Two episodes in, Survivor 51 is still full of surprises. First the structural ones: A reward challenge in Episode 2! Everyone in two camps, finally! Also, we're five days in, the season is 20% over, and still nobody has been forced to lose their vote! Perhaps not coincidentally, it feels like the cast is responding to their newfound freedom with some creative gameplay: Did Linnea really mishear Carter talking about crabs, or was she banking on nobody else having heard the rest? Did Rhode Island Rob really just try to idol himself out? People on both tribes have now found idols in secret, then used that knowledge to try to pull in an ally (with a 50% success rate).

All of this is welcome return to what Survivor used to be: Contestants playing the game, rather than spending most of their time extricating themselves from various production hazards. It feels like instead of setting the cast up to repeatedly step on an infinite series of rakes, the Survivor chaos meter really is now set to "opportunity," as claimed in the opening minutes. This is what fans have been begging for since the dawn of the new era. Sure, the Open Era is bloody, littered with fragments of "digies," and maybe a few strategic wild goose chases based entirely on misunderstandings. And at least one person (so far) trying in vain to write their own name at Tribal Council. But these were all things the players initiated themselves! This is the future superfans want! (I do, at least.)

So despite everyone realizing by the second season in that the "new era" had been woefully misnamed, the "open era" actually appears to be delivering as promised. So far, anyway. Maybe there's still life in the American version of this franchise, after all? Thumbs up.

You have to REALLY want it

This episode also was one of contrasts. The show was clearly pretty proud that even though Brady suffered a quite gruesome injury, he was singularly focused on not being pulled from the game. It also - weirdly - seemed to pat itself on the back for Kristin's determination to keep playing, despite the show giving her an extremely predictable foot injury, the kind you wouldn't think you would want to negligibly inflict on a lawyer who knows the show's history inside and out! Just saying. Both of these portraits in fierceness were held up against Rob slowly deteriorating emotionally - mainly from not sleeping, but clearly also missing his wife and young kids, and feeling guilty about taking this time away from them, and apparently trying to "accidentally" idol himself out.

The show's editorial stance on Rob was a bit murky, because he never stated his plan explicitly (which the show also appeared to be mad about, see above), and you had to piece together what he was trying to do from his failed actions: (1) Rob thought everyone was voting for Eric; (2) Rob tried to write his own name, which is against the rules unless Jimmy Fallon suggests it; and (3) he planned to give the idol to Eric, all of which, if allowed, might have led to all the votes for Eric being voided, and poor old Rob going home. (Except he assumed Eric would play his Shot in the Dark and therefore not vote, but Rob overestimated his own persuasiveness and Eric did not play his Shot, which would have led to a 1-1 tie between Rob and Ana and forced a revote, which he probably would have survived, and of course Rob was also unaware five other people were voting for Ana.) Nonetheless, it was pretty clear the show wanted him viewed in a negative light, since he was presented in a fairly negative way throughout the episode: he did improv (!), other people (Alexis) commented on his declining mental state, Rob cried in confessional about his family, and there were carefully curated highly negative-looking quotes (below).

All in all, the message appeared to be: If you have a physical injury and stay in, you are a hero. Survivor is HARD [*Rupert roar*]. In contrast, if you're suffering emotionally, for any reason, you are a SOFT BABY, and we will ridicule you. You signed up for this! You knew we give you no food! (Despite "permanent uncertainty.") You knew it's really hard to sleep at night, because it's cold and it rains a lot, even though we don't show that any more! Rub some dirt on it!

This would be a good time to point out that starting in S41, the show switched from small amounts of rice over 39 days to no food at all and 26 days (0% of the food for 67% of the filming time) by choice. And they have not switched back to basic rice rations. From the "Jeff Probst Field Notes" series, it's clear *why* they chose to do that: They *like* to see people break down mentally. Look at his excitement in describing Lewis's depletion on Day 2: "Lewis failed at the mast. Further evidence of how fast you can get depleted. ... Survivor has been on so long it's easy to take the deprivation as wallpaper. It's not. It's the fundamental driving engine of this experience."

This is another vestige of the new era that needs to change. People have always been starving and irritable on Survivor. It was always hard! Tagi ate a can of dog food. Pagong was eating rats! It's great that most of the structural barriers to the contestants playing the game have come down in the Open Era, but there's just no reason to keep completely starving them. Just a small amount of rice should be enough to get everyone functional enough to cook up schemes that actually work, rather than forgetting they can't vote for themselves, or wanting to quit.

A reward challenge? In this economy?

To properly appreciate a welcome change: There was a freestanding reward challenge! In Episode 2! Reward challenges are good, because they're allowed to be a little more low-key, have more variety, more flexibility. They're not expected to be quite as gritty, as they're not a must-win for either tribe. They can be lighter. Let's say you don't especially care to have to spend the afternoon pretending to enjoy Zac Brown's music. If that's the case, you can maybe put in only an 80% effort.

And for fans who appreciate variety in challenges, reward challenges are also a great place for the show to experiment with challenge structure, at least in theory. It's a great spot for a silly waterslide-based race, or people trying to knock an idol out of an opponent's hand, as in "Idol Hands" (hey look, CBS forgot to delete the video of it in S28: Cagayan!).

Sadly, that didn't happen here. While we're supposed to expect the unexpected in the Open Era, one thing (beyond forced F4 fire and always a Final Three) remains constant: The homogeneity of challenges. During the New Era, Australian Survivor has evolved far away from US Survivor. One area of that was the degree to which the Aussies have embraced head-to-head faceoffs in their pre-merge challenges, especially for reward. Classics like "Sumo at Sea" and "Idol Hands" have been run, tinkered with, and mutated - for example, they had a version of "Idol Hands" where players were tethered to two idols on stands, and they had to knock off both their opponent's idols before their own hit the ground. Meanwhile, these 1v1 bouts and really any "first team to do X scores a point, playing to Y points" format challenges were completely abandoned by the American version, for two obvious reasons: (1) always-three-tribes in the New Era made such challenges impossible, and (2) the New Era also almost completely removed separate reward challenges and replaced them with journeys. Seriously! Apart from an opening RC right after the cast greets Probst, there would be at most one RC in the next four episodes (usually in Ep4 or Ep5), and then we were already at merge-atory. So getting a separate RC in Episode 2? Unheard of! (Except in S50, which, notably, this season has followed pretty closely so far.)

So while it was great we had a separate RC here, it was unfortunately the same homogenized challenge-like product the new era has been force-feeding us throughout the 2020s. Instead of something fun, like team "When It Rains," it was your standard Obstacle 1 - obstacle 2 - obstacle 3 - puzzle/skill task affair. Not only that, but the first obstacle was one that was already notorious for breaking a player's ankle 22 seasons back, to which production apparently said: "Let's see how many ankles we can snap if we blindfold half the players!" (Answer: Only one, surprisingly.)

Once they passed the tipping net of death, though, the rest of the challenge was at least new-ish and moderately entertaining. The final element repurposed the poles from "Over-Extended" for hanging a sandbag from a high overhead hook. If you enjoy challenges that involve frustration (all the stacking ones, for example), this was one for you.

To be the bearer of bad news, however, the opportunity window for head-to-head bouts in a challenge is rapidly expiring. All signs point towards an imminent swap to three tribes: One of the official CBS preseason videos showed two whale idols before a challenge, and there's a third tribe's flag visible in Alexis's intro shot. (I guess nobody bothered to alter it because she's still in the Savu lane.) This swap to three tribes will most likely come in Episode 4 - exactly where it would have been in S50, except Kyle's medevac moved it up a week. Next week appears to include just one challenge, also as S50 did, and the press photos which are here reveal yet another obstacle course with a puzzle/skill task at the end. [Christa Hastie voice]: "Bummer!"

Maybe this season we will swap back to two tribes right before merge, and we'll have a fun 1v1 challenge then. Maybe they're saving that for Survivor 52, as further proof that things can still change from season. Whatever the plan is, I hope it includes people shoving/swatting each other with pillows. Please and thank you.

Come on, wouldn't it have been fun to watch Brady and Devin face off after a swap to two tribes? Or Rob and Eric? Ana and Alexis? Ah well, maybe next year/season.

The tempestuous teapot of tepid takes

- Taking alliance stock: Toka - So Brady and Devin are in an "alliance" that doesn't necessarily vote together (I think that's usually just called a "tribe"). Theoretically, they now have a five that includes Patt, Jelly, and Mike. Except we haven't seen Mike agree to that, or even comment on it. There's also new arrival Lewis, who would seem like a good fit for the side with the tall, bro-ey guys, but he seems to fit better with fellow (reluctant?) "farmer" Maggie. That also leaves last week's protagonist, Jenna, out of the numbers, along with fellow superfan Kilby, and the seen-but-not-heard Thien An. It all seems pretty vague, but Toka was also the tribe not going to Tribal this week, so they have more time to reconfigure themselves.

- Taking alliance stock: Savu - Savu's divisions are much clearer, because they're fresher, and have just been Tribal-tested. We have a clear three of Sharonda, Linnea, and Alexis, with whom Eric appears to currently be working. Sharonda pulled in Kristin (after they bonded in the premiere), and also theoretically Ori ... who didn't vote with them this time. The Sharonda-Ori connection was supposed to be secret, but Linnea and Alexis asked Sharonda whether she thought Ori would join them, then they all found out together (above), so it doesn't seem all that secret? Cristian was also included, even though he was with Ana and Carter in the "popcorn" scene. Confusing!

Although they seemed overmatched this week, Savu appears a little more cohesive than the split-down-the-middle Toka tribe. Presumably everyone will try to mend their relationships with Carter and Ori, but the preview showed someone (Linnea?) searching what must be Rob's bag and finding the idol, so Rob may not be receiving the same welcome back to the fold.

- Field notes, a - I've generally been enjoying the "Jeff Probst Field Notes" series on the official Survivor Instagram page (Ep2 here). It's a nice extra layer of information, some of it behind-the-scenes. But all it takes is a cursory glance to notice that there are factual errors, so don't take anything written here as the 100% canonical truth. For example, in the first paragraph: "Got an early morning call from Dr. Barry in Medical. Brady was using a machete to split some wood and chopped off the tip of his thumb." Brady was clearly using an axe or hatchet, not the machete. The photo accompanying this block of text even shows the tip on the axe! I've noted that the "machete" version made it into some of the press coverage of the episode. Not great!

Also, in the Tribal Council section, Probst claims "Another Live Tribal. Back to back." The first one was debatable, but not a single vote changed here, except Rob's for himself. Rob whispered to Eric, but that does not make it a Live Tribal, especially since Eric in no way followed through on Rob's instructions. This could well have been something Probst *thought* was a Live Tribal in the moment, but clearly, it wasn't. So the Field Notes offer insights, just not necessarily facts.