We’re four episodes into Survivor 44 and fans can’t get enough of Carolyn Wiger. The thirty-five-year-old drug counselor from Minnesota has won over pretty much everyone watching the show with her vibrant personality and fake idol schemes, but just because she’s building a bond with viewers doesn’t mean she built a bond with everyone on the island. In fact, one Survivor player just came out and said publicly she didn’t have a strong relationship with Carolyn. Let’s talk about it and get into some spoilers for this season so far.
Sarah Wade was voted out this past week after a fiery tribal council that saw Josh play his hidden immunity idol after an argument between Carolyn and Yam Yam. In her exit interview, which obviously touched a lot on the fake idol she had in her pocket, she talked about her relationship with Carolyn and how she doesn’t think her fellow castaway likes her at all. Here’s a portion of the quote she gave to Entertainment Weekly…
I mean… as a human, it's probably dramatic, but we are just very, very different. I admire Carolyn. I think the way that she was expressive is so admirable and, honestly, brave. There were signs out there that she didn't like me that much. We had Bruce's sweatshirt and we would rotate it at night, and she would do anything rather than have me sleep in the sweatshirt. It was little stuff like that where she'd give it to Carson a hundred nights in a row rather than let me have it. It was little things like that where I knew I'm just not her type of gal.
Judging by the rest of her exit interview and what we saw on Survivor 44, Sarah is a person who is pretty thoughtful with her words. Unlike Carolyn, she doesn’t come off as the type to lay her emotions bare and shoot from the hip. So, if you’re looking at the above quote through that lens, it actually hits a bit harder. In a separate question where she was asked about not playing her idol, she directly said “I knew Carolyn doesn’t like me as a human,” but said she didn’t play what she thought was a real idol because she thought Carolyn was angrier at Yam Yam.
Survivor is, at its most basic, a game of relationship building. You obviously need a core group of people to work with, which requires some level of connection, but also, it really helps to have strong relationships with people you aren’t working with. That’s how you sniff out other people plotting against you. Sarah didn’t have enough of those strong relationships, especially after Helen went home. It remains to be seen whether Carolyn has created any of those or whether her connections have simply been single tribal council partnerships.
Survivor 44 has been a wild ride thus far. There have been medical issues, fake idols and some of the most unusual personalities the show has ever given us. The end result to this point has been one of the most fun premerges we’ve ever had, but with a half dozen real idols and a bunch of fake ones in play, there are many fans worried Jeff Probst and the producers' over-meddling could cause problems later in the game, which has happened in recent seasons. We’ll just have to see how that plays out and how long Carolyn’s delightful run will last.
