Genevieve Mushaluk Was Screwed Over by ‘Survivor 50’

Spoilers follow for the April 1 episode of Survivor 50.

What was Genevieve Mushaluk supposed to do, exactly? The Survivor 50 contestant had been playing one of the best games of the season so far but, last night, went home at the merge episode. Even though she’s been doing well in the game so far, it wasn’t a surprise that she got sent packing. After all, despite making allies and finding advantages galore, Genevieve spent the episode ally- and advantage-less. Survivor has spent the season punishing her for her success, and this is just the culmination.

The twist of the episode revolved around a “merge” that happened despite not having a full cast vote. Instead of a normal merge vote, the Survivor tribes were mashed together — with a shocking 17 people left in the game — then randomly redistributed into three new groups. Genevieve ended up with the worst group imaginable for her game: her No. 1 enemy, Aubry; Christian and Devens, who are aligned and want to work with Aubry; and Joe, whom she’s never met. With Aubry dead set against her, there was really nothing Genevieve could do. She couldn’t maneuver, cajole, or lie her way out of the bad swap, and at the end of the episode, she went home. It gave permanent Eeyore Aubry her first win of the game, getting out her foe, and Survivor played it as a sad but normal elimination, when really Genevieve was epically swap-screwed.

And here’s the thing: People have been swap-screwed before. Dating back to Silas in Survivor: Africa, this has been part of Survivor’s story. The problem is that it comes at the end of a long list of indignities for Genevieve, specifically perpetrated by Billie Eilish. The idols on this season are known as the “Billie Eilish Boomerang Idols.” When players find the advantages, the twist is that they have to send them to players on other tribes, and then, if those people get eliminated, the original sender gets the idol back. Genevieve found two of these idols and was forced by the BEBI twist to give them to Rizo Velovic and Ozzy Lusth — both of whom could not be voted out last night because they ended up on Exile Island, meaning those idols could not boomerang back to her. For the first time ever on Survivor, a contestant found two idols, then got to keep neither. (This notably came after her immediate No. 1 ally, Kyle Fraser, got medically evacuated.) Then, Aubry, who has hated Genevieve from the first episode for no apparent reason, received an idol from Christian — her newfound tribemate.

The usual argument that it’s okay for the game when a contestant gets “swap screwed” is that they could have found an advantage to sneak their way out of it. But Genevieve did! She found two! And, through no fault of her own, couldn’t use them. Instead, she got put in a tribe with a group of people who have bonded over their own BEBI and then had to get through without the help of any of the advantages she found. At the end of the episode, Genevieve ended up playing her “Shot in the Dark,” showing that she knew she was going home. An idol would have helped.

The fun of watching Survivor is seeing contestants wriggle out of seemingly impossible binds through social skills, but when that becomes impossible, the show renders itself only frustrating. Watching Genevieve’s run on Survivor 50 come to an end through no fault of her own is not thrilling. It’s just sad. In a season that’s been throwing out twists left and right in an attempt to make itself “epic,” Survivor needs to figure out what counts as a “game mechanism” and what is simply punishing success.