Survivor Season 48, Episode 7
"Survivor Smack Talk"
Cast: Shauhin Davari, Eva Erickson, Kyle Fraser, Mitch Guerra, Saiounia Hughley, Joe Hunter, Kamilla Karthigesu, David Kinne, Cedrek McFadden, Chrissy Sarnowsky, Star Toomey, Mary Zheng
My first instinct after this episode was that I wanted to yell at many of the players this season. Mitch! Chrissy! Star! Mary! Sai! Cedrek! What are you all doing!? There seems to be this massive alliance that clearly is running things and it felt disappointing to watch Sai and Cedrek go home when they might have actually been able to swing the vote onto a power player. These votes may have been a mistake for Sai and Cedrek (they were voted out) but was it that bad of a move for Chrissy, Star, Mitch or Mary? Maybe not.
Let's start with Mitch.
He comes back to camp and knows he was on the outside of the last vote. He owns up to it by telling Sai. He talks to the people in power and gets told a very similar line by all of them: "We had to and we couldn't tell you." Mitch sets himself up into the position the people in charge want him to be — loyal but powerless.
My first thought was "Mitch! Don't just do what they want! Go do something! Shake things up!" But to be honest, this isn't the worst position for Mitch to create for himself. He needed to go into this tribal looking like the larger alliance was his only chance at surviving in this game. Now he can bide his time and let the larger alliance collapse on itself. He just needed to make sure he wasn't the person voted out this time and by wisely offering up his advantage in the game (using his Block-A-Vote on Sai), he earned some much needed trust. He can wield that trust in the future by working with a person in the Strong 5 Alliance (as I'm calling it) to take out someone else inside of it.
Both Sai and Cedrek try to do the same thing, but fail.
Sai is also on the outs and she approaches Shauhin about his vote for her. He realizes Sai wants to deal with conflict directly and he gives her exactly what she's looking for. It seems to work. Sai might be out, but her last couple of days were all about building connections and trying. She didn't roll over.
However, while Sai's hinky vote on Cedrek is the most fun segment I've seen on the show in a while (right down to Cedrek thinking it was Sai other than the handwriting), it ultimately proved to be a nothing burger. If Sai and Cedrek ended up on the same team, only one of them would have been voted out and maybe Sai's vote ruse would have led to something.
While all of this is happening, the Strong 5 Alliance of Joe, Eva, David, Shauhin, and Kyle (and to some degree, Kamila) is thriving.
David and Joe end up being the Individual Immunity Idol winners after a showdown that broke Gabler's record in the challenge where you had to maintain your grip to hold up a bucket. With neither of them able to be voted out, it perfectly grew their targets for a future vote. They may have shown a little too much.
Joe and the rest of the Orange team, which included Mitch, Chrissy, Eva, Star and Sai, head to Tribal Council first. While it may have seemed obvious for Eva to be voted out, that option was never on the table. The first reason may be her idol and that fact that she could save herself but there's more at play.
Chrissy is integrated with the others in a way that Mitch isn't, despite both of them being from original Civa. Star, meanwhile, has a connection to Eva. We don't see much of it this episode but she gave her the Immunity Idol. So if those two aren't going to vote for Eva, there aren't enough votes left. That leaves it between Sai, who many call the easy vote, and Mitch, who people think has a better chance in the game long term. It's Mitch's use of his Block-A-Vote that, in my opinion, earns him just enough trust to be kept in the game.
I'm a bit bummed that a player like Sai made it this far and didn't make the jury. While I think it's a little too into the semantics to really care, she was one of the hardest players we've seen on the show. That's saying a lot considering the calibre of play provided in the New Era.
The second tribal is where things get a little more interesting and it's where the theme of the episode really comes into play. It's also where we get to see the two best players in the season begin to work their magic.
Kyle and Kamila are really the best thing about this season right now. While they may not have actually voted out Shauhin, they did a lot of stellar work to plant seeds for his future downfall. The debate is whether they take out the person on the outs or take this opportunity to knock out a big player. This move checked off two boxes for the pair: they not only got rid of someone who wasn't going to work with them in Cedrek, they also showed just how nervous Shauhin was at being voted out. Setting up that level of panic sets them up very well to validate other people's opinion on Shauhin in a future tribal council.
In the end, this episode wasn't about taking the big swing. It was about laying the groundwork. Players like Chrissy, Star, and Mary may not have blown up the game this week, but they kept their names out of people's mouths and quietly deepened their social capital. They watched, they listened, and they clocked who was in power — and more importantly, who was nervous about staying there. The Strong 5 may look tight right now, but as individual games begin to pull priority over group loyalty, those outside the core are perfectly positioned to flip the script. The revolution isn't here yet, but if this episode taught us anything, it's that the underdogs are no longer just hanging on. They're getting ready.
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