someone who in the pre-game recognized that she had so many early-boot qualities, she did not do a good job of compartmentalizing those extremely polarizing traits, which was much to the enjoyment of the viewers but detrimental to her long-term game. In a returning season, someone would recognize Natalie like Abi-Maria in Second Chances, as a goat to try to drag to the end.

The Jabeni tribe was already a generally “weaker” tribe than the other two, so voting out Natalie will help them in challenges now that Vuku and Tiva will have to sit one person out each.

2. The Goliaths have flipped on the majority two episodes in a row and voted out one of their own, setting up a 7-7 numbers game between Davids and Goliaths.

This makes for great entertainment and an underdog story, but for the Goliaths it could mean disaster comes the merge. In Ghost Island, we heard “Naviti strong” to the point of nausea, and we’ve heard “Goliath strong” a few times already. The difference here is that the Goliaths and Davids are even, and picking off the Davids is now a significantly harder task.

Alec’s move to boot Natalia will likely come back to haunt him because I don’t think Davie sees him as a true ally. He and Kara are in a serious hole at Vuku. Similarly, Mike and Angelina got rid of Natalie, losing their Goliath majority, but Natalie was so volatile and didn’t have many direct allies, making her a liability moving forward. I think that whenever the merge comes, it will be amazing because these castaways are certainly taking the Tony Vlachos motto of having an alliance of comfort rather than an alliance of numbers.

3. The weather in the Fijian rainy season is no joke and the fact that this cast is still so dynamic through it is AWESOME

We’ve seen quite a few seasons where the weather (heat or rain) significantly affects the story (specifically I think of Samoa where Russell was able to manipulate their WEAK MINDS because the weather was so miserable and Kaoh Rong where we saw three evacuations and one of the most brutal seasons overall).

We get the second ever evacuation due to a cyclone, and thank god they pulled the cast because those shelters were destroyed and someone would have gotten seriously injured. I thought for a hot second that it would be hilarious if the camps weren’t destroyed while they were in lock down, so production goes and destroys the camp before they get back to justify the evacuation. That would be hilarious, but probably unrealistic, because the castaways were in lock down for two full days which is crazy.

We’ve seen Survivor break the fourth wall a few times over the years and give viewers a glimpse into behind-the scenes production and how the sausage gets made, with Pat’s evacuation being the most recent. I would LOVE to see what the lock down actually looks like since we lose literally 48 hours of game. Either way, I love how exciting this season is and the castaways have been TROOPERS through the storms. It’s gotta be depressing and difficult, but they’re killing it and giving us a great season so far.

4. The Tiva tribe, to my surprise, is mortal, losing the reward challenge and almost losing the immunity challenge, and I think we’re being set up for an Alison pre-merge exit

The Tiva tribe is certainly the most interesting tribe out of the three in my opinion. We have 4 of the biggest personalities this season all on the same beach, and it’s paying off. We saw Christian being included in the Brochachos alliance of Dan and John. Gabby’s character arc seems to be on its way up because even though she’s easily emotional, it’s always either in confessional or with Christian, never in front of the rest of the tribe. We just saw a brief bit of Dr. Alison, which I think might be a set up for her pre-merge demise. The second we see a lot of her, she’s probably gone.

I was shocked that they lost the reward challenge and were so close to losing the immunity challenge. However, I have a hard time seeing that happening again because of their pure strength and their great puzzle solvers. I think at least 4/5 of these castaways make the merge and play a huge part in the overall story line of the season.

5. There are currently only 3 idols in play and 1 advantage. The game play is going to be much more fluid without an influx of advantages

Compare that to Ghost Island, where we had 4 idols and 2 advantages at the merge: Idols were held by Dom, Wendell, Michael, and Chris; Kellyn had an extra vote; and Dom had the legacy advantage. The combination of a massive Naviti majority and a fear of advantages seriously hindered strategy and alliances. I think my final takeaway from this episode and from the season so far is that this is a good amount of advantages to have as it balances the fluidity of strategy with twists.

Power Rankings

Unfortunately, I think it might be a tough week for the women…

John – John is not going anywhere. He’ll be a mainstay for a while, showing he’s not just a physical brute, but that he’s forming real relationships with the people he’s on the island with. I think he’ll be a pretty good strategist. Davie – I’m absolutely loving Davie. He is such a fun loving character and I’m sure Survivor production was relieved they brought him out there last minute. He’s got his idol, a majority, and a great ally in Carl with lots of options to maneuver. Dan – Dan without Kara is the Dan that everybody was hoping to see before this season started. He just found a SECOND idol and hopefully won’t tell anybody about this one. I like his standing in the Brochachos and don’t think he’ll get blindsided easily in this tribe of 5. Christian – Christian is going to get very far in this game because he’s so endearing that people might not even realize he’ll win the game until day 30. He’s in the Brochachos and he has Gabby, so he’s fine. Mike – Before we found out about jacket-gate and Angelina’s intentions, I thought Mike actually flipped on the Goliaths. I wasn’t surprised to find out it was a ploy, but nobody sees him as a threat right now and he has good bonds with Nick and Angelina both, so he’s in the power position. Nick – A legitimate threat comes the merge, I’m taking a risk putting Nick this high. I think if Mike and Angelina were ruthless they’d try to cut him before the merge, but he has a good relationship with Mike right now and I don’t see him going anywhere. Lyrsa – Lyrsa had a great episode last week for the most part and has now been in serious danger twice in this pre-merge. I’m not sure how tight she is with Nick, Mike, or Angelina because we haven’t seen a whole lot of pure strategy or relationship building from her, but I think Angelina is in more danger than Lyrsa is on the Jabeni tribe. Gabby – I’m starting to get a little bit worried about Gabby’s edit because there’s so many high highs but there’s also lots of low lows. We see her breaking down with Alison in the preview for the next episode, and I’m hoping her character arc will be that of a underdog/growth narrative rather than just the paranoid, emotional person. I can’t imagine the Tiva tribe losing a second time, but if they do I really think she’ll be okay. Carl – We haven’t seen a whole lot from Carl since his return from exile island, but he did have that scene where he and Kara were talking about Alec’s decision. Carl has a great ally in Davie and is laying relatively low, so I think we’ll see him into the merge for sure. Elizabeth – The previews portray Elizabeth getting angry with Davie and that’s not a good sign at Vuku camp. I feel like in a potential battle between Elizabeth and Davie, Davie wins out. But, I don’t see that actually playing out, so I still have Elizabeth above Alec and Kara. Alec – He’s flipped once and put himself in a Goliath minority, but I think Davie, Carl, and maybe Elizabeth would be more willing to work with him than Kara. Kara – Kara is certainly on the outs at the Vuku tribe. She made the wrong pitch with Elizabeth last week saying that she has connections with the Goliaths on the other side that Alec might not have, which is exactly what might worry them heading into a merge. Angelina – Angelina might have played foolishly with jacket-gate. Putting Lyrsa’s name down just to get a jacket will probably make Lyrsa think she’s disposable, and thus puts Angelina in trouble. I think Mike and Nick are closer than Angelina is to anyone on this tribe and if they end up back at tribal, we might see her go. Alison – Should the Tiva tribe lose immunity, I really think we’re getting set up for an Alison blindside. We’ve seen the trend of Goliaths turning on Goliaths in both tribes since the swap and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it again. A lot of the previews focus on Allison and we finally got some exposure to her last week. I think if we see a lot of content from her early on, she might be getting the boot.