The fourth episode of Survivor 47 delivered just the right blend of cringe comedy and strategic maneuvering, as multiple contestants overestimated their abilities, while one previously hidden player emerged to seize control of the vote. All in all, 90 minutes well spent.

It remains to be seen how Genevieve's big move will play out in the long term, but right now, she appears to be in a good spot. As long as she repairs her relationship with Teeny, she should now have a close-ish ally in Sol, while also having demonstrated loyalty to Rome. Will Rome repay that loyalty? In new era Survivor, is Episode 3 too early in the game to fully reveal your strategic chops? These are important questions that we'll just have to watch and see how they play out.

The brilliant booby-trapped idol

At first glance, when Sue found the beware clue directing her directly to another idol, that seemed a little unfair, considering the lengths Gabe, Rome, and Sam had gone through, just to find keys, then dig up boxes, then ponder the risks of taking an idol good for one Tribal Council vs. doing even more searching for a more powerful one. When Sue's idol was revealed to be fully powered, that seemed even less equitable. But as more time passed, and the puddle of red paint kept spreading everywhere, alarming Sue more and more, on balance: This was perfect.

Survivor works best when it's a fairly even mix of comedy and pathos, and this idol set-up hit that middle ground exactly right. Not only that, but Sue was perhaps the perfect victor/victim for this idol. The preceding scene established Sue's overconfidence, with Sue being 100% sure she had duped her tribemates into believing her "I'm a grandma, but I'm only 45" story. The paint-splattered idol gave us another concrete example of that social unawareness in action. As Sue proudly announces in confessional, "Not one person will ever, ever know I have a hidden immunity idol. I pulled it off!" And yet ... Tiyana and Caroline happen upon Sue near the well as she's cleaning up, machete freshly washed, with clean hands but dirt-caked forearms, and what appears to be blood on her hair, thumb, and chin. Despite Tiyana's reasonable concerns about Sue's well-being, Sue gives a meandering series of excuse-planations ("I'm fine," "I didn't cut myself, I just did something stupid," "I bit the back of my tongue") that do nothing to reassure them, but she eventually shoos them away anyway, somehow.

It's high comedy all around, and perhaps nobody else in the cast could have delivered such a hasty, implausible, non-quite alibi in quite the same way. (Okay, maybe Rome might have?) Going forward, obviously production can't use this same mechanism every time, but let's hope we see more of these high-risk/high-difficulty idols like this, instead of the time-consuming multi-step processes we had with the first round of idols. Having time-clocked idols as each camp's first idol, then graduating to full idols near the merge seems like the right progression in power. But aiming for something more like Sue's paint idol task for every idol hunt would free up a lot more time to show the cast.

Another day, another depressing, booby-trapped journey

After praising last week's journey for at least not being right after the IC, we got one that did exactly that, anyway. Sigh.

And after criticizing last week's journey for giving the three participants each 2-in-3 chances of losing their vote, production ramped up the unfairness by giving at least one person a 100% chance of losing their vote. But wait, if one person intentionally gave up their vote, all three would be saddled with an "advantage" they probably would have turned down had they been given a choice. Great stuff!

As Teeny explained their choice, the decision came down to: "I'm losing my vote either way, so I might as well make it worth something." [Narrator: It was not, in fact, worth something.] Side note: More people received idols this episode (4) than cast votes (3). (Side-side note: I know, the amulets are really the old half-idols, except now one-third idols, since they can only ever collectively void votes once. But still!)

The amulet idols have already repeatedly proven themselves to be extremely detrimental to the people holding them, because they strongly incentivize each holder to vote the others out. Maybe that calculation has changed a little bit with the rule change (the amulets are now only idols, not the crappy extra vote/ vote steal/ idol 3-2-1 progression), but still, the idea of three people agreeing to use an idol seems pretty far-fetched. Then again, the amulets are 100% public now, so there's incentive to burn them ASAP, so maybe it'll at least work with two left? (Then again - again - we've already had half-idol holders refuse to combine theirs, so chances are still slim.)

All in all, it felt pretty underhanded that (1) nobody on the journey was told what the advantage was ahead of time, and (2) the decision Teeny made is really the only reasonable one, so unless one of the journey-goers was 100% sure the hidden advantage was the amulets and not, say, three extra vote parchments, there was no reason for anyone to say "Screw this, I don't want the risk that comes with an amulet, let's all lose our votes." So the amulets were more or less forced on this trio. Not even the option to swap them out for sandwiches! (If you're thinking to yourself, "Gosh, I would really like to be enraged today!" you can read a particularly patronizing Jeff Probst defense of the twist, as told to Dalton Ross over at EW.com)

Everything else in this episode was really good, though - the perfect balance of gameplay and humor - so why was this journey even necessary here? Couldn't it have been saved for Episode 5 or 6? And why have there been two no-choice journeys where people are very likely to lose their votes this season, let alone in back-to-back episodes? At least the problematic journey in Survivor 44's premiere was balanced out by a quasi-swap journey and the one where Brandon, Danny, and Caroline just got to eat and chat (or listen) at the Sanctuary.

Did Andy's improved spot just fall between the cracks?

One of the main themes of the episode was Kishan unintentionally creating the conditions for his own blindside by stirring the pot at Lavo, guiding/goading Rome to antagonize Sol as much as possible, and suggesting Genevieve as the decoy boot. At the same time, over on Gata, there was a parallel story where Andy seemed to also be undermining his own position, all while trying to reinforce his own alliance connections, to disastrous results.

Andy has just two close relationships on Gata (that we've been shown): With Sam, and with Sierra. Despite clearly having been on the bottom since Day 3, Andy looked like he was potentially in a good spot there, with both Sam and Sierra having planned back in Episode 2 to save Andy, using Sam's 1-Tribal idol.

Despite that, as time passed in the two episodes since then, the editors have highlighted the deepening wedge developing between the very visible pair that committed to keeping Andy around. First, both were aghast that the Ep3 journey-goers asked if Sam and Sierra were dating. Then in this episode, Andy told Sam about the Gata women's "Breadwinners" alliance name (after promising Sierra not to talk about it), after which Sam confronted Sierra about that alliance. Sierra was separately upset about Andy's "sloppy" play, as he briefly misplaced his Shot in the Dark die, and she fretted whether Sam's plan to move forward with Andy made sense in light of that. Then Sam and Sierra bickered over eating the chickens.

Taken together, the strong implication is that while Andy has been very loyal to Sam, and has slowly been building rapport with Sierra, by trying to strengthen those bonds separately, he's unintentionally been driving them apart. Which of course returns him to being in a bad spot, much as Kishan ended up this episode. Add to that his possession of an amulet idol (fresh incentive for Caroline and Teeny to vote him out, with a swap and merge looming), and it's not looking great for Andy. (As further evidence, there was a cut to an Andy/Anika shot, along with tight close-ups on the similarly doomed-seeming Kyle and the now-departed Kishan, right as Probst said "where one of you will be next person voted out" before the IC.)

What's most frustrating about this is, all of this of mostly outside of Andy's control. True, telling Sierra's (secret) alliance name to Sam wasn't the *best* choice, but the "are they dating?" thing came out of nowhere, from people who hadn't met Sam or Sierra. The lost SitD die was a fluke accident. Sam and Sierra having opposing views on eating chickens was outside Andy's purview. He didn't really have a choice about the amulet idol, the choice was either take the unseen advantage or lose his vote. It's a reminder that even when you're trying your hardest to stay in the game, effort doesn't always equal results. (As Andy himself said a while back, "I gave it everything!")

For what it's worth, Kyle seems to have an even steeper hill to climb: Sue has vowed vengeance on him for writing her name at Tuku's last Tribal, he's lost his vote, and Sue now has an idol. Hard work is definitely not its own reward on this show. A change of scenery could likely benefit both of these guys. Will they get it?

Shorter takes

The advantage signal: A rarely exploited feature of most of the Tribal-based advantages like Rome's vote steal is that they're played before the vote. Sometimes, this has been a flaw in execution, as it alerts someone with an idol they should probably play theirs (see Dan vs. Carolyn in Worlds Apart). But here, Rome's playing the advantage - and especially his having to announce that he was playing it against Kishan - alerted Sol (and Genevieve) that Rome was following through on the plan they had discussed. To be fair, Rome *could* still have been duping Sol, and could have voted twice against him. But the intent here, of playing it as a show of trust, should be something players can leverage in the future.

Rome appreciation thread: This episode demonstrated why Rome is such casting gold. *Everyone*, from his tribemates to every person in the audience, has an opinion on him. He's over-the-top, absolutely. But he's also genuine in that pedal-to-the-metal approach to everything. That absolutely pays off in an episode like this, where the editors didn't have to concoct some bogus boot plan to distract us from Kishan's blindside, because the posturing conflict between Rome and Sol was 100% real. Genevieve's last-minute plan to take out Kishan seemed really unlikely to actually work, because we saw how resistant Sol was to changing course. The one thing he wanted most - Rome's boot - was seemingly minutes away, and Genevieve wants to swap that highly desirable outcome out for something else?! You could see why he was uninterested in that plan, even if it made sense for his game!

Despite all the understandable hostility he generates, Rome is still playing things really well overall. He's voted correctly three times. He played an idol (voiding a vote against him on a close vote). His advantage play was one of the most effective uses of a vote steal in Survivor history. He stayed loyal to his closest ally, Genevieve, and was rewarded for that. He even apologized to Sol! (Sort of ... well, not really.)

Rome is a lot. He's in no way a subtle player. I have no idea if or how he'll be able to wriggle out of the jam the next time everyone wants to vote him out. But for now, he's playing at maximum velocity, and it's highly entertaining to watch.

At last! In case you missed it as it flashed on the screen in the post-episode preview of Ep5, that trailer included a very striking, obvious visual clue about the next episode's as-yet unannounced twist. Suffice it to say, it's one fans have been begging for since (a season or so after) the dawn of the new era. We're only getting it for one, maybe two episodes before we merge, but even in that limited lifespan, it's glorious. How will it affect the prospects of players like Andy or Kyle, who otherwise appear doomed if their current tribe goes to Tribal one more time? We shall see.