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That was pretty great I'm not gonna lie. No forced super boring journey bullshit like they've done the past 10 seasons, the return of two starting tribes, and what seems to be a great cast. I wanted to root for Brady going into the season but he started annoying me by constantly calling everyone brody, it ruined the word for me honestly and I'm probably never gonna use it again. The cast is extremely white, easily the most white of the post-covid era. They even cast an A10 Irish laddy which I didn't even know they could do. The Trump effect on CBS since he took office almost two years ago has actually been crazy, with the outright removal of the Diversity Mandate which saw Survivor forced to cast at least 50% POC players.

I was hilariously pleased to see the attempt at a Cookout Alliance (all POC alliance) undermined not once but TWICE this episode, as the five non asian nonwhites came together and hastily formed an obvious race-based alliance within 20 minutes of hitting the beach, only to get broken up across tribes in the worst way possible, and then (spoiler) lose one of their own as the first boot. Delicious... Honestly, this entire post-covid new era is lowkey blessed by the survivor gods in that almost every attempt to force woke and race shit has been lost to the stronger forces of karma, with the outnumbered White often prevailing, and huge clusters of POCs being sent home before the merge. It has actually led to a small subsection of the fanbase claiming the boot orders have been racist.

I was pretty surprised the strategic gay black guy was gay when he revealed that at tribal but it explains a lot, I do expect his cunning to bring him at least to the merge, but I could be wrong. I'm really hoping that Jenna girl who was almost voted out now goes far and gains some confidence. The reddit guy Kilby was super gay and I hope he is clowned on if he stays in the game. The mickey mouse voice gay guy asian with the glasses needs to go immediately, he's the closest thing to a trans on the show this season. I haven't even mentioned it yet but this might be the hottest group of female players since idk season 26 Caramoan. All in all I think we're in for a great season, even the buzzcut dyke was good TV you have to admit.

8.2/10

Winner Picks

I'm not looking at any of the kalshi or polymarket predictions for this season's winner, because I don't want to taint the rewarding feeling I will achieve at the end of this season when I'm shown to have correctly picked the winner of Survivor for the third season in a row, for the second time in my watching career (the first time being when I correctly picked the winners of seasons 32-34 back in the day). According to my winner picking rules, I have to lock my prediction in before the third episode of a season airs, so I still have some time to mull it over and think about the edgic. So far, I have my eyes on a few players, primarily Linnea, who was given a strategic sounding confessional and just has the winner look, and the bald Rhode Islander guy Rob who acts exactly like legendary Survivor player Tony Vlachos. His ally, Carter seemed pretty level-headed too.