‘Survivor’ Recap, S48, Ep. 10: A Star Is Born

[Jeff’s voice]: Come on in! Vulture readers getting a first look at the new Nui Nai tribe recapper …

… Kidding! I’m just filling in for the week while Brian presumably enjoys a chicken-and-waffles picnic on a lush Fijian island. While he’s out, I’ll recap this week’s quite silly episode, which kicks off moments after David the Goliath got felled like a hulking, entitled tree at tribal council. Happy trails, David. I hope they serve milk in Ponderosa.

Mary is shocked and demoralized after tribal council, because all the “bulky, hulky, strong Herculean people completely played me and David.” She hitched her wagon to the wrong bulky, hulky Herc hunk. Mary’s only recourse is to try scheming with Kamilla and Star, the latter of which brands their erstwhile underdog alliance as piranhas, small and poised to attack. Star gives fantastic confessionals in this episode, and from the time the show suddenly gives her, it’s clear from the jump that her writing is probably on the wall. “What we have is spirit,” she tells the camera, “and spirit goes a long way.” If “a long way” actually means the next 59 minutes.

Meanwhile, I love Eva’s policy of honesty, which seems as much a facet of her very nature — the flipside of not picking up on lies — as it is a unique strategy. She straight up tells Mary that she will keep her around as a space-filler for as long as she can. Sure, she will vote her out at some point, but she’ll at least warn her. Eva also says in confessional that she’s built up “an artillery of weapons,” and I thought she was referring to the meat shields in her alliance, but she meant the two advantages she’s sitting on.

The next day, the tribe is watching Saturday-morning cartoons, by which I mean they’re watching Mailman Mitch tell a story from his ol’ letter-carryin’ days, acting out in great detail getting chased by a dog and running headfirst into a tree. It’s slapstick, and Shauhin tells the camera it’s “the hardest he’s ever laughed.” If Mitch doesn’t make it to the end, at least he’s got a future in vaudeville. Shauhin thinks Kamilla’s a free agent who can be won over, but she has a hammock chat with her secret ride-or-die, Kyle, telling him her plan to try to get four people to vote for Joe and push the vote to rocks, something nobody wants. Of course, we just saw Kyle share his personal trauma with Joe, forging a bond reminiscent of that between Joe and Eva. He will play no part in the effort to bring Joe down, but he’ll let Kamilla do her dirty work. And that’s sort of the tense thing about their alliance: While pretending like they’re not besties, they’ve spent so much time apart and forged genuine relationships with others at the expense of their own bond. Another fun camp detail: They’ve painted a fake Wi-Fi code and password on a tree. (The Wi-Fi name? Probst5G.)

For this week’s reward challenge, the survivors have to wriggle through the sand like Dune worms, arms and legs bound together, dragging a buoy on a rope with their teeth, but not before Jeff leads them in a “fried chicken and waffles” chant that they all get way too into. Shauhin and Star even put a little freestyle spin on it. (This is foreshadowing.) The challenge is difficult to watch and is not made easier by Jeff adding commentary like, “First thing is you gotta get that handle in your mouth,” and “Lotta grunting on day 18!” Poor Kamilla doesn’t get a hang of her slither and is still spasming through the sand by the time nearly everyone else has gotten through to the next phase of the challenge, which involves maneuvering their buoy through a rope maze and then untying and tossing three rings onto a hooked target. Kyle wins it, with Joe seconds behind, and invites Eva, Shauhin, and Kamilla on the reward. At first, I thought he was doing this to keep her away from the other piranhas, therefore stopping her from convincing them to vote Joe out, but actually, it’s a good way to try to fold Kamilla into the alliance.

Mitch is pissed. He feels betrayed by Kyle, and we cut to Kyle telling the camera that he wants Mitch, Star, and Mary to be as pissed off as they can possibly be because this is a game that’s “won in the margins,” and he’s making small-push strategies rather than big gestures. Joe rationalizes that Kyle didn’t pick him because he needs Joe to “babysit” the others back at camp, lest Mary influence Mitch and Star. He also tries some “jury management” on Mary, thinking his honesty will win her over. He says that everyone’s saying she manipulated David in a way that led to his getting voted out, and she privately scoffs at all of this. She then pitches Mitch on the going-to-rock plan while Joe is pointedly shown in the background gathering wood. Meanwhile, over at the reward, Eva says, “Shauhin pelting me with a handful of whipped cream made me feel so joyous!”

The immunity challenge is the one where they have to stack blocks to spell “IMMUNITY” while holding a rope to keep a wobbly platform steady, and this thing is tense. Beforehand, Jeff offers a rice trade, saying, “There is a price for the rice,” like he’s the witch in Into the Woods. He asks Survivor scholar Shauhin why contestants don’t take him up on this New Era offer anymore, and he says, “You throw twists and turns at us; the players will throw twists right back at you.” The challenge itself was so compelling to me. I often tune out during multi-part physical ones involving platforms and ropes and slides and mazes and climbing and throwing, but watching these eight contestants concentrate on not spilling the blocks had me rapt. Joe is the main character of this challenge from the start: He kisses each block before he places it, he’s got flies all over his face trying to break his focus, and at one moment, he points a stern finger at a block and says, “don’t you dare be a buttfuck.” Star, hilariously, has her rope slack over her shoulder and platform teetering all over the place. This is truly someone who conserves her energy during challenges and saves it for talking back at camp and confessionals, and I think that’s awesome. Joe wins immunity and attributes it to his dad powers, tiptoeing around the house trying not to wake his kids up after going to bed.

Back at camp, Mary’s plan to get Joe out is out the window, and the burgeoning piranha coalition turns against each other. Mitch is blackpilled from not getting tapped for reward and doesn’t trust anyone; Mary successfully pitches Star to everyone. And Star? Well … Star’s being her beautiful, glorious self. She says things like how she wants to lead a revolution and she has a fighting spirit, but she could not have been more relatably half-assed in that challenge, and she’s not actually campaigning all that hard. This is when she reveals, “At home, I love to rap,” and launches into a freestyle about how her enemies are plotting, which the editors accompany by turning it into a mini music video and laying down a backing track. Mary’s not in nearly as good of a mood, because if the vote doesn’t get Star out, it’s coming for her. “My social game is pretty frickin’ bomb, but with this group of people here tonight, it’s not slappin’,” she says before they grab their torches and head to tribal council. It’s a bar not even good enough for a Star freestyle.

At tribal council, David looks genuinely evil on the jury bench, sending death glares across the fire at the players still in it. The theme of this fireside chat is paranoia versus trust, and everyone insists they’re operating from a totally trusting place, while still sounding extremely neurotic and paranoid. Everyone except Star, who calls Jeff “Uncle JP” and who has committed to the bit of being as absolutely delusionally confident and laidback as possible. She commits to the bit so hard that she says she probably won’t even bother playing her shot in the dark, and when it comes time to read the votes, it’s true. She gets one more than Mary and has to go, exiting with a salute to Uncle JP and a freestyle rap over the credits. David makes exaggerated faces at Cedrek, trying to pull focus basically the entire time.

And with that, A Star Is Born! And A Star Is Voted Off! Now I leave it to you beautiful, hulky, bulky Herc-y hunks to hit me with some real smart analysis in the comments.

• Some overall thoughts on the season: Look, I’m no master strategist. I don’t watch Survivor analytically, the way people watch sports, and that’s because I also don’t watch sports. I’m in it for the vibes, and I have to say, the vibes have arrived at this point in the season. We’ve seen evidence of a looser Jeff (crying!), and that playfulness is echoed by the editors, who are having fun with it. The slo-mo sequence in this episode? Delightful! The multiple raps! And the cast has been winnowed down to seven, all of whom I find compelling at this point. Joe and Kyle are that perfect balance of being great at challenges, socially clever, and sensitive, and they both have great backstories … it will be fun to see the ways that the underdogs work to stay in it against competitors like this. Also, I demand The Traitors get their hands on Star! She’d crush in the castle. I feel too dumb at this to make predictions, but I have a feeling season 49 will continue this streak of good New Era seasons, leading to 50! To quote Shauhin (quoting Jeff): And that is how you play Survivor.