Survivor 48 | Ep. 1
Welcome to SURVIVOR 48!!!!
First, I am setting my expectations for 48 to a season 44/45 level and not a 46/47 level. I think season 47 was incredible (best of new era) and will be very difficult to follow. Having said that, I also believe that each season of the new era has gotten better than the previous one, so let’s be cautiously optimistic at the start.
Next, I have continued making daily fire making videos until I get cast on Survivor during the off season. I have pledged to make a video of myself making fire with a creative touch that maybe my brain only understands. So, to date, we are at day 164, so click here to view the Fire in honor of the Survivor 48 premiere.
QUICK THOUGHT ENTERING INTO 48
MOST INTRIGUED BY _____________ ENTERING SURVIVOR 48
VOTING FOR SURVIVOR 50 FAN INPUT DURING SURVIVOR 48
On the one hand it’s amazing that Survivor 50 is around the corner and they have chosen to have a theme of “In the Hands of the Fans” and allowing the fans to have input for how 50 will be designed. It’s a tremendous idea and I have ZERO doubt that it will be anything but a success.
However….
On the other hand, like Jeff has said, Survivor still has 48 and 49 before 50. Now, we are entering into Survivor 48 but the attention and hype of 50 overshadows 48 and 49 and I am intrigued to see how all the voting and attention toward 50 will play out while trying to enjoy 48.
Poor 49, doesn’t stand a chance.
Now, onto 48!
OPENING SEQUENCE
Amazing idea to let the viewers in on seeing cast members be told that they will be on season 48. Authentically powerful, emotional, and inspiring. It makes me think about when I get that FaceTime call that will change my life. It’s a top 5 phone call of your life easily. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself but react like I had just won the Super Bowl!
The beautiful aerial shots of Fiji never disappoint nor does swooping down into the boats with the newly formed tribes as they are about the embark on the journey at their marooning.
LFG!!!
A fire captain, a stunt performer, a physicist, a surgeon, and best of all, our captain Jeff welcoming us atop a stone to get the party started!
MAROONING
Mitch has a speech impediment and connected with Survivor Amazon’s deaf castaway. Chrissy the firefighter from Chicago is a day one fan. Kevin connected with Yul in season 13 and the David vs. Goliath season 37 theme. Their excitement has me excited.
Once again, STANDING OVATION to Jeff Probst. The guy is jussssssst TREMENDOUS.
“Failure in the pursuit of something amazing, is admirable…worth getting off the couch..Failure due to fear, why bother?” - Jeff
Jeff’s understanding of Survivor, how the players need to approach it, and his choice to give them the nudge or maybe the permission to go for it, swing for the fences, and still fail, really connects. Jeff truly wins this moment EVERY TIME because he sets the right tone for the season IMMEDIATELY.
TRIBE NAMES
CIVA - Orange (sun) - Mitch, Chrissy, David, Kamila, Kyle
VULA - Green (moon) - Kevin, Stephanie, Cedrek, Sai, Justin, Mary
LAGI - Purple (entire sky) - Bianca, Joe, Star, Thomas, Shauhin, Eva
MAROONING CHALLENGE
REWARD - flint, machete, pot
Three words to describe this marooning challenge:
MUDDY - i know that Survivor and Jeff specifically could not be any prouder of their mud. I know they make it. I know the consistency is the same and tested. But, it sure did feel like the mud to start 48, was EXTRA. It looked heavier. It looked thicker. Plus, the challenge had them go through it multiple times with other people under the netting. That may have caused Kevin to dislocate his shoulder.
AWKWARD - The ridiculously heavy wooden chests kept getting dropped which made me wince every time at the possibility of the destruction that it could cause a la medical evac. It made me think of Bruce. Also, I can’t understand why some people would go into the mud with their oversized or baggy shirt to only have it be immediately a mud blanket.
EXHAUSTION - The adrenaline I’m feeling is through the roof and I’m sitting on my couch. The level of adrenaline that these players must be pumping, has to be off the charts. By the time they got to the wall to retrieve the key, they were gassed. Luckily, LAGI had some brawn in Joe to overcome that obstacle. Unfortunately for VULA, Cedrek was dead weight and never getting up the wall.
Congratulations LAGI!
Kevin (VULA) and Kyle (CIVA) are tasked with winning tribe supplies for their tribes.
LAGI - Day 1
Day 1 at LAGI we start from Thomas’ perspective and learn that LAGI is the brawn tribe with strong males, female ice hockey player who played for the boys team and a basketball player. Immediately, Thomas is laying out the social dynamics and how he is already adapting. He finds Bianca and the two of them seem to be instant friends as the “non-brawn” members of the tribe. Bianca’s strategy is a social game and so is Thomas’. Feels like they will be day 1 partners.
CIVA - Day 1
Day 1 at CIVA we meet David the stunt performer who is larger than life. He seems charming and personable which is a winning combo with his bamboo fire making and pull up superpowers.
VULA - Day 1
Cedrek the colorectal surgeon puts it out there that the VULA tribe is lacking the brawn of the other two tribes. Once he said it, you can’t unsee it. Confirms how screwed they were at the marooning challenge.
Stephanie wants to take action but is holding back and Sai is not taking that approach. Sai is taking action immediately and is dropping the need for core 4. Sai is pinky promising with Cedrek and Justin and declaring it her season. I wonder how this strategy will play out. Feels like the seeds of Rome in 47.
KEVIN & KYLE - TRIBAL SUPPLIES CHALLENGE
The tribal supplies challenge was great. Love that they competed against each other. Love that it was fast paced and physical but also strategic. Love that their was urgency but in the end you needed precision and that’s where Kyle failed. Kevin’s injury actually helped him because he had to adapt his approach at each station and Kyle was much more frantic and out of control and it cost him the supplies when he broke the glass jug trying to the key out.
Final word, the fact that Kyle decides in his moment of horrendous disappointment and failure to go help Kevin is admirable. I want to believe that I would do the same, but I don’t know if I would. It’s a great way to turn a horrible negative into a salvageable positive.
VULA - Day 1
Kevin’s heroics of winning the tribe their supplies combined with Sai approaching him about her alliance and Mary and him connecting one on one has Kevin grinning from ear to ear. He’s the first player to go from zero to hero this season and it only took a few minutes. He feels really likeable and easy to trust, but I’m questioning how cutthroat he can be.
CIVA - Day 1
The eagle has landed. David and Mitch find an eagle printed on a tree near the water well and then some black string with the letter S underneath.
🤔
Kyle the lawyer shows up and is telling everyone he’s an English teacher and then David shares that he found the letter with ther rest of the tribe. They are finding letters and following the octopus on the oar, the turtle on the tribe sign and without supplies, they are following their noses.
LAGI - Day 1
Eva explains she has autism and immediately shows us how her brain works when she becomes a bamboo and wood gathering machine. She seeks an ally in Joe who she relates to because of their shared physical strength. I’m very interested to see how Eva’s game plays out and how her autism effects her game and the game of the other members of LAGI.
Joe is a powerhouse and a fireman, but the most interesting aspect of Joe is his emotional reaction when he got the news of being cast. He was in tears thinking about how proud his kids will be of him and he mentions his kids again to the tribe saying that his son left him a sticky note in his passport to “be good and lift wood”. I’m most interested in the emotional component of Joe, not his obvious physical stature.
VULA - Day 2
Sai’s aggressive approach out of the gate is an interesting strategy. It pays off with her finding the Beware Advantage in the form of a scroll with a number code. She tells Justin, the Pizza shirt guy, and seems like she will need some help. Sai may be getting a bit over her skis already, and it’s only day 2.
LAGI - Day 2
Star follows Sai’s lead and begins to search for an advantage at LAGI. As Shauhin said, it’s Survivor 101, like don’t disappear for an hour on day 2 and bring that kind of heat on you. Foolish.
Though that is usually interesting to start Survivor, there is nothing more compelling than Eva approaching Joe, letting herself be vulnerable, and sharing with him about her autism. Eva let him in on how her brain works, how she can get overstimulated and fixated, and that she needs him to help her. Then Joe asked how he can help her and in that moment, the two of them were bonded in this game.
Joe’s a fireman and father. He has a daughter. Joe was unquestionably the right guy for Eva. The icing on the cake of this compelling moment is when Joe tells us that he’s made a decision, and you can read in his body language that he means it, and the decision is
“I’m not going to let her down…even if it hurts my game…I’m not going to let her down.” - Joe
We are halfway through episode one and we already have a transcending the game of Survivor moment and bond between Joe and Eva. Quickly, I’m invested in their relationship and this season.
Wow.
CIVA - Day 2
David must drive conversation and he lands on what a person drives, their favorite movie and how they like their steak cooked is the way to tell about a person. Kamila and Kyle both love the movie “Holes”, have family in the Bronx, and social connection.
Kamila is getting the strategy game going by taking the knowledge of Charity being paranoid and throwing Kyle’s name out there is being turned against her. All of a sudden, Kamila, Kyle, David, and Chrissy are finding a name to agree on.
Look out for Kamila folks.
VULA - Day 2
Sai is accelerating the game for everyone at VULA. The cryptogram and Beware Advantage is bringing people in but also putting people on edge and outside their comfort zone.
Then, she makes the connection between the colored number code for the cryptogram and the different color symbols scattered around their camp.
2 - BIRD
1 - LIZARD
6 - TURTLE
3 - FISH
3 - OCTOPUS
7 - DOLPHIN
With the help of Justin and Cedrek, Sai cracks the code “LISTEN” and gets her Hidden Immunity Idol and her vote back. The aggressive approach has a very Cobra Kai feel of “Strike First, Strike Hard, No Mercy” approach as she is out of the gate with power in the game and a bond with tribemates over the journey to unlock the cryptogram.
Could be a positive but could come back to bite her. We shall see.
IMMUNITY CHALLENGE - Day 3
REWARD - 1st Place - Large Tool Kit, 2nd Place - Small Tool Kit
No surprise, VULA, aka the physically weakest tribe lagged behind, though still having a chance to win it at the logo puzzle, they came up short and head to Tribal Council. LAGI ran away with 1st place and CIVA overcame VULA at the puzzle to win the small tool kit.
PRE-TRIBAL SCRAMBLE - Day 3
The decision comes down to Stephanie and her failure at the puzzle against trust. Mary values trust and simply doesn’t trust Sai. Sai is trying to get Kevin, Cedrek and Justin to vote Stephanie for her failure at the puzzle.
Kevin and Justin seem to be the middle ground. Sai, Cedrek and the idol on one side and Mary and Stephanie and Mary on the other side valuing trust.
The decision will come down to whether the VULA tribe will allow the aggressor to steer the ship or will they reject that game play and value trust.
PREDICTION: Sai plays the idol and Stephanie gets voted out. If you’re going to play aggressively from the jump then why not play the idol, save yourself, and go find the next one.
TRIBAL COUNCIL - Day 3
Air signs, pizza place analogies, and a bunch of city folks enter Tribal and lay out the decision at hand between physical strength/challenges and trust.
It feels like Sai is reading very young and I think that will catch up to her eventually, just not now, when the vote feels like the typical first Tribal vote.
STEPHANIE PLAYS HER SHOT IN THE DARK
VOTES
STEPH - 4
SAI - 1
Welcome to Survivor 48 where an aggressive game builds more trust than going against the person who is acting that way. Steph’s game got run over by Sai’s. The physical weakness of their tribe put them at a disadvantage and Steph’s puzzle failure sealed her fate.
My read is Steph’s strategy was to form relationships with people by asking questions and getting to know them so she could build trust, but the problem with that strategy is when someone isn’t playing to get to know people or answer your questions and is just interested in playing the game.
The takeaway from Steph being voted out first is that she didn’t drive the dynamics of her tribe nor did she adjust her game to the direction that VULA decided to go.
SURVIVOR 50 VOTING
To close out the 48 premiere blog I want to circle back to my most intrigued about ______ heading into 48 being how the voting for 50 would be done and how it would mesh with or overshadow 48. As always, Survivor did it right. They replaced the “apply for Survivor” mini promos with Jeff with the vote for Survivor 50 promo. Simple and easy. I originally thought it might pop up during the episode or as this season hit the checkpoints of a vote that it would pop up and we would interact with it.
Nope.
My fears were put to rest while satisfying my intrigue. I get to vote for 50 without it taking away from 48. Here are my votes for this week.
I didn’t care about the tribe colors. I chose no rice, keep final four fire making, and to keep the winner reveal in Fiji. I actually agree with how the new era does things. Maybe because I’ve become an obsessive fan watching in real time only during the new era or maybe I just think they are better than the alternatives. Ultimately, I think those choices won’t be the winning choices. Too many people will want to see “what used to be” on Survivor. That’s fine too.
See you next week!
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