Now that was a satisfying episode of Survivor. There’s something about this format that makes a comeuppance narrative extremely fun to watch, especially when it is a comeuppance narrative that so neatly fits into the span of one episode. Drew, you big, dumb, buffoon of a man, it was fun to watch you get what you deserve.
From the beginning of the episode it was fairly obvious the season was finally going to swerve from the tired “Coyopa is a giant failure” rut it was stuck in. Not only did Coyopa come dangerously close to winning the Reward Challenge, but the action was also mainly focused at Hunahpu, specifically on what a general idiot Drew appears to be. It turns out the “goofball” edit Hunahpu got in the past few weeks was all just a primer for this episode, where all of the tribe’s goofball tendencies are revealed to be because the tribe, as a whole, is kind of a disaster. Other than winning challenges, nothing about the tribe is in sync, and these divisions are revealed when Drew decides to throw the Immunity Challenge because he thinks it is time to cull the Hunahpu herd. Drew thinks this because he is a moron.
“Drew is a moron” is the general theme of the entire episode, and for good reason: He’s hilariously overconfident about his gameplay and place in his tribe, without anything to back up this confidence. Drew is just that dumb, overconfident guy who thinks he shits roses that everyone else wants to smell. He demonstrates this reckless overconfidence in a prescient way when his tribe finds their lost flint and Drew decides to ask Jeff if they can make a reverse trade for the fishing gear they gave up, to which Jeff hilariously shoots down. This little peek into Drew’s confidence game turns out to be hilarious foreshadowing for the rest of the episode, when this confidence does nothing but send him to his doom.
Take the Immunity Challenge, for example. Drew is convinced his tribe is winning too much and he needs to work to get rid of the people who want to get rid of him, so he decides to throw the Immunity Challenge. That it turns out to be an Immunity Challenge he can easily throw is a genuine blessing, because everything that happens once Hunahpu loses is true gold. Drew is convinced he has enough sway with his tribe to get them to vote out anyone he wants, and what he wants is for Kelley to get voted out. His reasoning? Kelley is a huge Survivor fan who knows the strategy of the game cold, and he is convinced she is putting together an all-female alliance to take him out. Never mind the women don’t have enough of a majority to take him out without a man or two flipping to her side: Drew wants Kelley gone, and he won’t hear any arguments to the contrary.
Hilariously, though, Drew turns out to have all the pull of a toy tractor with the rest of his tribe. Everyone wants to do something different: Jon wants to vote out Julia because she has no loved one on the other tribe, Jeremy wants to vote out Keith because Keith told everyone Jeremy had an idol, and no one but Drew wants to vote out Kelley. Drew is so confident in his place in his tribe that he talks about the dangers of an all-female alliance in front of Natalie, who goes to Missy and starts plotting exactly that, if simply to take Drew out.. He even (loudly) talks about getting Kelley out when she is a few feet behind him, listening to every word. Essentially, Drew causes the very all-female alliance he is afraid of and gives them one huge target: himself. It is glorious in its simplicity, and his stupidity.
The best part about it has to be that, at least in his exit interview, Drew seems to have no self-awareness that he was the entire reason he was voted out. All he had to do was sit back and let Jon rally for Julie, or Jeremy rally for Keith, and Drew would still be doing dumb tricks on the beach with Jon while Natalie makes snide comments. Instead, he let his overconfidence take over and make him think he had a much stronger position in the game than he actually did. Considering he called the very women who voted him out “bitches” just hours before they wrote his name down, it seems as if he got exactly what he deserved.
Stray observations:
- Four people got votes in this Tribal Council. Four! Let’s have more chaos before Tribal in the future, please. It is fun.
- Drew is a ladies man, according to Alec. I mean if the ladies’ choices are between Drew and Alec… (Choose death.)
- Keith finds the idol right before the merge. This is a good thing for him considering Jeremy’s new vendetta against him.
- Reed: “What’s your return policy, Jeff?”
- Drew: “If I don’t want to win we are not going to win, and that’s what makes me the kingpin of my tribe.”