Survivor: Winners at War Leans Into Some Messed-Up Narratives

SPOILERS for the outcome of Wednesday night's episode of Survivor ahead.

For anyone who might have been unconvinced last week, this week's Survivor: Winners at War cemented the notion that the show's 40th season has surrendered itself to the looney-tunes antics of Tony Vlachos. Tonight's episode featured: Tony scrambling to patch things up with Sarah after breaking off from their alliance to vote out Sophie; Tony setting up a "spy nest" overlooking the water well that didn't even come into play in this episode; Tony winning his third immunity challenge in a row; Tony aggressively lobbying first Ben and then Jeremy to vote out Kim even though she couldn't vote him out this week anyway. Tony has become so much the central figure of the show that as soon as we saw Kim declare her intent to target Tony, you knew she was toast. And toast she was.

Kim's elimination at the hands of Tony's alliance feeds into one of the season's worst narratives: the notion that Tony and the other alpha males like Jeremy and Ben are the "real threats," while the other players (largely women) are bottom-feeders. Tony yet again verbalized this notion in this episode, telling Ben that Kim was rallying the other "lower-tier" winners, and later characterizing them as rats. It should be remembered that Kim Spradlin won her original season, Survivor: One World in an absolute rout, having essentially run that season from post to post, delivering one of the most dominant Survivor performances of all time. To characterize her as a lower-tier rat simply because she's going against three of Survivor alpha-male darlings is laughably incorrect. But with Tony now narrating the remainder of the season, his word goes basically unchallenged.

The episode's other cruddy narrative came from the goings on at Edge of Extinction, where this week's task saw the eleven exiled players traversing the island to retrieve coconuts one at a time, with the first six finishers earning fire tokens. Some players, like Natalie, Sophie, Yul, Tyson, and Parvati thrived, while others like unathletic Adam Klein and no-spring-chicken Boston Rob struggled. When Wendell edged out Danni for the sixth winning spot, the competition effectively ended, but an exhausted and bloodied Boston Rob (he'd fallen and cut up his elbow earlier) insisted on finishing. His stated reasoning: that he didn't want to be a quitter. Edge of Extinction has had a perseverance vs. quitting narrative all season, since the only way to be fully eliminated is to voluntarily surrender. When two-time winner Sandra Diaz-Twine did exactly that, the debate within Survivor fandom surrounded whether Sandra tarnished her legacy by "quitting." Boston Rob grafting a quitter's rationale onto his continuing to punish his body for a competition that had already ended was even more foolish, and the fact that the show ran with it and seemed to endorse it was deeply silly.

The root of both of these narratives are Tony and Rob, two of the longtime darlings of Survivor and host/executive producer Jeff Probst. The show has chosen to endorse their respective narratives this season: Tony the alpha-male "real" winner, and Rob the virtuous warrior who can't quit. With so many other interesting players with their own less chiched and dubious narratives, these two are particularly frustrating.

As for the rest of this week's happenings…

Winner of the Week: Tony, again, who gets Jeremy, Ben, and Nick to vote with him and eliminate the one person gunning for him the hardest.

Sub-Winner(s) of the Week: Jeremy, a strong player in his previous two seasons who this year keeps getting bailed out by either idols, advantages, or other players making big moves on his behalf.

War of the Week: Ben versus Jeremy, as the former allies fell out to the point where Ben refused to even speak to Jeremy, but who still managed to vote together for Kim.

Alliance Report: As expected, Tony and Sarah managed to patch up their bruised Cops Are Us alliance before the first commercial break. Meanwhile, the momentarily strong Kim/Denise/Michele/Nick alliance fell apart before it could even get going.

Dispatches from the Edge of Extinction: Natalie continues to re-assert herself as the player to beat on the Edge of Extinction, with a huge advantage in fire tokens and a seemingly undiminished competitive edge. Meanwhile, Amber Mariano continues to do nothing but quietly support her husband.

Advantage Report: Okay, let's see …

• Ben found the immunity idol that Sophie was voted out with, and was forced to share that knowledge with Tony, who caught him finding it.
• Tony has an immunity idol that will likely get him through one of the three remaining tribal councils between here and the final four.
• Michele lent her dubiously helpful 50/50 advantage to Jeremy, who nearly played it before thinking better of it.

Fire Token Report: After this week's wheelings and dealings …

• Natalie remains the 1% of Survivor island, holding eight fire tokens, after winning two more tonight.
• Denise began the episode with three tokens, scored two more with her Immunity Challenge win, and then got another from Kim after she got voted out, bringing her total to six.
• Kim distributed her other two fire tokens to Sarah (who now has three) and Michele (who now has one).
• Tony won two fire tokens with his immunity win, though he gave one to Nick as repayment for stepping down to allow Tony to win Nick now has two tokens.
• Ben holds one token.
• Jeremy has none.

War of the Weeks Ahead: Next week's two-hour episode should whittle the final seven down to the final five.

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Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.