Kyle hugs too much

Okay… welcome to Survivor Thanksgiving food auction, everyone! We have some incredible uncovered items for you today. Turrrrrrkey. Mash potatoes. Stuffffffffffing. Sauce. And of course all the fixins. The good news is that you don’t even have to bid money for any of these items. You also don’t have to worry about losing your voice. The bad news is that you have to spend a lot more time hanging out with your family than you probably want. You know what I’m talking about. The fact that you’re sitting here reading this recap instead of asking your visiting Uncle Curtis about his latest hip replacement tells me you know what I’m talking about.

Yes, it’s a special holiday edition of Survivor summary! I hope you are happy, healthy and hungry for lots of side dishes this week. As for me, I’ll be spending Thanksgiving in New Jersey, which also happens to be the title of my upcoming Hallmark holiday movie. Ah, Thanksgiving — the holiday where we argue with loved ones about how many hours of football we’re allowed to watch, while also convincing over-invested family members to relax on all the Black Friday stuff. It’s also the holiday season when the canned vs. fresh cranberry sauce debate is an actual thing and almost as fraught as any kind of political discussion that takes place around the table.

Of course the debate over who to vote off this week’s episode of Survivor 47 didn’t seem so heated as another player received the vast majority of scrolls. Let’s recap episode 11 before our families find out we’re hiding and demand our immediate return. (But if they don’t, feel free to avoid them for even longer by adding your two cents in our comments section below.)

Sue checks herself

Let’s give thanks this Thanksgiving for having an emotional player like 45-year-old Sue. Emotional players are fun because there is nothing better than watching a contestant with a grudge ignore logic, reason, and strategy to achieve that grudge at all costs. And I fully expected Sue to blow a gasket after her number one ally, Gabe, was voted out by everyone, including her number two ally, Caroline. But give Sue credit! While she was clearly seething behind the scenes, she kept her cool at Tribal Council after the match back at camp.

She was also smart not to sever strategic ties with Caroline, but stumbled only mildly by explaining, “I just don’t like disloyal people. It’s just who I am. It’s not that I don’t you…” It’s not too far off from Rodney Dangerfield asking if one Caddyshack hat came with a free bowl of soup, only to then tell Ted Knight “Looks good on you though.” (By the way, find me a better comedic performance than Ted Knight in Caddyshack. I’m waiting. Also so strange that the one person apparently not consuming massive amounts of cocaine while the movie was making it somehow still managed to be the funniest thing about it.)

The fact that Sue was able to forgive Caroline allowed Tweedledee and Tweedledum to join Andy, Rachel and Teeny to form a new voting bloc of five people who really like hanging out at the watering hole. After a transition shot with a drop of water landing on a human skull (possibly belonging to TK?), we saw Kyle, Genevieve and Sam together and clearly isolated as the three perceived threats to the tribe who had no choice but to support the others as shields. While Kyle’s boast about his ability to lie, manipulate and deceive felt a bit hollow, but far more believable was Genevieve’s claim that “I’d rather be a villain that people didn’t connect with than that best friend who killed their dream.” In this game, she seems to have been both.

Ocean bound

This Thanksgiving, let’s give thanks for the season’s most entertaining travel game. And one that took place not on land, but on the sea!

There were three players (Genevieve, Sam, Rachel) who all wanted to join, but Rachel ended up being the one to pull the ceremonial Paschal English Purple Rock of Fate, allowing her to get on the boat. You all know I’m not a big fan of travel. The games aren’t always that exciting. You must have a PhD. in statistics to keep track of who has lost how many votes. It’s just not my jam.

But this one was super legit. First the trip went to a floating platform in the middle of the sea… perhaps inspired by the local area liquid Cloud 9 bar. The puzzle Rachel had to complete – pushing all the balls into appropriate matching columns – wasn’t that remarkable in itself, but the brilliant twist is that the entire puzzle platform was tied to a rope connected to a series of weights that would pull. rope into the sea. If she didn’t finish the puzzle in time, the last weight would pull both the puzzle and the advantage into the water. It is much more dramatic than an hourglass.

I can’t express how well this competition was edited with the close-ups of the rope rolling out into the water and the weights dropping into the depths below. It created a level of excitement for both the competitor and the viewers that you wouldn’t normally expect from simply moving around a series of colored balls. Rachel won with seconds to spare and as a bonus we still got to see the platform being pulled into the water. Granted, not as good as if she’d still been working on it and holding the platform so she was dragged into the water with it… but still pretty good. However, the well-edited challenges were not over this week.

The Great Collapse

Let’s thank this Thanksgiving for montages of reality TV contestants getting super frustrated to see all their hard work come crashing down before their eyes. It’s the absolute best! This is why I love any kind of stacking challenge Survivor. I actually wrote down the words “NOT ENOUGH FALLING” while watching this week’s immunity contest (apparently not realizing I had accidentally hit the “caps lock” key at one point).

And then, as if on cue (or hitting some sort of Mark Burnett degaussing button), everyone’s stacks of “IMMUNITY” blocks began to fall. One right after the other. It was glorious. Poor Teeny, so slow and steady all along, was only a quarter away… and it all crumbled to the ground like my beloved Washington Commanders after a missed extra point against their archrivals. Is it bad that I laughed at Teeny’s misfortune? Seriously, does that make me a bad person? And I love Teeny! Teeny was my pick of episode 1 to win! Teeny is from New Jersey! Teeny wears a ridiculous shirt with a boxing gorilla on it! What’s not to love about Teeny? And yet I took a perverse amount of joy in her misfortune here. And everyone else’s misfortune that fell right after.

It eventually came down to Rachel and Kyle, where Rachel had placed all her blocks and took about the same approximate time it would take to see a whole Harry Potter movie marathon (including all that crap Fantastic beasts movie!) to get back to her platform. Will Kyle catch her in time? The editing was so top notch throughout this sequence, building the tension as the stacks fell and Rachel tried to hold off her next closet competitor. And the music played a big part in that too. Just great produce choices all around on this one. And kudos to impatient Rachel for taking her husband’s word for it and pulling off an individual immunity win. Big episode for Rachel!

Hugothon 2024

This Thanksgiving, let’s give thanks for two exciting nominees who may have been voted out. With Kyle necklace-less, the question became whether the others would finally take their shot at the challenge king, or take the crafty “horror movie on the legs” instead. But that wasn’t really the big question. While Andy and Rachel absolutely preferred to eliminate Genevieve, even coming armed with facts and figures to further their case, Sue would most likely have immolated herself if Kyle wasn’t the choice.

Regular readers (Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?) know I haven’t understood the tribe’s obsession with taking out Kyle, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out that juries don’t respect challenge winners. Kyle and Probst even pointed it out themselves at Tribal Council, where the host master general apparently decided to beat Andy up by dishing out his own facts and figures when it comes to challenging beasts that have not won Survivor.

The show tried its best to make it seem like a choice between one-buck-twenty Kyle and low-tribal-council-energy Genevieve, but the vote became pretty obvious when Rachel mentioned that other names had been discussed besides the four* (*actually three-and-a-half) time individual immunity winner and Kyle actually got his walking parchment.

And then Kyle did the most Kyle thing imaginable by thanking everyone who just voted him out for their friendship and kind words about him and his family. He hugged players, he hugged the host, I even wonder if he went and hugged the judges and they just cut it out for time as each hug was like an extended 12″ dance remix that seemed to never end. ( Which would be a real shame if they cut it, because any opportunity to see Sol wearing a vest is an opportunity that should be taken.)

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God, I can’t tell you how much I would have loved to have Sue’s brain mic up during all of this. Sue, who can’t stand Kyle and could never get over the voice he gave her. Sue, who was tired of hearing about how poor Kyle was. Sue who wrote Tweedle Dee about the vote she used to send him to the jury. I can only assume she didn’t agree with Gabe’s assessment of Kyle being a “hero” or Sierra’s view of him being a “gentleman.”

Kyle told us this week that he had the ability to lie, manipulate and deceive, but honestly, I never bought it. The guy is just too clean for this game. It would actually have been super interesting to see how he would have done had he made it to the final three. No one seemed to respect his strategic game at all, but they (outside of Sue) seemed to like the guy, so who knows.

Even at this point, who is the insider on the jury? Genevieve is respected, but I am not convinced that she has created the personal bonds necessary to win the jury’s votes. Her decision to emotionally separate herself from players could end up costing her. Andy keeps telling us he controls the game, but it’s equally remarkable how no one other tells us. My feeling at this point is that Rachel (respected, liked) and Teeny (liked a lot) are actually best placed to win votes if they can make it to the end. But who cares what I think. Who does you do you think you will get the most jury votes if they make it to the final three? Hit the comments below to weigh in on your choice and why.

We also have some other tidbits for you to enjoy, like an exclusive deleted scene, as well as Jeff Probst talking about why he “enjoys Survivor more than ever.” Probst also explains his comment to Kyle after extinguishing his torch. Due to Thanksgiving, my exit interview with Kyle will be delayed until Monday, but I plan to give 120 percent anyway. And I’ll leave you with this Thanksgiving Hot Take as I prepare to consume copious amounts of food: Stuffing is the best side dish, and it’s not even close. Feel free to nominate your favorite Turkey dish in the comments , as I scarf down several balls of the crisp.