In Episode 7 of Survivor 51, we finally saw the first almost-normal merge since before COVID, six long years ago. Everyone received a buff at the same time. There was a full, 13-person individual immunity challenge, with one winner. Everyone voted at Tribal Council. And the results demonstrated why fans have clamoring for this since the dawn of the new era: We had a chaotic, shape-shifting vote where the target changed multiple times.

Sure, we can (and will, below) quibble that there was a pointless "earn the merge meal" quasi-challenge (with ten winners!) that reminded everyone that Jeff Probst's obsession with giving fans exactly what they don't want is never more than a step away. But on the whole, this was a substantial step forward for the show. It's almost as if the show knows what works, and after 10 straight seasons of doing the opposite, decided to let it be good again!

And the good news didn't stop there: Tribal Council boiled down to a tug-of-war between two of the more irritating contestants (Brady and Eric), with the bigger blowhard getting the boot. No more "brody"-ing on this season! (Except from the jury bench, and likely a lot at Final Tribal.) Or, as @roddiaztwine on Bluesky expertly put it, in election-related terms:

Naturally, all good news comes with caveat. (Brady: "I love caviar.") Next week, we have to endure another edition of the inexpertly named "Double Duos" (that should mean just four people, but there's already a twist for that), also known as "Tied Destinies." Most likely, as discussed below, we're probably going to lose a good player as collateral damage. All because we started with too many players (did we *really* need Rob the Quitter?), for reasons that only make sense to Jeff Probst.

But let's get back to the positivity. Thirteen people voted at a single Tribal Council! (To be fair, that also happened in Ep7 of S50: In the Hands of the Fans, just a few months ago.) In theory, it could have even been 14 votes. We appeared to have a live Tribal. There was boneheaded strategy (openly threatening the guy with the necklace) and calmer, more subtle gameplay (Jelly and Devin leaving Savu 2.0 to join up with the remaining Savu 1.0s, minus Carter, but plus Mike, for now). There are still a lot of moving parts that are reconfiguring themselves, and the game remains fluid, with a lot of strong players still left. This is the future Survivor fans have been wanting!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled doomsaying.

How to screw up the merge feast, in one easy step

(Answer: Jeff Probst, duh.) The merge is more than just the midpoint of the game. Yes, it's the end of the tribal phase, and the beginning of the individual phase, but lasting this long is also an accomplishment on its own. Remember the "outlast" part on the logo? (It's right there, bottom-center, you can't miss it.) Even in the new era, where you just had to not be on the disaster tribe to get to the merge, you're still sleeping outside, away from your loved ones, and not eating. So naturally, the merge feast has always been a tangible celebration of that milestone. Everyone eats! As a bonus, the contestants finally get to meet people they may have only seen at challenges. It breathes new life into everything.

Or, as Jeff Probst described it, the merge feast is "where you all sit around a table and eat too much food, as you talk about [how] you've made it to the next phase of the game." Yeah, exactly! That's what we've been missing these last 10 seasons! Please don't say any more.

But, of course, Jeff Probst did go on, and added a "caveat" that only 10 people could possibly eat at this feast, so they had to do a challenge to weed out the three who would starve. Less of a reward challenge, more of a punishment challenge. The "challenge" was just eating two live grubs, which was done in S1: Borneo (as part of a reward challenge), and ... also done just last season (as a pointless way to make the auction less fun). So it both tarnished a classic memory for Eric AND was something that the audience just saw happen. Fun?

But more importantly, it ruined the whole ethos of the merge feast by needlessly excluding people. Just as it had done in the new era, except it was three people not eating, instead of six. Wow, what progress! What exactly was gained by preventing three people from connecting with everyone else? Was it entertaining to watch (medical student) Thien An excitedly hug (OB/GYN physician) Sharonda the second they got their merge buffs, then not get to talk at the merge feast?

I guess it did spare Kristin, Sharonda, and Cristian from having to find a quiet space away from both Brady's drunken braying and Eric's endless stories. And it was helpful for Kristin and Sharonda's games that they had some privacy in which to connect over the tethered idol, and that Kristin got to info-dump about life on Toka to Cristian and Sharonda. But they certainly could have done these things after eating the merge feast. And we could have had grub-gobbling as an actual throwback reward challenge, one which we could have swapped out for whatever pointless future journey we will be stuck with in Ep10, or whatever.

As justification for doing all this, Jeff Probst said: "We go to the most recent era, the new era. You're gonna earn it." [Audible audience groaning.] Again (as with every merge in the new era): They already earned it by lasting this long. This is the open era, we're supposed to be changing things up and doing new things. You're not "bringing back" a twist by "earning the merge meal," because that has never left!

He closed out his justification by asking, just before the bug-eating task began, his standard "Big enough stakes?" question. Ahem. You don't need "stakes" for a celebration! (Side note: Probst said at least twice, very precisely, "In order to eat at the feast, you've got to eat your grubs." Couldn't even go for the grub/grubs pun in the script there, huh? What an absolute waste.)

To be fair, Survivor already did this dumb, pointless thing once before in the pre-new era: In S34: Game Changers, Brad and Tai were excluded from the merge feast, for ... reasons. Probst demanded each tribe offer up one volunteer to skip it, with the food already in front of them. Just random, pointless cruelty, which I guess was a harbinger of the new era to come seven seasons later. This is the kind of sadistic bullshit the blue tsunami was supposed to wash away, Probst!

I did, however, appreciate that after everyone celebrated wildly following Probst promising a "classic Survivor merge feast" and they slowly sobered up, figuring he couldn't possibly be telling the whole truth, and there had to be some kind of stupid exception, Jeff Probst began confirming that suspicion with, "It *is* the Open Era" after which the editors spliced in a sad trombone sound effect to drive that point home. On the whole, the Open Era has been a massive improvement on the "new" era, but this was a good audible reminder that it still has a way to go.

Double Duos is back: Call your shot

As previously mentioned, I didn't love Double Duos in S50, and I also didn't love its earlier version (Tied Destinies) in SurvivorSA 8: Immunity Island. Even knowing how it works ahead of time, it's bound to screw someone over, because you don't have infinite choices of partners, and as other people pair up, the pickings become increasingly slim. Somebody is going to end up tethered to someone they would rather avoid. Plus the optimal partner is someone who might help you win immunity, and also not be anyone's target at Tribal, in case you don't win. That's not easy to find.

From the "Next time on Survivor..." teaser, we can already see some of who those pairs are. The shot above shows one complete pair, and parts of three more: Cristian and Carter are paired on the green team, while Kilby is orange, Lewis is yellow, and Thien An is purple. In another scene, we see Eric (purple) talking to Jelly (blue), and we also see Lewis hugging a blue-banded Devin. So Devin and Jelly are a pair (naturally), and Eric and Thien An also are. That leaves just Sharonda, Kristin (maybe the missing red team?), Mike, and Maggie unaccounted for.

Of these, Eric was already a target this episode, Kristin temporarily was, and Mike was until he won immunity, and probably will be again. So whom does that put in the greatest peril?

I'm thinking it's Eric and Thien An. They are highly unlikely to win the challenge (11th and 12th place in this week's IC, respectively), and Eric was already a near-consensus target, while Thien An's part of the broader Toka alliance that Savu is trying to whittle down, and she appears to have been out of the loop on the Brady boot. Only Maggie seems particularly close to her (although Thien An did seem to have a secret connection to Lewis, which we know about only because of the nightvision B-roll of them fist-bumping after Toka's Ep3 Tribal, above, which was shown while someone else was talking). Both have also been close to Kilby, who's another possible target. The other option is Mike, but I think there's a decent chance he wins again. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Relatedly, because idols apply to both members of a pair, there's the possibility of a whopping eight people (out of 12) being immune at the next Tribal, leaving just two pairs possible to be voted against. Because of the tethered idol, it would make a lot of sense for Kristin and Sharonda to be the missing red pair. (Kristin could therefore play the idol for herself, ha!) Carter has an idol. Jelly has an idol. And some pair is going to have necklaces. All of which looks like increasingly bad news for Eric and Thien An.

The tempestuous teapot of tepid takes

- Team Rocket blasts off at the speed of light - It's challenging to give credit to a single person (or duo) for a chaotic, sand-shifting vote outcome, but the story of the episode appeared to be: It was Jelly's idea. It's more clear on rewatch, because while we get the standard post-Tribal look at Devin and Jelly alone at the Savu camp following the Ori boot, it's given more of a forward-looking spin, as they pledge to go into the rest of the game as a strong pair: "They hate to see this duo coming." During the scrambling, Jelly is a potent anti-Brady voice (tired of having to adjust her plans in response to his "tantrums"), and at Tribal delivers the killer quote ("we're dealing with man-children.") There's a definite through-line there. Devin and Jelly dressed up as Team Rocket for Halloween. Who is their Meowth? Mike?

- Carter and Lewis, together again? - They were the keys to the Patt blindside, providing the key swing votes alongside Maggie, Kilby, Thien An, and the now-departed Jenna. But we didn't see them talk to each other even once post-merge. And yet they both voted for Eric. Carter's vote made sense, he seemed tight with Brady. But Lewis's? Was he just out of the loop? His first vote since Linnea left, and he doesn't vote with Maggie or Kilby? Lewis had no obvious ties to Brady, so was there just some unaired scrambling conversation where Lewis agreed to repay Carter for going along with the Patt vote with a Lewis promise to vote Eric? (Side note: Carter has a really bad feel for voting numbers.)

- Yeesh, give it a rest? - I know, producers prod contestants to utter specific phrases in confessionals, but there's no reason for the S51 contestants to be tossing out "permanent uncertainty" in public settings (Kristin at the merge, someone else at Tribal), unless they're actively trying to curry favor with the host. It comes across as brown-nosing. It's too much. Please stop.