Survivor S44E06: Survivor With a Capital 'S'

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Survivor delivers a milquetoast merge with a fairly expected outcome.
by Jeremy Fogelman

The latest episode of Survivor is called “Survivor with a Capital S” delivered by one of the common narrators, Mike -- that of the Mike/Frannie dynamic/romantic duo. But although he describes the first post-Merge Survivor vote out as high level, it feels pretty straightforward and mainly complicated simply because of how many people are talking to each other suddenly.

Although there were suddenly a lot of people rushing to chat and share information, the actual real decision happened twice, once at the winning feast and once at the losing beach. The battle between Yam Yam and Josh is the main fight initiator at the losing beach, as each one immediately tries to target the other one (despite hints that they might reconcile last episode).

Carolyn reconnects with her one true ally Carson, who seems to convince her to stay the course with Yam Yam -- and thus opposed to Josh. For Josh’s part, his old tribemates seem to want to vote him out anyway and the only true concern is whether or not he might or might not have an idol. As a note, the funniest part of the episode was Carolyn attempting to tell her fellow immunity winners that maybe Josh just has a fake idol (which she knows for a fact but can’t admit that) but nobody is listening to her.

Juxtapose that with the specifically edited scene of her having difficulty connecting with people (the show literally plays a discordant sound to shots of Carolyn struggling to join the conversation) and Carolyn remains one of the show’s fascinating punching bags: She’s not an idiot but she has poor social skills.

The other punching bag is poor Jaime, who believes she has a real idol (she doesn’t) and the one person who knew she didn’t was Matthew, who was medically evacuated last episode. The show seems to delight in having her spout off self-aggrandizing phrases while prominently showing “Fake Idol” in the chyron. It’s just on that balance of funny and mean but I worry the show might teeter over too much.

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Carson has a mostly successful episode this time -- he maintains his alliance with Carolyn, doesn’t destroy his potential alliance with fellow nerd Kane, and dominates the puzzle (mainly because he 3D printed his own copy at home! Maybe they should’ve at least tweaked the puzzle to not be identical). He did screw up a little with admitting to Kane that his name was brought up, meaning he had to quickly apologize to the more level headed Brandon. But for now he might be doing shockingly well for someone of his age and “nerdy” look.

Another setup was about the continuing Matt and Frannie romance, which was cute, but Matt admitted to us that although he knew they should be hiding their connection it’s not easy to do so in reality. Definitely a setup of things potentially to come with that sort of shoutout.

Ultimately at the end Josh simply didn’t have the allies to keep himself in the game, and his lack of a real idol made things impossible. His last minute attempt to be friendly with Yam Yam was too little, too late, and he played things too safe by not at least risking things. He felt safe, but he was anything but as he was actually (by far) the desired vote out target. When even his original tribe wanted him out, it probably means he wasn’t trustworthy enough even from the start.

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It’s the sort of not-to-interesting outcome to a merge we sometimes see, but there are enough potential blowups that I’m not quite writing off the season yet. Hopefully we get to see some actually interesting gameplay soon instead of the easy vote outs.

Next time on Survivor, it’s Dungeons & Dragons, Frannie and Matt are noticed as a duo by Lauren, and there’s a twist.