A monumental moment in show history
My goodness did we have a doozy of an episode this week on Survivor. Our fellow Georgia Tech graduate, Eva Erickson, was front and center tonight as we approach the halfway point of the season. If you missed our recap of Eva’s game from last week, you can find it here.
SPOILERS FOR SURVIVOR 48 EPISODE 5 AHEAD
We start immediately at a reward challenge with a sanctuary visit on the line, which Lagi wins easily. They munched on some breakfast pastries and got what many visitors to the sanctuary get: a full belly and a good nap.
Eva has one confessional during the sanctuary visit where she remarks how she doesn’t feel that Charity comes across fully authentic person (she uses the word “fake), a sentiment I totally understand. There of course is real depth with Charity, but there can be a natural tension between people who just don’t do superfluously nice personalities and people pleasers.
Fast forward to the immunity challenge, which involves dragging a boat in the water, lifting a heavy chest, and digging through sand, all of which Eva excels at to give Lagi solid lead going into the final ball maze.
Here is where things get interesting. Usually, a table ball maze like the one provided in this challenge can be done by anyone as long as the each ball (four in this case) is slotted on the other side of the table, but this time all four participating tribe members had to complete the maze once, no exceptions.
Everyone at this point goes through the learning curve of figuring out the timing of the track the ball goes on, and some contestants trade out as they got the feel for the maze. Eva went for that option, eventually becoming the final person on Lagi who needed to complete the maze to win the challenge. By her turn, only Lagi and Civa were left to get the final immunity spot, Lagi ahead by one ball.
It was obvious that landing the ball on the other side of the table was causing distress and overstimluating her to the point that Jeff Probst even walked over to motivate her as she fought through tears, which us as viewers knew that likely meant one of her autism episodes was bubbling up (we get quick looks at Joe during this entire sequence as he’s the only competitor who actually knows what’s going on with Eva in the moment).
Eva soon figures out the maze and lands the final ball in its socket, winning reward for Lagi. While she celebrates, the overstimulation comes over her. She has an episode, which Jeff is quick to realize and gives Joe the freedom to go over to Eva and guide her through the moment and come out the other side, doing exactly what Eva taught her at the beginning of the season if this moment ever arose. After what seemed like a couple of minutes, Eva gets through it and is ok.
Of course, considering everyone left in the game and Jeff saw this play out, Jeff gives clarification to the players that he felt in the moment it was more than ok for Joe to cross tribe lines and provide comfort to Eva (something that usually wouldn’t happen at an immunity challenge). Jeff then asks Eva about that moment, which she uses to tell her story about growing up with autism and how that’s become a part of her life she embraces. “Everyone who has autism should not be ashamed to ask for help and to receive it,” she says. It gets multiple players teared up to the point even Jeff chokes up when he talks about being a parent and wanting to see people treat his kids like he saw Joe treat Eva in that moment.
In the end, the cast were very appreciative to see and hear her story. Back at Lagi, the celebration continues with her as in a sense, this is the first time in the entire game she’s been able to be her full true self without hiding any massive parts of her life.
During the celebration, Star uses the opportunity to tell everyone that she has the Lagi beware advantage (which everyone knew she had because Eva spiilled the beans right after last week’s tribe swap), prompting a clue hunt to figure out the cipher to unlock her idol. Eva once again steps up, figuring out the cipher (the code word was “silent”) and unlocking the idol, which Star lets her keep (Star couldn’t figure out the clues for an entire week, keeping that idol would’ve been A CHOICE).
So, Eva this week had the winning moment in the immunity challenge, one of the most vulnerable moments in show history, and found an immunity idol all in the same day. For a day on Survivor, that’s about as jam packed as it can get while feeling the whole spectrum of emotions.
For her gameplay, it’s in a very unique place. People know that her relationship with Joe not only is strategic, it’s also literally a lifeline for her from a medical standpoint. What’s left to decide is do the contestants care about that when strategy comes into play? Eva still has yet to go to tribal council. She’s never had to really discuss strategy with her life in the game on the line.
When the tribes merge, everyone is going to know that Joe and Eva are working together and likely will vote as a unit. Usually, those are the kind of pairings you want to split up. Almost never though do those kinds of strategic pairs have an incredibly meaningful and purposeful reason for existing outside of the game itself like Joe and Eva have. If you vote out Joe, that could legitimately affect Eva from a mental health standpoint. On the flip side, how could you think about voting out Eva after seeing this from her?
This is where not having ever played limits my knowledge, but I couldn’t even comprehend of voting for Eva without feeling an incredible amount of guilt. Would it make me a bad person? Do I ignore the humanity of it all and treat it as a million dollar game? Or is considering the humanity of it all better for my game? Now imagine trying to figure all of this out after not eating for a week. It’s all part of what makes Survivor the incredible game that it is; the line between real life and the game is not straight and inflexible. It moves every single second depending on who’s out there and how they got to each specific moment.
What does this mean for Eva? We know the merge is coming next week, so her and Joe will be able to reunite. She’s made inroads with David as well, but that relationship never was tested since Lagi 2.0 never went to tribal council. Everyone to an extent should be able to care for her better than before in case she does have another episode, so the biggest medical hurdle she had coming in is likely cleared. Does that free up her confidence in gameplay? There’s so much to consider spawning from this episode that we’ll only get answers from in the coming episode.