This week, the show completely blows up the traditional merge process… twice!
Time to bring you in on another big twist.
All right, Dalton is about to start his recap.
The cast of ‘Survivor 41’.Robert Voets/CBS
It’s his sixth recap of the season.
It’s kind of annoying actually.
It’s like, dude, broken record much?
The Yase tribe on ‘Survivor 41’.Robert Voets/CBS
But nobody is getting voted out!
So the joke’s on him!
Anyway…"
Wait, what do you mean nobody is getting voted out, Jeff?
Jeff Probst and the Yase tribe on ‘Survivor 41’.Robert Voets/CBS
“Ohhhhhhhh… well, this is weird.
I was talking directly to your readers and didn’t think you could hear me.”
Of course I could hear you!
I’m right here.
That doesn’t even make any sense!
“I’m not gonna lie.
It’s not good.
But it must be nice to be alone with your thoughts.
And to make fire on your own.”
Again, what in the Sam Hill are you talking about, Jeff?
“What I’m talking about is this: Fear not, pathetic reality TV show recapper.
That was uncalled for, Jeff.
Accurate, yet uncalled for.
“Couldn’t resist.
Hidden here under my dope-ass orange-billed baseball hat is an hourglass.
Okay, let’s pretend that entire thing never happened.
I was like, “Bro!
They’re right there!
They’re gonna bust you!”
But you didn’t come here for me to dissect Jeff’s camera asides.
But you are about to be disappointed.
You will get neither a simple LOVED IT nor LOATHED IT reaction in these here digital pages.
There are certain aspects about it I really liked.
And there are other aspects I really didn’t.
Because there are things to like.
Let’s begin with this: I love messing with the merge.
Which brings us to the system of the idea.
I also really dig the first part of that utility.
Let’s take out the hourglass element for the time being.
Again, well done.
The one tweak I would have made to that formula is to not have redivided the players into teams.
I don’t like it for two reasons.
Allow me to work backwards to explain as we reverse-engineer this.
The episode ended on a cliffhanger.
That actually didn’t bug me.
I thought it might, but it didn’t.
They work through every scenario before they put something into motion.
Extremely low, right?
So the producers knew when that challenge started that the winners of it were actually the losers.
So from a strictly game perspective, the twist is pretty much indefensible.
You are straight up punishing people for winning when you told them winning was what they wanted to do.
The counterargument would be the producers are not concerned with “fair.”
They care about making good television.
As they should be.
I may not like it, but I get it.
I’ll say what I have been saying all season: This is a great cast.
Trust them to create enough drama on their own.
Trust the format of the show.
Quick Hits
- How amazing was that scene between Shan and Ricard that kicked off the episode?
Such a fascinating dynamic between those two.
And the scene here perfectly illustratedwhy I argued last weekthat Shan should have voted Ricard out instead of Genie.
Shan said she couldn’t trust Ricard.
Shan then said it was bothersome he wouldn’t give it back.
Ricard then countered that Shan wanted all the power.
Shan pointed out that she took all the risk.
- I can’t quite make out what is going on with the Luvu folks.
Math for the win!
Or, perhaps in this case, the loss.
- I love, love, love how into it Probst is this season while calling challenges.
No wonder the dude’s voice has been so hoarse.
and “NO, QUIT!
THAT’S IT!”
was the icing on the cake.
Oh, and Naseer…. Love you, bro.
Salt in the wound, my man.
Shan’s smarter than that, so I’ll chalk it up to exhaustion and/or malnutrition.
Also, props to Xander for coming up with the phrase “mergeatory.”
I wonder if Liana can use her Knowledge Is Power advantage to steal that line from him.
- Do we have another Cookout forming?
And here we had Shan, Liana, Danny, and Deshawn talking about essentially doing the same thing.
Check it out at the top of the recap.
