The first half of the post-premiere pre-merge, Episodes 2 through 5 of Survivor 20: Heroes vs. Villains, starts off with two obvious boots, in Stephenie (Ep2) and Randy (Ep3). Then the gameplay really kicks into high gear in the last pair of episodes, with Tom idoling out Cirie in Ep4 (with JT temporarily flipping to Tom and Colby's alliance to make it happen), and what's left of Cirie's alliance exacting their revenge in Ep5 (on Tom, but not on JT, who flips back). It's a nice little mini-arc, before the Villains shake off their own rust and take their turn at actually playing.

The loss of Cirie in Episode 4 was a huge blow for the season in retrospect, considering how much her presence added to her next three appearances (S34: Game Changers, AU11: Australia v. The World, and S50: In the Hands of the Fans). So there's satisfaction for Cirie fans in Tom's being cut in the very next episode. Also simply for Survivor fans who had long since grown weart of his patronizing, sanctimonious attitude, like declaring to Colby as the Heroes start dispersing on returning to camp after their Ep5 IC loss: "Now the conniving starts." Get over yourself, Tom. You're playing Survivor, not America's Next Top Papal Candidate. Sorry the Heroes tribe didn't bow down and kiss your feet as you expected after Koror.

Through modern eyes, JT's flip-flopping made perfect sense for his game, it just didn't work out well for him, mainly because the vast majority of the cast at this point in the show's run still follows the archaic winning strategy of S1: Borneo: you should have solid alliances in your initial tribe, you shouldn't talk to anyone else, and at the merge, you just need to wipe out everyone from the other tribe. Having "options," as Kim Spradlin would describe it four seasons later, made you an untrustable snake (or rat). It doesn't help that JT's reputation coming into the game was as a Real America straight-shooter, or whatever. He's happy to talk about his villain turn in confessional, but he can't let any other players in on his hijinks, which is really a bad idea in a season with 19 other people. Also he's really bad at lying. So, good on paper, but the short-term tactics and the longer-term strategy just clashed. Also he voted out Cirie, so his boos were earned.

The 'one voice' challenge

What kicks off this sequence of events, and is the centerpiece of Episode 2, is of course the "one voice" challenge, where the Heroes blow a second consecutive lead on the puzzle. (Definitely not the last time they do this!) The show did a good job of giving the audience all the necessary clues, and letting them see the madness unfold ... but then for some reason ended up deciding that it wasn't Stephenie's fault for screwing up, but rather James's for noticing. (Loudly and rudely, to be fair, but still.)

Before the challenge, we see the heroic, teamworking Heroes discussing their heroic, teamwork-based strategy for "A Crate Idea." Since JT had competed in (and won) this challenge before, he volunteered to lead the tribe in the challenge, and we close out the "minute to strategize" pre-challenge segment with Tom saying the tribe will listen to "one voice." During the challenge, the Heroes benefit from at least two Probst calls that should have been overturned on video review (telling the Heroes to send the next pair out before the crate reaches the platform), and they push to a one-crate lead. Then they hit the puzzle wall again.

The Heroes start to lag quickly, but they're making up time until "one voice" (Stephenie's) insists that a crate that is correctly placed is in fact "wrong." They go to the effort of lifting the heavy crate to move it up where she says it needs to go, but eventually realize it had been in the right place all along. Chaos ensues, and they lose big. James ends the challenge yelling about how they all agreed to the "one voice" concept.

James was clearly being a hothead here. He shouldn't have yelled at Stephenie personally, but she was indeed the person who screwed it up for the Heroes. (James was similarly a bully, along with Ozzy, to Eliza in S16: Micronesia when she had a fever and was barely functioning. As Courtney later says, "I told you you were on the wrong tribe, James.") But it's pretty clear from the episode that Stephenie indeed lost the challenge for the Heroes, and was the main voice contradicting JT. (Probst's "Previously on..." spiel in Ep2 incorrectly characterizes the Heroes' Ep1 Tribal decision as blaming Sugar for losing the challenge for them on the puzzle, which is a bizarre misinterpretation created out of thin air, but it does match up much quite well with this episode's storyline, so maybe that's what the thinking was.)

Side note: The Heroes, told they needed to sit someone out, collectively decided "It has to be one of the strong people" ... in an *immunity* challenge that required group strength. What on earth were they thinking picking Rupert? Just bizarre. No follow-up explanation afterwards, of course.

Side side note: James clearly thinks he's come up with a slam-dunk indictment of Stephenie's abilities by pointing out that her entire tribe was voted out in S10: Palau, so logically, she must have been the weak link that caused Ulong to keep losing immunities. It's so clever that he says it in confessional, says it again to Candice, and says it at Tribal. Except ... that all it really tells you is that James did not watch S11: Guatemala. (Which would have given James many other reasons to dislike Stephenie, sadly.)

You get a deep dive! And YOU get a deep dive! No, not you

One common motif I had forgotten about is the "this returning player is struggling" extended segments, where one of the guys (it's always a man) is shown having problems keeping up with the "modern" game. (Scare quotes because, hoo boy, is Heroes vs. Villains-era gameplay still pretty antiquated relative to an average New Era season - the Villains collectively decided that anyone caught looking for the idol was persona non grata! The *Villains*!) In the premiere, we got good ol' Rupert moping about his broken toe and his inability to start fire. (Tom and Colby also fretted about the then-current gameplay at multiple times.) In Ep2, Boston Rob collapses from apparent dehydration, because the mean, ungrateful Villains didn't want to rebuild their shelter for the fourth time in four days, and he had to do it all himself. Don't worry, Jeff Probst rushed to tend to him, after the medical team mysteriously couldn't find anything wrong.

Then a tearful Coach was counseled by a surprisingly level-headed and empathetic Tyson at the start of Ep4, because mean Sandra (okay, "meaner," in her own words) had accused Coach of not working constantly at the Ep3 Tribal. The nerve! Don't worry, Coach bounces back, and decides to do the exact opposite of what Tyson suggested, and just be Coach to the Coachth power. Also, in a rare treat, Ep3 had Coach singing, accompanied by blended visuals to create a truly hallucinatory experience.

On the one hand, almost all of this is silly (especially the Coach stuff), and generally harmless. Even Rob admits that maybe his collapse was a bout of "crybaby-itis." (Although it's not awesome that after reassuring Coach that he's not on the outs, Rob tells him to "buck up" and "be a man.") The best part, I guess, is that this takes time away that the editors might otherwise have been wasting on Russell Hantz. So I guess it's all good, for the most part.

Except ... this season also had Cirie, Parvati, and Sandra on it, and they've essentially been side characters thus far. It's basically the opening sequence all over again. We see lots of JT, and Rupert, and Rob, and Russell, and Coach, and Tom, and Colby. All the big-name guys. We've certainly also had some great confessionals from Sandra and Cirie, and some questionable ones from Parvati (Jerri is just a "bitter old cougar"), but it definitely still feels the editors only care about the male contestants. Knowing how the jury vote turns out, with two women receiving all the votes and Hantz none, it's especially odd. And with Cirie gone by Ep4, I definitely feel like I was deprived of some great Cirie content because the editors were too busy force-feeding me Russell Hantz.

In the end, it's fine, I guess. Sandra and Parvati will have more a lot more screen time as the season proceeds, and the decision to dole out Sandra's insights as precious morsels I guess makes you relish them all the more? (And Courtney. There's far too little Courtney, but each moment is perfect.) And at least Episode 4 gave us Sandra's as-always spot-on assessment of Hantz.

The world's worst dictionary salesman is back!

Back in S12: Panama, Cirie was unimpressed when at the merge, Good Guy Terry tried to convince her (and Bruce) to flip from a core position in the Casaya alliance to the very bottom of his La Mina one. (5th or 6th place could be yours, rather than worrying you might be out before then!) Tom's sales pitch to Candice and Cirie in Ep2 was almost as bad. Cirie was running the majority alliance, with Candice emerging as a valuable sounding board for her. So they were probably #1-2 in that alliance, or at the worst, top four. Tom's offer would have made them #4 and #5 in his alliance with Colby and Stephenie. (Except he also had an alliance with JT, so it was more like #5 and #6 ... on a nine-person tribe.) It was a ridiculous offer, but Good Guy Tom was pretty sure he could make this sale! Odd how "I'm the leader, so if you just shut up and do what I say, I will win, and you can leave the game at your appointed time" never really caught on as a valid Survivor strategy, except in S22: Redemption Island. Who knew? (Apart from Cirie. And apparently Candice.)

What's striking about all of this is that at the time, the show's overarching editorial standpoint was pretty clearly on the side of people like Tom and Terry (and Boston Rob, who is doing the same thing over on the Villains tribe). Those types of players almost never win any more, and I think the show has grudgingly accepted that reality. Or at least it did after Redemption Island. But compare that season to everyone just rolling their eyes at Rob's strong-arm tactics in S40: Winners at War, and you can see how things have changed. You still get wistful echoes of the attitude now and then, but the closest you'll get is someone who thinks they've pulled it off, but eventually learn they did not (Brad Culpepper in S34: Game Changers).

This is fundamentally a welcome change for the show. One alpha male dictating the entire season and coasting to victory is exceptionally boring for the audience to watch. It's fine for the show to keep casting these types of players, at least as long as they keep failing. And the way to ensure that happens is to fill the rest of the cast with people who actually enjoy playing and/or watching Survivor, and won't put up with taking orders, as we've seen most of the time since WaW. The overabundance of "honor and integrity" types in S50: In the Hands of the Fans was less welcome and a bit of a departure from this trend, but despite the show's attempts to stack towards a particular outcome (and to thwart long-term strategy with excessive rock draws), everything ended up okay-ish in the end.

S20-era idol-hiding etiquette

In Episode 4, we see the Villains find an idol clue in their reward swag (tucked inside a knife case). That's on Day 9. As date-stamped by the show (and repeated in the "Previously on..." the next episode, Ep5), we're told the Heroes finally noticed a similar note in their coffee the next morning, on Day 10. They had won that coffee at the Ep3 RC/IC, two days earlier. This raises a lot of questions.

Chief among them: Were the idols there the whole time, but nobody found them? Relatedly, was nobody looking? The location in the Villains camp was the very tree Rob and Tyson were thinking of climbing, then Rob and Sandra were betting on whether Coach would climb. It's hard to imagine nobody thought to look in its vicinity. Similarly, the one at the Heroes camp was buried, but it seemed pretty easy to find. Tom mentioned the sand around it being loose, which tipped him off that he was looking in the right place.

The loose sand part makes me think both idols were freshly hidden, probably while everyone was gone for the Ep4 RC (where the Villains won their idol clue). But if that's the case, why were no idols hidden for the first three episodes? Those were all very simple, pile-on votes that could have been dramatically upended if the targets had found idols. Is it possible the idols were hidden from the start, nobody found them, so they were re-hidden and clues distributed in Ep4? Or were there really no idols for the first eight days?

Will none of you save my favorites?

As archaic as Tom and Colby's gameplay feels, the real living fossil this season is none other than Jeff Probst. At the Ep4 Tribal, after Colby says Stephenie was voted out because she was on the wrong side of alliance numbers, Probst asks JT: "JT, where's the wisdom in having alliances this early that cause you to vote out somebody strong, merely because they're on the wrong side of the numbers?"

On the surface, this is an insane question. "This early"?! This is the third Tribal for the Heroes! It's Day 11! The season is almost a third over! Also, you were there for all the challenges and the two previous Tribals, Probst! "Strong" Stephenie screwed up the puzzle for them in the Ep2 IC, so they voted her out. They won their next challenge (Ep3 RC/IC, "Sumo'an Mud"), which was almost entirely strength-based, 8-0, so losing a "strong" player clearly didn't hurt them, not even a little bit! They also voted her out in part because she didn't follow Tom's explicit directions ("one voice") and in the Ep4 immunity challenge they had just lost, she would have been blindfolded and following Tom's instructions! How on earth would Stephenie being "strong" have made them any better? Do you have short-term memory loss, or are you just incapable of thinking analytically? Good lord.

Actually, though, it's much worse than that. Probst very clearly was lambasting the Heroes tribe for voting out someone strong the last time AND thinking about maybe doing it again. Probst likes to claim that he's never told what the players are planning before Tribal Council (this is almost certainly bullshit but let's pretend it's not), but to give him the benefit of the doubt: maybe he was able to deduce from Colby talking about being "on the wrong side of the numbers" and being worried for himself, that Probst felt the need to start badgering JT and Rupert about "You guys just lost! Why are you 'keeping your word' when you should be keeping the tribe strong!" (paraphrased).

Yes, Probst was very nice to Cirie at the S50: In the Hands of Probst finale/reunion, and gave her a plastic trophy as some kind of "Whoopsies! We Keep Screwing You Over, Our Bad!" Lifetime Achievement Award. I guess that's good. But in this instance, it wasn't some random production twist (or confluence thereof) sending Cirie home, it was Probst himself openly campaigning for it. He was all but begging one of JT or Rupert or James to "come to their senses" (paraphrased again) and vote her out (or some other woman, probably). There's no other way to look at it. He clearly had a viewpoint and he was very obviously pushing for a particular outcome. He wasn't "just asking questions." So after saying how much better Tribal seemed in the premiere, this one serves as a strong counterpoint. (To be fair, every indication is that JT had already flipped to the Tom/Colby side long before Tribal, and Probst's harangue was unnecessary. But it still wasn't great!)

Jeff Probst likes to say he respects Cirie for getting up off the couch and playing Survivor, but obviously that support is conditional on her not doing so at the expense of his favorites, like Colby or Tom. (Even though Colby lost the RC for the Heroes in this same episode.) In this instance, he wasn't just putting his thumb on the scale, he was throwing his whole entire body onto it, along with several couches.

Tom is saved! JT is a hero! Wait, no...

In the wake of Cirie's blindside, as the Heroes head into the Episode 5 Tribal, nobody trusts JT's word any more. Not even Amanda! And for good reason. Looking back at JT's zigs and zags logically, what he did made total sense on paper. Cirie was clearly the biggest threat on the Heroes. Tom recognized that from the start, and in Ep4, it took her just a few minutes talking to James and Amanda to untangle their brains from Tom's last-ditch plan to pin the target on Candice. Similarly, even though in Ep5 JT was targeting a fellow former winner, Tom clearly was a persuasive voice, someone who probably had the second-most control over the tribe after Cirie. With Tom's idol played the Tribal before, he was the logical person to target in Episode 5. So why did it all seem so ham-fisted?

It's a combination of how the game still worked at this time, and being on the Heroes tribe. (*Also, JT is just bad at lying, which we'll get to below.) The game meta is a big impediment. As is also very clear over on the Villains tribe, HvsV is still stuck in the era of rigid initial-tribe alliances and having numbers at the merge. Swaps have helped loosen that up a bit, but there was no swap this season. Modern players are obviously much more flexible, every other player on the beach is an option to work with. You can blindside a player one day, and work with their old allies the next. Not so in season 20, where Boston Rob has made clear that Russell Hantz is the tribe pariah, and so is anyone who dares to work with him. The Heroes are desperate to "keep the tribe strong" and win immunities because they all plan to stick together after the merge and Pagong the Villains, if they have the numbers to do so. (Although everyone is pretty sure Amanda and/or James is going to pull in Parvati.)

For JT, the other problem is that the Heroes tribe is full of the very people who are most into that gameplay style: Tom and Colby especially, but also Rupert and James to an extent. Loyalty is a big deal. Flipping on your alliance is deeply frowned upon. (Although to be fair, over on the Villains, Boston Rob is the same way, as is Danielle, although for Rob, the only loyalty that matters is being loyal to HIM, he's free to do whatever he wants himself.) These tend to be the more physical, athlete-adjacent people, the straight shooters, and JT came into the game with that reputation, even though he's been saying otherwise from the start ... in confessional. Still, he made it all the way to the Cirie blindside with that aura intact, at least among his tribemates.

But in the wake of JT's flipping on Cirie, as the Heroes head into the Episode 5 Tribal, nobody trusts JT's word any more, not even Amanda! And they obviously shouldn't. It's his tactics of swearing he's 100% honest, betraying one side, then immediately flipping back (while swearing he's still 100% honest) that just don't work. Maybe it's the Heroes buff blinding him, but JT just can't bring himself to embrace full villainhood, at least not publicly. Taking out the two biggest threats to win didn't just put JT in a better position, it helped everyone else, too. But for some reason, he couldn't just come out and say that. That reason was mostly because JT is a "Hero," and so is everyone else on his tribe.

*JT's other major tactical flaw is that he's just really bad at lying, or at least he was this season. I'm no body language expert, but even I picked up a very obvious tell: When JT is lying to Colby about voting for James in Ep5, he looks off past Colby when talking, then turns his head to look Colby in the face as he finishes. In contrast, when he's telling Rupert or Amanda the target is Tom (which is true), he looks them square in the face the whole time. No wonder he did so poorly this season and in S34: Game Changers.

The land of tepid takes

- No more Randy - I can't say I particularly enjoyed Randy in S17: Gabon. It seemed like he was genuinely amusing at the start, then just got progressively meaner as the show went on, and his humor often punches down on people with less standing in the game than him, which is just not fun. But in the Ep2 RC/IC, when he and Courtney are sitting out for the Villains, and Rupert is sitting out for the Heroes (!?!), he does give us the absolute banger above. And he was right that Parvati was a threat the Villains should have dealt with early. Oh well.

- Mini-calendrical crisis - In Ep2, there's a date stamp before the IC that says "Day 5." There's another date stamp in the middle of the Heroes camp plotting segment that says "Day 6." That suggests that for whatever reason, Survivor went back to its ancient practice of holding ICs and Tribal on separate days. But then everyone at Tribal is talking about who cost them the challenge "today." Probst also expresses alarm that the Heroes are so divided this early: "This is Day 6!" So which is right? It seems most likely that the IC and Tribal really were on the same day, and that was Day 6, and the "Day 5" date stamp was just wrong. The opening scene of Ep3 confirms that Tribal was on Night 6, as Probst said.

- Wow, you really showed them - Before the Ep5 RC, as a sneak peek of the chocolate feast reward, Probst offers each tribe a plate with small pieces of chocolate. The Villains happily devour theirs, but Colby sets the tone for the Heroes by refusing to even try it, and the rest of the Heroes follow suit. JT hands the plate back to Probst, as Colby, Rupert, James, and JT scowl away. Probst repeats, "Free offer of chocolate! I..." Colby interrupts with "Don't need it. Let's go." Rupert adds "We don't care about the reward, we just want to win the challenge." Sadly, the humorless scolds on the Heroes tribe lose the challenge, and fail at both goals. What a shame. And then Colby sits out!

- Schmergen- what now? - This season already tempted fate by re-running "Roll With It," the challenge that led to Russ Swan's medevac in S19: Samoa (dehydration can happen at any time, so sure, whatever). But the real head-scratcher is doing "Schmergenbrawl" a second time. This is where Ben Browning was actively trying to injure people on the other tribe (which JT, Rob, Russell, and Rupert also do this time around). And it was the challenge that led to Mike Borassi's (second) medevac! Shockingly, James sustained a torn knee ligament (after being tackled by some guy named Russell Hantz), and despite still surviving the Ep5 Tribal, was voted out the next day (the docs recommended a medevac after the initial injury). I know this challenge grew out of something the crew enjoyed as a fun break-time activity, but come on, everyone had just seen that this one was vicious and brutal when there were actual stakes, a month earlier. It's absolute insanity to trot it right out again the next season, to (predictably) similar contestant-disabling results. Great work, Survivor. And it's not even that entertaining to watch! (Although I did enjoy JT missing on roughly ten shots, while Candice, Tyson, and Jerri all landed one.)