With twenty-four players on Survivor 50, the edit was always going to be a challenge. There’s just not enough screen time to tell the story from that many perspectives, especially when you throw in celebrities. Some castaways were always going to get the dreaded purple edit, which is the Survivor fanbase code for mostly being a background character. With only five players remaining, however, it’s now very clear that the show missed a huge opportunity to give one of those purple players a bigger edit, and the consequences of not doing so will have a direct impact on the finale.
The player in question is Tiffany, and during the past few episodes, it’s become clear the other players look at her as a threat to win the game. She was everyone’s agreed upon target prior to her winning immunity during the last vote, and the players seem to be implying they’re planning to get her out ASAP this week. There’s a sense that she has a strong relationship with many jury members and that she’s a real threat to win the game if she’s around at the end. In theory, that’s not a surprise given her strong people skills and strategic abilities, but in real life, it’s a huge shock since the edit has barely shown us any of that.
During the first five episodes of the season, Tiffany got a whopping 2 confessionals. During that same stretch, Christian, Ozzy, Genevieve, Coach, Mike White, Rizo, Emily, Rick Devens, Aubry, Joe, Cirie, Stephenie, Colby, Charlie, Q and Savannah all got 10 or more. Jonathan, who is also one of the five players currently remaining in the game, got 8. Tiffany was the lowest of any player, and the second lowest (Chrissy) got more than twice as many during that same stretch.
Those first person confessionals go a long way in shaping how we view what’s going on as an audience, and they go a long way in helping people decide who to root for. By repeatedly not showing Tiffany, the edit implied that she’s a background character and not someone to be taken seriously. Even worse, it prevented us from understanding what was going on in her head or seeing any of the relationships she was building.
Early on, we got a little bit of her and Aubry and a little bit of her and Dee. Later, we got one bonding scene with Joe and more recently, a fair number of conversations with Cirie. That last bit has been sorta nice, but it’s hard to get too excited when we got so many more confessionals of Cirie directly talking about her relationships with Ozzy and Rizo. It’s hard to get too excited when we’ve gotten so many more confessionals and explanations and perspective content from everyone else left with the possible exception of Joe.
Now, to be clear, I don’t think the Survivor edit owes anyone anything. I’m not one of those fans who thinks every player should get an equal amount of screen time. You need to provide entertainment value or be key to the storyline to get shown. This isn’t a charity. The thing is though, it’s quite clear that, at least at this point in the season, Tiffany is very key to the storyline. In fact, if she had gotten more screen time and been given more confessionals throughout the season, we might be looking at her as a real threat to win this game, which would make the upcoming finale way more interesting.
With five players left in the game, Aubry is the clear frontrunner and has gotten a ton of recent narrational content where she’s outlined her strategy. Most fans are very confident the edit is setting her up to win the game. Why? Well, mostly because it doesn’t really seem like anyone else can win the game, except maybe Jonathan. Fans think she’s going to win basically through a process of elimination.
We cannot totally write Jonathan off because he’s been a steady and consistent presence throughout the season. He’s been given credit for several big moves, and we’ve always known what he’s been thinking and why he’s acted in specific ways. Like Aubry, he’s been a key character that’s been central to how the story has been told. He’s a viable winner. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen him do things like lick uncooked rice in front of everyone and be called easily manipulated in other people’s confessionals. Those aren't winning vibes.
He looks like a better bet than the other three though because yikes. Rizo has been a funny and RizGod-y, but the other players have also dunked on him a lot in their confessionals. Aubry has basically said she thinks he can’t win a jury vote at the end and would like to sit next to him, which is a terrible sign. Throw that in with all the talk about him being young and lazy around camp, and the edit has not presented him like someone we should take seriously.
Joe looks dead in the water too. He’s been a bit more of a consistent presence on the show, but we haven’t seen him push any of the strategy. We’ve also seen a lot of other players complain about how rigidly he plays the game. He’s basically been depicted as a strong challenge performer who is pretty well liked but is kind of just there and told how to vote most of the time. The edit wouldn’t make any sense if he won.
That brings us to Tiffany. The other players clearly think she can win. They’re desperate to vote her out. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to take her seriously when she’s been a background character for most of the season. It’s impossible to take her seriously when we haven’t explored most of these alleged great relationships with the jury. It’s impossible to take her seriously when the editors, through how they have apportioned screen time, have told us not to take her seriously. And that sucks because there was clearly a better story to tell.
Tiffany has been funny and full of life in the confessionals we've seen. She provided one of the season’s more entertaining moments when she told off Coach in the confessional booth, and her performance was great in many of the challenges. I wish we would have seen more of her. Yes, it would have meant we missed a confessional or two from Christian or Ozzy or Coach, but it also would have given us a finale in which we had more than one presumptive winner, one longshot and three people the editors have implied can't win.
