My Enemies Are Plottin' (S48: Episode 10)

Another week, another wasted opportunity. After last episode’s betrayal of David, Mary finds herself right back on the bottom. She, Kamilla, and Star start quietly plotting an uprising to target Joe. But surprise, surprise—he wins immunity. And this "revolution" crumbles before it even gets to throw a punch. This, to me, is where (in what feels like all seasons of Survivor up until this point) if you can't go for the main target, you go for their number two—in this case, Eva. In this scenario, yes, there's a risk of her playing her advantages, but wouldn't they want to flush them regardless? IDK! I'm confused!!

Eva always on rewards! ...go for the #1 ally!

Mitch clearly never took a page out of Sandra's book and refuses to work with Star over petty past drama, Kamilla flips on Mary, and everyone suddenly decides Star is this chaotic wildcard… which is wild, because from what we’ve seen, she’s been one of the more emotionally grounded, loyal, and strategically thoughtful players left. She literally gave Eva her idol, made smart pitches, and kept things light and hilarious in camp.

But the edit we've been given of her has just been extremely weird. Sure, she’d pop up for a fun confessional or one-liner, but when it came to the actual game narrative, she was basically background noise. And now, just as the cracks in the majority start showing, she’s gone. Voted out 5–3 after being scapegoated as unpredictable—when the actual chaos was everyone else turning on each other to save face for this "core" alliance.

Her exit rap was an odd production move (lol), but this one at least felt genuine in comparison to the cringey chicken and waffle song we got earlier in the episode. I feel like Survivor is working on releasing an album with all of these original island tunes :

But at the end of the day, I am just left feeling I wanted waaaaay more of Star. More of her fun. More of her energy. More of her pep talks. More "Uncle JP." More of an actual underdog movement (that I always root for when it comes to Survivor). Instead, we got another stalled episode, a revolution that never left camp, and a majority alliance that feels like they're all just going through the motions :/ ...and a big RIP to the Star Updates Twitter.

I do want to give Shauhin a shoutout for his most impressive "worm" move. One of the fastest I think we've ever seen!

Also, apparently this episode is now the lowest rated Survivor episode on IMDb (clearly these raters have not seen any episodes of S39 with Dan Spilo...)

What happened with the points tho?

This was a fairly even-scoring episode, all things considered, with Joe and Kyle being the two with the highest points thanks to their challenge wins. Even Star earned her tribe’s 5 points (which is pretty rare for the booted contestant) for naming the episode!

Of our five advantage winners last week, the only person who chose to play their Buyer’s Remorse advantage and swap their Sole Survivor pick was Laura. She previously had Bianca as her Sole and swapped for her last standing tribemember, Mitch. I bet Coach Juju instantly regrets not playing her advantage, as her Sole, Star, got eliminated this week... sorry for you... While Coach Juju is the only league member to have lost their Sole, Amanda M., Christina F., and Connor W. are all knocked down to a tribe of one, and Rachael becomes our first league member to have no one left on her tribe.

!!!!

~Your Tribemasters Liv & Brian