The final winner has fallen and the remaining castaways lean heavily old school. A pleasant surprise after the past couple of returning player seasons.
I personally think that for someone who caught quite a bit of heat, and was eventually booted this episode, Dee, was still portrayed in a pretty nuanced, reflective, and rootable way. She went out the way she wanted to: playing hard. Dee knew she screwed up and did what she could to try to flip the votes onto Coach, including trying to create chaos by instigating a live Tribal Council and playing her Shot In The Dark. Neither worked out for her, but she had a pretty good run on Survivor 50. Alas… Dragon. Slain.
Something I've been keeping track of: another player who has explicitly talked about how they should target Cirie exits the game without having successfully pulled the trigger. I believe the only other player that remains like this is Jonathan, maybe Emily.
This was an interesting episode. Overall it felt like a good return to form after the Zac Brown and Blood Moon episodes. There was a lot of negative tone thrown around, and I think the ones that didn't get any are the ones that stood out to me the most: Cirie, Ozzy, Rizo, and Stephenie. After this episode it really feels like the winner is one of Cirie, Rizo, or Ozzy. Stephenie is climbing her way up the ladder but she feels perhaps more like the final elimination before Fire Making which I'm sure the “fans” voted for.
Here's how things are looking for me right now:
Contenders
Cirie - Anyone who knows me knows that I love Cirie Fields. That love may very well be what's putting her at the top for me, however, I still feel pretty unsure. It's really close between Cirie, Ozzy, and Rizo for me, and all three have their strengths and weaknesses. Hers remain the same at this point. Excellent scenes of her social game when she sniffs out Stephenie’s advantage and actually gets Stephenie to feel good about relieving that secret. It’s notable that Stephenie is shown telling Cirie. Not Coach. No Chrissy. Not Jonathan. Afterward Cirie touches base with Rizo, who is in her Polycule, and they now become even more powerful than they were before, knowing where every idol and advantage in the game lies. At the end of the day, it feels like Cirie and Rizo were the ones to make sure Dee went home instead of Coach, and are likely happy to let Jonathan think he deserves all the credit. So far this season, what Cirie wants to happen, happens reliably. However, I think she just needs more personal content. There is still time, but it’s starting to run out. We see her crying in the NTOS, so maybe it’s finally coming. If this ends up being the case, I think it’s fair enough that the editors dialed back her personal content substantially after the premiere to focus more on her personality and social game. Cirie had a huge premiere in terms of emotional content, at this point, we just need a little more from the horse’s mouth. If we get that in the next couple of episodes, she might have actually done it.
Ozzy - Ozzy continues to pretty perfectly embody the themes of the season when it comes to playing the game you need to in the moment. It was a fun little full circle moment when he came back from Exile Island with Rizo to find that it had been a major advantage after having spoken about it glowingly in the previous episode. He wins individual immunity in this episode and he gets a great confessional afterward about how it feels like he’s stepping back into his old shoes and that he’s ready to take on the rest of the game. Ozzy continues to exemplify a good balance between Ozzy and Oscar. Only slight negative for him in this episode was him being part of the silliness of the slew of people who said they wanted to vote Dee, but ended up being one of the people in the split voting for Tiffany. Meanwhile, his primarily alliance members in Cirie and Rizo seemed to be the undercurrent that actually turned the tides onto Dee in the first place, but he wasn’t really included in those conversations.
Rizo - Great episode for Rizo without question or caveats. He and Cirie have a good conversation about needing to let go of Dee, and it felt like that conversation more than anything else in the episode, is what got her sent home. Rizo clocks and schools Coach on his Four Horseman Alliance and antics around camp. He doesn’t necessarily have a “past self” to play like or unlike, but we do seem some quick thinking and adaptability from Rizo in his conversations with Coach, correctly saying what Coach wants to hear, while operating with his true allies behind the scenes. We are seeing something similar to Rizo’s edit in Survivor 49 where he becomes more serious and less goofy in the post-merge. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing considering he did not win Survivor 49, but the RizGod has a strong edit.
Christian - He's still here cause he's built up a lot of credit, but I think my feeling that Genevieve could have foreshadowed Christian's downfall may have been confirmed. Over the past few episodes he's gotten a bit of implicit negativity: arrogance, naiveté, petulance. However, this episode he got more overt negativity. Yes we are reminded that Devens loves Christian and that he's the person Devens wants to play with the most. On the flip side we get Coach calling him a “middle rat” (?) and saying he and Dee need to be taken out. Obviously Christian and Devens have some tricks up their sleeve, but they are starting to feel less like heroes. Christian cooled down in this episode which is good, but we'll see if he can fully recover. We’ll see how this very hyped, highly anticipated fake idol play goes. The result may truly determine things.
Other Episode Winners
Stephenie - I said “got nothing for ya” to Stephenie a while ago when she received a zero confessional episode early in the season. However, after more of the season has played out, there are other players like Cirie and Jonathan who also received zero confessional episodes whose edits otherwise have some legs. I think Stephenie is very close to resurrecting herself from the dead to join these folks as contenders or outside contenders. The editors continue to just give her good personal, rootable content. I think I need to see a little bit more from her in terms of gameplay if she’s really going to break back into serious contention. When it comes to ~The Game of Survivor~ she feels more like a narrator or auxiliary piece of whatever is going on rather than a driver of strategy or someone with agency in the game. In reality, it seems like she’s probably playing a pretty good game. At the end of the day, she’s been pretty insulated within her alliances, survived her less than favorable swap tribe, seems to be getting along with everyone, and is a threat to win challenges. It just feels like there’s probably enough there for the editors to play with in terms of her game that it’s kind of weird for them not to be including it if she did win the season.
Episode Losers
Jonathan - No matter how right or how well Jonathan played from an objective and strategic standpoint, I did not think that he came off well at all. He didn't get the level of negativity and dodo-ism that Coach received, but I don't think, especially in the New Era, that yelling at a woman is really a good look. Even if he was doing it strategically to get a rise out of Dee. We get his thought process behind the whole thing, but it didn’t feel like it really had an impact on the vote since we didn't actually get a lot of content from other players talking about how Dee lost her cool. Perhaps on the surface it looked like Coach and Jonathan led the troops, but I think the root cause of her elimination was Cirie, Rizo, and Ozzy deciding that they could let her go for spilling information to Emily. It was eye rolls all around at Tribal Council when it came to honor and integrity, but at the end of the day Dee still went home because Cirie’s Rizard of Oz wanted that, not because Jonathan caused a scene that turned the tides against Dee. He’s still got stuff to work with, but I don't know, I'm not convinced that he can overcome the negativity that comes with the honor and integrity shtick at this point. I’ll give it to him though, he’s definitely playing hard.
Other Notable Edits
Aubry - I wouldn’t really call her an episode winner or loser, but I’m wondering if maybe she’s at a turning point in her story? I’ve wondered if this was the case a couple of times with her already, but ultimately felt that she was still kind of drawing dead. She still gets a lot of negativity this episode. It’s pretty much confirmed that Christian and Devens would be fine with voting her out to get the idol back, and everyone catches her playing in their faces about “forgetting” to play it. However, by the end of the episode she gets rid of the idol, making good on a promise she made to finally get rid of it. Is this a jumping off point for Aubry to make an impact on this game? Finally rid of Geneveive and her idol she’s free to do what she wants now.
Got Nothing For Ya
Coach - The Old Coach is back! And I don't think that's a good thing. For his winning chances at least. The New Era has been devoid of this type of big personality, so that is a welcome change in terms of entertainment value. However, this edit looks a lot closer to a combination of Tocantins Coach and South Pacific Coach than Heroes vs. Villains Coach, which I think he would need a lot more of if he was gonna take this thing. Even his alliance members were questioning him. He came off as delusional, annoying, hypocritical, and perhaps worst of all, bad at the game. Players of all allegiances were roasting him left, right, up, down, and center. Coach may strong arm himself further in this game, but unfortunately for him, I don’t think he’ll take the title of Sole Survivor.