Warning: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED EPISODE 4 OF SURVIVOR 44.

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Welcome to Survivor Vibe Check! Each Thursday this season, Blake Schuster and Bryan Kalbrosky will chat about last night’s episode to see who is thriving and who is straight up not having a good time on the islands of Fiji. Season 44 got off to an absolutely chaotic start.  Episode 2 sowed strategies and alliances. Episode 3 exposed some tribal priorities. And Wednesday’s episode 4 just changed the game again.

Let’s dig into it.

Blake: Well, we got our tribe swap….kinda. Carson, Jamie and Josh were placed on new tribes (each with an immunity idol!) and in all the chaos Sarah ended up voted out. I think Yam Yam really struck a nerve with Carolyn, who appears reluctantly in control of the game. After eight days of getting pushed around, she’s finally pushing back and winning. Do you think Yam Yam got the message? 

Bryan: That was a very fun episode. I see where Carolyn’s frustration is coming from! You can’t just continue to use my name as a decoy over and over again without it becoming a problem. She and Josh made some strategic alignments and assessed the situation well with who they could trust and who they could not, and they immediately became the power players on their tribe with Yam Yam suddenly at the bottom. He definitely got the message. One question I had for you, though: Why does Josh feel so inclined to lie about being a surgeon? I feel like that isn’t the type of profession you need to hide on the island.

Blake: Well if he wanted to dumb himself down, his math skills definitely did the trick. How did he not think his lie through? That tribal council is going to have a massive impact on Yam Yam, and in turn the rest of the game, because they spent a good chunk of time on the island discussing how Josh was a blatant liar and Carolyn decided to align with him anyways. I would expect the niceties start to drop and things get a bit more cutthroat. 

I feel bad for Sarah, but not as bad as she’s going to feel when she realizes she went home with a fake idol.

Bryan: Her post-boot interview was a season-defining moment for me. I think this season could become uniquely centered around fake idols, specifically because production is helping the contestants by literally giving it to them. So when she said that she is joining an elite club of folks going home with idols in their pockets, little did she realize that she was actually creating her own club of getting sent packing with a fake idol in her pocket. It sucks she caught the brunt of Josh’s very real idol after our long-awaited swap, though, and I do think it is worth mentioning how we’ve now had four women in a row voted off. Not great, Bob!

Blake: Yeah, this is a big issue. In this case, it would’ve made way more sense for Carolyn to secretly target Yam Yam (as much as I enjoy watching him play). If you want to send a message that you’re not here to be a decoy, make an example of the guy who keeps suggesting you play the decoy. I do think Sarah is smart and capable and that definitely made her a threat. On the other hand, what good does sending a message to Yam Yam do if now you’ve alienated an ally who now has every reason not to trust you?

Bryan: I’ll tell you this much: If this tribe goes back to tribal, my bet is that it would be the last for Yam Yam. But regardless, with such a small tribe, we’re probably getting fairly close to a merge.

Blake: Let’s say Carolyn does target Yam Yam, she’d hold so much power not only in her tribe, but in the game. She has an idol, she knows Josh has an idol and she knows Sarah has a fake. That is a massive advantage. The edit does not make clear why Sarah was the target and I really wish we had more insight. It feels like Carolyn’s power play has a ton of potential to backfire. Am I missing something?

Bryan: My guess: Carolyn, as the more senior member of the tribe between the recently-formed alliance, made the executive decision. We have some postgame press from Sarah indicating that Carolyn just plainly did not like her. She explained that Carolyn hid the fake idol about three feet from where Sarah slept, so she may have specifically wanted Sarah to find it. Sarah also said that Josh didn’t like how much she questioned him about the details of his backstory, and also, she apparently told him she thought he had an idol — which he denied. So as much as it could have been a power play to get rid of Yam Yam, now that they’ve got numbers, they can just get him next.

Blake: That’s understandable, I suppose. Is there anything Survivor should do next season so it’s not just women on the chopping block tribal after tribal?

Bryan: I think the challenges are what they are. But let’s get rid of the three tribe non-sense and start with two bigger ones instead. With such small tribes, it’s easy to vote out one woman early in the game because of some perceived notion they can’t help in challenges — and then it just torpedoes from there. What say you? 

Blake: The three tribe format has to go. It does not work in a shorter game. You can still get different factions of people going at each other in two tribes. I also think part of the problem is the pace of the game overall. I’m not sure we’ll see Survivor go back to 39 days anytime soon, but that extra time was crucial for players to develop relationships and alliances. That makes a huge difference in how you approach the social game. When everything just continues to rely on the ability to win challenges, we’ve seen time and time again how women get blamed for failing even with that’s a patently false narrative in the vast majority of cases.

Bryan: I think it would be a travesty to not address this before Season 45. With four women in a row voted off to start the game, it’s absolutely not a coincidence.

Blake: Jeff has been good about confronting players in the past and having tough discussions. I think this warrants another even if the finger ends up pointed back at him and the producers. They can’t ignore the issue.

Bryan: If we can fix “Come on in, guys!” we can fix this! On another note, during our preview of the next episode, it certainly seemed like we could get a medical evacuation for Matthew. I’m not sure how much longer his shoulder is going to hold up.

Blake: If we don’t get a merge next week, I can’t imagine it won’t be too much longer before it happens. Matthew is clearly in trouble. If it’s not a med evac that does him in, the post-merge endurance challenges may put him in some serious danger.

Bryan: I hope he is able to stay in the game. That’s no way to go out. But you’re right: individual immunity with an injury doesn’t sound fun. Has anyone impressed you during challenges? Danny doing flips was awesome.

Blake: No one who really stands out yet, to be honest. But I don’t think anyone is really trying to stand out at the moment.