I love Survivor so much!
Ok, as it’s my first Survivor newsletter here, some background information first.
I’ve been a fan of Survivor since season one. I don’t think I’ve missed a single episode (OK, maybe one or two in the early seasons… maybe…) and I used to blog about it for many years.
However, life got busier, and it became more and more difficult to write about it weekly. At the same time, there were so many great blogs out there, that I didn’t feel that mine added much to the Survivor blogging microcosm.
I still love Survivor, though. And I love blogging as much.
I thought about including a Survivor section on one of my main blogs, but it felt out of place. Lack of time also prevented me from exploring this option further.
It seemed that I was not going to be blogging about Survivor again much.
However, a few weeks ago, I discovered Substack, and… well… I think it’s the perfect format to share my thought about the show when I can, and if I don’t have time… oh well…
So for starters, if you aren’t subscribed to the newsletter yet, please do so:
Ok, now that we got that out of the way… Survivor!
And more precisely, this week’s episode of Survivor 41, with the pretty awesome title Baby with a Machine Gun.
Well, let’s start with what most fans are agreeing on:
This was one of the best episodes of the history of the show!
And this happened, not because of big moves (although this week’s elimination definitely was a big move, don’t get me wrong, just not a flashy one), definitely not because of advantages (Jeff, I don’t think you’ll ever read this, nor care if you do but enough with so many advantages everywhere).
We got such an amazing and wonderful episode thanks to… the cast! And the editors. Let’s not forget the editors, they play a major part in the quality of what we’re seeing, and the editing has been all sorts of awesome this season (remember the flashback of Naseer finding the idol?).
Still, even the best editors can’t do a good job if they don’t have good material to start with. And this good… this stellar material, this season, comes from the cast and only the cast!
It’s probably one of the best cast ever. Everyone is here to play, everyone is here to win, and honestly, there isn’t a single goat. I love this so much. The last time we had a newbie cast that good was probably David vs Goliath. Before that? No idea. Tocantins, maybe?
So, let’s talk about the players.
If you’ve read my Survivor blogs before, you know that I usually structure my posts detailing each player, and while I toyed with different formats, it’s the one that works best for me, so let’s do this again, shall we?
Danny McCray: I may surprise a lot of people by saying he may be one of the weaker players this season. And at the same time, he’s playing a very good game, probably one of the best games a (former) pro-athlete has played. Can you imagine? Guys like him rarely make it to the merge, and when they do, they’re the number one target and don’t last. Danny hasn’t had a single vote cast against him. Nobody has ever mentioned his name as a possible target. He’s in a solid alliance with Deshawn. Even crazier, Deshawn kinda is his “shield.” Any other season, if by a miracle he was still in the game, Danny would be Deshawn’s meat shield and not the other way around.
So, when I say that he’s playing one of the weaker games, what I really mean is that he’s playing a very good game, but many other players are playing a stellar game this season.
That’s why I think his chances to win the game are very slim. He has a great social game, he did great in challenges (he’s a big reason why Luvu never went to tribal pre-merge, and if he didn’t win a single individual immunity yet, it’s because individual immunities don’t rely on pure physical strength anymore - that is a good thing overall), but his “résumé” is a bit lacking. His only move so far was to turn on Shan, but I don’t think he really had a choice. He’s not going to break ranks with Deshawn.
However, this is also why he pretty much has no chance to win. The only way I can see him go to the end is with Deshawn, and if they’re both sitting next to each other at the final tribal council, Deshawn will win. Still, he’s playing the best game a pro athlete has played. Any other season, he’d have a good shot at winning. This season? I don’t think so.
Deshawn Radden: During the first episode, I discounted him as the somewhat bland guy that will probably suck at challenges and who would be the cause of Luvu’s downfall, at least until he’s voted out. I couldn’t have been more wrong! Deshawn is smart, he has a stellar social game (see how both Evvie and Shan trusted him and lost because of him), he doesn’t suck at strategy at all, neither at challenges. After taking Shan out, he really is in the driver’s seat to win this game. However, there is a little problem. The only alliance left right now is his own with Danny (sure there’s also Erika and Heather, but I don’t think their alliance is that tight), so he’ll need numbers to remain in the driver’s seat for much longer. If he can’t find them, he’ll be heading to the jury soon. And I think that this is his main problem. If he reaches the final tribal council, he has a good chance to win against almost everybody, but getting there will be very hard. There’s also one bigger target than him, and that is Ricard. With Ricard gone, he’ll probably be next. Actually aligning himself with Ricard could be his best move. They’ll need a fourth person (Xander?) and they could be the final four (with Danny). I don’t see the three of them (Deshawn, Xander, and Ricard) getting together, though. I think Ricard and Deshawn will try to vote each other out next week.
Erika Casupanan: We always hear the other players saying that Erika is good, sneaky, that she shouldn’t be trusted and more, but we never really saw why until recently. She must have strategized way more than we saw at Luvu, except that none of it came to fruition because they never went to tribal. We’ve seen her strategical skills during the last two episodes, though. She was instrumental in voting Naseer and Shan out. Sure, she did it to save her own skin first, but she suceeded. Not once, but twice. She has a very big problem, though. She doesn’t seem very well-liked by the other contestants (maybe because she played too hard at Luvu?). This is the reason why she’s been at the bottom since before the merge. Can she survive until the end? It’ll be very difficult. Even more difficult, can she get enough votes if she makes it to the final tribal council? Well, I think she can. I’m pretty sure this jury won’t be a bitter jury, and if she makes it to the end, despite all of the adversity and playing from the bottom for most of the time, she will have a strong case and she could get enough votes. Maybe.
Heather Aldret: OK, earlier I praised the cast, saying that they all had a chance to win, and the editing focused on all of the players. Well, Heather really got the short end of the stick on that one. She was pretty much invisible during pre-merge, and while we finally see her now, she’s not a major character. It’s pretty clear that she’s not winning the game. However, I refuse to call her a goat. She’s playing, and she’s playing hard. At least she has since the merge. Before the merge, hard to tell, but I assume that it was difficult for her to do anything strategic in this tribe that was keeping on winning challenges, not thanks to her, but despite her. Still, she’s not a goat. She’s well-liked and seems to have good relationships with everyone. Deshawn’s alliance never ostracized her nor excluded her. Actually, this is one of the best moves Deshawn and Danny have made, they always included Heather, Naseer, and Erika in most discussions, so that they never felt completely excluded and didn’t start making alliances with the people from Ua or Yase.
However, the truth is that Heather is at the bottom, she really only has Erika, and they’re probably only tight because of circumstances. I really don’t see a path to victory for her. But I refuse to call her a goat. She’s playing. And she’s playing to win, and she’s not even playing a bad game with the cards she’s been dealt with. And for all of this, she has my full respect, and I’m proud of her.
Gosh, I love this cast so much!
Liana Wallace: While I just said that I love this entire cast, and I definitely don’t hate Liana, she’s been a disappointment. I liked her pre-merge, but since the merge, her hate/tunnel vision against Xander has been a bit annoying, especially because it appears to be so one-sided and coming out of nowhere. Maybe she has a good reason to hate him that wasn’t shown to us, and it greatly plays against her. Because as someone said online, right now, it mostly feels like Xander reminds her of her ex-boyfriend and that’s the extent of the reason for her resentment against him. It also doesn’t help her popularity among viewers that she tried to make moves, and they all failed or backfired. Also, she never seems to be a decision-maker, always a follower, or at least a “group member.” At this point of the game, I don’t see a path to victory for her. Maybe if she’s sitting next to Danny and Heather at the end? Not even.
Sorry, maybe I’m a bit tough on her, but I have soured on her as soon as her hatred for Xander started to blind her and made her lose sight of the big picture. Now that Shan is gone, she is truly alone and I don’t see her aligning herself with anyone that’s remaining: she hates Xander, she’ll be resenting the other men for betraying Shan, and she never seemed to care for Heather and Erika. Maybe she could form a small alliance with them, but it wouldn’t be in Heather and Erika’s interest to do so. She pretty much has become expandable at this point. She’ll be a number for the next vote, final seven is always crucial, but I can see her being voted out at final five or six.
Important disclaimer: I see too much vile behavior against Survivor contestants on social media at times, and I think that this is very wrong. So, I want to make sure that anyone reading this understands that when I say that I like or dislike someone on this show, I mean that I like or dislike the very heavily edited character that we’re seeing playing a game on TV. I do not know these people in real life, and while - after the fact - you can sometimes have a good idea of some past contestants’ goodness from their activity on social media and/or some news about them, during the show, the truth is that we have no idea. I don’t know these people, and you don’t know these people, we only know some characters on a TV show. So don’t attack them personally ever, and definitely not for something they did or didn’t do on the show. And if you ever see me saying bad things about one of them here, keep that in mind: I’m talking about the character on the show, not the real person. For example here, maybe Liana is a wonderful person, and she’s just currently edited as unpleasant to fit a certain narrative. No idea.
Ricard Foyé: While most of the focus was on Shan for most of the season, I believe Ricard is actually the best player of Season 41 so far. He has constantly made the right moves to survive Ua’s self-destruction. He also positioned himself in a good spot at the merge to avoid being targeted early, and when he felt the wind turning against him, he knew it was time to cut his ties with Shan, and he managed to have her being voted out. There is no doubt that if he hadn’t won immunity this week, he would have been the one to go home, but a lesser player wouldn’t have managed to seize this opportunity to further his game. A lesser player would have stayed loyal to Shan for too long. Ricard is not a lesser player.
Now, with that being said, his way to the end is probably the most difficult of all the remaining players as his target is as big as possible now: with two individual immunity wins, a reward challenge too, and of course taking out the biggest player of the season who also happened to be his number one ally. At this point, if he goes to the end, he’ll most likely win, but can he get there?
The good thing is that there is pretty much no alliance left. Only D&D and Heather+Erika. He can easily get closer to the two women, get Xander onboard and they can take out Deshawn easily. They don’t even need Liana who will be alone, Danny too after that.
The bad thing is that as he’s the biggest target, the remaining six may just get together and vote him out next time if he doesn’t win immunity.
Yes, his path to the end now is a difficult one, and it definitely involves a few more individual immunity wins and some luck.
We’ll see.
Shan Smith: Was there a newbie player in recent memory who had such a strong impact on the game? She totally controlled the pre-merge, and despite her team losing and losing again, she easily (?) controlled every vote with Ricard. Only after the merge she started showing some weaknesses (I assume the lack of food played a role) but even then, she was central to pretty much everything that was happening.
And this send-off episode was such a beautiful episode honoring her in a way very few contestants have been before, especially first timers. I loved the talk about “the culture” with Deshawn and what it represented for them, I loved her last conversations with Ricard. They were fully aware that they shouldn’t be in the final tribal council together, and that they would have to go after one another sooner or later. In many ways, their relationship reminded me of Malcolm and Denise (maybe just a little bit more villainous?) I also loved how there was little suspense at tribal council. Sure there was a tiny chance that Liana or Erika get voted out, but realistically, it was pretty obvious that it was Shan’s time to go. I especially loved how the editors didn’t pretend there was any kind of suspense for the revote, and instead they decided to use that time to pay a last hommage to this wonderful player. Thank you Shan, you were the queen of this season, and when you return, if you manage to navigate the huge target on your back from the very beginning, you will make an even stronger impact on this game we all love so much. I can’t wait!
Xander Hastings: He was almost invisible this episode, but let’s not get mistaken, he’s also one of the top contenders to win this game. He still has a (not) hidden immunity idol, an extra-vote (does anyone know about this vote, I forgot) and while he’s still isolated and without allies, now Ricard and Deshawn have become bigger targets than him.
I’m going to surprise a few people, but I think he’ll win this season. He will have to pull out a few surprises to get to end, but it won’t be that difficult when you think about it. He only needs to win one immunity next week or at final five (and play his idol for the other vote), play his extra vote soundly at final six, and he’s in the final four where anything can happen. If he makes it to the end, he has an awesome résumé, surviving adversity and being in the minority since pretty much the beginning of the game, including a couple of big moves *cough* fake necklace *cough*.
I’m still baffled that most contestants underestimate him (see Liana, even after being fooled by him like few people have been fooled in this game). Sometimes, I wonder if he’s just very good at looking like someone who’s just not that smart or plain weird. In her exit interview Tiffany mentioned that at first nobody was shocked by his dead relative butterflies comment because he always says weird things.
So, mark my words and keep an eye on him.
Next week: I feel that next week will be a showdown between Ricard and Deshawn and I have no idea who will come out on top.
Winner Predictions: I’ve put my money on Xander since pretty much day one, and it’s still there. (not really, I’m not the betting kind, but you know what I mean).
OK, that’s all for now. I hope you liked this Survivor analysis. I hope I’ll have the time for more before the end of the season.
Stay tuned (and subscribe if you haven’t done so yet).
I also had Xander high on my list of castaways to win this season! I compared him to Tarzan just swinging from vine to vine through all the bad luck that seemed to follow him through the game.