The lengthy Tribal Council in Episode 3 of Survivor 48 was advertised as "historic." And sure, it was the first time one person's vote decided who went home in Episode 3 of a season. Congrats, I guess?

But I have another word for it: Pointless. A dramatic decision, sure, but not really one reflective of Survivor's "social experiment." Rather, it was one that felt more like the producers saying, "Hey, look what we made happen!" It was the inevitable eventual endpoint of production's insistence on tiny starting tribes and using every opportunity available to take people's votes away. It wasn't an organic achievement, it was a manufactured outcome. It wasn't some masterpiece of handmade art, it was AI slop.

Justin Pioppi was booted from a tribe that had finished dead last in all four challenges. Before the season even started, his tribe looked woefully under-muscled, and then their one physical asset dislocated his shoulder seconds into the opening challenge. (On a mud crawl, just like Bruce!) So after seven days of this, Vula still had no fire, they had no food. Justin also lacked a vote, because he was forced by another tribe (who won the challenge, which again was not really an option for his tribe) to go on a journey, where he was forced to participate in a game, in which he was forced to risk his vote - and unlike prior journeys, it wasn't a test of skill or willpower, it was just pure dumb luck, a literal dice-roll.

You'll note that when Jeff Probst made his weekly ad pitch to apply, this time around he touted the "fun" of a challenge where people who are blindfolded repeatedly bash their heads and/or groins on logs. Apparently that was a stronger selling point than "After years of applying, you might finally get on this show where ... we'll put you on a tribe with no chance of winning, so you'll have no fire, no food, and you'll probably also have no vote. Apply now!"

So how could this have been done better? For starters, the starting tribes. We're now in the eighth consecutive season of three tribes of six. It's was already tiresome back in 44, and here we are, still stuck in the same rut, four seasons later. This is especially galling in comparison with Australian Survivor, which has been firing on all cylinders for three straight years.

It's painfully obvious that small starting tribes really limit gameplay. SurvivorAU has had multiple wacky, complicated votes this season. Survivor 48 has had three straight unanimous votes, or would have, had Mary's Shot in the Dark not hit. There are only so many ways you can divide six people, or five, and once you get down to four, the available options are close to zero. At least Survivor 48 is pulling the ripcord and bailing on the original tribes next episode. But they're still extending the problem by (1) keeping it three tribes, and (2) doing the swap an episode too late. This could easily have been avoided. But you the sense that this is what the show actually wanted.

It was pretty clear after Episode 1 that original Vula was never going to win a challenge. When that was confirmed, spectacularly, in Episode 2, why not just move the swap up an episode, and form two new tribes with 16 people left, in Episode 3? The answer is most likely a boring, technical one: that all the remaining pre-merge challenges had already been built for three tribes, and there was no way to adjust on the fly. But that in itself reflects the show's self-limiting planning. Some of those three-tribe challenges could work as post-merge team RCs. Just plan more challenges for two teams, since those also work in the post-merge.

A second and much simpler fix for the starting tribes is simply to let the players pick them again. It's not that challenging to put David, Joe, and Kyle on separate teams, as everyone expected to happen in the pre-season. Whether the very obvious tribe imbalance was intentional or just an oversight on production's part, if they can't do this basic job well themselves after 48 seasons, maybe they should let the players do it for them.

The other major problem is of course taking votes away, especially involuntarily. A Beware idol that explicitly warns you against opening it? Eh, that's fine. Volunteering for a journey, then finding a task you can choose to undertake, or not (as Emily did)? A big waste of time, but sure. Opting out of voting to play a Shot in the Dark instead? Not great, but it's at least a low-percentage (1-in-6 chances) lifeline for a player with no other options. A choice the players themselves make is always best. Forcing people to go on journeys, however, especially where they are forced to risk their votes, then making it pure luck whether that happens? That's atrocious.

Players deserve a little more respect for the sacrifices they've made: jumping through the hoops of casting, putting their lives on hold to play this game, then starving for seven days. To go through all that, then to have their experience ended purely by chance? That's just insulting. It's treating them not as people, but as disposable pawns. Like ones you would march around blindfolded, hoping they'll nail themselves in the crotch.

Justin played out the nightmare scenario he found himself in about as well as he could have. Had he told Cedrek and/or Sai about his lost vote, their obvious move is to vote for each other (after Mary is SAFE), and force a deadlocked tie, which means Justin is out as the only eligible player to boot.

Jeff Probst has made clear on his podcast that he loved Advantage-geddon (Cirie's elimination at final six in Game Changers despite not being voted against), so in that context, this outcome makes perfect sense. It's what the New Era's been designed to do all along: Remove enough voters and votes such that at some point in the pre-merge, someone leaves the game without having been voted against. Technically that happened here, because there were only two votes in the first round of voting, and both of them were against Mary ... which she blocked with her Shot in the Dark. So hurrah, mission accomplished, and so on (although Kaleb already did that to JMaya in Survivor 45). So can we stop with the three tiny tribes thing now?

Honestly, there's not much more I can say about the last two episodes. I didn't have anything positive to say last week, as the show mostly hid Kevin's shoulder injury, and tried to hide that he was more or less a mercy boot, which felt very deceptive. Eight seasons into the New Era, we still have all the same problems that were obvious by roughly Survivor 43 (tiny tribes, lost votes, no food, the dumb taking of the flint), and there's no relief in sight.

Jeff Probst likes to wave away fan complaints about the New Era as "You just don't like change." But a lot of these now-permanent format changes are things that used to change every season (cast size, tribe size/number, who picks the tribes). The variety was what kept things fresh! This is (1) the opposite of change, (2) not very interesting, and (3) tiresome. You keep waiting for US Survivor to notice that Australian Survivor is now vastly better than they are, but they never do. Instead, they just keep on hitting the gas as the show sits in the same muddy pit it's been stuck in lo these many years, spinning its wheels, baptizing everyone in mud.

If there is a green shoot of hope for this season, it's that (very minor) change is afoot, in the form of a swap. Airing when it has, 48 has thus far felt a bit like Spring Training in baseball. A bunch of games that don't really matter, then everything resets once the regular season starts. Which apparently is Episode 4. Next week, there will be three new tribes of five. New game! Stephanie, Kevin, and Justin were all released to pursue other opportunities. Seems like a bit of a waste, but it also feels like it was scheduled that way, so uh ... yay, new season, I guess?

Shorter takes

-Mary and Sai: I'm aware Mary is already a huge online favorite, but I just can't quite connect to what she's doing, somehow. (Could be a me problem.) Her detached, sing-songy confessional style is just too uncanny, too off-putting. It makes her seem like she's just going through the motions and doesn't really give a shit about anything, especially the game. It's Courtney Yates (which should be a huge plus, one of my all-time favorite characters) minus the self-aware humor. But just about the time I think "I'm out," we get fun things like her "respectful frenemies" relationship/competition with Sai, and her fairly creative decision to give up on looking for an idol, and act like she already found one instead. It didn't *quite* work (just as it didn't for Rupert in HvV), since Cedrek and Sai both voted for her anyway, but it was worth a shot. I'm glad we get more of both Mary and Sai, even though the swap splits them up (as seen in this preview ad). I'm hopeful Mary is more of a slow-burn character that grows on you.

-The rules are what we make them: I've been doing this a long time, but I swear the old rule used to be (post-Marquesas): The tiebreaker for a deadlocked vote was (1) a rock draw for tribes of greater than four people, and (2) fire-making for four or fewer people. It's why forcing a 2-2 tie at Final Four resulted in fire-making in Cook Islands, Gabon, Worlds Apart (and so on), rather than forcing the one person who didn't receive a vote or wear the necklace to draw a rock. It's why Stephenie and Bobby Jon made fire in Palau. It's why Hayden knew he could force a rock draw at Final Six (a draw that didn't involve him) in Blood vs. Water. So why didn't Sai and Justin make fire? As Shauhin noted in the preseason, isn't making fires at Tribal supposed to be the pinnacle of Survivor-related drama? Maybe the tiebreaker rules changed in HvHvH with the advent of forced F4 fire?