“Survivor”: Season 48, Episodes 3 and 4, Reviewed

Because of Spring Break, I’m reviewing episodes three and four at the same time. Interestingly, the two episodes focus on incredibly different types of players. Episode three was defined by the battle between Mary and Sai in the Vula tribe. They’re both sloppy but play hard and are entertaining because of it. The partnership between Kyle and Kamilla defined episode four. Those two are careful and calculated — very different from Mary and Sai.

The episode started with Mary being honest with Cedrek. After being left out of the vote yet again, she worries she is at the bottom.

Sai was frustrated with Cedrek and Justin for leaving her out of the previous vote. They made her use her idol, signifying to her that their alliance was not as tight as she thought it was.

At Civa’s beach, we learned more about David. At 38, he doesn’t make much money from being a stuntman, so he lives in a trailer by his dad’s house. He wants to start a family but can’t because of his living situation. His girlfriend is 32, wants four kids, and wants to be a stay-at-home mom. Like he says to Charity, he either wins the million dollars at the end of the season, or he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

At Lagi’s beach, Joe made a massive bonfire. Eva and her dad often make massive bonfires in a cabin in Minnesota, so that reminded her of home. She gave him a bracelet as an expression of gratitude, which was very sweet but tipped Thomas off to the fact that Eva and Joe were too close for his liking.

Star started the episode on the outs. The “California Girls” (Joe, Shauhin, Thomas) alliance was dominant. To make things worse for Star, Eva thinks she is in the majority because of her connection to Joe, and Bianca thinks she is in the majority because of her connection with Thomas. Star was the only one with no ties to that alliance. Eva wanted Star out next because of this but talked to Star to build mutual trust. Because of her autism, Eva is not great at telling when people are lying to her. However, Joe told her that Star had a clue to the immunity idol. Eva asked Star if she had found anything, and Star said that she hadn’t. This confirmed to Eva that there was no trust between them. This plan was creative and impressive by Eva. The issue was that she also told Star she would like to take out Bianca or Thomas. This was intended to make Star feel better, but it armed Star with valuable information. Star took this information back to Bianca and Thomas, pinning them against Eva.

Mary got up the next morning looking for an idol, with Sai following close behind. Mary eventually started sorting around camp to force Sai to chase after her. The running made it pretty unlikely Mary would find anything, but this chase sequence was very entertaining.

At Lagi’s beach, Charity and Mitch solidified their partnership — they genuinely won’t turn on each other. They agreed that they wanted to keep David and Kyle with them because those two men were physical threats that would get targeted before them. Mitch took Kyle out in a boat to tell him that he wanted to go deep with him and Charity. Now, Kyle can either go with the original foursome of him, Chrissy, Kamilla, and David, or the new foursome of him, David, Mitch, and Charity. Kyle is in an awesome spot, with an idol to boot.

Along with immunity, tarps and hammocks were up for grabs at the challenge. It was a blind-calling challenge, where all tribe members except one were blindfolded. The unblinded caller needed to guide the rest of the tribe through an obstacle course with their voice and then solve a puzzle at the end. Shauhin did this role best, leading Lagi to another first-place finish. Kamilla led Civa over Vula, sending Vula to tribal council once again.

Back at Vula’s beach, Mary planned to act as calm as possible and pretend she had an idol instead of frantically searching for one. She set out to swim and lounge on the beach, freaking Sai out. Mary’s plan worked perfectly. Sai now planned to split the vote and put one on Justin. Cedrek did not like that plan, as he had worked with Justin since day one.

Part of the reason Sai chose Justin to split the vote on was that he wasn’t there at the moment. After winning the challenge, Lagi had the option to send one person from each tribe on a journey. They sent Bianca from their own tribe, Justin from Vula, and Kamilla from Civa.

Justin got screwed by the journey. Their game was rolling seven dice. Four sides of each die were blank; one was a skull, and one was fire. If you rolled four skulls, you lost your vote; four flames got you an extra vote. It was intense watching these high stakes be put to pure chance – you could tell that the anxiety levels of the players were off the charts. Kamilla got the extra vote, while Justin and Bianca lost theirs.

Justin chose to lie about losing his vote instead of planning around it with Cedrek. Despite Sai’s fear, Cedrek convinced her to put all votes on Mary. Mary played her “shot in the dark,” sacrificing her vote for a one-in-six chance at safety. For the second time in Survivor history, it worked. This was wild and made the tribal council complicated.

Now, Sai and Cedrek knew that Justin had no vote. All votes had been canceled out due to the shot in the dark, so the tribe had to re-vote. Mary had no vote due to the shot in the dark, and Justin had no vote due to the journey, so only Sai and Cedrek cast votes. Sai voted for Justin, but Cedrek voted for Sai. He preferred to keep his steady, day-one ally over the wild card that is Sai.

Typically, when votes are deadlocked in Survivor, all players who have not received a vote are asked to make a unanimous decision. If they can’t, the players receiving votes become safe, and the players not receiving votes draw rocks to see who goes home. However, Cedrek was the only person able to vote for someone who was not voted for. He took a while to decide, but Sai convinced him to vote out Justin over her because Justin lied to him about not having a vote. If Justin had never gone on the journey, he would likely be moving on, but he instead became the third player voted out of Survivor 48 and one of the unluckiest players in Survivor history.

At the start of the next episode, it quickly became clear that Cedrek made a mistake. He could have kept his number-one ally but instead opted to keep two people who banded together against him. Mary and Sai are now working together. They have always respected each other and are finally on the same page. Sai feels complicated towards Cedrek — he saved her, but he’s also the one who endangered her in the first place.

Vula walked into what they thought was a challenge dejected, while the other two tribes came in animated and excited. Jeff told them that the tribes were swapping, at which the Vula members got pumped while the other tribes looked gut-punched.

Eva was especially stressed. Joe is the only castaway she has confided in about her autism and how it impacts the game, so she is terrified about either having to tell someone else or having no one to rely on.

The new Civa members are Chrissy and Mitch (Siva), Cedrek and Sai (Vula), and Bianca (Lagi). It looks like Bianca was in a great spot in the middle of two tribes, but she doesn’t have a vote because of the journey in the last episode. That complicated things. At new Civa’s beach, Cedrek told Mitch that he had a stutter growing up. This bonded them and made Cedrek fairly solid with Chrissy and Mitch.

Cedrek wanted to pull Sai into whichever side he went with, but Sai was still distrustful of Cedrek. She wanted space and was disappointed that he was on her swapped tribe. Bianca told Sai she wanted to work with her and Cedrek, but Sai was noncommital in response.

The new Vula is Joe, Shauhin Thomas (Lagi), and Kyle and Kamilla (Civa). The California Girls’ alliance (Joe, Shauhin, Thomas) stayed together and stayed a majority. The tribe looked incredibly strong on paper, but the entirely non-Vula tribe ironically had to go back to the decrepit Vula beach. They had no food, a terrible shelter, no flint, and no machete because the Vula tribe had never won a challenge. They didn’t even have the map for the tree mail or the water well.

Kyle and Kamilla planned to keep working together but knew they were in the minority. Kamilla lied that she was on the bottom of the original Civa, which Shauhin bought. Kamilla also told Joe and Shauhin that Thomas didn’t actually have the opportunity to walk away from the journey that he said he did. She knew this because Mitch told her he had no option and got the advantage (she lied and said Mitch didn’t get it). Star told her that Thomas had walked away at a challenge. Kamilla did a masterful job convincing Lagi she was on the bottom and not working with Kyle.

However, she did not really make them doubt Thomas. Shauhin and Joe told Thomas what Kamilla was saying about him. He knew she was telling the truth, as he had told no one about his advantage. Now Thomas wanted Kamilla out.

The new Lagi is David and Charity (Civa), Star and Eva (Lagi), and Mary (Vula). I initially viewed this as a great situation for Mary and a terrible situation for Eva. Star dislikes Eva and could easily pitch voting her out to the other three. However, Eva quickly hit it off with David, as he reminded her of her teammates on the men’s hockey team she plays on. Eva did exactly what I thought Star would do against Eva the first chance she got, pushing for her to go home and even telling the rest of the tribe that Star had a beware advantage.

Despite the original Civa affiliation, David actually preferred to take Charity out over Star. Charity underestimated David, thinking of him as dumb and unstrategic. David recognizes this and tells Eva that he has never trusted Charity. Mitch and Charity got Kyle on board but never really solidified David – that could come back to bite them.

Vula came into the immunity challenge cocky and left en route to tribal. The shoddy camp and lack of food certainly impacted them — they choked at the end of the puzzle — but regardless, they had to send a tribe member home. The other tribes won safety and massive assortments of fruit.

Back at Vula Beach, the California Girls strongly believed that Kyle and Kamilla were against each other. The discussion was about whether Kyle or Kamilla should go home. The California Girls searched Kyle’s bag right in front of Kamilla, which understandably terrified her. Thankfully, they didn’t find the idol, as it was in Kyle’s shoe right next to them.

To avoid arousing suspicion, Kyle and Kamilla only had two conversations that night. In the shadows, they decided that Kyle should play his idol and that they should keep the “steal-a-vote” advantage for the future. They could have played the steal-a-vote instead of the idol so that they wouldn’t have to predict which of them the California Girls would vote for. This way, though, if the Vula tribe loses again, Kyle and Kamila can steal either Joe or Shauhin’s vote to guarantee one of them goes home. Kyle used the idol to cancel out the three votes on him, eliminating Thomas. I’m incredibly impressed with Kyle and Kamilla’s acting and strategic chops. Kamilla could have voted for Kyle to keep up the ruse that she was with the majority three, but I can’t complain because of how masterful their execution was.

Tune into next week to see how this season continues to unfold.