The following contains spoilers for episode 3 of Survivor Season 41.
The newest season ofSurvivorseems to be settling comfortably into itself with the release of the third episode, “My Million Dollar Mistake”. The game is finally feeling like it’s getting underway, with more advantages entering the arena, and players starting to think really seriously about their alliances and game plans. The show is giving the audience a wider picture of who these castaways are, which makes it easier to get attached to them, but also makes it all the more disappointing to watch someone get voted out.
The episode begins with a series of footage from all three camps, where an advantage has been placed at each tribe out in the open for players to find as soon as they wake up. Tiffany, Brad, and Sydney find the advantages at their respective tribes…though the word “found” is perhaps a bit generous. This season,Survivorkeeps saying that it wants to do things differently, but just leaving advantages out in the open isn’t exactly the most interesting change they could make. In fact, it takes away part of the fun of watching castaways search for idols and advantages. It doesn’t really feel like the players have truly earned an advantage if they just stumble across one that a producer put next to the fire at camp.
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The viewer then learns that Brad found yet another advantage while everyone at Ua was hunting for idols. He found one-third ofthe three-way immunity idol(that Xander also owns a third of), but the idol still can’t go into effect until someone from Luvu finds the idol hidden at their camp. This whole three-way idol twist is a new one forSurvivorand is an interesting concept, but it also feels like it might be a twist that drags on for a little too long. Since the people who own these idols can’t vote until their idol is activated, it makes the voting situation more complicated and means that the show is three episodes in and no one really has an idol yet.
When night falls, the three castaways who came across that advantage from earlier have to make a boat escape, which Brad does by hilariously building a fake body to take his place while he’s gone (in a very Ferris Bueller-like way). They arebrought to a mysterious islandwhere they are presented with a choice: a tarp for their tribe or a steal-a-vote advantage. This works a lot like the “risk or protect your vote” prisoner’s dilemma from the first two episodes, with the rewards changed slightly. The point of this element is to test the players’ strategies and trust in each other by making them predict what the other castaways are going to do.
Tiffany and Sydney don’t trust each other right off the bat, so they vote tarp because they don’t want to risk their votes. Brad, however, decides to go for the risky move and in the end receives a steal-a-vote. This prisoner’s dilemma situation has beena main feature of all three episodes so far, and while it was interesting at first, it’s starting to get repetitive. It’s a twist that’s interesting a few times, in moderation, but after three episodes in a row of essentially the same situation, it’s clear that there’s probably not going to be a crazy outcome from this twist. The players are smart and cautious enough to make good moves, but it also means that every outcome of this element feels very similar and somewhat predictable.
Then the show finally gets to what is arguably the highlight of most episodes for a lot of people: the immunity challenge. Before the challenge starts, Brad makes a (horribly bungled) reference to the phrase he has to say to activate the idol, and Xander does his best to respond in a way that doesn’t seem too forced. The idol still isn’t activated because Luvu hasn’t found theirs, which means that more of these hilariously awkward exchanges will be taking place until all three idols are finally found. It’s still unclear whether or not this three-way idol and the terms that come with it areactually a clever twistor just a way to humiliate the players over and over. Either way, it’s pretty entertaining to watch.
The challenge itself is fun and dynamic, with a lot of tension coming from the Yase tribe and their incredible come from behind. It seems like they’re falling out of the challenge until they pick it up in the last third and end up coming second overall. It was a great moment, and it was satisfying to watchYase finally get a winafter being beaten down over and over again in this game. Luvu comes first once again, meaning the audience still doesn’t get to spend much time with the tribe or any of its members because they’ve avoided Tribal Council once again. It might feel strange to root for a tribe to lose, but at least if they got sent to Tribal, Luvu would finally get some much-needed screen time.
In this episode, however, it was Ua who had to make the trek to join Jeff at Tribal Council. They’re essentially split between voting for J.D. or Brad. Brad has a lot of advantages and idols, which makes him a threat, but J.D. loses the trust of his alliance by not confiding in them about his idol, and also seems to begetting under the skinof his fellow tribe-mates. In the end, they decide to keep J.D. and snuff out Brad’s torch, which means he goes home with a bounty of advantages in his pocket. Brad was heavily featured in this episode, which made it feel like the show was setting him up to be another major player, but it seems to have been a red herring to make his exit at Tribal feel sadder, as though his potential on the show was wasted. This really felt like the first time that one of the players voted out was a real character that the audience could get attached to or knew anything about.
Overall, the episode was good, and it was fun to watch the players find advantages and start to strategize more. That being said, this season ofSurvivorhas been absolutely jam-packed with advantages, and it’s only three episodes in. It makes things a little overwhelming when most of the screen time is devoted to advantages and idols and how they work, and not on the classicSurvivorelements of people forming relationships and…surviving. Fans ofSurvivorhave been complaining for a few years now that there aretoo many advantages in the game, and there might be some merit to that after how this season has started. While advantages are fun in moderation, it’s not as interesting when they start to take over the whole game. Hopefully, they take more of a backseat in future episodes and let the other elements ofSurvivor- that made people fall in love with it in the first place - shine.
