Survivor Recap: An Old-School Misdirect

All reality shows should feel like a ritual. The same parts are in the same places every time. There is a familiarity that draws you both into the show and yourself. But what makes for a great reality show — and I believe we watched a really great episode right here — is that you get both the ritual and the familiar, but it still keeps you guessing right until the last moment, and then, as the credits roll and we wait for the “Next time on Survivor…,” everything makes perfect sense; it was all laid out perfectly for us. Wow, “Operation: Italy” sure turned out to have some excellent gameplay.

Normally, I love it in Survivor when the minority group can somehow trump the numbers by finagling both the other players and the game itself and end up on top. However, in this situation, I’m kind of torn. The same reason I love it when the smaller group wins is that I love an underdog, and because I love an underdog, I also love an Underdog Alliance. I haven’t said it in the recaps, but I’ve been rooting for Caroline and Rachel almost exclusively for the past few weeks, and this episode ended up with one of them ousted and one of them in grave danger. While Andy, Genevieve, and Sam pulled off a great move, and the constellations aligned in such a way that their crazy operation worked without making the patient’s red nose glow (wait, wrong operation), I’m still a little bit miffed.

Also, Team Underdog, this is why you should have gotten rid of Genevieve last episode! She was always a much more dangerous player than Kyle, who never could have pulled off this move. All he could do was win immunity; he couldn’t act, think, or plan in a way that would have made Andy’s ornate orchestrations work.

The episode starts with Sue doing an amazing victory dance now that her nemesis, Kyle, has finally been thrown onto the jury, where he doesn’t really seem to fit in because he is the only dude not in a sarong at Tribal Council. Then we get some shockingly bad gameplay from Genevieve, who basically threatens Teeny that if Teeny doesn’t get rid of Rachel, then Genevieve won’t vote for her in the end.

Then we go right into a reward challenge where you have to gather a bunch of Jeff’s balls (this guy loves balls more than Cinderella) and get them to stand on the top of a little stand. Sam comes out victorious and gets to choose two people to go to the Sanctuary, where good plans happen, to eat a bunch of Italian food and get letters from home. He chooses Andy, because he says he promised he would take him on a reward, and Genevieve, because they’ve been commiserating about why they’re on the bottom.

As soon as the decision is made, Teeny is hopping mad. Here’s the thing about Teeny: I love her. I want to go to a lesbian bar with her and be in her Survivor group chat and hear all the jokes she makes about the show. While she is enormously likable, she’s a terrible player. She has gotten this far almost by accident and has been on the wrong side of more votes than nearly anyone else. If Genevieve’s biggest flaw is playing too cold, Teeny’s is playing far too emotionally.

When Teeny, Sue, Caroline, and Rachel, a very solid four, get back to camp, Teeny is doing a whole song and dance about how Sam is awful, he just ended his game by not taking her, and how this is his last supper and they’re going to vote him out. Even at Tribal Council, she says, “Jeff, the thing is, a lot of us have proved trust to each other already, and a pecking order has been decided, and that’s that,” right before that pecking order is shown to be totally moot. In fact, Teeny is talking about Sam being gone so much, I thought, There is no way that is going to happen. It’s way too early for the edit to reveal whose torch is getting snuffed.

However, I must admit, I was on Teeny’s side when Sam made those choices. I thought that everyone gave up their Shots in the Dark, but this reward was Sam’s version of a Shot in the Dark. Why not take some people from the big alliance, lay out a plan, see if he can get in somehow and be of use to them? It may not work, but it probably has one in six odds, which is the same as the SITD that everyone traded for rice. It turns out both Teeny and I were dead wrong. Sam didn’t need a SITD because he had Andy.

Our math genius sits them both down and lays out a plan that they dub “Operation: Italy” because of all the Italian food they just gorged on and then probably gave them the shits. The plan is that they’re going to make the other four ladies think that Genevieve has an idol; she makes a fake one using the remnants of Sam’s real idol he never played and some tree-mail trinkets. Then Andy will tell them to split the votes three to two on Sam to flush Genevieve’s idol but also get Sam out. But Andy has already flipped; he’s going to vote with Sam and Genevieve to boot Rachel, who is by far the best player in the Underdogs game.

The one hiccup in the plan is that Rachel ends up winning a challenge that featured a handful of skulls and even more balls. “Welcome to Jeffrey Lee Probst’s Ball Emporium and Ugly Necklace Showroom,” he shouted at them as they filed in. Now that they can’t take out Rachel, the plan shifts to Caroline because Andy accurately says that she and Sue are a tight duo and that Caroline is the brains of the operation. Sorry, Sue, but at least she still has an idol to keep her company at night.

Back at camp, Andy pushes the plan hard, and Teeny is miffed that everyone wants to get rid of Genevieve instead of Sam. She almost derails the whole thing until Genevieve flashes her a glimpse of the idol (just like Sol was probably flashing people glimpses up his sarong at Tribal Council), and she buys the entire story.

What I never understood about the plan is why they had to split. We see Rachel bring this up. They don’t need to actually place votes on Genevieve; they just need her to think that it’s coming for her to play this idol, which may or may not exist. From what we saw, it seemed like Andy was selling the plan maybe a little too hard, but that also seems to be Andy’s M.O. even when he wasn’t about to betray all of his closest allies.

Right before they leave for Tribal, Genevieve outlines all the ways the plan could go wrong: They might not split the votes, Andy might not flip with them, Caroline might have something she could play to save herself. Yes, there were so many simple ways the Underdogs could have thwarted this and they whiffed on every single one of them.

What was great about this episode is that it allowed us to follow a plan from conception to finish. We saw every step, every conference, every way that it could have gone wrong. We were in on it every step of the way, so much so it made me question whether they would pull it off. How many crazy plans have we followed on this show that come to absolutely nothing? What I also loved is that it was old-school Survivor at its best. The only idol really in consideration was the fake one because it seems like no one knows about Rachel’s or Sue’s idols (even though Sue told Caroline). There weren’t any advantages bandied about, even though Rachel could have played her Steal a Vote. This was just lying, manipulation, paranoia, and some excellent gameplay coming together.

Going into Tribal, I had no idea what to think. We saw so much of the plan that it had to work, right? No, but some of these women are such good players they’ll know something is up, right? Sue’s going to save the day with her idol, right? Genevieve’s fake was really good enough to sway them, right? I was going back and forth more than an oscillating fan in a tornado. When they sat down at Tribal, I didn’t want to listen to any of it. Just get to the vote! I want to see what happens! Fast-forward! No, don’t. What if I miss something? Rewind. No, fast-forward. No, pause. What is that look Teeny and Caroline are giving each other? Gah!! Vote already!!

Then Jeff reads the vote, and Operation: Italy, like never-ending breadsticks at Olive Garden, was a huge hit. Caroline went home, Andy made a huge move, and going into this two-part finale (sorry, Jeff, but a finale by the very definition of the word can’t be two parts over two weeks), the game is completely up in the air. This season just went from good to great; too bad my girl Caroline had to pay the price.