When Survivor's "New Era" dawned back in Survivor 41, it was filled with lots of really terrible ideas that felt completely antithetical to the show's previous incarnation as the world's premiere social-strategic competition. Instead of a game where contestants could use guile, charm, and subterfuge to eliminate opponents, then later convince those same people to give them a million dollars, the New Era was full of booby traps and even the threat of elimination by pure random draw (Do or Die).

Thankfully, a lot of the worst offenders in the production twist arsenal have been quietly retired (Do or Die, the hourglass), but as Episode 7 of Survivor 47 showed, they may still live on, just now cleverly disguised (spooky!) as Jeff Probst's ubiquitous bag of rocks. Instead of someone immediately leaving the game after a random draw, now it just takes up to 90 minutes to get there.

Immediately after the rock draw, it looked like Rachel was doomed, being stuck on a team with all five original Tukus, and things looked even more grim when that team lost the challenge. But wait! Another twist saved Rachel, leaving ... Tiyana now doomed, with the old Tuku majority alliance in no-sweat control, and her closest ally Kyle immune. So we went from one obvious outcome due to the rock draw ... to another obvious outcome due to the rock draw plus an advantage. Way to keep things fresh, Survivor. Worst of all, the plans that were derailed by the first twist looked much more interesting. Now we'll have to wait another week for the post-merge to start happening. Unless it's again blocked by another bag of rocks, of course.

Before the IC, after the prospect of a women's alliance was floated, Tiyana said, "I want people to see me as an individualized player, and I can make my own moves on my own time, and in my own way." So it's fairly tragic that Tiyana went from having wide-open options with the merge tribe as the episode opened, to gradually having those stripped away by production as the episode proceeded. The rest of the episode is (1) a rock draw that puts her back on Tuku (plus Rachel), and (2) an advantage that removes Rachel from that equation, with Kyle already immune, leaving Tiyana a sitting duck. We turned back time to where Tuku was back in Episode 3, and Tiyana was unable to make any moves at all, thanks to this combination of twists and advantages.

Sure, Tiyana bears some responsibility for this outcome, in mistakenly thinking she was closer to Sue and Caroline than Gabe was (credit also to Caroline and Sue for convincing Tiyana of this), but her inability to maneuver here was almost entirely due to the twist, not to any inherent flaw in Tiyana's game. The last-second springing of Rachel's advantage at the end of Tribal Council put everyone in panic mode, and when people are uncertain, they react cautiously, like retreating to the alliance that kept them safe from Days 1 through 12. Caroline had the choice of booting Gabe or Tiyana, but if she chose to target Gabe, she would have betrayed Sue ("my girl"). In a spot decision like this, Caroline really only had one choice, whereas if a move against Gabe had grown organically out of a multi-day plan among the merge tribe's women (as it seemed to be doing at the start of the episode), it may well have gone forward. Gabe himself threw out Caroline's name to Rachel! That's bound to blow back on him soon, right?

It's this kind of sequence of events that makes conspiracy-minded Survivor fans think, "Oh no, someone mentioned a women's alliance! Time to release the bag of rocks and snuff that out." Obviously, these twists and advantages were planned well ahead of time, so that's not what actually happened. The problem is, however, the whole point of these twists was to thwart the plotting of the contestants. I have two questions: (1) Why is that desirable, and (2) why on earth is that necessary on the first official post-merge vote?

The first 10 minutes of this episode were the standard Survivor scheming and (re-)aligning that keeps the show interesting: Seeing the people from the three original tribes finally starting to work together and/or against each other, sorting themselves into strategic groups, making plans for the remaining 13 days of the game. As Sierra said, "We just getting our buffs, we're just officially making it to the merge..." and then Genevieve walks in with the fateful treemail announcing the (random-drawn teams) immunity challenge.

So the auspicious start was yanked away, and the next 50 minutes of the episode were mostly about production progressively introducing more and more roadblocks and hurdles to the contestants' strategic efforts. Sure, it was an incredibly improbable draw that led old Tuku plus Rachel to be on the losing team together. But why is it the show's intent to block the contestants from scheming and plotting in the first place? They've only voted together once!

In summary, see also this tweet.

The clunkiness of the reward/immunity challenge

As noted by EW's Dalton Ross on twitter, this week's reward/immunity challenge was ostensibly two separate individual ICs, but it all kind of fell apart at the end, since Teeny and Genevieve had no incentive to keep going after Kyle lost. So they finished more-or-less tied for first, and Kyle was third overall, but first on the losing team. Even so, third-place Kyle was the only person who received an immunity necklace; Teeny and Genevieve did not. Justice for Teeny and Genevieve!

We saw the exact same challenge, exact same two-team format in Survivor 44, where Frannie won overall, with Brandon in second, but first for his losing team. Both winners received necklaces then. So in light of that, again, Teeny and Genevieve were robbed!

I'm guessing this omission probably happened because production didn't have enough necklaces to go around. (We've only seen one so far, there did not seem to be any spares near Probst at the challenge, and only having made one to begin with seems to track for low-budget late-New Era Survivor.)

What's crazy is, this all could have been even sillier. Rachel was the first person on her team to drop her ball. At that point, the five Tukus could have collectively winked at each other, and all dropped their poles/balls or stepped off en masse. If not for semi-pro challenge-blower Andy being first out overall, it could have been even worse than that, and the entire other team could have come in first. But even in our original Tuku-throws scenario, they would have needed *SIX* necklaces (one for whichever Tuku dropped last, five for the non-Andys).

This kind of dual-track individual challenge makes sense when both teams have to vote someone out at Tribal. In that scenario, every player wants/needs individual immunity. But it doesn't work at all when one team is safe, because as we saw, there's no reason to keep going after the last person on the losing team drops out. What they *should* have done instead is use last week's episode's format: A team challenge run first, to decide the winning and losing teams, then immediately move on to a separate individual immunity challenge, just performed with the losing team. Bizarre that the show already had the optimal set-up, it was just off by one episode, and that they didn't foresee this. But what do I know, I just write stuff on the internet.

(The other obvious fix is a much simpler one: Just don't do this "one team is safe, the other vulnerable" thing again, and let the contestants play the damn game. It was unfair back in S14: Fiji when it took out Michelle Yi, it's still unfair now.)

Shorter takes

It was Sue all along! In the opening segment of this episode, we see Andy grilling Sol about *why* Sol wrote down Andy's name, of all people. A reasonable question, if not handled particularly gracefully by Andy. Sol eventually trots out Sam's name, since Sam encouraged him in the shelter to pile on an extra Andy vote. But why was Sue's name never mentioned at any time? Andy as the backup/decoy vote was Sue's idea in the first place! Since that time, we've never heard her thoughts on it. Why did she suggest Andy? Why doesn't she have to explain her own vote against Andy, either to him or to the audience? Did she also apologize to him in private? Have Andy and Sue ever even talked to each other once? It all feels like a bizarre omission, unless we're just building to a (Gata + Lavo) vs. (Sam/Sierra + Tuku) story in the post-merge (see Andy's sand scribbles, above), which I guess may actually start in Episode 8.

Was there an idol at Lavo? At the reward feast, Teeny wondered aloud whether there was an idol hidden on old Lavo beach, where the losing team was sent prior to Tribal. Teeny's logic seemed suspect (the amulet idol isn't really like other idols, so it doesn't seem like it would be rehidden), *but* Rome did play his 1-Tribal idol during the Kishan boot way back in Episode 4, and nobody at Lavo ever found the replacement idol that was likely hidden there. (It would probably have been booby-trapped, like Sue's.) Would production have retrieved that idol after Lavo left for Tuku beach on Day 11? (Yeah, probably.) Would they have left it there (or put it back), knowing the camp would be re-used this episode? That seems more likely than an amulet idol replacement.

The Shot not taken (this is so dumb): One final twist that could have made the episode much more interesting would have been Tiyana playing her Shot in the Dark (and being Safe). That would have created absolute chaos, with now only four people voting and Kyle immune. In theory, Sue could have also played her idol at that point, leaving only Gabe and Caroline eligible to be voted against. Does Sue stick with Caroline, and it's 3-1 on Gabe? (Probably, the edit of Ep1 seemed to hint Sue is actually closer to Caroline than to Gabe.) But it *could* be tied 2-2, and if so, and Sue has already played her idol ... what happens? Nobody is eligible to be voted out! The yellow team in the jury seats are all immune, Rachel's back at camp, Kyle's immune, Tiyana's Safe, Sue's idol-immune, and on a rock draw, Gabe and Caroline can't draw rocks, due to being the two who were tied. The answer is probably just that Gabe and Caroline would then face off in a boring fire challenge. That would be an underwhelming conclusion, but at least it might have snapped production out of its "we must always have tiny Tribal Councils, drowning in advantages, forever" fetish.