Coming into the eleventh episode of Survivor 49, I believed that I had a good idea of how the rest of the game would play out. I assumed that the trio of Savannah, Rizo, and Sophi B. would be able to coast through the rest of the game together with their advantages and Sophie S. as a loyal number. But I was wrong, and by the end of the episode, those four had turned on each other, the trio of Steven, Kristina, and Sage seem to be in a stronger position with a block-a-vote, and the game is completely up for grabs. Yet, I still felt underwhelmed by the episode and know that the Hina side of things cannot win the war. It all circles back to the unique problem of Survivor 50 that this season faces and a long-standing New Era problem: journeys.
Post-tribal, Sage feels completely blindsided and betrayed by Sophie S. because of the Jawan vote. Ironically, she tells Sophie S. that she is handing the game to Savannah by keeping her around, now making it her mission to get revenge by voting out Sophie S. and keeping Savannah another round! Then comes the dreaded journey, a New Era tradition that takes away player’s votes for no reason and wastes runtime on the show! Yay! But wait, if you complete your journey task, you get a power that can range from completely game-changing to useless! Steven knows how much danger he is in with his side down in numbers and makes it his mission to go on the journey. Luckily for him, no one puts up much of a battle. But why would everyone so easily allow Steven to go on this journey without a fight? Because production decided to make this journey so physically strenuous that no one else wanted to do it! And the strenuous challenge was one of the most boring yet! It just consisted of Steven running around an island alone, finding numbers for a combination lock. The entire segment is just a slog in the episode that drags the entire product down.
The episode picks up slightly once Steven returns to camp. Steven decides to tell the truth about everything that happened on the journey, but does not reveal what advantage he got from the journey to leave the other side guessing. This leads to some entertaining Rizo content, where he is confidently incorrect about Steven having a steal-a-vote and even tells him that to his face. Sophi also begins wondering if betraying Rizo and Savannah or staying loyal to them is best for her game. It seems whichever decision she makes could win or lose the game for her and that how she navigates her Knowledge is Power will determine how her game plays out. I am genuinely interested to see what she chooses to do with it, steal Rizo’s public idol or try to steal Steven’s advantage somehow. Or secret third option: never use it at all and keep it a secret.
The immunity challenge was whatever. Just stacking letters to spell out immunity with extra obstacles attached. Steven wins the immunity necklace and the reward, choosing Kristina and Rizo to experience a little bit of Italy in Fiji! At the reward, Rizo tells Steven and Kristina that he is fully willing to vote Sophie S. out of the game. Unfortunately, this is where the episode’s suspense comes to a halt…
The decoy target for the viewers is Savannah, someone who we know is on Survivor 50 alongside her close ally Rizo. So, when the vote is between Savannah, someone who must have made a big enough impact to end up on one of Survivor’s most anticipated seasons and has received plenty of screen time all season, and Sophie S., someone who has been purpled up until the merge, one becomes the obvious boot for this episode. As the show attempts to build suspense around who will lose the battle between Savannah and Sophie S., it falls flat with the large portion of the audience that has been spoiled on the Survivor 50 returnees. Luckily, we do get one final entertaining moment, where, at tribal council, Kristina and Savannah put their rivalry on full display, although Kristina seems to have way more hatred for Savannah than vice versa. She makes a comment about strongly disliking Savannah to the shock of the players, viewers, and even Jeff Probst! The two later revealed this moment was just a ploy to trick Sophie S. into thinking she was safe before her 6-1 blindside, an innovative strategy.
Sophie S. unfortunately exemplifies a lot of what is wrong with this season. She was genuinely entertaining, when she was shown. But most viewers had no idea who she was for the entire pre-merge because she never went to tribal council until the merge and was part of the highly under-edited Hina tribe. Outside of calling out the lame fruit reward, she had little to stand out from the rest of the cast. But at the merge, we saw what a force she was, seemingly dictating the Jawan blindside and being a huge threat in the immunity challenges. She also just has a fun personality that we were never able to see. She deserved better from the editors, and so did the season as a whole.
It is such a shame. If the Hina tribe weren’t so under-edited in the merge and the mystery of the two who return for Survivor 50 were actually a mystery, this merge could have been an all-timer. But knowing who returns and how under-edited one of the sides going into the 3-3 final six war is, it is obvious who will win and the suspense is removed. The results of the merge episodes have been unpredictable, but if the end result is still practically set in stone, how much does that truly matter?
Survivor 49’s tenth episode should be exciting, dramatic, and unpredictable. A battle between the four remaining original Uli members that results in a dramatic 5-3-1 Jawan vote out at the final eight. A vote that leaves half of the remaining Survivors completely blindsided and has fun tribal antics from Savannah and Rizo. A wasted idol, successful extra vote usage, dynamic gameplay right before tribal. It follows a solid string of decent-good merge episodes after quite possibly the most boring pre-merge stretch of the New Era. And coming into the episode, the game was split right by the middle, yet, which side would win by the end was never in question. Unfortunately, that is the main issue with this season as a whole. It feels like the storytelling of the season is meant more to set up Rizo and Savannah’s return for Survivor 50 than to actually tell a compelling story.
So much of this season’s overarching content has revolved around the original Uli tribe members and Sophi B. With the early episodes being forced to focus on the disaster Kele tribe, despite most of them not mattering to the story of the season at all, the original Hina tribe was completely under-edited. That’s a problem when three of them are now in the final 7 and we are supposed to believe that any of them have a serious chance of winning the game. Of the three, Steven has consistently had the most screentime and development, yet his content after the MC boot has mainly focused on his relationship with Kristina and his mistake of telling Sage about her idol to bolster the Bottoms’ Up alliance. Sophie S. wins her second immunity this episode, something that was accidentally spoiled in the trailer, and seems to dictate who the underdog trio (Sophi B., Savannah, Rizo) votes between Jawan and Sage. And Kristina finally gets substantial content. Of course, there is her emotional moment at the reward challenge that was hyped up all week. It’s a touching moment surrounding grief that makes you empathize and relate with her, but the way Jeff tries to milk it afterward and turn it into a grand Survivor moment sours the authenticity. It exemplifies the problem with Jeff in the New Era. He always tries to turn Survivor into this grand journey of growth and make it more than it has to be. Of course, Survivor can be the catalyst for great emotional moments and growth for it’s contestants, but it has to come naturally and not squeezed out by Jeff Probst whenever he sees an opportunity. As for Kristina’s other content, it revolves around her idol. The build-up before tribal council involves her decisions on if she should use her idol for Steven and throw a vote in Rizo to guarantee one of him or Savannah goes home. Ultimately though, it feels so unimportant because the vote shifts away from Steven and it becomes clears that whatever Kristina does won’t matter, as the underdog trio and Sophie S. are dictating who goes between Sage and Jawan. After the blindside, Steven and Kristina are just happy to still be there, despite seemingly being sitting ducks. Unfortunately, even in her most substantial episode yet, Kristina still feels so irrelevant to the trajectory of the season.
This is Sage and Jawan’s downfall episode. And it feels like a self-inflicted downfall, as they had the tools to flush Rizo’s idol but just didn’t, for some reason that I feel must not have been shown in the episodes. They start off seemingly positive, managing to gain back Rizo and Savannah’s trust, only for that to come undone by Sophie S. After that, it all goes downhill, as the two are completely unaware of their impending blindside. With the end of Jawan’s game, so ends his rivalry with Savannah, who has, as expected since the first episode, come out on top. He had a fun run on the season, starting off unknowingly on the bottom on the original Uli tribe, then waking up and climbing his way to the top, only for a series of errors to cause him to fall right out of the game. Him accidentally taking other people’s stuff also culminates in a fun way, taking Rizo’s torch as he leaves the game. He clearly came to play the game as hard as he could and make big moves, and for that, you have to respect him.
The underdog trio was by far the best part of the episode, and it is becoming clearer why Savannah and Rizo were brought back for Survivor 50. Rizo is someone who is willing to risk his life in the game for more power. He would rather make high risk moves and decisions that could backfire and land him an early boot than ever be dragged along to the end with no real potential. He came to play and it shows. He is playing with his food by continuing to keep his idol despite being in danger round after round, with his latest stunt being playing a fake idol to cause confusion within the tribe. Savannah was great at tribal council as well, acting as if she was completely blindsided by Jawan’s betrayal as the votes were read, despite knowing she had the numbers. The two are definitely putting on a show and that makes me more confident that their likely steamroll of Sage, Kristina, and Steven won’t be too boring to watch unfold. Unfortunately, for Sophi B., this episode continues to place doubt in her win equity, now from a game perspective rather than just edit. She finds out about Kristina’s idol before tribal council and discusses using her Knowledge is Power on her, but decides not to by the end of it. It feels like a missed opportunity and puts worry that she might just never use it. She could be voted out with it still a secret or reveal it in the final 3 only for no one to be impressed. The jury might knock her for never using it to make a power play. Besides, she has been with Rizo and Savannah ever since the swap, but is it actually in her best interest to go with them to the end? She knows about Rizo’s idol and could swipe it out from under him, but unfortunately, I cannot see that happening, especially with the added context of Survivor 50.
And ultimately, that’s the problem with this episode. The two power players in Sage and Jawan have a big, glorious downfall in this episode, yet, it feels foretold and like an inevitability. Knowing that Savannah and Rizo return and given just how under-edited the Hina side of things are, there is just little suspense surrounding how the rest of the game will play out. Everything that should feel bold and exciting instead feels like an explanation for Savannah and Rizo’s return. Hopefully we get good Sage content with her seemingly being pissed at Sophie S. for voting out Jawan and her rivalry with Savannah still at large, but it feels like whatever happens will just end with her going down in flames. Hopefully, there is more scrappy gameplay from the underdog trio or some betrayal along the way from anyone. I am grasping at straws, hoping that there is something that I am seriously wrong about, because otherwise, it is looking pretty straightforward how the rest of the game will play out, despite there being a split right down the middle with Sophie S. as a swing.
Big Brother’s production team is no stranger to adding twists into their game that range from completely pointless to season-killers. Just two years ago, we saw Big Brother 25, a season with a dynamic and fluid pre-jury section, lose all of its momentum due to Zombie Week– an entire week where almost nothing happens, created purely to extend the runtime of the season, all for Cameron (who had been creepy toward the women in the house) to return to the game. Luckily for Zombie Week, it has been bested in the worst twist category by the White Locust, a twist that unceremoniously took out the star of the show up to that point– Rachel Reilly– through a single competition without a single vote cast. The White Locust is is now undoubtedly the worst twist Big Brother production has ever concocted and a stain on what could have been a top 5 Big Brother season. The only reason the season was not immediately killed in a similar fashion to Big Brother 25 is because Vince and Morgan put on a show, turning the typically stale endgame into a soap opera with their endless drama about what to do with all their HOH reigns. It also does not hurt that despite production’s attempts to replicate The Challenge with how many competitions they dumped onto the cast this season, Ashley Hollis, the player who maneuvered the social and strategic aspects of the game the best (only winning two competitions throughout the way!), won the entire game.
Before the season premiere, vibes in the Big Brother community were off. BB27 was the first season to abandon the 50% BIPOC diversity mandate established in 2021 (although diversity was definitely still higher than pre-mandate) and it was announced that live feeds would be off until after the 7/12 Sunday episode, meaning we would miss most of the crucial first days inside the house. The premiere was rather unremarkable, with the only things of note being Vince winning the first HOH, Rachel entering the game, and Zach winning a $10,000 secret power. Heading into the Sunday episode, I was extremely pessimistic of the editor’s ability to accurately depict what had happened in those first days, given their tendency to shield problematic figures and behaviors in the past and overall poor ability to depict events accurately. So, I was pleasantly surprised that the episode was entertaining the whole way through. Not without faults though, as the overblown reaction to Ashley’s infamous ‘Showergate’ incident gave me war flashbacks of the ostracization of Taylor Hale. Luckily, it did not turn out to be anything like that, even if some of the other houseguests’ conversations about Ashley raised some eyebrows. The rest of week 1 was a solid start for the season. Ashley wins a clutch veto after being the initial target, Kelley begins her role as perpetual pawn, and a fight between Rachel and Zae occurs the night before eviction day. We also see the return of the BB26 A.I Arena, now the BB Blockbuster, quite possibly the best received twist since the Power of Veto was introduced in BB3. Personally, I was initially excited to see the Blockbuster, as I believe it does help keep intrigue throughout the entire week, helping the three day stretch between the Veto meeting and eviction feel more interesting. However, like most good things, the BB Blockbuster dragged on way too long (final 6, seriously?!), to the point that when it finally ended, I felt way less positively about it. Week 1 ends rather poetically, with Kelley winning her first Blockbuster, sealing Zae’s fate, funnily enough Vince’s worst case scenario, which is something that Vince brings on himself time and time again. Zae is the perfect first boot for this season, a jock without much game ability (using ChatGPT for game advice, really?) bested by Rachel Reilly.
After week 1, the rest of the pre-jury phase provided plenty of entertaining, satisfying, and iconic moments. However, one thing became clear: almost every houseguest was awful at the game. In week 2, Jimmy was forced to nominate five people, culminating in him targeting someone that would have been a number for his side in Amy. Week 3 began Lauren’s reputation as indecisive and too passive, choosing Adrian as a replacement nominee over Ashley, despite Adrian being a loyal ally for her, after days of both sides of the house trying to control her, resulting in Adrian’s eviction. Then Mickey and Zach, two of the early frontrunners made catastrophically bad mistakes. Mickey stole Rylie’s HOH reign in week 4, then proceeded not to target him or his grossmance partner, Katherine. Sidenote, that relationship was so disturbing that it had the BB community united in hating Rylie for his controlling and manipulative tendencies. Instead, after the house target Keanu won the veto, she was convinced by Morgan that she should target their close ally, Jimmy, instead! After doing just that and going on a power trip, Mickey was not able to recover and became herself the house target until her exit right before the beginning of the jury phase. Then, Zach, who had everything necessary to run the game, chose not to use his get out of jail free card in his $10,000 secret veto after Ava nominated him in week 5, the main reason being that he did not want to give her the money, even if he claims otherwise. After Keanu won the Blockbuster that week, Vince and Zach were left on the chopping block, and Zach’s own potential showmance, Lauren, and apparent closest ally, Morgan, chose to evict him!
You can’t talk about the pre-jury phase without talking about Rachel Reilly. She is integral to how this entire phase plays out and was playing her best game yet! She was a huge character and presence on the live feeds and her on-again-off-again frenemy situation with Keanu was fascinating. And her week 6 HOH reign will go down in history as one of the best of all time! It came in clutch too, as by that point, over half of the house was after her. She initially targeted the trio of Vince, Morgan, and Mickey after realizing they were the loudest voices against her, powerful nominations that shook up the game. Yet, the best was yet to come, as after Lauren won the iconic OTEV competition, Rachel spent days trying to convince her not to use the veto. Yet, after painstakingly going back and forth on a decision, Lauren decided she had to save Vince, despite him being the most safe out of the three nominees if it came to a vote. In a Hail Mary, Rachel told Lauren she would put up her close ally Rylie as the replacement if she saved Vince, but Lauren foolishly thought she was bluffing and used to veto anyways, leading to the Oklahoma creep sitting on the nomination seats. Unfortunately, it seemed that Rylie was unlikely to be evicted in any Blockbuster scenario. The only glimmer of hope was if he sat against Morgan. At this point, Vince and Morgan’s relationship was ramping up, thanks to Zach’s eviction pulling them closer together. Furthermore, despite Morgan and Rachel’s previous spats and Rachel nominating Morgan, it seems she had a change of heart and wanted to fix her relationship with Rachel. Knowing this, Ashley and Will talked Morgan into creating the Judges alliance, with them three plus Vince and Rachel. However, the Judges were still only three out of five votes needed if Morgan was still sitting up for eviction against Rylie by Thursday night. They would have to rely on the main target, Mickey, winning the Blockbuster and then Ava, who talked of targeting Morgan during her HOH reign, somehow voting to keep her. Everyone else was a locked vote to keep Rylie. It seemed so implausible, that I gave up hope. Even Vince backtracked and was thinking about keeping Rylie. Yet, on eviction night, a miracle happened. Mickey won the Blockbuster, a carnival game of who could roll their ball down a narrow pathway the furthest within three minutes, seemingly because both Morgan and Rylie misunderstood the rules. Then, despite her erratic tendencies, she indeed voted to keep Morgan. Vince and Ava convened minutes before the vote and, miraculously, agreed to evict Rylie. With Ashley and Will’s locked in votes, it was a 5-4 vote to get Rylie out, leaving half of the house blindsided going into the iconic wall camp. The final two pre-jury weeks see Rachel somehow survive a second Vince HOH reign by the skin of her teeth after house target Mickey won the veto. Vince nominates Katherine instead of Rachel, who was then evicted after Kelley’s third blockbuster win, her run on the show sadly overshadowed by the Rylie situation. Then, Keanu wins HOH and gets revenge on Vince for all of his betrayals by nominating him against Morgan and Mickey only to regret it immediately after. Morgan begins her competition streak with her first veto win, leading to Ashley being the replacement and a chaotic Ashley and Rachel vs. Keanu fight. Mickey is finally taken out to cap everything off, a core personality for the pre-jury that provided plenty of entertainment with her terrible gameplay.
Going into the jury phase, the game was wide open and practically everyone was being targeted by at least one other person. Of course production had to blow all of that up though. Everyone goes to the backyard shortly after Mickey’s eviction to find out from the Mastermind (a ridiculous inclusion to the season) that one of them will be leaving in the next hour, not through vote, but through the Hamster Wheel competition from the BB Reindeer Games. It was great there, because that spinoff was meant to be about competitions, but not here! Ava wins a weird shuffleboard competition to decide the first person to play in the hamster wheel. Frustratingly, she picks Vince for some reason, despite the two openly targeting each other! She also has a heel turn from being ride or die with Rachel to completely trashing her. As much as Ava’s gameplay is frustrating from here on out, it is unfair to scapegoat her for Rachel’s untimely exit. All blame should be placed on production for ever thinking this was a good idea. Nobody should ever be taken out of Big Brother without a proper vote and eviction (unless it’s an expulsion or quit), but especially not the star of your season! By doing that, you risk leaving so many unresolved plots and storylines because they were never properly evicted! In Rachel’s case, her frenemies storyline with Keanu is cut short, the Judges lose one of their core members, and the person whose eviction would have been a potentially game winning move for someone is taken out by a carnival game! To make matters worse, after Rachel’s eviction, it is revealed the person with the fastest time in the hamster wheel will become the new HOH. Only three people (Vince, Morgan, Lauren) even completed that competition in the first place! You are completely screwing over Kelley, Keanu, Ashley, and Will, who never even got a chance to compete! That week was the low point of the season. Morale not only within the community, but in the house as well, was at a low point. It seemed no one wanted to play if they could just be taken out by a single competition. Lauren nominated Morgan, Ashley, and Will, with a plan to backdoor Keanu, but almost no one cared anymore. After Morgan wins her second veto, Keanu is backdoored, but wins the Blockbuster, which is still here for some reason. That leaves Ashley and Will, who had played the best social-strategic games up to that point, on the block, even though they never even got to compete in the HOH competition! Ashley had successfully managed to flip the vote on Will though, and in a 3-2 vote, Will, who had captured the heart of most of the community for just being a rare genuine, kind man on Big Brother, was unjustly taken out with an injured knee.
The game sped up significantly during the jury phase, with two evictions every week leading up to the finale. This was a welcome change, as most Big Brother seasons unfortunately fall off in terms of entertainment during the last weeks of the game. The change prevented the season from ever losing the steam that it had during the pre-jury phase despite production’s best attempts to do so with the White Locust. We also have to give credit to the remaining cast members for an entertaining endgame, as heading into week 10, the remaining houseguests, even Lauren, put on a show for double eviction week. Vince wins his third HOH to start off the week, although it was practically Morgan’s HOH given how the week plays out. He betrays Keanu for the millionth, but not final, time by placing him on the chopping block alongside Kelley and Ava. Morgan wins the veto yet again and somehow forces Vince’s hand to nominate Lauren as a replacement, despite his hatred for Ashley, the only other viable replacement nominee. Even worse for Vince, Morgan has almost no reason to even use the veto in the first place, with her reasoning being that she needed Vince to prove to her that he would pick her over Lauren. Vince’s game completely unravels here, as despite wanting to take Lauren to the final 2 over Morgan, he for some reason agrees to nominate Lauren, despite a very real possibility she gets voted out. Morgan takes Ava down from the block with the veto, resulting in a weird little dance from Ava, and Lauren is nominated as planned, despite Lauren’s pleading with Vince that this was a horrific move. Immediately after the veto, more drama ensues between Vince and Morgan, with Vince pissed that she “forced” him to nominate Lauren and Morgan agreeing to not vote Lauren out. Coming into double eviction night, the vote was wide open and every nominee had a chance of going home. Lauren beats out the Blockbuster queen and king, Kelley and Keanu, in the final Blockbuster, ending their reign of terror once and for all. At the first eviction of the night, Lauren and Ava vote to evict Keanu because of their newly established trio with Kelley, while Morgan and Ashley vote to evict Kelley, sensing the threat of that trio. Vince is forced to break the tie (first one since BB24!) and evicts the person who was once his closest ally, Kelley. Kelley somehow immediately becomes way more likeable than she was inside the game after being evicted, having some choice words for Vince and a genuinely charismatic exit interview. Morgan wins her first HOH during the double eviction and sets her sights on Lauren, with Keanu as a backup target. However, Keanu wins veto, sealing Lauren’s fate, as Ashley and Keanu, scorned due to Lauren’s betrayal of him during the final 8, evict Lauren, who had won a Blockbuster not even 30 minutes prior. A great end to the week that rejuvenated the season after the disaster at the White Locust. And Zingbot was great too!
The final 5 round starts off with an endurance competition that barely lasts over an hour, with Ava and Ashley dropping early and Keanu losing to Vince in embarrassing fashion. With his fourth HOH, Vince finally decides it is time to cut Keanu, who somehow still trusted him after all of his betrayals. Ava and Keanu are nominated, with the Judges somehow becoming a completely real alliance despite how absurd it seemed early on. Morgan wins her fourth veto, sealing Keanu’s fate. The vote is some sort of voodoo doll ritual in which both Ashley and Morgan stab Keanu’s voodoo doll to evict him. And so ends Keanu’s legendary run. Despite his terrible gameplay and reads on the house, he was a genuinely nice underdog who had managed to scrape by through veto and Blockbuster wins, turning him into the easy fan favorite of the season. That’s not the end of the week, as a two day final four round is next, with Morgan winning the HOH and final veto, giving her full control over the week. With Morgan set on a Judges strong mindset, Ava has no chance and merely tries a weak attack on Vince to save herself to no avail. Ava’s run on the season is one that starts out with her being seen as an authentic and lovable person, only for many to lose respect for her once it became clear she was only playing for the $50,000 America’s Favorite Houseguest prize. A disappointing end to what could have been a great run.
Heading into the finale, Morgan was the clear frontrunner, the most likely to win the final HOH competition and the biggest jury threat. With Vince likely to take Morgan to the end as well, it seemed like the only way Morgan would lose was if Ashley won the final HOH and cut her. But Ashley hadn’t won a competition since week 1, so that would never happen, right? Well, Morgan won the first part of the final HOH as expected, leaving Vince and Ashley to battle it out in part 2. Most including myself expected Vince to win this part and Ashley to be locked out of the final part of the HOH competition. However, somehow, Vince had one of the most colossal challenge mistakes and meltdowns in part 2, allowing Ashley to come from behind and win part 2, giving her a fighting chance. Even better, Ashley had somehow managed to convince Morgan that her best move was to cut her closest ally Vince and take her to the final 2, meaning Ashley went from likely 3rd place to guaranteed final 2. Morgan and Vince continued their late-night soap operas until the final day of the feeds, with Vince slowly realizing there was a chance Morgan would not even take him to the final 2 after everything he did to prove his loyalty. Those late nights caught up to Morgan, as Ashley easily won part 3 of the final HOH competition. Ashley gauged that Morgan was the biggest jury threat and cut her at the final 3, leaving the final 2 of Vince and Ashley. An absolutely insane final 2 by the way, considering how the game first started. Vince literally got laughed at by the jury as Ashley gave convincing answers. With her jury speech, Ashley articulated her gameplay well, how she lowered her threat level by playing dumb and was like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, sweeping the jury in a somewhat controversial 6-1 vote and victory.
The final 3 all played drastically different games. Morgan was the prototypical big threat that would easily sweep a jury vote against most players, but who could not keep their threat level hidden and was cut right before the end. Vince had all of the tools to run the game. He had allies who were undyingly loyal to him like Keanu and had all of the HOH reigns needed to build his resume and run the game. Unfortunately for him, he made the wrong moves at almost every opportunity and pissed almost everyone on the jury off, ensuring it would be nearly impossible for him to ever win a jury vote. Ashley was never out in front as the biggest threat or best player, in fact, it was the opposite. Many players inside the house and even fans online never saw her as a serious contender to win the game. In truth, though, Ashley’s game is one of subtle social and strategic moves that would help her get all the way to the end despite a lack of competition skills. She built relationships with people like Morgan, Rachel, and Mickey, who were willing to advocate for her to make sure she was safe. She helped create the Judges, which would be instrumental to her survival throughout the jury phase. Because of her purposefully lowering her threat level, no one ever thought to target her with their HOH reigns. People like Kelley, Keanu, and Ava went from disliking her to happily voting for her to win the whole game. She was playing behind the scenes the whole game to insulate herself as her allies were out in front getting blood on their hands for her.
Let it be known, Big Brother 27 was a great season, but not because production actually knows how to run their own show. The houseguests made this season great. They made the most out of the poor hand production dealt out, like keeping the Blockbuster until the final 6 and the White Locust, delivering an unpredictable and drama-filled season. The future of Big Brother is still concerning, though. Production clearly learned nothing from their mistakes this season, as they are considering bringing back the White Locust twist for future seasons due to the massive success of this season. But they may not be so lucky next time, and the White Locust might actually become a season-killer.
Survivor 49’s ninth episode saw the underdog trio of Savannah, Rizo, and Sophi B. miraculously survive yet another round, seemingly taking outsider Sophie S. under their wing. Their underdog story should feel exciting and exhilarating to watch live, reminiscent of the Foa Foa Four in Survivor Samoa exactly 30 seasons prior. Yet, the worst-kept secret of Rizo and Savannah’s return for Survivor 50 spoils that excitement.
Throughout the episode, Rizo planted seeds to the power duo of Sage and Jawan and, separately, Sophie S., that the eventual boot, Alex, was playing all sides. He managed to convince all three of them, even as Kristina and Steven tried to rally them all together to flush Rizo’s idol at the same time. Going into tribal, the edit painted this vote as a battle between Alex and Rizo in which only one would survive. For lots of fans, including myself, though, the intrigue is taken away because of Rizo’s return for 50, which almost guarantees he won’t be unceremoniously voted out with an idol in his pocket at the final 9, leaving Alex as the obvious boot. Now, with his idol still in play, alongside Savannah’s extra vote, Sophi B.’s Knowledge is Power advantage, and Sophie S. as shield and number, the underdog trio is poised to run the game together, likely pulling off huge moves and blindsides along the way. At least, that must be what justifies Savannah and Rizo being in the milestone 50th season, snatching spots from 42’s winner, Maryanne, and 47’s scrappy underdog, Andy. It has to happen so that their inclusion in the season is worthwhile, right?
Rizo, Savannah, and Sophi B. are playing impressive from-the-bottom games, that cannot be denied. However, it is also true that the majority of Jawan, Sage, Kristina, and Steven have played everything after the Nate blindside awfully. We had that whole mess with the MC boot last episode, which allowed Rizo to keep his idol despite being heavily outnumbered at the split tribal. However, Kristina and Steven’s immediate reaction to seeing MC gone and Sophie S. still in the game may be worse than anything that happened that round. Their shock and confusion after learning what happened alerted Sophie S. that she was at the bottom of the Hina power structure and eventually led her to side with the underdog trio instead. Then, Steven leaked Kristina’s idol to Sage, opening a can of worms to the idol potentially becoming just as public as Rizo’s and getting snatched by Sophi B.’s Knowledge is Power. I will cut Steven some slack though, since, at this point, no one knows about Sophi B.’s K.I.P, which may lead to the K.I.P finally being used successfully after 4 years of failure (yay for keeping your advantages a secret!). Finally, you have Jawan and Sage completely abandoning the vote split plan between Rizo and Sophi B. and voting out Alex instead. One has to wonder, why not just throw your votes on Rizo or Sophi B. since Alex was already getting votes anyways? Unless there is something that we are missing and Jawan and Sage did not want to risk Rizo going at all despite seemingly targeting him and Savannah for the entire merge?
There is not much for me to say about the boot of the episode himself, Alex. He was a fine personality on the show, but nothing in particular stands out for me. Despite all of the content he received, being one of the main narrators for the pre-merge, he just sort of fizzled out after the merge and went out with a whimper. Unfortunately, he is just another slightly above-average player in the new era that was voted out for not being able to maintain his threat level.
The Alex boot feels like a game-losing move for Sage and Jawan, who had all of the tools to run this game and have now unknowingly ceded power to the underdog trio. We seem set up for a dynamic rest of the game and a hopefully exciting ending, even if that excitement is partly spoiled by Savannah and Rizo’s return for 50. Honestly though, we deserve a fluid merge after how much of a boring slog 48’s merge was.
Reality TV Thoughts 