Survivor S44E02: Two Dorky Magnets

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Survivor gets a little wacky before the immunity challenge and a little boring after it.
by Jeremy Fogelman

The latest episode of Survivor is called “Two Dorky Magnets” and those two magnets are indeed the most interesting part of the episode. On Soka, we get a fun series of scenes where Matt, fresh off his recent breakup, connects with Frannie with a bunch of awkward flirting -- her snort-laughing is basically too perfect. But it’s also funny both how obvious the two are being in their “showmance” pairing and how they know how they shouldn’t be so obvious.

Although the best part of this sequence was Claire giving the pair a disgusted look when they kept flirting in plain sight. Also on Soka, one player got an A for the cage scenario when Danny (who we have nothing from otherwise so far) found the key, took out the idol, but left the fake idol behind -- it would’ve been an A+ if he’d left the note too. Far better handled than Brandon nearly getting voted out and losing his idol last episode.

There’s also a hint of drama to come, as Brandon admits that he’s salty about Kane’s sole vote towards him -- it’s a little silly to care so early but also hard not to care either. Otherwise Ratu and Soka had uneventful adventures this episode, but honestly, Tika wasn’t that much more interesting either.

Crazy Carolyn continues to be out there, successfully getting the idol from the cage without being anyone’s guess. It was admittedly a funny series of confessionals when every other person suspected someone else beside Carolyn. Carolyn’s highly dramatic behavior is a little trying, but she’s at least a little entertaining so far -- hard to imagine she could possibly win the game, but she’s not without any game at all.

Carolyn and Yam Yam ally together to target Helen, who they identify as a smart threat -- perhaps Carson feels the same way, that Helen is too dangerous to keep allying with. Honestly, this early in the game it’s still hard to really say that anyone made a particularly bad movie, let alone anything Helen did other than come across as too smart or with “body language” that was lying (which she wasn’t).

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It’s hard not to think there’s some sort of unconscious bias there, but on the other hand, Helen clearly is smart and certainly had that Savvy challenge down easily. It’s more of a shame because she felt like an interesting player, and we now have two strategic women as our two first boots, ignoring the one medically evacuated player. Doesn’t really feel so great.

Overall, the episode felt a little bit of a whimper overall, some of these players are interesting, but others don’t really have something that uniquely intriguing about them yet. I do wonder how well the season will progress with some of these conflicts setup already, I think there are still some fun players left in the game, but there’s a lot of big question marks still to reveal.

Maybe it’s also a letdown from the out of control first episode, but this one is less exciting by comparison. But I suppose the potential is still here with all of the players to really get out of control in a fun way soon enough.

Next time on Survivor, there are heroes and liabilities and somebody is eating something they shouldn’t.