Taako From Teevhii shares the best bonus scenes from the previous episode of Survivor: Bigfoot Fjord.

This Week In Secret (Extended) Scenes

”Guac!”

If we’re getting a Secret Scene devoted to a food reward, then y’all can bet y’all’s asses that I’m nitpicking the fuck outta the food. Is that a jaded part of these video posts? How should I know, and why should I care? I’m doing it. Get into it.

If you stop the video at 0:16, you can see that there were these sauces… the bottles are labelled “Green Chilli Sauce,” “Peri-Peri Sauce,” “Habanero Sauce,” “Extra Hot Habanero Sauce,” and “Chilli.” First things first, CHILI is spelled with ONE L. Do some people spell it with two L’s? Sure, but they’re still wrong. You can rub your chopsticks together; a hot dog isn’t a sandwich*; chili is spelled with one L. You can disagree with the truth, but it doesn’t stop being the truth. Second, peri-peri isn’t Mexican; it isn’t even Hispanic in origin. It’s a Portuguese product of South African influences. And now, I’m not saying that you can’t put this delicious sauce on a taco. Hell, one of the best burritos I’ve ever made had barbacoa topped with cole slaw and Sriracha. But this smacks of some PA wondering “What are some Mexican sauces that we can put in this Mexican food reward?” and landing on peri-peri, and that’s no good. Really, I guess this comes down to Production giving them peri-peri but not Sriracha. And there’s no excuse because Production loves Sriracha. Third, how do you have “Extra Hot” habanero sauce? Habaneros only have one heat. What you really have here is “mild” (read: diluted) habanero sauce and regular habanero sauce. The final nitpick is at 0:19. Whenever you eat an enchilada, there should be a non-zero chance of you seriously staining your shirt. Those enchiladas looked drier than a Mormon Prohibitionist’s baby shower.

Anyways, onto the substance of this clip. Wendell rattles off his perceptions of his teammates on this reward. There’s Donathan, who “everyone loves;” Libby, who “can smile at anyone and have anything her way;” Laurel, a “serious” competitor; Chelsea, a “silent observer;” and Angela, a veteran and a mom who frightens Wendell a bit. To reiterate, Chelsea, a “silent observer.” It’s natural for a Survivor player to size up their competition and treat each one as a threat, but it’s interesting to hear how Wendell perceives everyone else. We all love Donathan (well, most of us do), but what does it mean that people on the island love him as much as us and that we haven’t been shown that dynamic? Why is Libby continually being referred to as a femme fatale when she seems to have the personality and charm of a coat rack? How will Laurel’s competitive nature help or hinder her in moving forward in the game’s social dynamics?

And what the hell does the Chris Noble boot mean for Angela? Wendell says that Angela is going to be unpredictable after losing her partner-in-crime. Angela just sees this as her first opportunity to actually play. As she tells Libby, “perception is reality,” and Angela lived that as she was never able to shake the persona of “Chris Noble’s second-in-command.” But the restrains are off now, and Angela is ready to start taking some shots. The only question is, will the perception of Angela as a player about to kick it into high gear send her to Ponderosa in short order?

*I know that this debate is dumb and played out. But I also know that y’all have already scrolled past this footnote to argue about this in the comments. Please read the last section before doing so.

This Week In Confessionals

”I Just Love Angela”

There isn’t any particular quote to overanalyze here. The TLDNW is that Donathan has a bond with Angela and hopes they go far in the game together. But that sentence itself feels like something new and unexpected. Has this been a thing since Donathan, Angela, Chris Noble, and Dom were on Naviti 2.0 together? What does it mean going forward for Donathan (who’s aligned with Domenick) to want to align with Angela (who was aligned with Chris Noble?). And is that seriously the strongest connection Donathan’s made out of everyone out on the island?

”I Really Like Donathan”

This is getting too Midsummer Night’s Dream-esque for me. Is Chris Noble Bottom or Puck? Someone else can figure out how to map these characters. But for real, Donathan’s strongest connection is with Angela, and Desiree’s strongest connection is with Donathan. And that’s after just meeting him six days ago. 6! You can read that as Donathan being great socially or Kellyn being terrible socially. Or you can read it as two things. But I do feel like the social narrative is being over-simplified into a convenient “Malolo v. Naviti” package.

Trend Alert!

Angela and Michael draw strength from their families.

Laurel, Libby, Angela, and Wendell love to eat Mexican food.

Wendell and Chelsea hate to eat grubs.

This Week At Ponderosa

”Island Tikka Masala”

Let’s face facts: Chris Noble is a shitty Mayor of Ponderosa. He fails to welcome Libby as her boat pulls up to the dock. He fails to have a hard drink ready for her. His greeting is essentially, “Sucks, huh?” It looks like Libby’s arrival interrupted Chris Noble’s evening nursing a Corona, and despite being the second juror, Libby will probably (and rightfully) usurp Chris Noble as Mayor of Ponderosa.

Though to his credit, Chris Noble got Libby flowers. That followed Libby shopping for groceries in town and cooking up dinner for the two of them. Hali-Ozzy flashbacks, anyone? I wonder what other extracurriculars were repeated in the second Ponderosa.

Libby also discusses how she can’t (won’t?) have negativity covering up the positive blessings in her life, and that’s an admirable mindset to have. I’ll counter that by ragging on Libby for saying she won’t have cheese because she likes sweets. You can have them both, girl! I’ll counter that counter by quoting: “They were all saying that my hair was looking good. You can’t trust everybody in Survivor.” Like, that was funny! Where was that Libby the whole time?

This Week In Gifable Moments

When you find out that those oysters were from the Rocky Mountains.

When your partner’s fetish is maritimaphagophilia.

This Week In Bonus Food Rants

Okay, so I knew that y’all were coming to come at me with your bad hot dog takes, so here’s what’s up. I can argue that a hot dog is not a sandwich mathematically and taxonomically.

For the former, I want you to close your eyes. Metaphorically, that is, otherwise you can’t read the rest of this. Now imagine a sandwich. And don’t imagine a hot dog to be like “gotcha, a hot dog is a sandwich!” Just imagine a sandwich. Now imagine a plate for this sandwich, and put your imaginary sandwich on your plate. Now, I obviously have no clue what your sandwich looks like but I can pretty much guarantee that you’ve laid it down so that the plane of the bread is flush with the plate. And it doesn’t look weird at all, I bet. But if you rotate your sandwich to be orthogonal with the plate, it looks … wrong. And this would be true for pretty much every other sandwich as we conceive of them. But the hot dog … it looks right when it’s standing up, and it looks wrong when it’s lying down. This issue of orientation holds up to the point that we put the foodstuff in our mouths; the bread of a sandwich faces vertically outward when we bite it, whereas the bun of a hotdog faces laterally outward. This makes the hot dog an outlier here, and that sense of difference is enough to argue that we’re dealing with another entity entirely. That is, the definition of “stuff between bread” isn’t enough to label something a sandwich. Consider for example the chicken sandwich and the pulled pork sandwich. They use the same buns as burgers, and we don’t hesitate to call those sandwiches. But is a burger (using the same bread) a sandwich? It’s not a resounding “yes.” There’s an “otherness” by which we can rule out what some might otherwise consider a sandwich, and that’s why a hot dog is not a sandwich.

But maybe that isn’t convincing enough for you. So let me then ask: how many variations of the hot dog are there? Take your basic Dressed Dog: some mix of ketchup, mustard, and relish. There’s the Chicago Dog, which drops the ketchup and adds some roughage. Then you’ve got a Chili Cheese Dog and its close cousin, the Coney Dog. The Mac & Cheese Dog (often topped with bacon) is growing in popularity. Do we open this up to the many other types of bun-girdled wieners (we’re not not doing phrasing), such as the corndog, bratwurst, Polish, and Polish Boy? Those last two are different things, btw. It’s very clear that there are many variants of the hot dog, and that each of these are significantly different from each other. The hot dog becomes nearly unrecognizable in its variety. And frankly (clock the pun), that can’t be said about anything else that we consider a sandwich. Most of the genre are riffs on sandwich archetypes, and that typically results in a simple shuffling of the accoutrement on some algorithmic combination of cold cuts, cheese, greenery, and dressing. The hot dog becomes unique by its wide variance, and that should carry it to a taxonomical level equivalent to a sandwich. A hot dog cannot be both genus and family. For as much differentiation as there is for a “sandwich,” there is as much for a “hot dog.” Hot dogs really must be considered separate from sandwiches. That is, a hot dog is not a sandwich.