'Survivor' Has Found Its Jim Halpert

Spoilers through this week’s Survivor

It has been a slog of a Survivor season so far, save for a dramatic snakebite that seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the show for several episodes. Unfortunately, it’s one of those seasons where the same set of people end up at Tribal Council almost every week, so much so that this, the first before the merge, was the first time a couple of players had ever been to Tribal.

In these scenarios, where the same people attend Tribal Council every week, we usually know the pecking order early on. It’s just a matter of watching the predictable eliminations unfold. In past seasons, the editors have done a better job disguising the obvious, but this year’s alliances have been so solid and unbreakable that the editors have had little to work with.

Behind an otherwise dull season, however, a feud has been brewing between two players, Sage and Shannon, whose personalities couldn’t be more different. Shannon is deeply spiritual, frequently discusses spirituality, and leads her teammates in meditation sessions, repeatedly talking about manifesting things into existence, like her very presence on Survivor. But it’s clear early on that most of it is disingenuous, a strategy to align herself with everyone (I also bet she voted for RFK Jr.).

And then there’s Sage, who has absolutely zero patience for it. Some of the other players may be willing to indulge Shannon’s woo-woo, but Sage not only sees through it, she recognizes the threat it poses to her game. She’s not wrong, either. Players with more tolerance for Shannon’s schtick may have been content to hide behind her disingenuousness and ride her coattails for a few more episodes, at least until everyone else caught on.

The reality is, Shannon was playing a dangerous game. She cozied up to everyone to form alliances, then targeted for elimination the very people she’d bonded with through her New Age spirituality. In this week’s episode, after another tribal shake-up (because one was desperately needed), Shannon and Sage ended up on the same tribe again and eventually lost the immunity challenge. (I don’t think Jawan threw the maze challenge, but I do think Jawan was horribly ill-suited for it.)

After the loss, Shannon wasted time trying to ingratiate herself with her three tribemates, certain that everyone was buying her act and would ultimately vote with her to eliminate Jawan (whom she’d just spent an entire one-on-one flattering).

Sage played along as best she could, even as Shannon insisted on holding her hand. At one point, after coming to an “agreement” about who to vote out, Sage told Shannon, “I’d hug you if I could, but I think I’d stab you,” which apparently went completely over Shannon’s head. It’s not that Shannon is just New Age-y—it’s that, like a lot of those types, she’s a narcissist, incapable of believing anyone could dislike her, even as she says things like, “I remember being in the womb.”

The one small joy of this season has been watching Sage basically go full Jim Halpert from The Office - just fantastic reaction faces to Shannon’s nonsense.

And here she is, while hugging Shannon.

Meanwhile, oblivious Shannon looked like this during the entire Tribal Council, assuming all the digs her tribemates made were directed at anyone but sweet, spiritual Shannon. Her constant expression read, “These people love me. I’m so great. I love me, too.”

“I’ve guided a couple of meditations for the group, and we’re constantly working on keeping our hearts open,” she said during Tribal, which was about all I could take. And when she finally got voted out by all three of her tribemates, she remained oblivious, likely thinking it was because she was a threat. She insisted repeatedly that she had no hard feelings and demanded hugs from each of them, though Sage couldn’t indulge even that.

“I’m going to give you a handshake,” Sage said, rejecting the hug. “Because I want the hug to be genuine, and I don’t think I can give that to you right now.”

And Shannon’s earnest response to that? “I love you, too.”

So long, Shannon - and as she might say every time she leaves a room: Namaste.