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I see now why Survivor used to skip Thanksgiving week. Yesterday was the first chance I had to sit down and watch the episode! Sorry about the delay.

This week was a Karishma episode, and it highlights probably the thing that frustrates me most about Karishma as a player. When she’s up, she’s 100% certified Grade-A hot shit. She brags and preens, and puts down other players, and snaps her fingers, and cocks her neck back and forth. When she’s down, she’s depressed and mopey, always on the verge of quitting, crying and whining and blaming everyone else for her lot in life.

Spun another way, Karishma takes all the credit for her successes and none of the blame for her failures. This is noteworthy because in one of her darker moments she even admits to knowing she’s a “goat”; she knows she’s being dragged along to the end by better players who want an easy doubleyoo in the finals.

I generally hold the opinion that, by definition, the best player of Survivor is the player that wins. Losing the game means there’s some aspect of it you didn’t play well, and at the end of the day the only metric that matters is jurty votes for. In Survivor parlance, “deserve” is a dirty word.

On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of players get absolutely jacked by game twists they couldn’t have possibly forseen or planned for. Jamal is in that boat, for sure; his game came to an end because he touched a thing in a tree. Elizabeth probably counts too, and oh yeah by the way, spoilers.

I recall watching a man named Matt on Survivor: Redemption Island. In that season, the big twist was being voted out didn’t mean being voted off. You instead were sent to Redemption Island, where your fate in the game was linked to your ability to win challenges. Matt was sent there early, something like Day 3, and blitzed every challenge they threw at him. At the merge (so, Day 17 or so) Matt re-entered the game and was voted out immediately. He continued to blitz Redemption Island until the very last challenge (circa Day 38, maybe), where he lost unceremoniously.

Matt’s story was unique because, if he had won the one and only challenge he lost, and re-entered the game right at the finish line, and then managed to also win that final immunity challenge… he would have won the game without ever having played Survivor. At the time I was mostly bemused by Matt’s antics, but looking back I think I would have been a little upset. It turns out I-the-viewer don’t like the idea of someone who wins without playing.

(I’m still on Survivor social media blackout, but during one early sojourn through the subreddit I learned that the winner of season 38, Edge of Extinction, was a sort of Matt-lite. And yes, people were upset.)

This brings us to the conundrum of Karishma. Let me first give her some legit kudos: she’s on Survivor and she’s toughing it out, which is more than you could say about me or any other Armchair Warrior out there. However her story ends, by the end of it she’ll forever be a piece of Survivor lore and I’ll just be a guy with a blog nobody reads. But from what I can tell, this woman is a terrible player by any metric I know. I’m not upset that it honestly looks like she might make final three, and sit in the final Tribal Council. I’m upset that, if and when that happens, she will smugly think it was all her doing.

Let’s look at two boneheaded Karishma moments that had her feeling like Queen Big Shit. You’ll recall last episode, where Noura yelled at her for lazing around camp, and Karishma was CRUELLY AND UNJUSTLY BULLIED to go do the chore of picking up coconuts. Instead, she found a hidden Immunity Idol. She praised her resourcefulness without taking a moment to reflect that, holy crap, if she had continued to lounge around in the hammock all day, and Noura had gone to do the chore herself, that it’s Noura with a necklace, and not poor put-upon Karishma.

I guess when you luck into finding an idol you weren’t motivated to go look for in the first place, you don’t think too hard about how you’re going to use it. Once the Lumuwaku tribe, spearheaded by Dean and his distaste for the “Goat Army” he sees on the hirozone, decides Karishma is next to go, she resolves to play the idol and save herself.

The actual votes get a little complicated, but they strongly support my thesis that Karishma is a terrible player, and I want to give another player props before getting into the whole sordid story.

A boat arrives and tells Lumuwaku they have to send one player to the Island of the Idols. Lauren immediately speaks up. At this point in the game, enough players have gone there and come back with advantages that much of the exile stigma has been washed away. (Karishma pouts that she didn’t get to go, and blames Lauren for being loud and pushy, and thinks the reason she didn’t get picked is because her tribemates hate her. In reality, her tribemates won’t even know she wanted to go until they see this episode’s confessionals.)

Rob and Sandra describe the next Immunity Challenge to Lauren in some detail. It’s another endurance weight-balancing challenge, but this time, there’s a sit-out clause. If you’re confident in your place in the game, you can sit out and eat instead. If Lauren correctly identifies the winner of the challenge, she wins an Immunity Necklace.

Lauren wisely doesn’t bite right away, so Rob sweetens the deal by letting her pick two players. This is enough of a window for Lauren to work through the problem.

There are nine players, Lauren has to pick two. Blind chance, that’s nearly 1-in-4 odds. She knows she can sit out, and she knows her closest ally Tommy will sit out also. That’s nearly 1-in-3.

She knows Dan is complacent and comfortable, and that he’ll want to eat. And she knows Noura is a vegan, and isn’t down on some bacon and pancakes. So she’ll play. She also knows Elizabeth is worst off, from a gamestate perspective, and so will play no matter what. Her plan: peg Noura or Elizabeth to win, let Tommy in on the plan, and then work hard on getting as many other tribemates to sit out as possible.

This is already a great plan, but Lauren delivers a masterstroke: she tells the rest of the tribe that she decided the challenge would be eat-or-play. By framing the eat-or-play decision as her reward from the Island of the Idols, she makes the situation seem rarer than it actually is. And by going into details about all the yummy vittles on offer, she gets practically the whole tribe salivating.

Karishma, Elizabeth and Noura all decide to play, and Karishma couldn’t beat flabby sarcastic me in a challenge, let alone a yoga-obsessed health nut and an Olympic athlete. I took great delight in her dropping out first and having to sit the bench watching everyone else eat pancakes. I took even more delight in her little woe-is-me speech, and then even more when Probst didn’t ignore the still ongoing challenge to throw a little pity party for her.

Noura won the challenge and then displayed some actual growth as a person by trying to stay in as long as possible to give her tribemates more time to eat. (You’ll recall she stupidly stepped down from the previous endurance challenge, when further rewards were on the line.) I haven’t been Noura’s biggest cheerleader this season, but this does in fact show her eyes are open and generally pointed in the right direction.

The Karishma Vote.

Tommy wants Elizabeth gone next, because she’s a threat to sweep immunity and because she was gunning for him back when her allies were still in the game. Dean wants Karishma gone instead, because of his aversion to goats. After some hemming and hawing, and some reading of lips, the tribe settles on Karishma.

Dan tells (read: lies to) Karishma, saying the plan is to split the vote between Elizabeth and Janet. Karishma correctly intuits this isn’t true, and resolves to play her idol to protect herself. She is, in fact, one of three players to drop an idol tonight. First Dean plays a fake version of the fake legacy advantage given to him by Jamal (he’s hoping the other players will see it’s fake and assume he doesn’t still have the “real” one, then blindside them with it later, and god I hope that happens). Then Karishma plays her idol, much to everyone’s amazement. This shocks Lauren into playing her own necklace, since she knows whomever Karishma voted for is now leaving, and doesn’t want to risk it being her.

Seven votes Karishma, all thrown away. One vote Janet. One vote Elizabeth. Probst calls a re-vote, with Janet and Elizabeth sitting out, and Elizabeth goes home unanimously. (At least, I presume unanimously, as no Janet votes were shown. Usually, they show as many votes as possible to preserve tension as long as they can.)

Karishma loves that she’s still in the game, and thinks she played it beautifully. But I think she’s a bonehead, and here’s why.

First off, I wasn’t sure where where the Janet vote had come from. I usually skip the tail end of each episode, where the freshly-ejected player gives their exit interview while all the votes are shown on camera, but this week they only showed us the results of the anti-Elizabeth re-vote, so that wasn’t much help. Sometimes we get to see a vote or two against as they’re being cast, but that didn’t happen this episode. Not wanting to break my blackout oath, I checked Wikipedia, which sometimes have voting breakdowns. This revealed that the Janet vote came from Karishma.

(The only Elizabeth vote in the first draft came from Dan, which is itself interesting, but I don’t know what to make of it yet.)

So I’m working under the assumption Karishma thought it was going to be a landslide, and didn’t purposely force a tie. Here’s her position right now: she’s still in the game, she’s patting herself on the back, she’s on Cloud 9. But that’s going to come crashing back down when she gets back to camp, everyone likes her even less now, and she doesn’t have her idol anymore.

Playing an idol to squeak past one super important vote is fine — that’s sort of what Lauren did this episode. Playing an idol to squeak past one vote with no plan to follow up afterwards doesn’t actually accomplish anything. If I could ask Karishma a question, it’d be something like… what next?

If Karishma were an actually good player, she would have done a lot of legwork before Tribal Council. Just off the top of my head, she should immediately know Elizabeth and Janet are in danger, because that’s what Dan told her. Appraoch Elizabeth and Janet individually, show them the idol, and tell them, “Get on board with me, or one of you goes home tonight, and I don’t care which one.”

A really good player would go on to then slap together a makeshift alliance of four or maybe five, perhaps by swaying Dan or Noura, perhaps by selling “we need to break up Lauren and Tommy”. But we’re taking baby steps here.

In this hypothetical, Janet and Elizabeth need to start scrambling. They let the goose out about Karishma’s supposed idol. Does she have one? Who knows? Several players searched her bag but didn’t find it earlier. Maybe she doesn’t? Do we risk it? Are Elizabeth and Janet just trying to save themselves? Karishma could confirm or deny as much of this as she wants, in whatever direction she wants.

Maybe Lauren and Tommy see a united Karishma/Elizabeth/Janet vote. They still have six, but that’s not enough to split against an opposing alliance of three. They know Karishma will play an idol if she has one (or do they know that?). If they hit Karishma as planned, they lose one of their own instead — probably Noura. (Which makes Noura prime to flip! And Noura is prone to flipping! So maybe it’s 5-4 instead of 6-3?) If they hit Elizabeth instead (which Tommy wants to do, so it’s not much of a stretch), Karishma (maybe?) skates by with an idol still in her armpit.

The point is there’s lots of ways this could have gone. Karishma, when that guy whose name you can’t spell on that HBO show based on those books you didn’t read said “chaos is a ladder”, this is what he meant. You could have used your idol to punch some serious holes in the anti-you alliance. Instead, you quietly bought yourself three more days.

Which, I guess, brings us back around to that dirty word: “deserve”. Does Karishma deserve to win this season, if she wins? In this same season when stronger players were eliminated by unfair post-merge twists, or mis-application of #MeToo? I want to say yes. I have to say yes. Because saying no means this game is broken beyond recognition, and coming back to watch it again has been a mistake.

Who’s gonna win?
For all my bellyaching, I honestly think Karishma has no shot at the prize. Lasting long enough to get to the final three is just Step One; you then have to sit against the jury. And I simply don’t see this jury giving Karishma any votes. Jurors traditionally vote either based on strategy (e.g., they look at who played the best game and vote accordingly) or on spite (e.g., they vote for whichever finalist they hated the least). I think Karishma loses both of those votes against any of the seven people still in the game with her.

I’m sticking with Tommy, with a side-order of Lauren. I think Lauren might catch a little blowback from the jury regarding The Dan Situation, and everyone just watched her “waste” an idol. Also, I think an important future move for both these players is to try and make it look like the other one orchestrated an Elaine vote… which brings me to Elaine.

I’m also going to be watching Elaine very, very intensely going forward. She’s still the person everyone loves, and the time is fast approaching when all of those players need to be out of the game if you hope to win. I think Elaine wins against any of the remaining players… but I don’t think they’ll let her live that long. If I were Tommy or Lauren, I’d be having a hell of a talk with my ally about how much we’re willing to risk our long gameplan on that final four Immunity Challenge.

Wow. Wild ride. This week was a double episode, and for once I don’t want to give a play-by-play. Instead I’m going to summarize the actual gameplay and then move onto a big post about The Dan Situation.

In the first half of the two-part episode Kellee finds an idol on her beach, then finds a SECOND idol on her new beach after the tribes merge. So she’s on Survivor with two idols. She says she doesn’t want to be the person who walks away from Survivor with two idols. Then some… stuff happens and she and her two idols get voted out.

In the second half of the two-part episode Jamal goes to the Island of the Idols, where he immediately loses his vote. (He picked up a note dangling from a tree, Boston Rob told him “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is,” and in this case it was.) He was given a blank piece of paper to write a fake game advantage on, which he gave to Dean. Then some… more stuff happens and he gets voted off.

Kellee and Jamal were two of my favorite players this season and I think a lot of people are going to be upset at how they were ejected. I only dipped my toes into the Survivor social media universe for a couple minutes this afternoon, and the fireworks are really going off.

The real story across this big double episode is The Dan Situation.

I am a person who detests being touched. If I want you to touch me, I will initiate the contact, and you have my solemn assurance that will not happen until we know each other very well. Three words I abhor hearing are, “I’m a hugger!” There are people on this Earth I consider great friends — some perhaps who are reading this blog post — who have never had more than a handshake from me.

When I was a kid, the problem was my hair. I had long blonde hair that girls always, always, always wanted to touch. (If you’re watching this season, it was kind of similar to Jack’s hair.) I have had some very awkward conversations with women throughout my teens and early twenties about how I didn’t want them touching my hair, and I know along the road I hurt some feelings. I also learned the importance of not overreacting when someone touches me in certain situations. Like if I meet your Great Aunt Bertha for the first time and she wants to wrap me up in a big ol’ bear hug, that isn’t the time for me to address the problem, no matter how much Aunt Bertha needs to learn a lesson about personal space.

I am also hyper-aware that right now some people can be reading this and rolling their eyes, because I’m not a woman and because (to my knowledge) none of these unwanted touches over the years have been overtly sexual. All I know for sure is I hate it when people touch me, that’s my life experience. I’ve always considered it to be a personal problem because most people don’t seem to mind. Even my own wife and mother know to take a “hands off” approach with me; that’s not normal. I realize I’m not normal.

When I say I empathized with Kellee about Touchy Uncle Dan, that’s the context. Part of me understood where she was coming from, and another part of me understood that it’s more socially acceptable to just tough it out and not make it a big deal. And there’s a layer of “the editors are showing the story they want to tell” on top of all that. Part of that story, this episode, was some of the female players discussing how creepy Dan’s touches are, but also saying it’s totally okay when Aaron does it. (Aaron, for contrast, is a hot young dude.)

Let’s pass judgment on Dan first, using the incomplete and imperfect information we have to hand, plus some side speculation which may or may not be accurate. (Sorry, but that’s the best I’ve got.) I don’t think Dan is a sexual predator. I think Janet was spot-on with her assessment: he’s a man from an older generation where it was more socially acceptable to touch people. I think he has rationalized the social shift away from that behavior with something like, “This is serious, but it’s okay when I do it because I’m not a sexual predator.” I also think a lot of what he said at this week’s soon-to-be-legendary Tribal Council is accurate: this is a game where people are shoved into close quarters, where you have to move and slide and crawl all around each other, where sometimes your only source of warmth at night are the people sleeping next to you.

I also think that if Dan were actually guilty of molesting young women, we would not be seeing this season of Survivor. Speculation: there is some sort of filtering process that Survivor applicants have to go through. If Dan had a history of shitty behavior I don’t think he would have been picked. There are also rules about what players can and cannot do on the show, and one of those rules is you have to follow US law, no matter where shooting is taking place. Somewhere in a CBS vault there is ten thousand hours of footage showing what actually happened in Fiji this season. And we know CBS is willing to play up the woke-ness for positive public perception. If, at any point, Dan had ever done something truly inappropriate he would be pulled from the show.

For all these reasons, I think Dan is innocent of the things he’s accused of. But for all the reasons I outlined previously, I also think Kellee is innocent of falsly accusing him. It’s basically a nightmare situation: both people are right, and both points of view are equally valid. Dan shouldn’t be touching people, but then nobody wants to actually ask him to stop. The girls are justified in not wanting Dan to touch them, but then they’re fine with Aaron doing it. Kellee should speak up if she doesn’t want to be touched, but then that’s a hard thing for a woman to do, especially in a game where perception is everything. Kellee is maybe overreacting (like I do) but then her feelings aren’t any less important than Dan’s, or anyone else’s.

So I was mulling all this over and thinking there is a legitimate problem that 1) isn’t cut-and-dry enough to be cleanly resolved and 2) is 100% going to be manipulated by other players in this game.

But then something happened that I have not seen in all my years watching this show. During Kellee’s confessional, where she is talking about how much she hates Dan’s unwanted touches, we hear a producer’s voice. The producer says, in no uncertain terms, if this is a real issue we are going to step in and stop it. Just say the word. Kellee immediately backs off from the accusation, but the producers step in anyway. A few text cards appear onscreen telling us-the-viewer that the producers met with everyone individually, and as a tribe, to emphasize the importance of personal boundaries. We’re also told that Dan was taken aside and given a warning.

This was a little like hitting a brick wall. It had such a powerful sense of finality to it: the Voice of God had descened and told this tribe, “This is how it be. Stop touching people and respect personal boundaries.” This was a terrible solution but it was probably the only possible solution. It also tells me that the issue was so enormous out there on the island that world-class editors with 19 years’ experience crafting Survivor stories couldn’t edit around it.

What happens next is pretty unfair to basically everyone involved, both on a gameplay level and on a social level. At Tribal Council Janet says that sexual abuse and false accusations can both ruins lives. She’s right. And I have the sinking feeling that some of these Survivor players are going to be crucified and ostracized by the fanbase for their behavior.

Kellee wants to send Dan home, for obvious reasons, and a few of the other girls tell her (read: lie to her) that they agree he’s inappropriate. TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR ON THIS POINT: Kellee seems to be the only player with an earnest, personal objection to Dan. (And she’s allowed to be, for the same reason I would be, in her situation.) A few of the other women have noticed His Emminent Touchiness but only refer to it jokingly. And the other women — Missy, Elizabeth, and Elaine specifically — have no issue with Dan whatsoever. They don’t mind that he’s Old Uncle Touchy.

And here’s where the manipulation comes in. All the women approach Janet, who is something like the tribe’s den mother, and tell her “Hey, we need to get rid of Dan.” Kellee is doing this legitimately, because she thinks Janet will really listen to her. Which Janet does. And even though Janet loves Dan, and even though she isn’t bothered by Uncle Touchy, she shows sincere concern for Kellee and the other women on her tribe. They all decide to vote out Dan.

Of couse, most of these women are lying. And I want to stress 100% that it is exactly what they should do in the game of Survivor. That they were able to blindside Kellee and flush out two idols while making Janet take the fall is astonishing gameplay.

Janet falls all over herself explaining to her tribe, her alliance, Jeff Probst, and her confessionals that she stepped outside of the game to make a move she felt was morally right: she though the girls on her tribe had a problem, and she decided to help them solve it, even to her own detriment. As it turns out, most of the girls were just using her, and it was indeed to her own detriment. And so she’s understandably upset.

Dan is understandably upset too. It’s clear he feels these accusations are coming from nowhere, but he can’t discount them because he doesn’t think Janet would lie to him. The remaining women on the tribe all tell him, point blank, that they’re cool with him and that Janet’s a liar. What a completely sideways situation! Dan’s not lying, Janet’s not lying, the person with the most cause to remove Dan is now gone herself, and the women who are lying are justified in doing so because it’s Survivor! Zow!

During the second Tribal Council, Dan made a very hollow apology. He is being raked across the coals for this non-apology, but I think he was in an impossible situation. I don’t know what folks want from people in Dan’s situation, who haven’t actually done anything wrong but who have nonetheless caused someone else harm. If he says “I am a sexual deviant and I sexually assaulted Kellee” he’s admitting to something he didn’t do, and probably gets kicked off the show and faces criminal charges. If he says “It was never my intention to hurt anyone and I am torn up that I’ve apparently done that,” (which is closer to what he said) he loses points anyway because it’s a non-apology. There doesn’t seem to be a third option. Someone who is accused of sexual misconduct has already lost, whether they did it or not.

The apology he actually gave, however, was too self-aggrandizing. I checked out as soon as he said something about his profession being at the forefront of listening to women’s storis about harrassment and misconduct. Dan runs a talent agency. He is Hollywood. I mean, yeah, he’s right when he says his field is “leading the charge” in this movement, much in the same way that Osama bin Laden “led the charge” in getting airport security reforms passed. It was so incredibly tone deaf. From a gameplay perspective it wasn’t even helpful to his cause; his main enemy had already been voted out, and he’s already in the top alliance.

He kept saying to Probst, over and over, “I guess we’re not going to drop this.” To Probst’s credit, no, he said he never would. Good. As a host of a top-rated TV program with millions of viewers, Probst should be using his platform to spotlight difficult social movements. I think Dan doth protest too much. He acted too much like a man who was guilty of sexual misconduct, here.

So everyone in the Survivor fandom hates Dan. One commentor I saw said he should have his kids taken away. (I should have stopped checking out the Survivor social media there, but I didn’t.) That’s all fair enough.

The people at the real bottom of the situation, at least from a “crucified on Twitter” standpoint, are Missy and Elizabeth. These women have no problem with Dan’s behavior, and then lied and said they did in order to sway Kellee and Janet’s votes towards Dan, so they could blindside Kellee instead. Make no mistake, this is on Janet and Kellee. They took their heads out of the game and tried to play “real world” for a moment. They should have and did get the rug pulled out from under them.

But when I saw someone attacking the two of them as “gender traitors” this afternoon, I had to go on Survivor social media blackout. Whether Dan is a rapist or Kellee is a crybaby victim or whatever ridiculous extreme you want to fall on this issue, it’s still Survivor and I won’t fault a player for playing. They did the “right thing” by taking advantage of the situation and advancing their position, even though Janet and Kellee and ten million woke Survivor fans will hate them forever. They did the “wrong thing” by betraying Kellee and Janet’s trust on an incredibly serious and complicated real-world social issue.

As of now, Dan is still in the game. I don’t know what the editors are going to do here. In a typical season I would expect them to ham up his “Dan the villain” role, but doing that here could have serious, actual consequences for Dan in real post-game life. You can edit someone to look like an asshole when they aren’t, that’s fine, that’s just TV. (Two such people sit in a secret little bungalow every Tribal Council!) You can’t edit someone to look like a sex offender when they aren’t. And Dan isn’t, according to everyone left on his tribe.

If Missy or Elizabeth win this season, they are going to be the most hated Survivor winner in history.

Wow, what an uncomfortable situation all around. I can’t deny it’s compelling TV, though.

Who’s gonna win?
The Dan Situation casts a shadow over the whole rest of the season. I don’t think anyone comes out of it unscathed. I think Janet is gone soon; she found an idol and played it, and it didn’t matter, but she’s still the last holdout on a pro-Dan tribe. Once she’s on the jury, alongside Jamal (who has given some very woke speeches at these emotional Tribal Councils), and Kellee (who felt legitimately harrassed), and Jack (who is good friends with Jamal)… this is starting to look like a real tough win for Dan, Missy, or Elizabeth.

That said, Tommy and Lauren are still here, still playing together, and have kind of been in the background for most of The Dan Situation. They were crucial swing votes immediately after the merge and, though the waters are tumultuous and the immunity idols are flowing, I think they might be able to keep afloat. The question to my mind is whether Missy and Elizabeth are going to try and bus Lauren as one of the girls who lied to Janet re: Dan’s touchiness. If so, she’ll have a tough time with the jury for the same reason the two of them will. For that slight edge, I’m going with Tommy, and after all that’s happened in this crazy game, it feels good to bold his name again.

This week’s episode opens with various Lairo folks yammering to their confessionals and to their tribemates about who they’d like to eliminate next. I think their brain cycles may be better spent talking about how they’re going to start not losing challenges, but nobody asked me.

The Reward Challenge this week wasn’t as entertaining to watch as last week’s, but it did have some in-game reprecussions: when Vokai chooses to sit Elaine out of the challenge, Elaine is immediately whisked off to the Island of the Idols. Vokai wins some chickens to take back to their beach and, for the nonce, things look pretty bad for Elaine. Vokai is split 4/4 after the tribal shuffle, and thoughts on what to do about it were just as evenly split. The old Vokai members agreed they were all fine drawing rocks after a tie vote, while the old Lairo members begain talking about who they might like to flip on.

This is an interesting game state. Going to rocks is bad in this situation, because there is a 50/50 chance your alliance is disadvantaged from here on out. On the other hand, flipping on your own tribe is bad in this situation too, because you either end up 4/3 in a losing position (if your group decides to eat one of their own) or you trade your position at the bottom of a 4-player alliance to be at the bottom of the opposing 5-player aliance (if you’re a lone wolf who decices to betray your allies). I don’t see another way through it, though. Either someone flips or everyone goes to rocks. Or, well, maybe some third thing happens.

Elaine arrives at the Island of the Idols and she’s given what I see as the easiest mission so far: during the next Immunity Challenge, she has to find a hidden advantage somewhere on the challenge track. She’ll only have a few moments to grab it. If she does, she can block someone’s vote at her next Tribal Council. If she doesn’t, she loses her own vote. And to sweeten the pot, she gets to learn basically everything about the challenge before she even shows up. The Idols tell her the stakes are pretty high, and Elaine’s response is “I like stakes, nom nom nom”, and that’s why we love Elaine.

Back at Lairo Jack engages in a bit of mild racism towards Jamal, and there’s a big awkward discussion about it. To their credit they both handled the situation maturely and end up bros by the end, which I like to see. I still didn’t like it eating up screentime, though, and it took me re-watching the scene to really get why. To be clear, Jack’s joke was really insensitive and Jamal’s response was really understandable. Jack’s apology felt sincere and Jamal accepted it just as sincerely. I also don’t think Jack really understood that the joke was racist when he said it. It was a mistake, he owned up to it, Jamal forgave him. The social interaction was fine.

What I didn’t like was this thought: is this going to affect the game at all? If not, then the editors just showed us all a little lesson in woke-ness with a feel-good ending, and no harm done. But it might. Imagine a point down the line where Jack and Jamal have to vote against each other. Can Jack do that and not be villified? What about in the other direction? Do we get a scene four episodes from now where Jamal feels justified in voting out Jack because of what he said? Will some unscrupulous Vokai come in post-merge and stoke the flames back up?

None of those sitautions are fun, none of them are interesting gameplay, and they would all make me feel weird and bad. Like I said, I think both men handled it in a pretty mature way. But there’s a lot of game left. This has potential to end up being a wart on the season, if it goes somewhere nasty. I said last week I don’t like nasty in my Survivor and I still mean it.

Over on Vokai we get our first conversation between players about what happens at the Island of the Idols. Elaine (correctly) susses out that she’ll need a little help to pick up the thing during the Immunity Challenge, so she brings in Elizabeth, who visited the Island in the first episode. Elizabeth (correctly) sees this as a perfect solution to the 4/4 split, so agrees to help Elaine out. The actual challenge involves all the players carrying a big cage across a course. At a few points they have to stop, put the cage down, and spend a few moments untying ropes or digging up puzzle pieces or whatever. Elaine really did only have a couple seconds to grab her advantage before the Vokai cage moved on, dragging her with. But she does grab it, and it turns out to be vitally important, as Lairo finally decides to show up at a challenge for once. Lairo is immune, and Vokai heads off to Tribal Council.

At Tribal, it all comes out again: all of Old Vokai is fine drawing rocks, even though that is the worst thing you could possibly do with your game. Elaine uses her shiny new game piece to block Jason’s vote, and that brings the numbers down to 4/3. What followed was a huge amount of whispering and secret-passing between Old Vokai and Aaron, who had previously given signs of flipping.

All I could think was, why is this legal? I watched Survivor for twenty seasons and never saw cover whispering in Tribal Council. It always struck me as a situation where if you have something to say, you say it in front of everyone. There’s actually a big book of Survivor rules that players have to follow which aren’t obvious to us-at-home. For example, if you find a hidden idol, it belongs to you, and nobody else is allowed to steal it. I suppose I just assumed that hijacking Tribal Council away from the game’s host was against some bylaw somewhere. I wish it were, because it was pretty aggravating.

And it was for nothing, anyway. Aaron didn’t flip, and Jason got sent home after the four Old Lairo voted for him. On the way out he tells his tribemates “Hey, don’t trust Aaron”, which, yeah, duh. Aaron was only going to flip because he didn’t want to draw rocks, and then Elaine came to him with a better solution. Don’t trust someone in another alliance who isn’t forced to make a move against his own self-interest.

I do have to wonder if this will change the perception of the Island of the Idols. Until now players have viewed it as a punishment; it was a place you did not want to go and where you did not want your tribemates to be sent. Now, though, the secret is out: there are game pieces to be had, and those game pieces can ravage the game state. For the Old Vokai still on Vokai, at least, I suspect going to the Island is now a goal to aspire to.

Who’s gonna win?
There was no Karishma this episode, so a winner is me.

My serious pick so far as been Tommy, but he just had his legs cut out by a game token. Of the people who chopped him down I think Elaine is in trouble both because she’s seen as difficult to win against, and because Old Vokay can now gang up on her post merge because she’s the one who flushed Jason. Aaron is in trouble because Old Vokai knows he isn’t reliable and Old Lairo knows (because of Jason’s exit) that he apparently was keen to flip at some point.

So I think Old Vokai over on Lairo are in the best position overall. If they can keep winning challenges they might be in a good position to supply us a winner. Both Kellee and Jamal are over there with Immunity Idols and, of the two of them, I have to go with Jamal. He’s likely a good contender to win individual immunity post-merge, I think it’s fair to say Jack will do whatever he wants as far as voting, and he’s an all-around good dude who isn’t giving off any “but he’s hard to win against!” vibes. I think Jamal got his hard Survivor lesson out of the way early, even without having to be sent to the Island of the Idols.

…in Disney Villainous, anyway.

Me and the hipster bronies on my Discord server have played probably 100 games of Villainous at this point. Admittedly a lot of that time has been spent playtesting and refining the custom decks I’m working on for a Final Fantasy variant of the game, but that’s another blog post.

Villainous: Final Fantasy playlist on YouTube

Villainous is an asymmetric game. What that means is, when you play it, you pick one of a handful of famous Disney villains, and your win condition is different from everyone else’s. Each Villain has their own unique deck and their own unique challenges. It’s easier to win with some decks than others. Luck plays a bigger role in some decks than others. In some decks it’s possible to screw yourself out of the double-yoo if you don’t know what you’re doing. This has led to a few Reddit critics croaking about “lack of balance”, but the asymmetry is actually a design goal of the game. The idea is that players of different skill levels — say, parents and their children — can both play the game together “for real”. Give the kids one of the easier Villains, like Prince John or Maleficent, whie the grown-ups play the tougher ones, like Ursula or Dr. Facilier.

The game being asymmetrical means, inevitably, some villains are better than others. I don’t think this game is played in competition anywhere, so I don’t expect anyone to have detailed matchup statistics, but from my own experience and observations the tier list looks something like this:

There’s a mechanic in the game called Fate that lets you attack other players and push them away from their win condition, and this works pretty well as a balancing feature. The “easier” characters tend to get Fated more often than the “hard” ones. Prince John has an easy win condition that doesn’t take much planning or trickery to achieve, but all the other players know that, so they can work to block a Prince John win by sending a lot of Fate this way.

You know who never gets Fated, though? Jafar. Because everyone knows Jafar isn’t going to win. Jafar is the worst player in Villainous and it isn’t even close. There really needs to be another empty tier between him and the tier above, to demonstrate just how far away he is from the rest of the pack. Being the hardest villain to win with isn’t his biggest problem though. The problem is the things that make him hard to win with also make him very not fun to play as, which is a real damn shame.

We’re going to have to wade through a bunch of game jargon so I can make my case, so if you’re not familiar with Disney Villainous hopefully you’re able to follow along.

In a nutshell, what makes Jafar so tough to win with is this: he needs a specific card from his 30-card deck to fulfill the first step of his win condition. Only once he draws this card and gets it on the board is he able to “start playing”. He isn’t the only villain with this feature. About half the villains have to dig for something specific. (Ursula, who I rank very highly, has to dig for two somethings!) These other villains, though, are able to “start playing” sooner than Jafar is, because the design of their boards and their decks give them other things to do and to focus on while they’re digging. And also gives other players incentive to Fate them early.

So what’s Jafar’s malfunction? Let’s take a look at his Realm, and I’ll explain some game mechanics.

—

Jafar’s Realm

A villain’s Realm has four locations, and each location has four Action Symbols. Think of the Action Symbols like little buttons. On your turn you move to a location, push as many of the buttons there as you want, then draw some cards and end your turn. Each button has its own function and performing these functions is how you accomplish anything in the game. Look carefully at the Cave of Wonders space on Jafar’s board, and note the little lock icon in the corner. This means the Cave of Wonders starts out LOCKED. At the start of the game Jafar is not able to move there and its little buttons are not available to him. Also note the two top buttons in each location are in a kind of rounded box. When you Fate someone, you can play a Hero to their Realm. Heroes sit in these rounded boxes and cover up any action buttons in the top row.

Now let’s talk about what the little buttons do.

The numbers are Gain Power actions. You spend Power to play cards, and taking these actions is how you gain it. Most villains have a 1, 2, and 3 Power spot in their Realm. Note that Jafar’s Power: 2 is in a location he can’t reach at the start, and his Power: 1 can be covered by Heroes. A good anti-Jafar strategy is to stick a Hero in the Streets of Agrabah and cut his ability to gain power down by 25%.

The card with a triangle in it is the Play a Card action. This lets you play a card out of your hand by spending Power. Most villains have one space with no Play action, but Jafar has this button everywhere. At the Oasis he has two of these buttons, so at that location he’s allowed to play two cards. We call locations like the Oasis a “double play” space. The ability to play two cards early on is exceedingly important for Jafar, so another good anti-Jafar strategy is to stick a Hero there and remove his double play.

The card with the shinies coming off it is the Activate action. Some of the cards you play stay in your Realm and have features that need to be activated. You do that by moving to this location and pushing this button. Jafar has a few of these cards, and one in particular is very important for his endgame, but note that both of his Activate buttons are open from the start (e.g., neither are at Cave of Wonders) and both are in the top row (e.g., Heroes can take them away).

The card with the lightning bolt in it is the Move Hero action. You use this action to move Heroes around in your Realm, especially if they’re covering something you don’t like. Note that Jafar cannot do this, as he has no Move Hero buttons anywhere in his Realm. (He does have a card in his deck that moves Heroes for him.)

The spikey gear is the Vanquish action. To kill a Hero you need to play a special card called an Ally to that Hero’s location, then perform a Vanquish action. If the Ally has a higher number on it than the Hero, you can discard both. As an example, Jafar has some Palace Guards in his deck that he can play to his Realm and keep the Hero population low. Because Jafar can’t usually move Heroes, defeating them with Allies is the only way Jafar can deal with them. (Most other villains have both options.)

The thundercloud is the Fate action. This allows Jafar to attack other players. Possibly Jafar’s only saving grace is that he has a Fate button on the best space in his Realm, and he’ll be moving there often, letting him go offensive early. (Some villains have Fate buttons in more-or-less dead locations, meaning if you want to Fate someone you kind of have to waste a turn. Jafar has a lot of drawbacks but this isn’t one of them.)

The card with arrows on both sides is the Move an Ally or Item action, and it’s how you move cards you’ve played to your Realm from one location to another. This action is pretty central to Jafar’s win condition, which involves playing a specific card to the Cave of Wonders and then moving it one space at a time to the Sultan’s Palace. This takes three Move Item actions, which Jafar can only take once every two turns. (He has an Ally with an Activate feature that can help move the Item faster.)

The card with the X through it is the Discard action, and this is the most important button on Jafar’s board by far. When you take this action you can throw away as many cards as you want from your hand. Because Jafar’s entire game plan hinges on him finding one specific card, throwing away unwanted cards is his top priority. And this is the crux of the problem.

—

The Crux of the Problem

Jafar isn’t the only villain who wants to throw away a bunch of garbage while looking for one specific card. One of my favorite villains, Ursula, also has to do this. I’m not going to cram Ursula’s Realm into this post, so you’ll have to take my word that she’s much better at doing this than Jafar for a very simple reason: she has access to two Discard buttons from the beginning of the game. (She has a locked location in her Realm, like Jafar does, but there isn’t a Discard button there.) Having two Discard buttons — one on the bottom that’s always open to you, and one on the top that can be covered by Heroes — is the default setting for Villainous boards. The only exception other than Jafar is the Evil Queen (from Snow White), whose second Discard button is also in a locked location at the start. But Evil Queen doesn’t need to jackhammer her deck the way Jafar does, so in her case, it’s not a drawback. It’s only ever a problem for Jafar.

(Evil Queen, by the way, is the easiest deck to win with and maybe I’ll write another post about her. I suspect the reason one of her Discard buttons is locked up is because it’s not immediately obvious to young or new players that throwing away cards is a good move, so limiting it as an option and designing the deck so it’s not essential is a way of removing one layer of complexity from the game.)

Jafar’s only other recourse as far as getting rid of cards is to play them, by using the double play location in his realm. This isn’t a feature of Jafar’s board, by the way, every villain has a double play space. Jafar’s is crucial, though, because it’s a way to get rid of two cards from his hand without having to discard them. Of course, this consumes Power, which might be in short supply depending on what you drew. Also, one of the rules of Villainous is you aren’t allowed to play a card unless you can actually perform the card’s function. The language on the cards is pretty specific; there is a clear line between “you do this thing” and “you may do this thing”. If the card doesn’t have the magic word “may” you can’t play it unless you can do everything the card says. Even if you have enough Power to play a card that says “attach to an Ally”, you’re not allowed to actually play it unless there’s already an Ally on the board to attach it to.

Putting all this together, we see a kind of “Jafar formula” emerge. On your first turn you move to the Streets of Agrabah, gain 1 Power, and throw away your whole hand (and then probably Fate someone). You draw new cards and, hopefully, next turn you have the ability and enough Power to move to the Oasis and play two of them. Then you alternate these two turns until you see the specific card you need to actually “start playing”.

This already looks really bad for Jafar who, at best, is able to churn through three cards per turn on average. (It works out to less than that in practice, because there are a lot of cases where playing two cards at the Oasis just isn’t possible.) But it starts to look even worse when you begin comparing him to other villains that need one specific card. The most even comparison is Captain Hook.

—

Jafar’s Objective

Though these two cards have different verbiage, they do basically the same thing: Jafar needs to play the Scarab to unlock the Cave of Wonders, and Captain Hook needs to play the Map to unlock the Hangman’s Tree. Neither villain can win while the locked space in their Realm remains locked. This is Step One of their win condition. We already know why Hook has the advantage here: he can discard every turn, rather than every other turn. He gets to look at a lot more cards a lot faster than Jafar does.

Once they get the card they need and get their fourth space unlocked, each villain needs to play a second card to further their objective, and this is where we really start to see why Hook is great and Jafar is pants. Hook needs a specific Hero on the board, and he has eight cards in his deck that help him to find that Hero. That’s almost a full third of his deck devoted to getting this done. Jafar has only five such cards, many of which have probably already been discarded or used in search of the Scarab. (One of these cards is also really bad. So bad, in fact, I’m devoting an entire section of this post to it.)

Even after both villains get their second needed card, they have work to do. Jafar’s second card is the Magic Lamp, which brings the Genie into his Realm. He needs to Hypnotize the Genie (which means there’s a third specific card he needs to win, but it’s generally not a problem finding one if you make it this late in the game), then move the Lamp to the Sultan’s Palace. Even after doing all of this, he still doesn’t win. To actually secure victory, Jafar needs to be in that state — Genie hypnotized, Lamp at the Palace — at the start of his turn. Once he sets it all up, every other player at the table has a chance to Fate him, and there are several Fate cards that push his Objective back.

This is also pretty common. “Win at the start of your turn” is the default state for Villainous decks. It’s where Captain Hook stands out, though: he can win on his own turn by killing a specific Hero in a specific place. Once he has his Map, he needs to pull Peter Pan from his own Fate deck, play him, move him across his Realm, then murder him with pirates. Once he does this and puts his board into a “win state” he wins immediately. The table doesn’t get a round of actions to try and push him back.

And it gets even worse for Jafar. Since Hook can discard every single turn while digging around for his Map, he has the luxury of holding onto specific other cards if he thinks he’ll need them later. Other villains who are digging for specific cards, like Ursula and Yzma, can do this too. They have a little breathing room. Instead of dumping four cards every turn, they can instead dump three cards every turn and keep one in their pocket. Hook and Ursula and Yzma all have cards they want to play later, so this is a good trade. It’s also an interesting decision point, a thing that is severely lacking in Jafar’s deck. Do you dig hard by throwing away potentially useful cards? Or do you dig a little slower but keep something useful in reserve you’ll need once your Step One is behind you? There are reasons Hook, Ursula, or Yzma players might do it one way or the other, but Jafar doesn’t have that luxury of choice. He has to dig hard, and the only way he can do that is to throw everything away, every chance he gets.

Another thing Hook can do is what we call “building infrastructure”. He knows that eventually Pan will be on the board, and he knows he needs enough pirates in play at key locations to get the little green boy moving and eventually plant him. If he has a card he wants to place into that infrastructure, but can’t play it this turn (because he doesn’t have the Power, or because it’s not a legal play yet), he can use the breathing room he has to hold the card and play it later. In a typical Hook game this means you start to see the pieces he needs to kill Pan are at least partially in place by the time he finds and plays his Map.

But let’s look at Jafar in the same situation. Say he has Gazeem in his hand at the Streets of Agrabah. Gazeem costs 2 Power and has an ability that helps Jafar get Items on the board he’s already discarded. This ability can’t help him find the Scarab, but it can help him with the Lamp or other Items that might be useful late game. If Jafar started this turn with no Power, though, he can’t play Gazeem. He gets 1 Power from the Agrabah button (provided it isn’t covered), and now he’s stuck. He doesn’t want to junk Gazeem, because he’ll need him later. But he doesn’t want to keep Gazeem, because this is one of his precious discard turns, and discarding one fewer card means that Scarab is going to take longer to surface.

This isn’t an interesting decision point as far as I’m concerned. The Scarab is too precious, Gazeem has got to go. This means Jafar can’t build infrastructure in his Realm the way Hook can, while he’s digging. He has to dig single-mindedly, endlessly, painfully and then hope he can whip something up later, once the Cave of Wonders is open.

—

Scry Me a River

Jafar has one trick up his sleeve when searching for the Scarab so he can “start playing”: Scrying.

At first glance this looks like a pretty good deal. You shout excitedly, “Item! Item! I want an item!” and then you throw cards away from the top of your deck until you hit an Item. This is Jafar’s best tool for finding the Scarab. Other villains that need specific cards out of their deck have similar cards.

And right there is the first problem: they have these similar “dig through your deck” cards in addition to the ability to discard every turn. In actual practice, Scrying isn’t something special Jafar can do, it’s just a concession to the style of deck he has. (Notably, Hook does not have cards that help him dig for his Map. This is because he can discard constantly and has lots of cheap, helpful cards to play as it is. Hook doesn’t need any help in this regard.)

Even as far as “dig through your deck” cards go, though, Scrying is really bad. I mean, it’s fine if the Scarab happens to be near the top, but then you were going to draw it next turn anyway. Doesn’t that sound weird? If the Scarab is in a spot in your deck such that Scrying can help you get to it, you probably don’t need Scrying to help you get to it. And if it’s any lower in your deck than that, well…

There are eight Item cards in Jafar’s deck, one of which is the Scarab. One is the Magic Lamp, which he doesn’t need yet, but can safely discard. (He can grab it out of his discard pile later.) The rest of his Items only seem to exist to be land mines that foil Scrying. They’d be useful if Jafar were able to concentrate on building infrastructure, but he’s not. They’re just junk.

Let’s deploy math. Eight cards in a thirty card deck means, on average, there’s an Item card every 3.75 cards. With slightly better-than-average luck, you’ll use Scrying to discard three cards from your deck, then the fourth will be an Item. If that Item is your Scarab, great, but more often it will be something like one of Jafar’s three useless Scimitars. These Scimitars are the land mines I mentioned. When you hit one, it royally sucks, because you’ve used one of the most valuable cards in your deck to pull a sword you don’t want and maybe discard the same amount of cards you could have if you’d just had a goddamn Discard button in your space.

In absolute terms, Scrying is no better or worse than other such cards. You get to throw away a few cards you don’t want, and you maybe put the thing you do want in your hand. I bet a lot of playtesting was done to make sure the chances are about even across lots of Scrying plays. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and pull five or six or more cards before hitting a land mine; other times your life sucks and there was a Scimitar waiting right on top of your deck. Psychologically, though, on top of all the other drawbacks Jafar has, this card feels mean and gimped.

You have three Scrying cards, and some limited ability to pull them out of your discard pile after you’ve used them. These five-ish chances
are all you have to try and reach the Scarab on turns you can’t discard. It always pushes you forward, even if only an inch, but it generally feels bad to play because of its potential to hit a land mine.

—

This is Dumb

I want you to scroll back up and read the effect of the Scarab card. Note that playing it increases Jafar’s hand size, and mull that over a second. Doesn’t that sound like it would be super helpful in finding the Scarab? Printed on the Scarab card itself? D’oh!

Now look at Jafar’s second discard button, sitting there on the Cave of Wonders, where he can’t use it until after he plays the Scarab. Except, once he’s played the Scarab, he’s probably already seen half of his deck (on average) and doesn’t need to discard so hard anymore; once every two turns is probably enough for the rest of the game. Double d’oh!

Most Villainous decks have an elegant design sense to them. Cards that synergize well, cards that combine to create specific effects or action sequences that reward skilled players. Hades has one of my favorite turns in the game where, if he knows what he’s doing and has it all set up, can go from 10% to 100% of his win condition in a single turn, while all the other players watch in horror, mouths agape, tongues lolling, curses flying. It’s a great moment if you can pull it off. Other villains can do similar things.

By comparison, Jafar’s design looks like a train wreck. The two things that would be most helpful in completing his Step One are things he can’t do until after completing his Step One, at which point he kind of doesn’t need them anymore. Are there trombone players in Agrabah? Because I think we need a womp womp.

—

WHAT DO, HOW FIX?

When fixing problems like this, I think a light touch is best. Remember, we already don’t mind that some villains are “harder” than others. Asymmetry is one of the design goals of the game, and there’s a built-in mechanic to correct for overpowered decks. A simple tweak that makes him fun to play is absolutely fine, even if it leaves him the worst villain overall. Here’s the tweak:

Swap the Activate button at the Oasis with the Discard button at the Cave of Wonders.

Activate is an important button for Jafar, but not until after he finds the Scarab. A skilled player with two Activate buttons and the proper infrastructure can win very quickly once the Scarab is out. In order to give Jafar the space he needs to build that infrastructure, though, he needs to be able to discard heavily on his first couple turns. Both buttons are useful at the proper point in the game

Also, both buttons are on the top row, which means they can be covered. Other players have a reason to Fate him, now. In his current state Jafar almost never gets Fated because there’s really no point in doing so until he has his Scarab. In a version of his board with two Discard buttons, though, Fating him early and taking that power away is a more attractive strategy. Since Jafar’s Realm is more attractive to Heroes, he’ll have to spend a few turns cleaning them up. This puts more decision points into his game and breaks up the “Jafar formula” I mentioned earlier.

There are other changes you could make, if you really wanted to make his deck more powerful, but I don’t think that’s necessary. Remove the monotony of his early game, make him a bigger Fate target, make the Cave of Wonders a more dangerous space in the late game, and suddenly his board becomes both viable and fun. This one simple change accomplishes all these goals.

There’s still a problem with Jafar’s deck, though, that no simple gameplay tweak can address…

—

A Whole New Herp

I give you… Aladerp and Jersmine.

Most of the artwork in Villainous is tremendous, but these two cards are… special. I mean, they look like they smelled a fart.

Thank you for reading this long post about why Jafar sucks!

Jack seemed almost happy to have been blindsided. Maybe he sees it as a Survivor rite of passage? Maybe he’s just starstruck? Jamal doesn’t share his whimsy in any event. The two are on the outs, and they know it, but there’s still a lightning rod in camp named Noura that is constantly hounding everyone to do chores. There’s some discussion about how this is still an easy vote, but Jamal tries to shake things up by pitching a Dan vote to Janet. I’m not sure his case made a lot of sense to me, but Janet dutifully took it to Tommy, and Tommy mulled it over. I don’t think it made much sense to Tommy either. He wondered about it in a confessional, saying that even if the move did make sense, he doesn’t want to make Jamal’s power moves for him. Which is pretty much what a Jamal-orchestrated lobby against Dan would be doing.

I think Jamal just wants to be in control of the game. He knows he’s relatively safe in the short term and he knows his tribe has at least one really easy vote should they lose again, but he’s not in control of that scenario and he doesn’t like it. Here’s the deal, Jamal. You’re on a good tribe that shook you out of your Day One aliance. You’re one of the big strong dudes on that tribe. Why not just coast for a while? You seemed weirdly proud of “playing in first gear” last episode, why not just leave it there? Focus on getting to the merge with numbers and then start the left field power plays, yeah?

Over at Lairo, the editors whipped up a few rapid-fire moments that set me against Karishma. Karishma complains in a confessional about being an outsider in her tribe because she’s an old Indian lady, but she’s not actually that old (30-something, I think she said?) and there’s no indication anyone actually cares she’s Indian. She complains that she’s not being true to her culture by romping around a paradise island in her underwear, and oh boy won’t her conservative Indian community back home be shocked to see her. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this sort of argument, and I never find it endearing. Listen up folks, on Survivor people are going to see your boobs. You are going to prance around in your underwear, not because you’re a sultry tart, but because it’s a hundred degrees out there and everything is wet all the time. You are going to lie to people. You are going to be mean sometimes. You are going to tolerate dispicable behavior you never would at your home or your work or your school. You are going to poop in a hole and you are going to celebrate when you get a tarp and the nine people on the other tribe have to sit shivering in misery.

Getting good with all of that is a prerequisite to playing this game, as far as I’m concerned. At this point, 39 seasons in, I don’t buy that anyone is shocked to come onto the island and learn that, hey, maybe Mother and Father wouldn’t approve of my choices. So I was already kind of feeling like Karishma decided to be a mopey victim before stepping off the boat, and then she cut herself.

Nobody likes to cut themselves. And I’m not saying Karishma did it in purpose. And it did look like a serious cut. Serious enough to call the medical team over and bind up her hand. What upset her is that while she was bleeding out on the ground, none of her tribemates fawned over her injury. Nobody rocked her in their lap and stroked her hair and told her everything was going to be okay. Her response to this callousness was along the lines of “everyone on this tribe is dead to me”.

I wonder how many times medical has to be called over in a typical Survivor season. I expect probably several times per tribe, and I suspect most of these injuries are of the bumps-n-bruises variety that don’t merit screentime. Karishma’s cut was a little gross, but medical bound it up and she wasn’t airlifted out. She got the attention she needed, but it wasn’t the attention she wanted, which to her just confirms this fantasy she’s concocted that her tribe hates old Indian ladies.

The boat shows up to whisk Vince off to the Island of the Idols, leaving the remaining eight Lairo members standing there marveling at his exit. Dean immediately — as in, the split second Vince is out of earshot — talks about a plan to flush a possible Vince immunity idol by splitting the vote. This was really funny, because all of his tribemates were standing right there, so who was he planning to split a Vince vote with? He realized his error almost immediately, but the camera still did a zoom in on Karishma, so it turned into a fun little moment after all.

Vince immediately breaks down and starts crying when he realizes he’s sitting on a beach with Sandra and Rob. Once he composes himself they lay on the challenge: they want him to sneak into Vokai’s camp at night and steal fire. The lesson is something about staying calm under pressure, but I immediately saw an ulterior motive here: would there have been any benefit to Vince getting caught on purpose for a chance to pow-wow with Vokai this far away from a merge situation? We see a few moments where Vokai members are twisting and turning in the night, and the rain has put out their fire in any event, so Vince fills his canteen up with ash from their fire pit and calls it a win. Vince goes home with an idol.

I did note that Rob didn’t have Vince pull a Vokai name out of a bag before he went home. I wonder if that means Idol Island is going to twist next week. Perhaps there will be a grand reveal about the true nature of the island to all the players? Perhaps the reward challenge will be the idols visiting a camp and giving a group lesson this time? Or maybe the editors just figured we know how the bag o’ names works at this point and didn’t feel like showing it again?

I noted also that there was no confrontation between Vince and Elizabeth. Remember, Elizabeth came back from Idol Island with a kooky story about broken urns. Vince knows she lied. Elizabeth knows Vince knows she lied. This is an interaction that could land anywhere from conflict to cooperation, but just… nothing. Hmm.

The Immunity Challenge was another obstacle course ending with a puzzle. Once again, Lairo gets a big lead over Vokai, but once again, Vokai makes it up by blasting through their puzzle. Karishma was the butt monkey here, and the way she approached this puzzle made me wonder if she knew what a puzzle was or whether it was good to eat. This was not a level 10 brainteaser here, this was a ten-piece jigsaw with huge wooden blocks for pieces. Vokai takes their prizes home, and Lairo resumes scrabbling.

I had a lot of trouble following Lairo’s scheming from this point. There’s apparently still a women’s alliance (that Karishma is part of? or not?), and still a plot to split to vote to flush Vince’s (possible?) idol, even though it would hurt his allies (?) if he didn’t have one. Vince wants to join the girl’s alliance to get rid of Tom, Chelsea wants to bring Vince along with them… it was all a bit of a cluster and it left me with the impression that Lairo doesn’t have a better grasp on their alliances and loyalties that I do.

The crowning moment was Vince berating Karishma about giving him a name. He knows that she knows she’s on the chopping block, but she remains steadfast and won’t say anyone in particular. I don’t think this interaction makes sense for either player, but I think I see where they’re coming from. Vince wants Karishma to do some grown-up Survivor playing, and Karishma wants to not cause a scene the very night she’s in danger.

Or maybe not. If Karishma really didn’t want a big Mean Girl spotlight shined on her, she really should have kept her mouth shut at Tribal Council. Tom accused her of being terrible at puzzles (which, yeah, let’s be fair). Her response is that she’s the mightiest person to every play this game, that her strength and fortitude have untold depths, and she’s just about to break away and show everyone what Old Indian Superwoman can do… if only they’d give her the chance. She spent no small amount of time throwing shade on the other Lairo women for no clear reason I can figure. These are her allies, right? What’s the point of all this?

Probst closes Tribal Council out by asking a few people if what had been said tonight has influenced their decision. Everyone wants to just get on with it. Karishma then says “one sec Jeff” and whispers something into Elizabeth’s ear. Tom insists this is just an act, we never get to hear what it was Karishma said (I will be watching the opening Lairo confessionals very closely next week), and Vince sits on his idol.

There wasn’t a split vote and Karishma wasn’t in danger. It was a landslide for Vince. For the second time this episode, Vince goes home with an idol.

Probst gives the team props: “You may suck at puzzles, but you’re great at blindsides!”

That gave me an idea. Maybe while Vince was waterboarding Karishma for a name, her smart move would be something like “As soon as you left Dean came up with a plan to split the vote. It’s between you and me. Let’s work to get some numbers and vote off Dean.” That’d have been a good move, at least.

I’m hoping this whole Karishma-as-victim plotline is just something the editors have cobbled together, and she’s not actually like that. Either way, though, I already grow weary of it. If Karishma squeaks through the merge and doesn’t change her behavior at all, I think we’re in for a long season.

Who’s gonna win?
Vokai seems solid and I still think Tommy is the most solid player on the purple tribe.