“Survivor 43” - Episode 7 Review
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the seventh episode of Survivor’s 43rd season, currently airing at 8/7c Wednesdays on CBS.
This season of “Survivor” just keeps getting more interesting at each and every turn, after the so-called re-invention of the show after its 40th season.
After voting off Elie during last week's episode, everyone has now made it to the merge. As the groups feel settled with their new combined tribe, they expect to relax but with “Survivor” that is rarely the case.
Instead of signing their names to a tribe sign, the group got tree mail saying they needed to pick partners. As to not make public alliances or player bias, they decided to pick rocks they painted to figure out who their partners were going to be.
Although the challenge had partners, it was really a disguise for an immunity challenge that ended in one winner. The partners had to go through two different challenges, and after each one, two groups would subsequently be eliminated.
The first part of the challenge proved to be extremely tough as the last two remaining in the challenge, Noelle and Jeanine. Jeff Probst used this moment to bring emotional depth to the challenge and used this as a chance to get to know what the players were thinking about “Survivor” as a whole now that they have been experiencing it.
Even though there were conversations before the challenge to vote off Gabler, it was him who ended up winning the immunity necklace.
This caused the camp to switch it up around different people. At the water well in front of a few people, James found a bottle that told him where to locate an advantage.
After trying to play it off, James went after the advantage. Because the show is filled with super-fans of the show, the contestants had an idea that it might be the Knowledge-Is-Power advantage and they all scramble to give away their idols and advantages.
They wanted to split the votes between James and Ryan who are seen as the strongest in the group but Jesse and Cody had a different plan.
They both realized that Noelle was calling the shots, trying to control the vote by creating the idea for splitting the vote. The smart move might’ve been to vote her off but they instead decided to weaken her by going after Dwight.
Dwight ended up going home to the shock of Noelle and himself, as he was blindsided.
The parts that make “Survivor” really interesting, like the backstabbing moments and surprise uses of an advantage, have kept this show going on for as long as it has.
With the re-invention of the show there has been the incorporation of new events and idols like sending a tribe member on a trip to take a risk and beware idols that require a survivor to do something out of the ordinary to get it to work.
There is nothing wrong with any of these new tactics but they seem to take away from the original charm that “Survivor” brought to reality tv- the character moments that had you rooting for a favorite and or created a villain.
Rating: 3.5/5
Sophia Clements is a second-year majoring in communications. To contact her, email sbc6003@psu.edu.
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