With the Survivor 48 finale in the rear-view mirror and the Survivor 50 cast just announced, it's a good time to take a final look back at 48, especially in light of the new information we've received since it aired: the exit interviews with the Final Five, and the news of the S50: In the Hands of the Fans cast ... in which 48 is tied for the highest number of first-time returnees (three: Kyle, Kamilla, and Joe) with S37: David vs. Goliath and, for some reason, Survivor 46. So apparently, despite your preferences, everyone loved 48! (Note that there are also three from everyone's favorite season, S34: Game Changers, and four from S20: HvV.)

Whereas 48 at times seemed to drag, and the editors delighted in tricking the audience into thinking a big move was on the way, only for it all to collapse, the finale really did finally deliver some good gameplay, and helped to explain why power shifts hadn't happened earlier. Despite the audience constantly hearing from people headed to the jury that "Joe is going to win if you don't make a move," that public position of power started to slip away from under him as the game continued. Kyle and Kamilla recognized that in the faces of the jurors at Tribal, and adjusted their games accordingly. All of sudden, Joe and Eva were beatable, you just had to be the one sitting next to them. Shauhin saw that, Kamilla saw it, even Mitch saw it. But Kyle capitalized on it. (Literally, he received a million-dollar check.)

Kyle is a great winner, and has produced one of the best all-around performances of all time. He was great in challenges (90th percentile), but exceptional in the voting-related parts of the game - 10-for-10 in voting people out (94th percentile) and just 1 vote against in 10 Tribals (97th percentile). Put it all together, and by those three measures, he had the fourth-best season of all time, with an average of 93.5th %ile. That puts him behind just Brian Heidik (95.7th %ile), All-Stars Boston Rob (94.0th %ile), and Mike Holloway (93.7th %ile), and just ahead of One World Kim Spradlin (92.8th %ile). (Clearly this does not include jury votes, as the top two did this while almost blowing that aspect of the game.) He was also excellent at the social game, which was one of the main things that helped him stay in until the end, receiving only one vote since the swap Tribal where he idoled out Thomas.

Perhaps what's most impressive about Kyle's performance is: It should be somewhat reproducible. There was nothing overtly threatening about him. He participated in some deception, to be sure, but he wasn't a Hantzian mustache-twirling villain. He got along with his castmates, and they liked him. He came into the game wanting to be average and play the middle, and he did that to perfection. He could easily pull that off again his next season ... unless he plays again right after this season airs, and is ALSO on a cast with Joe and Kamilla. (Whoops.) This is one of the many tragedies of Survivor 50 being the first true all-star season since Game Changers. It's overloaded with very-recent players, who will probably be immediate targets, and who would have benefited from both some time off to reflect, and for their competitors to forget how great they were, before playing again. Sigh.

The other huge winner in the finale was Kamilla, who gave Kyle license to put her into forced F4 fire, since they both realized their best chance of winning individually was for one fo them to be in the final three against Joe and Eva, while the other pumped them up from the jury. Not a backstab with malice, but rather the ultimate ride-or-die assist. In addition, the Kamilla-nudging-Kyle reveal of their being a secret pair during Final Tribal was perfectly executed. Kamilla said in her exits that she did not mention it to the jurors before Final Tribal, saving it for maximal impact - and this is important - to be dropped at the perfect time, to refute a claim Joe and/or Eva made. Shauhin ate up the true story of his blindside, as did most of the rest of the jury. It might have fallen flat as an opening statement, but as a "can I push back on that for a second?" counterpoint? Devastating.

Furthermore, Kamilla's come-from-behind victory on (the puzzle in) the Final 5 IC was also epic. Perhaps the biggest (rivaling Ciera Eastin's similar last-to-first run, also on a puzzle, in the Ep.13 (first F5) IC in S27: Blood vs. Water). If production wants this sort of in-challenge lead change more often, the solution is obvious: Have more puzzles! There's no way to go from last to first on a challenge where you're standing in one place, balancing something.

One big final lesson from 48 is the effectiveness of hidden alliances. This is the third season in the last six where the winner's main alliance was not completely public, a huge trend in the New Era. Yam Yam's closeness with Carolyn was not clear to anyone in 44 (although he was openly working with Carson). The extent of Dee's closeness with Julie (and Drew) in the Reba Four was also hidden in 45, even if the showmance with Austin was visible. According to the exit interviews, the times we saw Kyle talking to Kamilla in the post-swap game were maybe 90% of all their interactions. They truly were hidden, and spent most of their time with others. It's an extremely tough strategy to pull off, because how do you pick one person to trust completely, when they're all strangers? How do you stay undetected for the whole game?

The misleading edit, and the spectre of 50

From the final five's exit interviews, there were some fairly significant parts of the season that were not shown, or that were even misrepresented on the show. Perhaps the most egregious is Kamilla's reveal to Mike Bloom that in the early post-merge, David, Star, and Mary were basically "cops," actively policing Kyle, Kamilla, and Shauhin, tailing them, and making sure they weren't able to talk to other people undetected. This is what really drove Kyle and Kamilla together as secret number ones for each other. Relatedly, Star had convinced herself that she was in tight with Joe and Eva, and told them *everything*. (We saw some of this with her telling them about Charity's suggestion she ask Eva to return the idol.)

Together, this forces a re-evaluation of a lot of what was shown. For one, Shauhin was probably close to the truth when he thought he could win the game vs. Joe and Eva. The show presented this as delusional ego-tripping, but Shauhin said the jury told him that same thing when he arrived at Ponderosa, and it matches what the jury said about Kamilla, AND how they actually voted when it was Kyle. Conversely, David's and Star's games now look even worse than was shown, and fan-favorite Mary's reputation also takes a bit of a hit.

Another major readjustment is that Mitch's depiction as a well-liked but ultimately harmless, indecisive player also needs to shift. Kamilla talked about how they suspected Star of being a mole for Joe and Eva, and Kamilla fed Star some fake information, and shortly thereafter, Kyle got that same information from Joe and Eva. Mitch told Mike Bloom he had a similar experience. Mitch was shown declining to work with Star and/or Mary at Final 8, because he couldn't trust them. As it turns out he was exactly right! There's no indication that going to rocks at F8 would ever have happened, and that was really the only "opportunity" Mitch ever had. Kyle and Shauhin both had no incentive to flip that early, because they really were tight with Joe and Eva, and (correctly) were starting to think they could beat them. So it was really just Mitch and Kamilla trying to get something going on their own, with maybe Mary joining them, but just as likely to abandon them on the next vote.

Eva also had something reasonable to nitpick with her edit. All indications are she was accurate in saying she was downplaying her intelligence to everyone, and trying to come off as a dumb jock, while in her partnership with Joe, she was the one giving him strategic advice. The edit, however, very much implied it was Joe taking her under his wing and guiding her through the game ... even if at times the game seemed to escape him (the weird sound effects at the Ep12 Tribal). But Eva was the one to convince Joe that it was in both of their interests to vote out Shauhin at F6, because Shauhin would win if those three were in the finals together. (Eva described this misrepresentation as the editors showing her to the audience in the same way she presented herself to the other players, which is extremely generous of her.)

Overall, I think the edit this season suffered from the looming filming of Survivor 50, although the next season to air may also be put through that same "filter", as there are two people from 49 in the cast. The editors were stuck with the unenviable task of both telling the story of 48, AND creating "stars" to bring back for 50, at the same time. Joe played this season 100% as Joe - loyal, honest, strong, family-oriented - and probably got the most straight-up edit. But his edit was also intentionally one that builds him up as a (certain subset of) fan favorite/ big character type of player, such as showing him as Eva's protector, rather than being the muscle to her brains in their duo. He's kind of a new-era Rupert figure in that sense. Having said that, of the three people from48 in the 50 cast, Joe is surprisingly the best-positioned for the next season, because he's now free to lie, backstab, and cause chaos, since nobody will see that coming. (Will he do that, though? Seems doubtful.)

Is it time to sunset the new era yet?

Ah well, at least we can still dream that Survivor 50 will have a freshened-up format. (Much bigger cast, definitely ... maybe some fan-voted structural improvements, too?) Unfortunately, Survivor 49 has already filmed, and the Survivor 50 game elements you voted on could have been decided by the mouthbreathing casuals on the Survivor facebook page who are still irate that people lie on the show. But on the bright side, that means we may be approaching the end of the "New Era" of almost no format changes for 9-10 seasons, and may get a fresh start with 50, perhaps carrying over to Survivor 51. (Nobody with any power over the show will ever read this, so don't worry.)

Anyway, here's a brief wishlist of ways to make the next batch of seasons actually approach watchability. Call it "A New Hope" or something, IDK.

For the love of everything, please stop taking votes away

Come on, people. Enough. It's bad enough we had a season where the people on the bottom were unable to change their fates, but it was made worse when despite having the intent and sufficient people willing to try, they just lacked enough votes (Justin and Bianca directly unable to save themselves; Star unable to help save Chrissy). Extra votes are fun. Do more of that! Being unable to participate in the most basic gameplay element of Survivor is not fun. Not for the contestants, not for the audience. Enough!

Can we please be done with journeys?

The journey experiment really started in Ghost Island, where it was a quasi-Exile with occasional advantages (especially the Chris Noble trip, which Eva was allowed to re-enact here, above). It came back and was changed to a brief visit in Island of the Idols, where it was almost exclusively for advantages (even those times where it was just getting to talk to Sandra; diminishing returns in that regard with Rob). The first few attempts in the new era ("Shipwheel Island"), where success depended on a Prisoner's Dilemma-type situation were at least interesting. Since then, the best format was probably the one seen in Survivor 45, where the visits were mostly choice-based - you can take this weak advantage or do this task to win something ... or just leave.

But that also exposed the pointlessness of most of the tasks (and advantages), and so we shifted to the current format, where there's no choice, the "advantages" are generally shitty (extra vote, Vote Steal/Block ... none of which really had much impact) and someone is guaranteed to lose their vote most of the time. It's really just pure punishment, despite whoever attends also immediately gaining a target on their back. What's the point, except creating time-consuming content for a 90-minute episode? Journeys are all filler, no killer.

So instead of this time-wasting charade, how about we just go back to hiding things in the area around camp, and in rewards, and so on? And having them be secret? And can we actually have decent advantages, or at least some choice?

Also: The dirty secret of journeys in general, which became increasingly clear in 48, is that they're low-budget substitutes for reward challenges. If you can build a tiny challenge structure for one to three people instead of a full two- to three-tribe massive challenge course, and nobody complains, why not keep doing it? You just tack the reward on to the immunity challenge, and nobody will be the wiser!

Well, consider this somebody complaining. You have 90-minute episodes. Having a combined RC/IC to allow more time for character development early in the season (Episodes 2-4, usually) made sense in the 60-minute episode era, but now it's impossible to distinguish from just being cheap. And it's especially so in the post-merge. Give us more separate reward and immunity challenges, you cheapo depots.

More idols, please?

One of the most glaring flaws in Survivor 48 was the inability of the people on the bottom to gain access to any tools to improve their position in the game. All the pre-merge advantages and idols were gone from the game by the second split Tribal in Ep7, which was ... the day after the "Mergeatory" Tribal in Ep6. All that is, except the idol Star gave to Eva, which sat unused in her bag for the entire postmerge until it expired at F5, where she played it, voiding zero votes.

Lots of people (myself included) were wondering: Are the people on the bottom just not looking, or are they bad at finding idols? Or are there just no more idols being hidden? Sam Phelan revealed the answer on "Why __ Lost" the weekend before the finale: There are no post-merge idols hidden in the New Era, except (1) Jake's in 45 and (2) Rachel's auction clue/idol in 47. Importantly, there's never an idol just hidden around camp somewhere after the merge. That is unless someone plays the last pre-merge, which Eva did not do.

This is just bizarre thinking on production's part. Are they really hoping for exactly the situation we all complained about in 48, an all-powerful majority alliance just grinding the also-rans into the sand? That makes no sense. Pagongings have never been popular, but that's the way to ensure they keep happening!

Worse news for production: They clearly pat themselves on the back in the New Era for putting in/ shuffling all these twists to "keep the players off-balance" or whatever, but here's a situation where the players have clearly figured this pattern out and adjusted their gameplay accordingly. Kamilla talked in her exit interviews about being happy Eva had the idol and wasn't going to play it except on herself or Joe, because it kept it out of the hands of someone like Shauhin, should it be rehidden - but they all knew there was no merge idol. So production's just sitting on their hands, editing the players' comments about it out of the show, and hoping nobody notices. Well, too late now!

To be clear, I'm not asking for a deluge of idols and advantages, just hide a damn idol in the merge tribe camp! A maximum of two idols active at the same time in the post-merge is not an unreasonable amount. There has to be a credible threat of an idol play, not this old-school "you're on the bottom and there's nothing you can do about it" vibe. Similarly,

Can we just have two tribes? Is that too much few to ask?

One thing that won't be changing in Survivor 50 is the number of starting tribes, because there's no way they're going to burn through 24 players in 26 days with just two. Three tribes of eight seems more likely, with both losing tribes booting someone each episode for a good stretch. (Six episodes of that lets them merge at 12 in Episode 7, and just one double boot needed to finish in 13 episodes.) Or they could New Era it up and have four tribes of six, and have three boots an episode, with Tribal Councils taking up a full half of the 90 minutes, with Jeff Probst asking each one if the game is harder than they remember. That'll be awesome.

Let's hope it's just three tribes of eight, though. It's slightly larger than the terrible New Era starting size of six people per tribe, but it's at least the size they started with in Borneo, right? But unless they swap down to two tribes (they should), we'll still be missing out on all the things we get from that format: The opportunity for head-to-head challenges, more bitter starting tribe enmities, the chance for team challenges where they work against each other ("Build It Up, Break It Down") or cross paths. It's a completely different format, one which SurvivorAU is still using in its golden age, and one that US Survivor seems to have permanently abandoned because Jeff Probst has convinced himself that "three tribes is better, Q.E.D." (Just like he refused to learn that Redemption Island/Edge of Extinction was bad until he ruined five seasons with it.)

It's almost as if coating people in mud is counterproductive (who are these people)?

We saw Kamilla mention cramping up during the fire-making challenge, but in her interview with Dalton Ross, she revealed that certain unnamed players had been cleaning mud off from challenges at the water well ... and letting the muddy runoff go back into the well. So the well water (which normally doesn't even need to be boiled these days!) was muddy and gross, and she was trying to drink less of it, hence the dehydration/cramping. First: They had an ocean right next to camp, what were they thinking? And second: Can we please have fewer challenges that coat people in mud?

The show's growing infatuation with this stunt is starting to get pretty grating. There were *three* challenges with mud pits this season (Ep1 RC, Ep6 RC, Final 5 RC/IC). There were also three that involved burrowing through sand. It's too much! And it's hard to imagine every single person is electing to eat their reward food without cleaning the mud off first - this has to be production-mandated.

If you want one or two of these per season, eh, fine. Whatever. But it's actively counterproductive in the very first challenge, Probst's babbling about "baptism" be damned (how is it "baptism" at Final 5?). In the opening challenge, we the audience are just meeting these people for the frst time, trying to put names to faces, then they're immediately indistinguishable from each other for the next 20 minutes or so? How is that good storytelling? If Kamilla can learn patience, so can you!

...

Anyway, that's all I've got for Survivor 48. Thanks for stopping in occasionally. I wish I'd had the time to recap SurvivorAU: Brains v Brawn II as well this season, especially since 48 wasn't the most take-inspiring season. The Australian show packed in enough chaos and surprises that it seemed a little unfair they didn't hand some of the excess energy over to their American brethren. Soon enough, AU: Australia v The World will be airing, and maybe I'll have time to recap that one? It will feature Cirie Fields, who's also on 50!