It seems like as we get closer to this season’s Survivor finale, the action only gets more and more heated. After yet another turbulent tribal council, in which Ben worked his way out of a massive hole once again, we are heading into a finale that promises to be extremely entertaining. For sticking by this season when people were ho-hum about its prospects in an admittedly slower pre-merge, I feel pretty good about the way all of this has played out. Now let’s get into the nitty gritty of this episode.
First of all, shame on everybody not named Ben Driebergen. How in the world did the other five players let him walk about the island by himself when they all knew he was looking for an idol? Everybody was hell bent on sending Ben home. This was his time. All they needed to do, to make sure they could vote him out, was ensure he didn’t win immunity or find an idol. So what they did do? They let him go about unsupervised for what seems like eternity.
It’s not like there isn’t precedent for this stuff in the past. Andrea Boehlke basically ended Malcolm Freberg’s game in Survivor: Caramoan by engaging in a standoff with him over idol territory. Malcolm wasn’t able to get his hands on the idol he knew was buried below him because Andrea just stuck by him and he went home that very tribal council. In Survivor: Blood vs Water, Monica Culpepper tailed Hayden Moss in the woods to keep him from an idol (that wasn’t there since Tyson Apostol already had it) because Hayden was in the minority and desperate. It’s basic Survivor strategy: if a person is on the bottom and an idol is out there… don’t let that person out of your sight.
You have to ask yourself how much a million dollars is worth to those five players if they couldn’t just tail Ben for 24 hours. Instead of trying to deter him from going idol searching, these guys just assumed he wouldn’t find an idol because they couldn’t. We got a confessional from Mike straight up telling us that there was no way Ben was going to find an idol. I mean… the hubris in even putting those words out into the universe. It was mind blowing to see unfold and a little infuriating. They had this guy on the ropes and stopped throwing haymakers just long enough for him to recover and throw a knockout punch.
There was a lot going on in this episode even before tribal council. The re-formation of a Devon, Chrissy, and Ryan alliance happened during the reward that Devon and Chrissy won. For Devon, if he’s trying to engineer a way to get to the final three with people he can beat, this is probably his best configuration. Ashley was a tighter ally to him but only represented one person. With Ryan and Chrissy, Devon has on paper, the majority going into the final five. Preferably, they would have gotten Ben out first but you know… it’s hard to do when you allow your prey to find safety before going after them.
For Chrissy and Ryan, I think siding with Devon is a good way to ensure their survival in the game. I don’t necessarily think it’s good for the chances to win the game at the final three. I think that the minute Ashley left the game, it became a lot harder for Chrissy and Ryan to come up with somebody they could beat in the final three. Ben has the story and the idols, Devon has a lot of good connections on the jury (even Ashley won’t vote for those two above Devon), and Mike has a lot of Healer friends and he’s cockroached his way out of some bad situations.
During that same reward, Ben tried to make inroads with both Mike and Ashley. They shot him down so hard that even if Ben were Dr. Sean levels of dense at strategy, Ben would have known how dire his situation was. Ben asking Mike who he was thinking of voting out and Mike replying “you mean besides you?” was both funny and telling. Ashley wouldn’t even entertain the thought of discussing strategy with Ben.
It was almost like Ben was a leper with how much everyone tried to distance themselves from him. If he was once King Arthur, in recent weeks he had turned into a king exiled from his own kingdom. From royalty to nothing, Ben has been fighting for his life these past few weeks and he has demonstrated by far the most hunger to succeed at Survivor.
At tribal council, things definitely got a little crazy. Should Jeff Probst had allowed Ben’s idol to be played and verified before the votes are even cast? This has been a debate that is heating up the Survivor online community since the episode aired. Personally, I don’t really care that Jeff did this. In my mind, it made for some exciting television and I’ve always said that above all else, Survivor is a show that should entertain me. Last night, it definitely succeeded in that regard.
Besides, the end result would have likely been the same even if Ben played it after the fact. The five would have split the votes 3–2, whether three on Ben (with Mike as the third) or Ashley, and Ashley would have still gone home. What we got instead was a throwback to the great Gary Hogeboom, I’m sorry I mean Hawkins, where an idol was played before the vote went through. I’ve seen some criticism that this made Ben the holder of a Tyler Perry idol. That definitely isn’t the case. The moment Ben gave Jeff his idol, he was never getting it back.
Once Ben played that idol, you could feel everybody else get tenser. Other than Chrissy and her inability to admit when somebody does something that totally messes up her plans. Did Devon make the right move in betraying Ashley and siding with his new potential alliance? In my mind, once Ben played that idol, it was the only move Devon had left.
Say for a minute Devon believes that Ben is being truthful and wants to vote with Ashley against Mike. That pretty much solidifies to Devon that Mike, Chrissy, and Ryan will be voting together as a trio against Ashley. Chrissy made it clear who she wanted gone and it wasn’t Mike. In that case, Devon is looking at either voting out his ally or forcing a tie. If he forces a tie and risks going to rocks, Ashley and Mike become immune and suddenly, Devon has a 50% chance of drawing the bad rock and going home. Those stakes are too high to even consider pulling a move like that.
Besides, the alternate option, given the reality of the vote, is that Devon votes with Ashley and shows Chrissy and Ryan that he does not follow their plans. They might feel uncomfortable with Devon and decide to simply rope Mike into their final three instead, making Devon the second pariah behind Ben.
If there’s one thing I’m not a fan of in recent weeks, it’s been the explosion of idols. In the seven merge votes so far, an idol has been played in five of them. This seems like overkill to me. The hidden immunity idol is a necessary twist. It keeps players on their toes and goes a long way in providing some potential game-swinging votes in a season that might otherwise be a boring Pagonging but this is too much.
Considering Survivor is supposedly a social experiment, it’s hard to see how Ben is still alive. This is no criticism of Ben’s idol playing, he’s simply going with how the game is currently played these days. That said, it’s a little ridiculous that someone so on the outs socially can continue to survive in the game by finding these magical trinkets. It’s become pretty obvious in recent Survivor history that the best skill to have going into the game isn’t guile, the ability to deceive or even survival skills, it’s the ability to find idols. That to me, is straying a long way from what Survivor originally was and I hope that moving forward, production reconsiders the amount of idols they allow into the game.
With that said, we are one week away from a very exciting finale. There are very few seasons I can point to where so many people could potentially still win the game. Out of the five players left, I think a case could be made for each of them as a winner and that is very refreshing. I can’t wait to see how things play out.
