The following contains spoilers for Episode 2 of Survivor Season 43.Season 43 ofSurvivoris still in the stages of setting its tone, and it seems to be a similar one to what fans got to see in the two previous seasons (asSurvivorhas been trying a bit of a refresh post-Season 40). It’s still very much character-focused, the “characters” in question being this season’s cast of players, who are widely varied in personality and background. There is still a lot of gameplay, obviously, but it takes a little bit of a backseat in these early episodes (as usual) to give time for the audience to get to know the people on their screen a little better.
The show is also starting to set up the relationships between the players. Building relationships and trust with fellow tribemates is such anintegral part of the game, and it’s usually one of the first things that players focus on. Of course, many of these alliances change as the game goes on and players pursue the course that will help them with their own interests the most, but it’s always interesting to see which players immediately click.
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The episode starts out with a classicSurvivorstorm, entailing a night that’s so wet and rainy that no one is able to get any sleep. Storms like this are a constant on the show, happening at least once a season and always reminding the audience of the kind of natural elements that these players are up against. Focusing on the elements like this feels like classicSurvivor, where the goal was to actually survive as much as it was to play a good social game and win the prize money, and it’s a welcome reminder inmore recent seasonsof what the show has always been about.
The episode then spends a lot of time establishing the backstories of some of the players, as well as their relationships with each other. Jesse narrates his goal to create connections with as many of his fellow Vesi tribe members as possible. Jesse is getting a lot of screen time (and narration time) in the show so far, seems like a smart player, andhas a compelling backstory, which makes him a perfect candidate to be one of the final players, and his edit on the show seems to be signaling to the audience that he is one to watch.
Jesse mentions that Justine is the one member of his tribe that he just isn’t clicking with (which is foreshadowing what happens later on in the episode). At this point, the editors decide to intercut Jesse saying this with clips of Justine being grossed out by a spider and commenting on how dirty her nails are. This specific editing choice is disappointing, as it just paints Justine as a sort of shallow girly-girl archetype when the audience doesn’t know much about her and will take that away as their main impression of her. Even if she did act that way in those instances, it’s irritating to seeSurvivorplay into these tropes, making it seem as though that was Justine’s entire personality.
Again, while there are plenty of gameplay elements to be found, the episode is mostly focused on setting up the players as characters, so fans who aren’t as interested in that kind of table-setting might not be as interested in this episode. That being said, the show does a good job of balancing these elements and still making the backstory sequences interesting. The audience learns more about Geo’s struggles with coming out to his family and gives him the space to bring awareness to the high rates of suicide and depression within the LGBTQIA+ community, and Cody opens up about losing a friend to cancer at a young age and how that shaped his perspective on life. These sequences not only give fans more insight into the players themselves, but they also providemoments of emotional impactfor the show that reminds the audience that these are complex humans that they’re watching on screen, not fictional characters.
After a tiring Immunity Challenge, Vesi is trying to figure out a game plan, as they lost the challenge and will therefore begoing to Tribal Council. The obvious choice seems to be to vote out Nneka, as she was a hindrance during the challenge, but Jesse thinks that Justine could be a big threat because she’s apparently good at lying. They start to solidify a solid plan, until Cody goes into the jungle and finds a Beware Advantage that he immediately decides to open, perhaps momentarily forgetting that these advantages take away your vote until you complete the task, which is a very risky move right before Tribal. The advantage states that he has to acquire special beads off of everyone’s bags (and they have to be given willingly, not stolen) in order to gain an immunity idol.
This is actually a very fun advantage, as it requires the players touse their social skillsto get what they need. Cody was a great person to get this advantage because of his general outgoing personality and his relationship with the tribe, and he manages to convince almost all of them to give him their beads to decorate the hat he made out of palm fronds earlier. The editing really lays out the sequence of events brilliantly, as he confides his problem in Jesse and Nneka, who try to help him get all of the beads in a great show of acting from all of them. Only Noelle is reluctant to give hers up, as she has made them into a keepsake bracelet that she doesn’t seem to want to part with.
Vesi goes into Tribal Council down two voters, as Cody lost his because of the Beware Advantage and Dwight lost his during the “Risk or No Risk” game during the last episode. That is, untilSurvivorreveals the tricky editingthey employed this episode and shows that Noelle actually did give Cody her beads eventually, and he’s been proudly wearing them on the hat he brought to Tribal. Hilariously, it seems like all of the beads need to be present for Cody to use them as an idol, and it would look suspicious if he took them off the hat now - meaning he now effectively has an immunity idol hat that he has to bring to Tribal with him.
Justine does end up being voted out, as the tribe was clearly suspicious of her. It’s easy to tell who the big players of the season are going to be, as they’re the ones getting the most focus, and unfortunately, Justine was not one of them. This istypical of any reality show, of course; the people most important to the story are going to get the most screen time. As it continues to set up the early game, it seems likeSurvivoris still committed to letting the audience get to know the people on screen before anything else, which is smart because it makes fans much more likely to get invested in the outcome of the game overall when they can relate to at least one person in this colorful cast of characters.
