I skipped recapping the last couple of episodes of Survivor 48, mainly because I was busy. Real life takes up a lot of hours sometimes, and to be honest, most of those spare hours I had, I preferred to spend with the conclusion of the much better SurvivorAU: Brains v Brawn II. I would prefer that US Survivor and SurvivorAU could find a way to not compete with each other, considering the Australian version only spans 8-9 weeks of airtime per season, while the two US seasons span 26-27 weeks - that leaves at least 16 free weeks, everyone! Over three months! But alas, compete they did, and that's the other problem: New-Era US Survivor is predictable and stale, and irritating, especially until you get past all the merged-but-not-yet-quite-individual stalling in the middle, which is where we currently find ourselves.

In addition, there's little I can say that I haven't already said about the New Era post-merge format. It's still frustrating in all the same ways it was in 44, 45, and so on. But I'll go a step further: Because of that New Era format, there's been very little game to talk about the past few weeks. The past three episodes have been kind of boring. Three straight weeks of predictable, safe votes (four total boots, all expected from the jump). And the sole "strategy" we've seen is the strong people saying "We're good in challenges, so we should be an alliance! No, not you, Mitch, even though we are exactly the types of players you liked as a fan." So as soon as Jeff Probst gets done annoying you with his iron determination to keep trotting out the same uninteresting decisions (merge-atory, split Tribals, only four people eligible for immunity), the cast takes over and grates on your remaining nerves.

That's not to say the whole cast is annoying, of course. Kyle and Kamilla are great! Star is a star! Shauhin had done some entertaining things! It's mostly David who's the problem, and that's really only due to his constant, tone-deaf banging away on his "the strong people should win!" empty milk jug.

Please, no more split Tribals at the jury/non-jury boundary

Back in the split-Tribals episode (Ep7), David, talking about the three people on the bottom (Sai, Cedrek, Mitch), told his alliance: "I don't think anyone has to join them. So close to jury? They'd be blowing up their game." And therein lies the problem with the bloated, sluggish New Era merge-atory that doesn't really get started until Ep8 at the earliest. (This season, we can still hope that happens in Ep9, I guess).

If even someone as strategy-phobic as David can see that it makes no sense to try to pull off a big move right when the jury is about to start, everyone else in the game can likely see it too. Which means nobody will try. And nobody did - well, Kyle and Kamilla gave it a go, but David blocked it. Which means that we'll almost always have dull, predictable culling of the people already out of power at this point. If you're a player who's already in power here, that's great! If you're on the outs (think Kaleb in 45 - temporarily given new life via his Shot in the Dark, then snuffed the very next Tribal at the zero-fuss split vote), or you're in the audience ... it's a long, slow, mostly painful grind. (Although the clear message of the New Era is "Nobody cares about the audience.")

And that's one of the core problems of the New Era structural changes - rather than enhancing the game, all the lost votes and forced sit-outs and randomly-drawn sets of voters have hindered it. Nobody knows who will even be eligible to vote the next time out, so why stick your neck out? Go with the numbers, go with the flow, live to vote (or have your vote taken away) another day. The merge vote was obviously either going to be Sai or Charity - Charity went. As David summarized, the split Tribals were going to be two of Sai, Cedrek, or Mitch - Sai and Cedrek left. That left Mitch, Kamilla, Chrissy, and Star this episode. Kyle had to work his ass off to flip it from Kamilla onto Chrissy.

To add to that, there's only one idol in the game, and it's stashed away unused on the majority alliance. The majority this season seems particularly inflexible, so guess what we're getting next week? Probably whatever's easiest.

So again, as expected, the split Tribals delivered exactly that. Of course, maybe I'm not viewing this through the rose-tinted lenses of Paramount Press Express, which promised: "It’s double trouble when an unforeseen twist puts pressure on the castaways during the immunity challenge." Whoo! That sounds exciting! An unforeseen twist? You mean one that first appeared 13 seasons ago, and has happened in exactly this spot for the last four seasons straight?

If Survivor needs a double-boot episode, there are definitely better options available. Survivor has been test-running double-boot episodes since S10: Palau. There, it was pre-merge, with both tribes going to Tribal, but one winning a food reward. That was fun! The winning tribe got to feast in front of the losing tribe, and observe their machinations. But other formats were tried out after that: The awful Cook Islands pre-merge "Bottle twist", where the Aitu Four everyone was rooting for barely avoided being cut down to just two people, because luckily Raro lost, had to boot someone, then opened the bottle that told them to boot another person. South Pacific did this post-merge, where there was an on-the-spot trivia IC after the first boot, so the majority-wielding Upolu alliance got to pick off two Savaiis (unsatisfyingly). But then Survivor tried this split-Tribal format in Ghost Island, and apparently thought, "That's it! Finally! This is perfect! No more changes ever again." (Narrator: It was not, in fact, perfect.)

Survivor has kept the same twist going, but moved the split Tribal around to different spots in the post-merge. In Survivor 42, they had it deciding the first two boots in the jury phase. Maryanne and Drea took one look at Rocksroy being the first juror, and both played idols *before the vote* to prevent the first two jurors being Black players. From 45 on, the double boot/split Tribal has mysteriously been parked at its current, particularly cruel spot: straddling the jury/non-jury boundary. On the one hand, this adds additional stakes to the Reward portion of the RC/IC. On the other, it's hard not to wonder if it's here to prevent future Maryanne/Drea double idol plays. As has been noted by @roddiaztwine on Bluesky: Every single person booted in the current position has been Black. Even if it's just a coincidence, not a great look, Survivor.

The obvious fix for this was tried at the very start of the New Era, way back in Survivor 41, and it worked great. So therefore, it was immediately abandoned. Just do the damn double boot when you have three tribes! Send both losing tribes to Tribal. (How is a string of second-place finishes "earning" anything?) If you wanted, you could even start with >18 players, and do this as many times as needed to make the numbers work!

Admittedly, the first attempt wasn't optimal, but that was just a matter of timing. In 41, the double boot was done in Episode 1. That's not great design, because it just means two people are out for the flimsiest of reasons instead of one. But that's easy to solve: just move it up to Episode 3, or something. Then you'll be down to 14 players in Ep4, and you can swap to two tribes. Go three more rounds, merge in Ep7 at 11 (an odd number, perfect for a power shift), the merge boot is the first juror. People are more familiar with each other due to three rounds of two tribes, and you no longer have this listless picking off of the easy targets in the middle of the season. If you're lucky, you might even have some big moves on the swap tribes, as people attempt to keep power players out of the merge tribe/jury. Since people are actually merged at the merge, you could even have a feast to celebrate! Imagine ....

Can we please stop denying people the chance for immunity?

We've had three immunity challenges since the merge. In only one of those could everyone compete. Episode 6 had the "earn it" merge-atory IC, which Sai "earned" by guessing the right path to take in camp and being the fastest person to reach an advantage sitting on a display stand in a clearing. Six people had to sit out there. This episode, six people had to sit out again, because the preceding RC ("Pairy Feral") had to be run in pairs. In a season with an established majority at the merge (which happens most of the time) and only one available idol, there's almost nothing the people on the outs can do to save themselves. They're sitting ducks. Chances are pretty low that *two* Shot in the Dark plays are going to hit in the same season (1-in-36!).

So in their zeal to make the players "earn it," Probst and company have given us multiple rounds of boring Pagonging, instead. Instead of amplifying gameplay, they've smothered it. Predictable structure (especially for the audience, that saw almost exactly the same challenges in the same order in 47), predictable results.

Now sure, you say. But was anyone going to beat Eva in 'Get a Grip'? Come on! Yeah, probably not. But why not give them the chance to try? Especially if you're going to waste the audience's time waxing poetic about the history of the challenge, and how it's a classic. Then you turn around and force the majority of the people - most of them superfans who would have treasured this once-in-a-lifetime chance to test it out for themselves - to sit on the bench and just watch it? Beaten by a bunch of rules, indeed.

It's also a little disrespectful to the challenge itself, no? Something that was an epic standalone contest, reduced to a sad little minigame at the end of a much-longer challenge? Didn't even get an intervening ad break.

Worst of all with these bloated concatenated challenges that limit the IC participation (like the Ep6 and Ep8 RC/ICs)? They're boring - and really only because they're too much in one sitting. Even the most ardent challenge enthusiast doesn't want to sit through a full half-hour of challenge footage at once. Having back-to-back separate challenges (team RC, individual IC) with no break in between just becomes a grind to watch. In contrast, the original, time-tested structure - 1. Reward Challenge, 2. reward, 3. plotting back at camp, possibly by the non-rewardees against those at reward, and/or vice-versa, and 4. Immunity Challenge - worked for a reason. It lets you see the consequences of the first challenge play out, let the players reset the game in response, then see those plans fall apart with a surprise immunity win. Why neuter all that, AND screw over people with no power AND bore the audience?

It's like eating a Thanksgiving feast, then immediately having pizza delivered. Who would do that? They may each be great individually, but wouldn't everyone feel more positive about the second meal if they were separated a bit more?

Where the game is headed

Every fan's favorite activity at the merge is to predict where the season will end up, based on the interactions and story arcs we've seen up to this point. Well, the game is way more than half over, and we're still kind of waiting for it to start. But no time like the present, right? What's up next?

Before the season started airing, Probst described it as a season of partnerships. So who are the key partners left? (We've already lost Thomas/Bianca, Sai/Cedrek, and half of Mitch/Charity.)

Joe and Eva - After the premiere, I flagged the unofficial theme of the season as "Heroes vs. Heroes". This was reiterated in the merge episode, from the "Previously On..." all the way through the episode itself. The best version of that theme is probably Eva winning, but Joe winning would be a New Era, feel-good Tom Westman ending. But the game has evolved a ton since Palau, and while people really like Joe, having a "trust and integrity" alliance that stomps everyone on a grim, Pagong-y march to victory doesn't seem like it should still be a winning plan. (This also - and maybe mostly - applies to David.)

Joe and Eva have been our most visible partnership since the premiere, and everyone in the game is aware of it. And if by some chance as a viewer you had forgotten this, or had doubts about the pair's longevity, Episode 8 put that to rest for you. In the post-Tribal scenes of the first group coming back to camp, we had this shot, with someone yelling "We're here for the long haul!" which the editors placed over a shot of Joe (centered) and Eva.

And if that was too subtle for you, when the second group returned, Mitch yelled out that one of the 10 of them was going to win a million dollars. Who did we immediately cut to again? Joe.

And it makes sense. Joe is probably the best-connected person at the moment. He's David's closest ally (maybe after Mary). He's Shauhin's. He's good with Kyle. He's worked with Star. And Eva is incredibly insulated, too, with an idol and an as-yet-unspecified bonus advantage waiting for her next episode. With only five votes left, that's pretty good safety. Incredibly, despite their very obvious connection to each other, nobody is seriously talking about targeting them (except Chrissy, who is now gone). From the edit, it seems most likely that of this duo, Joe is the probable winner. Just as you probably thought back in Ep1.

Kamilla and Kyle - Their "undercover" duo shield is rapidly evaporating, but for the audience, they're the next most-visible partnership this season. The biggest surprise so far has been that they haven't been actively working to counter the Strong Five's power, at least not as far as we've been shown. They've only done so this episode, REactively. Even though Kyle himself stated this episode, "If we keep on getting rid of people at the bottom, then we lose our shot of making a move." Kamilla had a good idea in keeping their options open by supporting Mitch's quest for preserving original Civa's modest five-person almost-majority at this F10 vote, but the plan never went further than that, and the boot ended up on Chrissy, which reduced the OG Civa numbers to four and the non-Strong Five numbers to three. Great work! If it's not just a dull, predictable Joe march to the end, Kamilla is the next most-likely winner candidate at this point. Mitch called it three episodes back: "One of the six of us (original Civa) is gonna get a million dollars." (To which Kamilla nodded, sagely.) Also, during the Ep6 IC, Probst said "Balancing a ball on a pole, doesn't seem like much. Could be worth a million dollars." At which point the camera cuts to Kamilla. It can't be BOTH Joe and Kamilla winning, obviously, so there must be at least one red herring floating belly-up here somewhere.

Shauhin - Shauhin is in this weird middle ground where he's clearly a knowledgeable student of the game, nominally has numbers, isn't playing emotionally, has fun confessionals ("I think it's a 7-year-old's drink"), and we keep getting status updates from him about his position in the game, even if they're inaccurate - all of which on paper adds up to the impression he could go far. Conversely, he doesn't really have a close partner/ally that has his back. Kyle and Kamilla tried to frame him at the Split Tribals! But unlike other people in his alliance (Joe, Eva, David), Shauhin doesn't seem particularly committed to the Strong Five, and could be the easiest person for Kyle and Kamilla to peel off to help them take a shot at David. They might be able to get Joe, too, but they don't really need him. With Star and Mitch's votes, that would be enough (unless we get another easy vote first, on Mitch or Star). It's odd we haven't really seen Shauhin try to engineer something himself. He's capable. Does he feel too safe, or is he thinking it's still way too early?

Mary and David - A new, emerging pair (although they've sort of been here since the swap) is Mary and David. But how much longer will both be in the game? Mary is one of the clear fan-favorite contestants of the season, partly because she was occasionally opposed to Sai, but also because she's been through a lot, and is still kicking. She's the first player to be saved by the Shot in the Dark, then survive even one, let alone multiple votes after that! But she took a step back in safety this week. Being perceived as David's pocket vote seems highly risky, especially when he's been busy irritating his allies. If they decide to cut David loose, only for him to win immunity ... guess who will be Plan B? Or if they think they still want David a number, but want him knocked down a peg, guess who will be Plan A? As the last original Vula standing, Mary should be seen as highly unthreatening, but that perception is fading.

David's edit has also taken a nosedive. He was a big, surprisingly well-received character in the pre-merge, but he's absolutely taken a heel turn in the last few episodes, as he has become increasingly strident in his insistence that it's the divine right of the strong people to dominate the game. It's hard to see that kind of attitude winning many jury votes, even if he now goes on a Brad Culpepper-esque immunity run. He might get Mary's, sure. Maybe Mitch's. But a majority? Nah. Most likely, he's a near-term target, because people would prefer not to keep hearing about chocolate milk all day, and jurors are required to be silent.

Star - After the merge episode, it was clear Star deserves to be a star. (Where had she been all season?!) Then she disappeared from the edit again. Like Sai, she's unpolished and not in the least bit cautious ("My brother-in-law told me not to say names, but Aramis? I've got to say names!"). Unlike Sai, Star's strategy focus is spotty at best, and she is as likely to hug you and give you an idol as to vote you out. She has a huge heart. Dare I say she's the new Keith Nale? Star is the fun, chaotic, spontaneous antithesis to the boring "We strong guys should stick together" alpha dude narrative. More Star soliloquys like "Where art thou, Vula? Where art thou, Civa? There is room in my heart for y'all. Today is about peace; tomorrow we can do war." Less buff dudes posturing with, "I don't go in for those backstabbing shenanigans." Please? Based on her limited screentime, I really don't think Star will win this season, but how amazing would it be if she did?

Mitch - What nobody seems to be asking is: Why wasn't Mitch included in the jocks alliance, and why was he not even mentioned? He was really good in the tribal challenges! It appears the collective distrust of Charity spread to Mitch, and that was enough of an excuse to exclude him. Joe was wary of Mitch's "story" as being unbeatable in front of the jury. (Maybe also because Mitch's story could compete with Eva's?)

To see where Mitch's standing is with the editors, refer back to the pair-picking sequence this episode: We see Shauhin pick Kamilla (Joe congratulates himself for setting this up, in confessional), David picks Mary (another nod from Joe), Kyle picks Chrissy (Kamilla is happy her own partnership with Kyle wasn't exposed), Eva picks Joe (Chrissy complains in confessional, despite already having a partner), and ... the last pair, presumably by default, is Mitch and Star, which we aren't shown, and nobody talks about. Unless, perhaps, it happened before that, and it was cut. Yikes. I do wonder if the callback to Christy Smith in the premiere was foreshadowing: Maybe - like Christy - Mitch is the swing vote between two big alliances, and leaves before committing fully to either of them?

In the short term, the Strong Five (plus Mary) seems all-powerful, but they really are at risk if they actually believe that. They now have massive numbers, and could even split 3-3 on the three people not in their alliance (Kamilla, Mitch, Star), if they even suspect one has an idol. The obvious flaw there is Kyle is highly unlikely to participate in such a plan if Kamilla is the target. Kyle and Kamilla's best (or at least most fun) move is to force that split, then Kyle flips to take out their target of choice (David?), 4-3-2. If there's no split plan (Eva has the idol, duh!), a 6-3 pile-on turns into just 5-4 if just Kyle flips, but they could easily pull in either Shauhin or Joe (or both) to target Mary, "to pull David back in with us." Will they do that this, or just allow another easy vote on someone they're not really with, like Star? Star's underedit makes that latter scenario a worry. We shall see.

What the hell, guys?

First off, the "bottom four must risk their vote" journey format was sort of tolerable the first time on 47, because the location for their journey Jenga game was spectacular. This time? It was just a dull sand spit. Meh. But the format (one person definitely loses their vote) is terrible, and it's the spiritual cousin of replacing "Sweat vs Savvy (you lost a reward, but here are two paths to win the basics) with the much more mean-sprited "Fight for Supplies" (you both lost reward, one of you is definitely coming away empty-handed again). The average journey format, where there's a private task with a range of prizes/punishments where each person is responsible for their own fate is one thing. Forced loss of one vote, after already losing out on immunity AND reward is just cruel. And there's no mystery, no gameplay possible. Four people saw it happen. One of them is going to talk. So everyone knew Star lost her vote. How could they not? Please send this down to the seafloor, wherever Rachel's cool ball-sorting game (from the following journey) ended up.

But that's not even the most objectionable post-RC/IC add-on event this episode! As several people pointed out Wednesday night, there were name tags at each taco-eating station (see above), so the seating was assigned. Each person had an individual bowl of tortilla chips. When the Reward Four first arrived, the name tags and bowls were visible then, too (see below).

That means the advantage was designed for Eva and only Eva. Even if the reasoning was, "the advantage-grabbing opportunity happens the night *after* the Ep8 Tribal, so they needed to be sure that person would still be in the game to get it," that still feels a bit icky. Bring back advantages that everyone has an equal chance of finding, not just one person. Or at least ones that aren't further enriching someone who's already safe. Trinkets like this work best when they empower someone who doesn't have any other options. There was a 0.0% chance of that happening here.

Final note: All will be forgiven if this is all an elaborate, two-episode prank, and the "advantage" Eva gets is just Knowledge is Power. (Yes, I know that was just successfully played in SurvivorAU.) She can steal her own idol!

Shorter takes

The purity of the game: Jeff Probst likes to pat himself of the back and tells fans that he doesn't watch any international Survivor franchises, to keep his ideas pure. I get that instinct, I truly do. Usually, I try to write recaps before listening to any podcasts, so that if I do cover a similar topic, at least the bad ideas are mine alone. But even so, I am BEGGING anyone with the power to do so: Please get Jeff Probst to watch either SurvivorAU: Titans v Rebels (2024) or SurvivorAU: Brains v Brawn II (2025). Both are all-newbie casts. Both are fantastic Survivor seasons with some amazing players, creative gameplay, innovative challenges, worthwhile rewards, HUGE characters, everything you could want. Sure, not every episode is a home run (there are 24 of them per season, gotta whiff occasionally). Non-elimination episodes are unfortunately a necessary evil. But even so, as a whole, each of these seasons performs at a higher level than a replacement-level New Era season. Please, before it's too late and Survivor 50 has been set up to run into the ground.