Just as the audience was getting comfortable with and excited about the two tribes format again, Survivor 51's Episode 4 yanked that away, and replaced it with the three tiny tribes the New Era was pretty sure you loved, you just didn't realize it. As if a certain host had asked and answered himself, "Am I so out of touch? No, it's the viewers who are wrong."

It was a deflating choice for both the fans and the players, as several of the latter were thrust into precarious positions simply by drawing the wrong buff. (It was at least nice of the show to let Kilby describe that in fan parlance as a "swap screw.") The results were, to bring back one of Jeff Probst's favorite "monster"-era mantras, "There's nowhere to hide." Oh well, at least there were no votes lost in the process.

Perhaps the most frustrating part was Jeff Probst's taunting presentation of the swap, briefly fooling the players (and the audience members who didn't watch the previews) into thinking that they would be returning to the S24: One World-like format of the premiere: 17 people, one beach. (Or I guess S50-like: A merge at 17? That hasn't been done since last season!) "It would be pretty interesting to do that now!" Probst said, leadingly. "Yes! It would!" yelled the audience. Giving the players time to react, he elicited a "That would be amazing!" endorsement from Kilby.

But then ... ha ha, hilarious joke! We're actually "going old-school" to the season before last (and the eight before that), and just having three tribes of six. Halloo, hillay! What a rare and splendiferous treat! (Well, at least we would have had three tribes of six, if Rob hadn't quit.)

You do wonder *why* it was necessary to go with three tribes instead of swapping to two new tribes, which would have been more interesting. This was a bit awkward as is: the uneven numbers meant two people had to sit out of the immunity challenge, a big ask on brand-new tribes. That could have been trimmed to one sit-out, had there been only two tribes. Yes, they had already built and tested the challenges for three tribes, but they had two full days to pare them back to two lanes from three. This week's challenge could have easily added one more bucket, and had two dedicated maze-turners, and voilà, a challenge for two tribes of seven. It wasn't *that* hard. It seems less like they needed three tribes, and more like someone high up really wanted it, and was unwilling to change. (There are logistical benefits to it, which I'll get to below, but come on.)

Not like this

It was a dispiriting turn of events, because the fanbase (and the host in real time!) seemed delighted at the strategic complexity that the return to two large tribes seemed to have reintroduced to the game. So the audience was holding its collective breath to see how the ill-timed swap to three small tribes played out. As it turned out, the fear was warranted. Just about every swapped tribe ended up with a simple majority and one or two people very obviously on the bottom. Jenna was one of them, and while from her exit interviews it sounds like she really thought she had a shot at swinging Devin and Jelly to her side, it was obvious to the audience (at least) that she was doomed as soon as Savu got a very late start on the challenge-ending maze stage of the IC. They lost the challenge, just like it looked like they would, and then Jenna lost her spot in the game. Same, same.

To be fair, a driving force here is a simple numbers one: By starting with 21 players, production more or less had to make the move to three tribes at this point. We're entering Day 10. There are 16 players left. Even with a Final Three, that means they need to eliminate 13 people in just 16 days (and there appear to be only eight pre-finale episodes left). So, assuming you start the finale with five people left, you only have eight episodes in which to get 11 people out - meaning you will need to eliminate two people per episode three times. (It would have been four if Rob hadn't quit!) Three tribes lets you do that at least once in the pre-merge, as we will see next week, with both losing tribes voting someone out. We will then need two more post-merge double boots - either two random-draw split Tribals (as seen in S50), or one plus Double Duos (as seen in S50). Or they could do Blood Moon again, I guess (as seen in S50). Not exactly "going old-school" as Probst claimed.

Then again, while we're stuck with three tribes for an episode or three for numbers/logistical reasons, it's at least a better option than random-drawn post-merge split Tribals. Random-drawn swap tribes aren't the best, but at least they allow players a couple of days or more to try to change their fate. The split Tribals format squashes that down to mere hours. (Or we could have just started with 18 or 19 and there would have been no need.) So ... it's fine, I guess. We're making the best of a crappy situation, even if it's one that is mostly the consequence of poor initial production choices. Except that unfortunately, by leaving the swap to the luck of the draw, we also ended up with multiple people likely being swap-screwed. How could this have been better executed? That's easy: By letting the contestants pick the swapped tribes.

Really, this is a repeat of a similar unforced flub from the premiere: After having the cast (minus Lewis) spend part of a day together, post-marooning with no tribes, that led to ... basically nothing. Production then assigned everyone to two tribes, rather than allowing a player pick, throwback twists that were used in S10: Palau and in S14: Fiji. To be fair, a "first impressions" draft might have gone poorly. In this spot, however, on Day 9, after three episodes of two tribes, there was ample information and experience available for a compelling player-picked draft. Think about the complexity of actually making tough choices here (we'll assume they drew rocks for captains):

Let's say Jelly is one of the captains. Does the Helicopter alliance risk exposing itself this early? If Jelly does try to get them all on her tribe, what if she's thwarted by Devin and Ori being likely first picks by other tribes? Maybe she misses out on both? More generally, let's say a captain has already picked themselves three close allies, do they spend the last one to two picks on obvious cannon fodder? Or do they go for tribe unity, picking exclusively people they trust? Or do they try to maximize challenge performance? The players know each other pretty well by now, it's a pity they weren't given the chance to demonstrate that. Not only did Jeff Probst's secret bag of buffs not produce particularly interesting swapped tribes, it robbed us of a golden opportunity to watch the players strategize on the spot.

Oh well, maybe next time (or in S53 or S54, more likely).

Hey man, nice shot - Uncle Camerman appreciation thread

There was a lot of fun camera work and editing in this episode, something that rarely gets recognized by the fandom at large. And seeing as I've already written "Please Mr. Probst, no more three small tribes," about 10 times in the last five years, let's focus on the positive, instead:

1. They literally did - This is more of an audio (and admittedly subtle) dad joke, but as the Toka tribe sees the boat arrive to take them to the swap, there's various overlapping yelling, but then we hear a very clear, enthusiastic "Let's go!" And then, as requested, Toka leaves for the swap.

2. He doth bestride... - I've long been an enthusiast for the intrinsic comedy (because Probst is not that tall, not that there's anything wrong with that) of the "Giant Probst, tiny contestants" shot framing - "forced perspective," the same technique that was used to make Gandalf and Aragorn look enormous relative to the hobbits in the Lord of the Rings movies. There's been a bunch already this season, including a good example at the swap (above) ...

... but that was preceded by one that was even better, and may never be topped (above). Well, actually there's a slight tweak that could improve it: We begin tight on the two boats heading straight in to shore, and as we zoom out we see two legs framing the shot, and as we zoom out a little more we then realize it's Probst, and he stands there astride the approaching boats like a mighty, living Colossus. We zoom out just enough for Probst to span the screen vertically, then cut to a different angle of a close-up of the boats landing, or whatever. If and when this happens, we will finally have achieved the absolute apex of the form. It is all I want. Thank you in advance.

3. Welcome back, Courtney Marit! As you will no doubt recall, when Bruce Kanegai had a painful intestinal blockage in S12: Panama, and was waiting for the medical team to transport him out of the game, his tribemate Courtney tried to comfort him by singing to him, despite Bruce's repeated pleas for her to stop. Here, we had poor, very ill Lewis ("I'm just troiying not to poop me pants") who's flat on the ground, desperately trying to rest, and who's next to him but our old friend Eric, happily chopping away at a coconut, while singing a song about how the new Dani tribe is going to win immunity tomorrow. (Points for Eric's prescience, I guess.) To be fair, this might even be worse than Courtney's performance, since she was at least trying to help.

4. [Angie Layton voice] "Sandwiches!" - Devin had a really clever confessional about Jelly and himself being the true swing voters on new Savu, as they were choosing between Alexis and Jenna as the targets. "If they're the bread, I'm the PB, and I got my girl Jelly, right in the middle." As always, a top-tier quote from Devin, but the highlight for me was right after he finished saying that, the editors added a little flourish of their own and tossed in a perfect visual representation of this Jelly-and-PB sandwich, above, as they went to the commercial break. If it's right in front of you, as Ori said at his first Tribal, take the layup.

5. Sunsets are pretty - They've kind of fallen out of favor in recent seasons, and I get that it's staged, and it's probably boring, repetitive, and tiring for the contestants to keep "hiking to Tribal" along the beach until the field producer decides they have enough good footage to use, but this version of the Tribal hike was really visually spectacular. We don't need it every episode, but when you can stick the landing like this, it's worth it.

The tempestuous teapot of tepid takes

- The what ring, now? - One of the plusses of moving to a brand new camp (the very obvious minus being no shelter) is that there ought to be a third idol hidden there somewhere. But in the preview, the "blood ring" appears to be at Dina camp (looks like Sharonda showing it to Linnea in the shot above, at least to my eyes). Did they get that instead of an idol? Is it as good as an idol? I'm guessing this is why Probst warned that you may not get the same idol at each camp, which seemed a weird thing to say when it was not true for Toka and Savu. Sigh.

- The color that dare not be described accurately - The Dina tribe chyrons are very clearly pink. Their buffs are pink (the CBS store actually calls it "magenta," which I guess is slightly more accurate). The painted items in their challenge lanes are pink. The ring around the logo on their camp sign is pink. So what does Jeff Probst call them? The "red tribe," of course.

- End of an era? - With AI creeping unasked-for into everything, I thought there would be a decent chance the age-old process of recoloring buffs (the "Buff-o-matic") for confessionals filmed around a tribe swap/merge might have been turned over to a machine-learning image manipulation algorithm in the Open Era. So imagine my surprise to see that the show instead ... just did the effective, efficient, low-tech thing and instead had people talk about their pre-swap tribe with no visible buff, then put their brand-new buff on for talking about post-swap activities (above, before and after). Well done!

- Whale flip watch - So far, every time (three straight episodes) when Jeff Probst has retrieved the whale idol from a tribe, he's put it down on the podium face-first (above, top). Yet come the end of the challenge, the idol has miraculously flipped to its correct position, pointing up. This time, there was an added wrinkle of adding the second idol (which Probst at least pointed up). So what did the end of the challenge bring? You guessed it.

Probst is generally off yelling at the contestants during the challenge, so it's unlikely that he's the one rearranging the idols before it's time to hand them back. So my favorite imagined storyline from this season so far is there's someone on the crew who has recently added "Jeff Probst's official whale flipper" to their CV. Maybe most employers won't recognize the significance of that, but someone should!