‘Survivor 48’ recap: When twists stay away, players play in an old-school way

No amount of knocking on wood could save David in this week’s Survivor 48, but fate did step in another way. Because when your usual Survivor correspondent Dalton Ross is away on top secret business, I get tapped in to cover the show in his absence — and this couldn’t have been a more perfect episode for me to recap.

I’m EW’s Sydney Bucksbaum, and I’ve always been loud and proud of how much I love old-school Survivor. Sure, I’ll always be a big fan of the show regardless of the format, but all the unpredictable twists of the new era seasons have been frustrating when they get in the way of players just playing the game. So imagine my delight when Survivor 48 delivered an episode that felt more old school than new era with this week’s “Welcome to the Party” — more than half of the extended episode focused on camp life, shifting alliances, and an epic blindside that breathes new life into the season.

I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and literally cheering by the end. Is it too soon to declare this one of the best new-era episodes? Probably! Especially since I love it due to it feeling like an old-school installment. But who cares about the reason why, let’s just get into all the juicy drama!

Chrissy’s just been sent to the Jury, and back at camp, Shauhin’s confused as to why she had targeted him with her vote when she was vocally against the strong, muscled players for teaming up. His confusion is valid, since she was so publicly against Joe and Eva during Tribal Council. But what Shauhin doesn’t know is that’s not what anyone is really interested in after the latest vote. He was never actually in trouble here. We want to hear from Kyle and Kamilla after David’s failed move against her.

Thankfully, David wastes no time in confessing (out in the open!) that he “floated” Kamilla’s name, but he blames it on being scared that Chrissy would play her Shot in the Dark — and Kamilla doesn’t let him get away with it. “You’re a horrible liar, don’t worry,” she tells him with a smile. Later she tells the camera, “David is dead to me,” just so we’re all super clear on how she feels. And while David is actually on to something big by taking note of Kyle’s hesitancy to vote out Kamilla, he’s blind to his own hypocrisy: Mary is his Kamilla, and he doesn’t realize he’s doing the exact same thing as Kyle to their “Strong Five” alliance by forcing them to turn it into six. Can he really be that blind?

The strong become weak

The next morning, David and Eva can’t help but gloat that they can “take a backseat” on the next vote by having the six go the same way. But David still sets up Mary to declare the next person voted out should be Kamilla. Kyle pretends to be okay with it, but he immediately goes to work to save his secret No. 1. He tells Shauhin that David’s suspicious of his connection with Kamilla, so David targeting Kamilla is actually a shot at Shauhin. Kyle knows he has to make his war with David personal for Shauhin, and it works beautifully — Shauhin declares that Kamilla needs to stay, and David and Mary are now on his hit list. The “Strong Five” finally weakens!

David is also busy working. He and Mary corner Eva to try and convince her that something is up with Shauhin and Kyle. But unfortunately for David, he just doesn’t have the same level of social capital as Kyle. Eva clocks their conversation as extremely paranoid, and Kyle’s attempt at smoothing things over with David only prompts David to start up all over again. The scene with David gaslighting Kyle when Kyle was just trying to talk calmly was so infuriating to watch — and they’re supposed to be allies! Imagine trying to live and work with this guy on an island. All Eva wants is for her Strong Five alliance to get along, and David is making that impossible… to his own detriment, as he’ll soon learn.

Eva goes to Vegas

In a refreshing change of pace, we pause on the David vs. Kyle war for Eva’s midnight advantage search. It’s the night after the taco reward, and she waited until she thought everyone fell asleep to sneak out of camp. But in a moment ripped straight out of a horror movie, a hooded figure follows her in the dark… it’s Shauhin! He puts two and two together and knows Eva is likely going for an advantage. But instead of keeping this intel for himself, he immediately wakes up Joe (again, in a very creepy way) and tells him to keep an eye out for Eva’s return.

At the other end of the beach, Eva gets an extra vote immediately. She then has a choice: keep it and return to camp, or risk it for something more powerful. The first choice is 50/50 to either get Safety Without Power or lose the extra vote. The current dissension in her alliance motivates her to risk it, and she’s rewarded with Safety Without Power. She then has one more choice to make, this time with worse odds. Three bamboo chutes lay in front of her, two risking her Safety Without Power and one containing an Immunity Idol that’s good until the Final Five. Instead of getting greedy, Eva doesn’t bet and walks away, feeling more confident than ever with both an Idol in her pocket and this new Safety Without Power.

While she had previously declared this advantage was going to stay secret, Eva immediately tells Joe, Shauhin, and Kyle about her late night journey — and it’s very eye-opening that she doesn’t clue in David (and Mary). But it was the right move for her, because she proved her loyalty to Joe and Shauhin without even realizing she needed to do that. They both trust her more now, even though she’s become a major threat to win the game with so much in her personal arsenal.

But showing all her cards has a downside, because Kyle then tells Kamilla about Eva’s advantage, so word is going to spread. Kyle also tries to make Joe suspicious of David by telling him that David is coming for him and Shauhin, and it works — only because David tries to take a shot at Kyle and Shauhin with Joe immediately after. You can’t script this any better! David keeps making the wrong calls, because he also tries to argue to Joe that Joe — honest, loyal to a fault Joe — went back on his word with the Chrissy vote, and it’s clear that Joe is not cool with that narrative. At all. No matter how David tries to twist the words to make Joe see his perspective, Joe is a brick wall on that front. And would you look at that, Joe is now rethinking his alliance with David! That didn’t take long.

Far from the shallow now

Meanwhile on the beach, Star is still here! Did you forget she was in the game? I definitely did, which is a shame after she finally started coming into her own post-merge (dropping the pen in the voting booth a few episodes back is a true season highlight). Now, she’s talking about how clear it is that she can’t swim — something that was most definitely not clear before now. Mitch has apparently been giving her lessons for the past few days, and she gets in the ocean to practice. It would have been great to see Mitch and Star’s bonding earlier, but at least we’re seeing their new friendship grow now. All this chill time at camp is really allowing the social dynamics to finally breathe and evolve.

And that really becomes clear when Kyle sits down with Joe to explain why David’s aggression in the last vote triggered him. He says it’s because of his past as a troubled teen, getting misdemeanor charges for underage possession of alcohol and disorderly conduct, and going to jail for a few weeks. But he also tells Joe how he turned his life around during that time, studying and taking exams while in jail, even having a professor visit him in jail to give him an in-person exam.

That bonding moment really hit close to home for Joe, whose father also spent time in jail. It’s another picture-perfect moment of Kyle using his social skills to read a situation and a person correctly, because now Joe is fully on board with him, and against David. Unfortunately, Eva still wants to bridge the gap between her warring allies, and Joe won’t go against Eva’s wishes, so it’s still an uphill battle. But not an impossible one.

Another strong showdown

We’re already halfway through the episode, and it’s finally time for a challenge! It’s at this point when I really start to feel like this is an old-school episode with how much camp time and social dynamics we’re getting — and I’m absolutely loving it. The strength/endurance challenge once again becomes a showdown between Kyle, Joe, and David — to no one’s surprise, although Shauhin did outlast Eva. While it looked like David was about to win, he lost focus for one second and stepped off his platform, shocking everyone (but mostly himself). Joe wins, and David has a really hard time accepting it. He declares he “should have won,” but welcome to Survivor! Just because you’re a physically strong player doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to win challenges. This has always been David’s Achilles’ heel, and it rubs everyone the wrong way.

Joe then picks Mitch to join him for the food reward since he’s the only one left who hasn’t eaten, as well as Shauhin and Eva. Back at camp, David still can’t let go of the loss (to a hilarious degree that has Kyle laughing). He also believes Shauhin is going to play an Idol on Kamilla, so he makes a pitch to vote out Mitch. Star’s attempt at swaying David and Mary to vote Shauhin is dead on arrival. Meanwhile, on the reward, Mitch wants David out, and that is music to Shauhin’s ears, because he has been planting seeds of doubt about David for five days to everyone. The only holdouts? Joe and Eva, who don’t want to betray their alliance. But they do consider it, so it’s not hopeless.

At Tribal Council, there’s a lot of not-so-subtle talk about shifting emotional connections that are shaking up alliances, but Eva says she’s “locked in” with who she trusts and what she wants to do with this vote. It’s not looking good for Mitch, but David’s still literally knocking on wood just in case.

Unfortunately for David, no amount of fate could save him. He gets his torch snuffed with five votes, and he takes it only slightly better than he took his challenge loss — if only because he didn’t complain about it out loud. He just slowly, veryyyy slowly, stared Joe down, picked up his things, and walked over to Jeff. With one last look at his alliance, he walked out, already thinking about his first glass of chocolate milk waiting for him at Pondy.

I’m not going to lie, I thought we were about to see Mitch get voted out. I did not think Joe and Eva were ready to adapt to the game and betray their own alliance member. But David signed his own death certificate by strong-arming (pun definitely intended) the people he was supposed to ride with until the end. He wanted a “strong” player to win in an old-school way, but he failed to realized that a successful old-school player needs to also be a social player. Shauhin, Joe, Eva, and Kyle know that, and that’s why they’re still in the game while David’s heading to Ponderosa.

Over on the jury, Cedrek and Chrissy are shocked to see David go. But Kamilla just smirks, and Mitch lets out a sigh of relief. It’s the end of the “Strong” alliance as David had pitched it, but now the game can really open up. And if this episode is any indication of what’s to come next, I’m ready to go on the record that this might be the best new-era season. Just think about it: we saw an entire hour’s worth of old-school political and social maneuvering without any twists, Idols, or advantages coming into play, and it resulted in a shocking vote. Let this be a lesson to Jeff Probst and Survivor producers: when you actually let the players play the game, you still get an entertaining episode full of blindsides and exciting moves.

Okay, that’s enough. I’ll get off my soapbox now. Dalton will be back next week, but I thoroughly enjoyed tapping in for this episode. And be sure to check back for this week’s exclusive deleted scene and scoop from Jeff himself, as well as this week’s exit interview with David to find out if he’s taking this loss better than he did at the challenge. My guess is… probably not!