The following contains spoilers for Episode 4 of Survivor Season 43.Survivor is all about trust, and more specifically, where one chooses to place it. Deciding whether or not to trust tribe members and alliances is at the very core of the game, and choosing incorrectly or misplacing your trust can really cause anyone's strategy to crumble. Episode 4 of Survivor Season 43, entitled "Show No Mercy", really focuses on this kind of trust, or lack thereof, both within the tribes themselves as well as across tribal lines.
It's always important for Survivor to show the tribal dynamics so that viewers can see the progression of the players' relationships with each other and how their strategies evolve with alliances. The episode opens with the growing tensions in the Baka tribe, where Gabler is becoming a bit of a nuisance and Elie has simply had enough of it. While they both have strong personalities and were bound to clash because of this, a lot of the tribe is annoyed by Gabler, and this storyline about their growing wariness of him has been woven through the four episodes of the season so far.
At the Reward Challenge, the tribes fight for the chance to receive 10 fresh fish, as well as the ability to go to another tribe's camp and steal one of their items (which is the much more exciting reward - for the viewer, at least). This challenge includes an interesting element where the players have to travel a certain distance using only two wooden blocks. It was refreshing to see a challenge element that felt new, as in recent years pretty much all Survivor challenges have been repeats of past years or just have repeated elements.
Vesi actually manages to pull out a win for once, and they ask for a fruit basket instead of the fish, as they have no flint and therefore no way of cooking a fish reward. It's always fun to watch negotiations take place on Survivor, as the players strategize to figure out what they actually need to survive the next few weeks. They then have to decide whose camp to raid, which leads to a discussion where it's clear that the members of this tribe have different priorities. Cody (who volunteers to be the representative) initially wants to make life difficult for the other tribe by taking something important to daily life like their machete, while the rest of Vesi wants to be more diplomatic about it and choose something that would actually help their survival, like a fishing kit.
In the end, Cody goes to Coco and tells them he wants to take their machete. This, it turns out, is a bit of a lie, as he's using a negotiation tactic from his experience as a salesperson. Because Coco is now worried that they're going to lose their machete, they start offering up whatever else Cody wants in order to appease him. He ends up getting not only their fishing kit, but a bunch of food from them as well. He manages to be charming and personable the whole time, and it seems to work, as Coco gives their things away with relatively little resentment. Karla is the only person who seems to immediately clock what he's doing, and she remarks on how bad this tribe is at negotiating. This is a really big moment for Cody, as it shows that his social skills are his biggest asset out here and could definitely be a huge threat going forward.
At the Immunity Challenge, Vesi wins once again, proving that perhaps getting rid of the tribe member who was the biggest hindrance in challenges was a smart move after all. After their victory, they start trying to give hints and advice to help Baka solve their puzzle, and Baka does end up finishing second. It's clear that these other two tribes are starting to visibly gang up against Coco, who had yet to lose until this point, which might seem like a questionable move as it's obviously going to create resentment in those Coco members that will stick around until Merge time.
This is the first time that Coco has really had to strategize collectively in this game, as they've been coasting by on their constant wins up until this point. This is also one of the only times the audience has gotten to see the ins and outs of the tribe dynamics, as Coco hasn't gotten a lot of focus before now. This is one of the unfortunate things about the nature of Survivor, as it seems like each season, there's one tribe who hardly goes to Tribal Council and therefore rarely gets the kind of dramatic screen time that the other tribes get, which leads to those players entering the Merge while not being particularly known to the audience.
But now that Coco's strategic style is being shown, how does it shake out? At first, the tribe agrees to vote for Geo, as he's too obviously trying to control things, and it's not only a threat, but it's getting on people's nerves. However, even though the plan has been set in motion, Lindsay starts getting paranoid, seemingly out of nowhere. She seems to think that her alliance is lying to her and plotting to vote her out instead, and she starts voicing this concern to everyone else. This, of course, just makes her look like a liability, as she clearly doesn't trust her alliance and is creating situations out of nothing.
At Tribal Council later, she even admits to this mistake, pointing out that it's not a great move to give in to paranoia when you're trying to form connections with these people on your tribe and show your alliance that you have put your trust in them, so they can feel confident that you'll stick with them. In the end, this sentiment turns out to be correct, as she is voted out by her tribe. There's a certain irony in the fact that she brought it upon herself; if she hadn't created a narrative in her head that her tribe members were out to get her, she would have been totally safe. It's a great example of how being on the show seems to mess with people's abilities to make rational decisions, and being tired, hungry, and overheated probably doesn't help.
This episode was barren of the player backstories that the first three episodes were packed full of, which is a noticeable contrast. At this point, the characters have been established, and it's time to get into more of the gameplay itself, which is always a fun turning point to reach on the show. The episode sets up the growing tensions between Coco and the other two tribes, and it will be interesting to see how this shakes out with other cross-tribal interactions before the Merge, and whether or not people on separate tribes will start forming more connections before the Merge even hits.