PicoBlog

When I’m not able to watch Survivor live, as is the case for the final episodes of Season 44, I’m always tempted to fast forward. Every moment I sit watching the episode is a moment where I’ll be unable to avoid the siren song of my Twitter feed, knowing that a spoiler could find its way through. And the truth is that, while Survivor is content-rich enough that the idea of 90-minute episodes is reasonable, there’s still some filler if your goal is to simply experience the “story” that will carry us into next week’s finale.

The “Previously On” sequence that opens tonight’s episode of Survivor is a luxury the show couldn’t afford before 90-minute episodes, at least this early in the season, and it made a conscious effort to pretend that there have been meaningful storylines coming out of Reba and Belo. The longer episodes did enable a general sketching out of the dynamics—Katurah’s one-sided feud with Bruce at Belo, and Austin’s Beware Advantage at Reba—that we get reminded of here, but there’s just no way for those details to feel like stories when they completely fall out after the immunity challenge.

Unfortunately, the “Previously on Survivor” package that opens “Tiki Man” does eventually have to address the Bhanu of it all. However, before it speedruns his crisis of faith after God sent him to fail at Survivor, it takes time to recap all of the various advantages that have been in the game but never mattered while Yanu was losing half its members. It’s probably a helpful reminder for anyone who doesn’t watch Survivor with actual notes in front of them, since we’ve certainly had no reason to think about Tevin and Maria’s extra votes since the premiere.

When Yanu returned from tribal council, you’d think that things would be pretty positive: after all, an overly elaborate plan to convince Jess she had a fake idol had worked like a charm. But Bhanu’s still spiraling after becoming overly emotional during tribal, realizing that the other three players hatched that plan without him. And while they subtly try to suggest that maybe his inability to hide his emotions make that a good choice for his game (given that Jess would target him with her vote and play the shot in the dark if she had known the idol was fake), he can’t get over the idea that they’re so willing to be deceptive, and are clearly going to target him next if they lose again.

One of the joys of writing about theatre is the opportunity to see classics that are new to me. SWEET CHARITY is a musical by Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields, and Neil Simon. It's perhaps most famous for its choreography by Bob Fosse, which the director and choreographer of this production, Diane Lala, uses to great effect. As she mentioned in our podcast interview, some of these numbers are so iconic that you just need to leave them be.

As season orders have shortened, the burden placed on ephemeral story arcs has increased. In a 22-episode season of a sitcom, a four-episode story arc would be a blip on the radar—in a 12-episode season of a streaming dramedy, it’s a full third of the story being told. If you are going to invest a third of a character or a team’s story around a temporary presence, then it needs to generate meaningful momentum and leave a mark on the characters involved.

“It’s not the food they remember—it’s the people.” The “To Be Continued” at the end of “Forever” is so confusing. First and foremost, the show hasn’t formally been renewed for a fourth season—Deadline reported in March that the show was rolling production into a fourth season for logistical reasons, but that report was never confirmed, and FX still hasn’t formally renewed the series. But even if there were a fourth season renewal, why does the show have to tell us that the story will be continued?

We were never due for a truly cathartic ending. That was clear from the first episode—from the first scene, even. Whitney and Asher Siegel, along with Dougie Schecter, are not people we root for to succeed, so it was always an open question what we would even want from the conclusion of their character journeys. Did we want the central trio to face the bleakest outcomes possible—marriage and friendship ruptured, TV show canceled, exiled by the community they tried so hard to make their own (heavy emphasis on the possessive “their own”)?

Let no one complain that The Gilded Age moves too slowly. Or is that just Rev. Forte cutting to the chase? He’s matched by Ada, though, who goes from foisting off the vicar’s roses on Marian to accepting his marriage proposal in record time. And with no hesitation, either! Nay, with enthusiasm! We’re all so proud of Ada.  So in case you thought the season was only building up to Opera Rumble, surprise!