Episode 6 of Survivor50: In the Hands of the Fans implored us to "find the joy." It's a great mindset, but the show went out of its way to make that as challenging as possible, a remarkable flub for an episode that took an event implicitly bursting with happiness (remember all those people jumping around in ecstasy at news of the merge?), and replaced it with grim, maudlin tripartite gloom at being defenseless against a randomly selected majority. On the one hand, at least we didn't have the new era mergeatory, and constant exhortations to "earn it." On the other hand, merging for one day, then dispersing everyone to four (!) separate beaches and three Tribals might be even worse.

This is a pretty depressing fumble, because everything started off so well, otherwise. The episode gave us the leaps and yelps of excitement at learning it was time to merge, and the unabashed enthusiasm people like Dee (a former winner!) had for the achievement. We had Christian and Rizo earnestly gushing over finally getting to meet some Survivor legends they'd only seen at challenges so far. And then the flood of social-strategic gameplay - within a few minutes everyone seemed to know about Aubry's idol, and Ozzy's idol. (Not Rizo's, which is quite a reversal from 49!) We saw tentative steps at larger groups forming - the fun people connected to Christian and Cirie, and the *sigh*-inducing "Honor & Integrity" crew.

And then, for whatever reason, at around the 16-minute mark, the show decided, "Eh, that's enough fun for one episode," and yanked everything away again, but kept going for another hour-and-three-quarters. Ozzy finds an "advantage" and is whisked away to Exile Island, with Rizo in tow. (It was fun to see them bonding over working with Cirie, but did they really have to miss the rest of the episode?) And then the floor fell out: Instead of a 17-, er, 15-person Tribal Council ... we were getting three five-person Tribals. The Michelle Yi twist, times three. That's not a merge, that's a swap. There was also not a merge feast, there was a five-person reward feast, but US Survivor probably doesn't even remember that merge feasts exist, even if SurvivorAU brought it back this season. But yay, this season is such a celebration of its history, or whatever.

This episode was also very sloooow in the middle and at the end (three Tribals will do that). Probst's pre-challenge monologue dragged on forever. The post-challenge maneuvering in the three separate camps ate up 20 minutes, for extremely little payoff. And there was a lot of extraneous talking about the episode theme (by Probst) at the Tribals. This episode could easily have been 90 minutes, and would have benefitted from some tightening up.

That said, the one part that was not really a celebration that I would leave intact was Colby's appropriately maudlin-but-somehow-positive self-reflection at the final Tribal Council. His appreciation of how the show has impacted his life over the last quarter-century (half his life!) was sincere, and finding the joy is probably the best way to go about things. That's not to excuse that it's pretty lame that Colby spent almost the entire game without a vote, which I guess that's the big payoff for the "collision between a founding icon and some recently added unnecessary fluff that detracts from the game itself, actually" situation that production was apparently jonesing for this season. Despite that, and the infected foot, and the torn ligament, and being a sitting duck because of a combination of two poorly considered twists piled on top of each other, Colby was still happy with his time on this season. We should all aspire to be that gracious.

So, to sum up: Dear Survivor, this was a merge episode. We were hoping for more of this...

... and this...

... and less of this:

Timing is everything

Perhaps this whole thing was meant as a celebration of the show's history, as Jeff Probst keeps insisting, since S14: Fiji is now 1/3 of the way through the show's run, and the "blood moon" twist was a triple re-enactment of Michelle Yi being twist-screwed at the Fiji merge. (It does make you wonder if Jeff Probst understands what a "celebration" actually is. Or perhaps Mike White's famous "But is it fun?" note on Probst's new era designs should have had a follow-up: "Do you even remember what fun is?")

At the time, fans rightly objected to Michelle Yi grinding her way through the pre-merge (at least until the swap) on the "have not" Ravu tribe, only to be - for the first time ever - re-divided onto a five-person team two days after the "merge," a team which promptly lost, and because it contained a simple majority of people from the other original tribe, voted her out. Along with Yau-Man, she had been one of eventual winner Earl Cole's tighter allies, but neither of them was on the team, so that was that.

Obviously, this same mechanic re-emerged in US Survivor a while ago, and has been popping up with increasing regularity. But the peripherals have gradually crept up on us, originally resurfacing at Final 10 in S36: Ghost Island (where it wasn't a terrible idea), and over time appearing earlier and in more Fiji-like form with each repetition. Until here we are again, with Fijix3. Here's how that progression happened: Note how the time since the merge and the intervening Tribals have gradually been shaved away over time. People in (parentheses) also missed the jury.

As you can see, we're right back where we started. When the twist returned in Ghost Island, this felt much more fair. The cast had been given nine long days since the merge to get to know each other, build trust (two Tribals), and make plans. They even all went back to the same camp, which created the opportunity for one group to scheme with the other, or potentially pass idols or advantages back and forth. That would have been more interesting here! That changed in S39: Island of the Idols, as the two groups were split up at separate camps (maybe the least of that season's sins), but it was still fairly deep into the post-merge. Since then, though, it's been the exact same format, just earlier and earlier in the post-merge. The only difference here was, again, even earlier and three groups. And a quasi-astronomical name with colored lights at Tribal.

Given all this, it's also fair to wonder what Jeff Probst thought was so groundbreaking about this twist, given that we've seen it so often in the last ten seasons, just not at this spot in the game, and with one more boot. Or is the joke that this is the Survivor equivalent of the old (SNL?) skit where Gilette engineers lose their shit at their creative genius for adding a sixth blade to the previously thought untoppable five-blade razor?

SurvivorAU vs Survivor50

I have wanted to write about Australian Survivor this season, but with three episodes a week and 100% overlap with Survivor 50, it simply hasn't been possible. That's a shame, because SurvivorAU has been really good. Honestly, the four-season run from AU9: Titans v Rebels through the in-progress (six episodes left) AU12: Redemption stacks up extremely well against any US Survivor four-season span. It's that good. Please, especially if you're in Australia, watch this show so that it doesn't get canceled ("cancelled" in Australian).

Why has AU: Redemption been so good? In short: Absolute chaos at the Tribal Councils. Multiple legit live Tribals. A big idol play taking out an on-the-spot-targeted flip-flopping ally. An idol play (and a fake idol play) on a 4-3-2-1 split that led to a hopelessly outnumbered minority's votes deciding which of the 3- or 2- vote recipients went to the jury (and one of that minority group flipping last-minute to change that). That minority regrouping for a 4-3-2. Elite lessons in reading people's intent and seeing through lies at Tribal. Australian Survivor is always a lot, at 24 episodes a season (except the shorter AU11: Australia v The World, which also featured Cirie Fields!), but this season has also been a lot of fun, especially in the post-merge.

A lot of that fun has been possible because there are so many people. AU has always had 24 contestants (again, except AUvTW), like the US show this season. Also like the US show this season, Australian editing is notoriously spotty, sometimes you see very little of some of those 24. But what you do get consistently are large Tribal Councils. Compare the two seasons thus far: AU: Redemption has had 18 Tribals so far, of which 15 had eight or more people voting. Survivor50 has had nine Tribals, in which only ONE had eight or more voters. So which would you rather see: 15/18 or 1/9? It turns out you can't have a dramatic 4-3-2-1 with a five-person Tribal. Sorry, that's just math.

This week's episode of Survivor50 in particular aptly demonstrated why this was a completely unforced self-own on US Survivor's part. There was a 17-person "merge"! That should have meant lots of moving parts at Tribal, right? With so many elite strategic minds like Christian, Cirie, Dee, and so forth around, who knows what kind of madness they could have cooked up? We will never know, because instead we had three random five-person Tribals, two of which were so obvious that the person leaving knew they were kaput before the immunity challenge ended.

We saw it in S14: Fiji, and we saw it here again. Smaller, randomly assigned groups with no time to scheme and plot are highly unlikely to lead to interesting scheming and plotting. It almost always leads to surface-level alliance-clinging. You go with the numbers to make it through to the next day, nothing more, nothing less. If the only suspense is whether Jonathan Young will stay with the people he was irate at 36 hours earlier, or swing to the Honor/Integrity people he's been eyeing longingly from the start of the season, you're doing something wrong. (Well, a lot of things wrong, like casting AND game design, but the game design is still a big factor.)

There were a huge number of options here that weren't trotting Jeff Probst out with his bag of rocks to divide the contestants into three teams of five. Many people have suggested some variation on "Why not a 17-person Tribal, followed immediately by two more vote outs?" Indeed, why not? The first vote exposes alliance lines, and creates the potential for pandemonium for the second. And then you get another vote! There's no way you get three simple unanimous votes back-to-back-to-back on the same night, anyway. It at least would have been a big swing with something new, and not "the same twist we've been doing, but with 50% more swap-screw." What about schoolyard picks for teams, instead of rock draws? That would have been far more interesting, and could have introduced strategy in an episode nearly devoid of it. Oh no, we might have had to cut three minutes of Jeff Probst describing the blood moon twist, how would we have coped? Or, you know, one more double-boot when you had three tribes, and then maybe two teams of eight here, with one person exiled. Nobody's going to rocks at the merge, right? Right?

The tempestuous teapot of tepid takes

- Well, that's ominous - Jonathan: "It's almost like a rebirth of Survivor in this season 50, because no one knows what to expect. So ... mysterious. Season 50's no joke! [Jonathan chops a coconut for emphasis.]" One of the best indicators of success in reality TV in general is the person praising the twists/ game format usually does well. And for Survivor in particular, the biggest green light is having a good showing in the merge episode. Jonathan was all over the confessionals here, we heard extensively about his (very minimal) thoughts about the game, AND he was the swing vote at the one Tribal with an outcome in doubt. Time to start revving up your excitement engine to watch him trounce Coach and Joe or Stephenie and Joe in the final three, I guess.

- I can't believe you won't shut up - It took six long minutes for Jeff Probst to pontificate about how amazing the "blood moon" twist was and describe every single item on the Applebees menu before the immunity challenge actually started. That's almost exactly how much time we spent in the merge camp on Day 12 - the one actually merged day - when everyone was getting to know each other. Needless to say, this was not the best way to allocate those time resources.

- (Devon Pinto voice) "This is NOT a blood moon" - The weirdest aspect of the "blood moon" twist was that a blood moon is an actual thing (full moon + lunar eclipse = red moon, due to the red wavelengths refracting through the atmosphere). There was not one during filming, although there was three months later, so it's kind of weird to pretend there was one. And despite the name, it doesn't really have any major cultural connotations, outside of (as Tiffany alluded) Zelda. (Ancient cultures were likely far more weirded out by solar eclipses or bright, daytime-visible comets.) Bathing Tribal Council in red light to mimic a celestial event that was not, in fact, happening felt pretty cheesy. Christian said it best, mid-challenge: "I didn't realize CBS had the budget to change the moon's phases." Probst chuckled, probably wondering silently what the nerd was going on about. (In the show's defense, Probst's stated reasoning was "this event is rare, and blood moons are rare, so therefore, this event = blood moon," so maybe this was all a very subtle Monty Python "Therefore ... she's a witch!" reference?)

- Complaining sometimes works - After numerous fans (and Angelina in her exit press) have complained this season about the dearth of screentime for some of the female contestants, we saw a lot of the previously invisible Chrissy and Tiffany this week. That's great. I've also seen a couple of reports that the fan backlash to Survivor handing over a third of the episode to Zac Brown has resulted in hasty edits to upcoming celeb appearances (MrBeast). It's reassuring that in season vaguely head-nodding at its fans, the show is adjusting on the fly, and a reminder that edit-related dismay is far simpler to correct than game-design disgruntledness. You can fix the edit up to a week or two before the episode airs, but you can't go back and reshoot with a better-engineered twist. I know this puts almost all of *my* complaining in this column into the "ultimately pointless" category, which is also fine. But can someone please fix the game design for 51 and 52? New Era+ ain't it.