Survivor: Worlds Apart Episode 5 Thoughts

After some thought, I realized why San Juan del Sur seemed like a boring season - it had a lot of decent game play, and was pretty minimal on the absurd and crazy. That might give somebody like me opportunity to discuss what might be the optimal play at any given time, but in general it makes for a boring watch. You need great game play to be captivating, but more important than that, you need some really bad game play. Survivor: Worlds Apart has been nothing, if not giving in the bad game play category.

So was our first bad game player, telling a giant lie that superfans Shirin and Max could see right through. We followed up with Vince, who was done in not by his own bad game play, but by Nina's horrendous decision to tell Will that Vince had been talking about targeting him. And of course, Nina's own play ended up being her own undoing.

Lindsay ended up yelling at her tribemates one too many times to move on, and though she was funny in confessionals, she took things too far when attacking tribemates. Max, aside from having annoying habits that alienated his tribemates, decided to continually talk to Shirin away from the rest of his tribe, which is a big red flag that any Survivor player can pick up on.

And then this week, Joaquin did not get away unscathed. He thought that he had smoothed things over with Sierra, and had her on board to be a part of a 4 person alliance with him, Tyler and Rodney. But he didn't think that Rodney would be an issue with Sierra, and he just kinda moved along, not willing to make sure that the wound had been healed.

And the bigger loser this week, Rodney, did not help his own cause by just assuming that it was a game and that Sierra could move past his brutal outburst 2 tribal councils ago. He just had to apologize sincerly to Sierra and things could have been just fine. Instead he chose to assume Sierra was good and not make any overtures to her. That, along with an arrogance that he was pulling one over on his tribe when his actions were rather transparent to them, lead to him being just as blindsided as his best bro Joaquin when the votes were revealed.

This season hasn't shown there to be anybody who is going to make a really big play that leaves people stunned. But it has shown us a lot of players who are willing to make bad plays while boasting about how great a position they are in, thus feeding us a continuous buffet of comeuppance. Without the great bold player, this is the best thing that could happen in a season.