“Survivor 48” recap: Wait… why is David standing?

Key Points

• Survivor 48 juror David did something very, very odd.

• Kyle doesn’t want to vote out people he got close with, but maybe not for the reason you think.

• Jeff Probst has to interrupt his own challenge-winning call.

A Fijian tragedy of epic proportions was unleashed four weeks ago on Survivor 48 when Sai was voted out first in a double elimination episode — robbing us of potentially the most hilariously over-the-top expressive jury member in Survivor history… and giving us the least expressive player ever, Cedrek, on the jury instead.

History has proved that savage entertainment injustice ever since. Honestly, I’m not even sure that is actually Cedrek sitting over there on the jury bench and is not, in fact, an unmoving cardboard cutout of the butt doctor. Prove me wrong! But never, even in my wildest dreams, did I have an extremely mad-looking juror standing at attention on my Survivor 48 bingo card.

Mary’s game finally came to an end on this week’s episode, but not without a truly bizarre and wonderful sideshow to accompany her ceremonial torch-snuffing. Because as Mary stood up to retrieve her torch and then walk it over to the Hostmaster General… someone else stood up as well!

Now, I’m not exactly sure why David was standing, but let it be stated for the record he was definitely standing. I want to assume it was to show some sort of support or solidarity with his former alliance partner, but if that was the case, WHY DID HE LOOK SO ANGRY?!?

Granted, David has already set a Survivor land speed record for jury mean mugging this season, but by continuing to beat up the final seven with his face while standing for Mary, it didn’t really come off as supportive gesture for his former ally as he assumed the posture of someone auditioning to play Bodyguard Thug #2 in the next Jean-Claude Van Damme comeback vehicle. Seriously, go back and watch it! He’s totally Bodyguard Thug #2, who is about to get a cinematic smackdown courtesy of the Muscles from Brussels.

As incredible as David’s last(?) stand was, it could have been sooooo much better. Like, if you really want to make a statement by dramatically rising to your feet, throw in a slow clap! Everyone loves a slow clap. And all the best entertainment properties have them: Cool Runnings, Hoosiers, Rudy, Lucas, Jersey Girl, Mystery, Alaska, etc…. Dude, you could have totally put Survivor right smack dab on that ultimate slow clap list. Missed opportunity!

I can only assume that since Survivor jurors are not supposed to make any audible noises that David felt he needed to forgo the slow clap, but guess what else jurors are not supposed to do? STAND UP! If you’re gonna go there, go there! Make television history! Plus, we’ve seen players get ovations from the jury before. The precedent has been set. Of course, none of those previous folks looked like they also wanted to simultaneously murder people sitting just a few feet away.

Which is what makes David’s gesture so odd and so glorious. Was he celebrating Mary? Protesting the others? Neither? Both? Also, as close as David and Mary appeared to be on the show, David told me in his exit interview that it was not quite the case:

“Mary sort of latched onto me and I did the best I could to keep her at arm’s length, but she was just everywhere and she was following me around. And again, not to take anything away from Mary. She’s a great player and she’s a great person, but I couldn’t separate myself from her in the strong five…. It was Mary sort of inserting herself into the group and then attaching herself to me. And it just came to the point where I’m like, ‘I can’t do anything about Mary. She’s here. We might as well use her for a number.’… She was always going to be the sixth boot, which I don’t think was ever really truly clarified.” 

If that’s the truth, that is quite the tribute David just paid to the person he was planning to dump in sixth place. If it even was a tribute! Again, I have no idea what the standing was about. David clearly had a moral code that he felt was crossed, but if he was trying to make a point that he personally would not stand for such behavior from the players, then why was he… um, standing???

It’s all so wonderful, and the only thing I hate about it is the fact that we did not get a Jeff Probst reaction shot to all this tomfoolery. It also breathed a little life to what ended up being another predictably anticlimactic vote. Let’s get more into that as we delve further into all the happenings of Survivor 48, episode 11. And this goes without saying, but feel free to stand while reading.

No moral escape

Look, I get it. For the second week in a row, we were teased with a huge game-changing move that ultimately never happened. As a viewer, it can be massively frustrating to be teased with a big shake-up only to end up once again with the status quo. Last week, it was Mitch who decided to stay put on the bottom of the strong person alliance because he did not trust the folks on the other side, Star and Mary. But what happened this week was far more fascinating… if once again massively anticlimactic.

With Mary pitching herself as a number to take out Joe to anyone who would listen, it all came down to Kyle. On one hand, he knew Joe kept winning immunity challenges and Eva kept getting idols and advantages in the game. They were the ultimate power duo and needed to be stopped. But there was a problem: Kyle also said he was “so emotionally connected to Joe and Eva.”

Kyle worried that if he betrayed them and Shauhin, he would be betraying super-deep personal conversations that had nothing to do with the game. “I just feel like I am in between a rock and hard place,” he explained before dropping one of the lines of the season: “At this point, my hands are tied. There is no moral escape for me.”

There is no moral escape for me. Wow, Survivor in a single sentence. And it crystalizes why this decision was much more difficult from a game and winning perspective, because I truly believe that is playing a part in Kyle’s decision-making process and this is not just a I-don’t-have-the-heart-to-do-it situation. I believe Kyle when he cries and says, “I don’t want to hurt people.” I do. But I also believe Kyle is smart and savvy enough that he fully understands the final Tribal voting implications at play here.

Kyle has gotten close to Joe, Eva, and Shauhin. Too close, it would seem. So now he finds himself stuck in a situation where he may not be able to beat Joe at the end. HOWEVER… if he turns on his alliance and blindsides Joe out of the game, he potentially loses three jury votes immediately.

Getting that close to people and then backstabbing rarely goes well. Just ask Coach, who instituted the first version of the honesty and loyalty alliance back in South Pacific. His alliance felt so betrayed he ended up losing to a woman who was drunk at final Tribal Council. Or ask Charlie, who lost out on $1 million just a year ago when his best friend in the game, Maria, spurned him at final Tribal… even though she tried to get him out at the same time he ousted her.

But it’s potentially even worse than that. Because not only does Kyle risk throwing out three votes if he starts taking out his allies, but the only way it would seem he might possibly get David’s vote is if he is sitting next to other people at the end that also blindsided the Incredible Bulk. So if Kyle starts taking out Joe, Eva, and Shauhin, he could be kicking four votes to the curb. In a game where you can only lose three votes without going to a tiebreaker, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

Kyle essentially punted on the decision this week, but he knows he’s stuck. How he gets unstuck is the most interesting element at play as we enter the endgame of Survivor 48.

Feet don’t fail me now

What a nightmare for producers. Their hope had to be that a lost vote from the power alliance or a spiffy advantage from someone on the outs would shake up the game. The bad news for them began when Eva purpled the purple rock to go on the Journey. That’s because the advantage up for grabs was a Knowledge is Power… which would have been dramatically amazing for any other player to use it against idol and advantage holding Eva, but what would Eva do with it? Play it on herself???

For a second there, it looked like she was maybe going to do exactly that. Because after Eva successfully saved her vote after building four levels of stacked tiles in a circle while spinning the disc with her foot, she kept going! If she made it to eight levels, she got a Knowledge is Power, but if it fell, she lost her vote again. I cannot overstate the amount of yelling that was directed at my television set when Eva initially — and nonsensically — kept going. If I had to guess, I would estimate that it was roughly equal to the amount of yelling Eva did to her TV set while watching the Minnesota Wild succumb to the Vegas Golden Knights in the first round of the NHL playoffs. (Go Caps!)

What was she doing? Why was she continuing on and risking her vote for a useless advantage? It actually did not surprise me. Producers intentionally cast aggressive players, and those players are constantly reminded to play a bold game in the days leading up to the start of filming. If you want to get asked back to play again, the way to do it is to go big, and trust me, this is always on players’ minds.

I’ve also spoken to tons of contestants who have talked about not wanting to disappoint Probst and the other producers while on the island, and how that can sometimes impact the decisions they make in the game. They know what is expected of them, and they don’t want to let anyone down. In that sense, there really is more pressure to not open a Beware Advantage, to not go on a Journey, and, in this case, to not go for an advantage that you don’t even need.

In the end, logic prevailed. Eva stayed put at four levels and left the same way she showed up — with her vote. I do want to say I thought it was cool how the game Eva played on the Journey was not one based on luck (like her last procured nighttime advantage), and was not a puzzle or brain teaser, but was an actual mini-challenge you might see run for immunity with the entire tribe. More, please. Speaking of immunity challenges…

An ‘unfogrettable’ challenge

This week’s immunity challenge really had it all. Very large men looking ridiculous pushing little wheelbarrows with vases on top? Check. Someone putting the last piece into their word puzzle only to watch the entire thing tumble down to the ground? Check. A person believing they had won immunity only to learn they had misspelled the winning word? Check and mate.

Any one of these things alone would already make for a memorable challenge, but none of these moments were even the biggest thing to go down this week, because that was saved for the very end, when Probst called the win for Joe… only to stop mid-call and then reverse the decision for Kamilla.

“Joe steps off, thinks he has it! Kamilla steps off! But Joe got their first! Joe wins!” Probst began. But then, without missing a single beat, the host amended the call, while calling himself out. “No, I’m wrong! Your puzzle’s wrong! Kamilla’s puzzle’s right! Kamilla wins individual immunity! Sorry, Joe, for the false alarm. It’s that last piece, that eye you put in is flipped on the wrong way. It should be on the black side so everything matches. You’ve got it on the white side.”

Because there is nothing and no one I root harder for on Survivor than pure mayhem, this was like my own personal bottomless reward feast of confusion and chaos. And I sucked it all in like the Colin Robinson havoc vampire that I am. I am actually somewhat scared to reveal how many times I rewound and rewatched this moment over and over again. So I won’t.

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The only problem with the whole thing is that Probst is simply too damn good at his job. I was hoping for some next-level Pearl Islands action where they awarded Burton immunity, put a giant pistol and sword around his neck, the players left, and then were forced to return and restart the game because someone realized that the winner had actually misspelled the word “liaison” and they had to pick things back up again. That would have been perfection. But Probst is just too damn good. He spotted the error in real time and made the correction mid-sentence.

You may not like some of the creative decisions Probst makes as executive producer, or you may long for the days when the host mixed it up more with players and challenged them at Tribal Council. That’s all fair and open for debate — because lord knows we Survivor fans love to debate — but Probst’s challenge-calling skills are undeniably masterful.

And if you even want to entertain the idea that he is not brilliant in this capacity, then go try it yourself. And not just for 30 seconds, but for 30 minutes. I’ve been on location at challenges that took longer than that and to watch Probst keep track of that many moving parts while calling, cajoling, cheering, and yes, challenging the contestants is to witness a master class. Anyway, it would have been much funnier if he weren’t so good and we could have had a much more awkward do-over, but it was sadly not meant to be.

Huge props to Kamilla for coming back to win individual immunity. Not only did she drop her entire stack while just one piece away, but she also later found herself one block away again… and dropped that last block on the ground, too. (As a reminder, Kamilla does not exactly have a Dikembe Mutombo-esque wingspan, so reaching that ground block while holding up the rest of her arch was definitely not a given.)

The win led to Kamilla crying and Probst smack-talking Kamilla’s parents through the television set. (I can’t tell you what a missed opportunity it is that Probst did not continue smack talking Kamilla’s mother and father during the “Apply to be on Survivor commercial” that followed. That would have been a comedic call back on the level of Enrico Palazzo.)

Not so merry Mary

Nothing was ever easy for Mary this season. She was on the outs from day 1 on Vula, yet somehow outlasted them all. Of course, a successful Shot in the Dark play certainly helped, but Mary was scrappy. She constantly hustled — whether hustling around the jungle to avoid a babysitting Sai or hustling to switch the vote up. And we saw that again this week when she worked pretty much everyone to take a shot at Joe. It didn’t come to fruition, but that’s what you want from a Survivor player — a person who never gives up and never stops playing and keeps working every angle, even when it seems all but impossible. If that’s not worth standing up for, I don’t know what is.

OHHHHHH, SNAP! Did you see what I did there? Went full circle, baby! Tied the end of this recap back to the beginning. That’s some professional-level recapping right there. So now allow me to dumb it down a little by reminding you of all the other Survivor goodies we have at your disposal.

Prepare yourself for next week’s updated season rankings by seeing which season each of the Survivor 48 players picked as the best ever. You can also see what Probst had to say about his corrected challenge call, and watch our exclusive deleted scene from the episode as well. We’ll also be chatting with Mary on Thursday morning, so prepare yourselves for that and I’ll be back next week with another scoop of the crispy.

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