Review: Survivor, "I Can't Wait To See Jeff" | Season 44, Episode 1
Well, that makes one of us, but it's still nice to have CBS' reality stalwart back
Welcome to Episodic Medium’s weekly coverage of the 44th season of Survivor, which debuts on Disney+ today. As always, the first review is available to all, but subsequent reviews will only be available to paid subscribers (and if paid subscribers would prefer to not receive those emails, you can adjust which shows you receive emails for under “Manage Subscription” under your Substack profile). If you’re new to the site, you can find out more about the show’s we’re covering on our About Page.
Survivor’s broken the fourth wall before, but it’s never happened quite like it does in the opening moments of Survivor 44, where drug counselor Carolyn is doing her basic introduction. Usually, the fourth wall breaks because the game has broken in some way - a few minutes later, for example, Bruce’s injury during the reward challenge worsens, leading Jeff to call everyone off and bring in medical for a checkup. But as the episode progresses, we realize that we saw Carolyn's interview because it’s silly—she’s struggling with the most basic discussion of who she is, in ways that are at least a little funny.
It’s a moment that shapes our perspective of her throughout the episode. When Carolyn steps up at the end of the reward challenge to begin the “toss a ring up a pole” portion, and she starts flailing around and removes her pants to give her more leverage, we’re naturally thinking back to the edit’s choice to present her as a bit of an oddball. The same goes for when her Tika tribemate Helen asks her if she thinks she’s good with brain teasers, and Carolyn is quick to be like “Yeah, no.” And it echoes as Carolyn finds herself being ignored by her tribe, throwing wild looks at the camera as she expresses her anxiety over no one talking to her.
As Carolyn is complaining about her struggle to connect to her tribe (except for Bruce, who has at this point been medically evacuated), she insists “I want to play this game as my authentic self.” It’s an outcast narrative, and it really feels like it’s setting her up for an early exit, especially when the three younger members of her tribe forge an alliance after Bruce’s exit. But when we get to the immunity challenge, Carolyn is right alongside the Tika tribe as they finish a respectable second, and she’s nothing if not her authentic self when she informs everyone that she peed her pants in the process.
In other words, rather than setting up any meaningful character dynamic, the choice to begin with Carolyn’s wonky interview was basically “vibes.” And on the whole, the vibes of Survivor 44 are pretty solid—while the premiere is plagued by medical interventions, and there is absolutely still too much going on in the modern iteration of the game, the overall atmosphere it creates is a pretty healthy one. Probst doesn’t feel like he’s overshadowing the players, the players confront the new dynamics of the game in compelling ways, and while I absolutely refuse to come within 100 feet of listening to Probst’s official Survivor podcast I’m mostly optimistic about the season it’s covering.
Season 44—which I’m dubbing Survivor: Sword and Shield—mostly makes small adjustments to the evolving Monster Era gameplay we’ve become used to the past few seasons. For example, instead of letting both losing tribes at the reward challenge choose between “Sweat” and “Savvy,” the choice of the second-place tribe forces the hand of the third-place tribe. It adds an extra element of strategy, and also creates an opportunity for hubris: Matthew and Brandon at Ratu are convinced that they can handle the “Sweat” challenge easily, but they gave the nerdier Tika tribe a fairly easy brain teaser, while exhausting themselves and contributing to their loss in the Immunity Challenge where Brandon collapses.
Similarly, the “Ship’s Wheel” component gets another twist. After last season turned it into a group decision, we go back to individual paths here, but with a new dynamic designed to maximize the amount of advantages in the game. With each player being forced to pick out of the bag, with no option to fully play it safe, it pushes them to dig into the bag a second time even if they lose their vote. It means every player will go back to their camp with some change to their strategy, whether it’s Soka’s Matt losing votes at his next two tribal councils, Tika’s Sarah balancing a lost vote with a new “Inheritance Advantage” or Ratu’s Lauren winning the lottery as it were with her “Bank A Vote Advantage.” Is it a little overwhelming to have the game throwing two (and potentially three) entirely new advantages into the mix? Maybe, and if they make weekly trips to the island the chyrons are going to get fully out of control. But it works well to start, complete with one of the advantages being played at the first tribal council. Accordingly, at least for the time being, I’ll keep my issues with advantage overload to the side.
That advantage comes from the Ratu tribe, who really do run the whole gamut of the game over the course of this episode. They’re the ones who get to make the decision between “Sweat” and “Savvy,” and they’re the only tribe to make a concerted effort to confront “The Cage.” It’s the biggest new twist to the game, and I appreciate how Ratu absolutely bulldozes it over the course of the two hours. Every player naturally knows there is some kind of advantage hidden on their island when the game starts, but it’s different when you can see it hanging there, just waiting to be unlocked. The psychological impact this will have as the game picks up and things start to get real is significant: the first time a tribe is about to head to tribal, the search for that key is going to be a mad dash.
Ratu, though, broke this portion of the game. First, they chose to look for it together, believing that it could be a team advantage for the first immunity challenge. Second, they find it before that challenge, meaning that there’s no “WE NEED TO UNLOCK THE CAGE” panic by anyone as shit gets real. And third, and most importantly, Brandon refuses to listen to Maddy and tells the entire tribe he found it, which leads to him opening it in front of everyone and discovering that the entire twist of the cage has been ruined. The fact the cage contains both a hidden immunity idol and a trinket that can be left in the cage as a dummy is perfect for continuing the psychological impacts of the cage after the point the key is initially found, but Brandon can’t take advantage of that in the way the other tribes will be able to as the game progresses. Which makes it only fitting that he burns his idol on the first tribal, correctly guessing that his tribe was working to flush it out.
I understand why Survivor is throwing so many advantages into the game: they want every tribal to be unpredictable, for the game to feel like it is always on a knife’s—or sword’s—edge. And in this case, Ratu’s trip to tribal is full of firsts: I’m pretty sure it’s the first time someone’s played an idol at the first tribal council, and it’s the first time someone successfully played the Shot-in-the-Dark, with yogi Jaime effectively panicking her way into being safe once it was clear the tribe had agreed to throw all their votes onto Brandon. And on top of it all, there were only three votes cast, with Lauren choosing to use her “Bank A Vote” under the guide of not having a vote at all. It’s wonky and exciting, and the problem with that is you can see why Probst wants every week to be like this, even though it gets exhausting if that becomes true.
Maddy probably didn’t “deserve” to go home in the way she did, given that she was smart enough to try to convince Brandon to hide the key from the rest of the tribe, but with no efforts made to split the vote that interaction sealed her fate. And ultimately, while a woman did indeed go home first again, it was refreshing that this first vote didn’t boil down to a discussion of strength and weakness…although whether the tribe would have been willing to vote out Brandon and his idol if he hadn’t collapsed at the Immunity Challenge is an open question. Still, as much as I’d argue that “a lot going on” does not always create a good Survivor episode, the vibes on this one stayed pretty solid.
In terms of standout narratives otherwise, Carson gets the clearest edit here: after his introduction lets us know he’s a spreadsheet nerd who 3D printed puzzles to prepare, we later learn he put on thirty pounds when he found out he was going to be on the show (bringing him up to 145 sopping wet). He fits into a very clear archetype of Survivor player (see: Cochrane, Spencer), but he’s perhaps the youngest and most earnest we’ve seen yet, and it will be interesting to see how he navigates that. He perhaps gets a little too “aw shucks” when talking about his lack of relationship experience, but he’s savvier about avoiding stepping up to do the brain teaser until Helen invites him in.
The best moment in the episode, though, comes from someone who barely speaks in it. After being introduced with a fairly early talking head, tech investor Claire doesn’t have a lot to say around the Soka camp, and the fact they won both the Reward and Immunity challenges means there’s no real strategy to be found. But when she sits out the immunity challenge, she gets Matthew’s attention next door to compare stories about the players who went on the pilgrimage. For a moment, it actually seemed like Claire’s intervention was going to send Lauren home, since Matthew correctly surmised that Lauren’s choice not to show them evidence of her lost vote meant she was lying. And while that faded away as tribal grew closer, Claire’s push to cross tribes for information is intriguing, and something to watch out for moving forward.
From the preview for next week, Carolyn’s “authenticity” will remain front and center, so it’s not like that opening scene was nothing but a gag. But it was a bit refreshing to see a season not start with Probst warning us that this is going to be the most demanding or challenging season yet because of X or Y1—instead, we get a montage of past seasons just reminding us that the game is about group dynamics and interpersonal relationships, without even leaning too hard on Probst’s obsession with the “social experiment” dimension of things. We’re not quite “back to basics” in terms of the broader changes to the game, but the simple choice to act like we are does have a tangible impact on how sufferable the trappings of the game are at this early stage. And I’ll take that as a win as someone who absolutely was in no rush to see Jeff.
Stray observations
Obviously, if the tribe wanted to flush Brandon’s idol, they clearly needed to split the votes. But I wonder if they ultimately lacked anyone to split them on—Lauren was the only other name who had come up, but she seemed to be central to the women’s plan. Really, they should have just pulled in only one of the two other guys and put their votes on the other one, but I wonder if they were internalizing the “strength” narrative.
I know we miss the full opening credits, but it was a bit weird to give us the slow motion camera shots during the first reward challenge, given they didn’t return for the second. Not sure if we’ll be getting more of this in situations where the camera setup allows it, or if this was a one-off.
If anyone wants to fall on the sword and be the person who listens to the podcast and passes along any meaningful insights, we will all be forever in your debt. (In this case, I’d love to hear whether they thought the beads thing from Season 43 worked less well than they hoped, or if they just wanted to try something entirely different regardless).
In case you were wondering, Ratu law student Kane was the last player to get a named chyron nearly an hour into the episode, although we did learn his name before it happened.
Look, I liked Matthew’s backstory even if I was alarmed to hear someone self-identify as the “oldest guy on the tribe” in his early 40s, but I have to be honest and say it was a little refreshing to see someone with no regard for the danger of climbing around like a maniac fall and hurt himself, scary as it was? I’m hopeful he manages to recover fully, which will be hard with no one being able to sit out challenges, but part of me was like “Good, maybe next time people won’t randomly climb rocks?”
It’s extremely rough to watch someone get evacuated on day one, especially over what seems like such a simple injury that you know would 95% of the time easily resolve itself with basic medical care. Curious to see if Tika feels the weight of the loss of an “alpha male” figure in Bruce or not as the challenges progress.
In addition to the sword and shield idols, lots of dragons in the production design, which is…not exactly consistent with a Fijian island.
Speaking of Fiji, I visited the country for roughly 2 hours last month on my way to Australia, and I can attest that the jungle around the airport was very beautiful.
And speaking of Australia: yes, I’m aware so many of you are now watching Australian Survivor, and I even saw ads for the current season when I was in Melbourne and Sydney! But between travel and running this here newsletter, I just haven’t found the time, but trust that I’m not ignoring your insistence I should.
I appreciate that there is both a queer Salon Owner (Yam Yam) and a queer barbershop owner (Matthew), and I really hope they both make it to the merge so they discover this.
Interesting that the three winning moments they chose to show in the montage were Richard (obviously), Maryanne, and Tyson.
The preview is definitely leaning into the idea of a Frannie and Matt romance at Soka, especially given how they foreground his recent breakup.
Welcome back to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Survivor! Honestly, as the side has grown, this has really become a pet project at best: as ever, paid subscribers have the ability to unsubscribe from particular shows, and Survivor emails go out to the least amount of people every time we cycle back around. But it’s a show that really embodies the ethos of what we’re doing here, as it really is a better experience with a community of people engaging with it week-to-week. Thanks for being here for another season, especially if you joined me a year ago when this was a one-man operation—your support helped make this what it is today. Anyway, I appreciate you being here, and be sure to spread the word to others who might enjoy a chance to discuss the season ahead.
Yes, this was on purpose.
Myles I have been with you since early days of episodic medium, then avclub for survivor, and I joined your Substack for your survivor reviews. Unbelievable job a year later growing the site from Saul to andor to mando and everything else you cover beyond worth the subscription price.
- Like the "Sword and Shield" as unofficial subtitle, hope it catches on! In fact, all post-40 seasons could use some fan-made title. The numeric titles are starting to blend together and its only been 4 seasons.
- Excited to see the Shot in the Dark finally work! I was starting to think the whole thing was an elaborate prank from the producers. It made for a bizarre first tribal ,and cant help but feel bad for Maddy for falling victim to a 3-vote tribal (although she seemed to be overplaying at camp anyway). Also feel terrible for Bruce but am happy to hear they are committed to bringing him back. When Sandra's daughter Nina played on Australian Survivor last season, she was med-evaced and was basically promised on the spot that she would have a chance to come back.
- I agree that Claire's move during the challenge was subtle but effective! I always like seeing what small strategizing players find ways to do during challenges.
- Not sure I'll listen to the Jeff Probst Pod every week, but will report back any interesting info I happen to catch.
- Carson may grow on me like Christian did, but for now I find his hyper Gen Z superfandom a little grating. Apparently, he caught some flack on Twitter a couple weeks back for selling T-shirts immediately after the cast announcement.
- I don't know if it challenges have become legitimately more intense in the 26 day game or recent casts are just smaller in stature but watching them try to move those huge blocks around the sand stresses me out.