Review: Survivor, "What About The Big Girls" | Season 43, Episode 9
The tribe split offers light thrills but does nothing to invigorate the season's narrative
Of the different structural elements of “Survivor 2.0,” the split-tribe, two-tribal structure at the Top 10 is far and away my favorite. It’s always productive to create a situation where existing alliances are shaken up and the forced, random separation of players brings tension to the surface on multiple fronts. But it’s particularly welcome a week after the players punted on doing anything remotely interesting, settling into a groove that absolutely needs to be disrupted. And it has a guaranteed value, wherein you know you’re going to get something truly pure from a narrative perspective: the players live reacting to something they couldn’t predict, in this case the results of the first tribal council.
That said, in continuing a theme, “What About The Big Girls” doesn’t really generate meaningful discourse through this twist in the …