The following contains spoilers for Episode 4 of Survivor Season 42.Sometimes a Survivor episode isn't focused on being as exciting as it possibly can be but is rather attempting to show tribe dynamics and gameplay in a way that's much more low-key. This is the vibe that Episode 4 of Season 42, "The Vibe of the Tribe", had. It was still a solid episode of Survivor, but was also the most low-key of the season and is the closest so far to what could be considered a "filler" episode, though it still set up important shifts in each of the tribes.
It seems as though the Survivor producers and editors took notes about the things that fans disliked in Season 41 and did their best to reflect those in Season 42. There has been so much less focus on advantages this season, with the spotlight instead being on the relationships between the players and how their tribes function as a result of that. This is a great shift because the entire point of Survivor is to act as a social experiment. Seeing how these people of varying backgrounds and personality types handle being stuck on an island together is one of the main sources of entertainment on the show, because it really gets back to what the game is supposed to be about in the first place.
The episode starts with the Vati tribe returning from Tribal Council and airing their grievances after what transpired there. Daniel is trying to clean up the absolute mess he made at Tribal when he didn't stand up for his alliance and actually threw Chanelle (one of his allies) completely under the bus. He was right in that the vote was Chanelle's plan, but she obviously doesn't want the rest of the tribe to know that and she does a great job of playing defense and keeping all of the blame and suspicion on Daniel instead of herself. At this point, basically the whole tribe is against Daniel, so his chances of survival if they go to Tribal again seem slim (but of course, this is Survivor, so anything could happen).
At the Reward Challenge, the Taku tribe wins easily, which gains them a set of fresh fish delivered to their camp. The other tribes are shown whispering amongst themselves about how much of a challenge beast Jonathan is, even going so far as to claim that he did the whole challenge by himself and just carried his team through it. That claim is a bit of a stretch in this specific instance because no feats of strength were required in this challenge; it was only about working as a team to untangle the rope, and clearly the Taku tribe are the best communicators as a team. Jeff even leads a discussion after the challenge that once again draws attention to Jonathan's strength, which is putting a huge target on his back as the Merge approaches.
Back at the Ika camp, it's clear that the alliances on the tribe are constantly shifting, and nobody seems particularly tight with anyone else. Rocksroy is still annoying his tribemates by bossing them around, and Swati has a plan to flip on her alliance and bring in Rocksroy and Tori, who is on the bottom, to vote Drea out. Tori tries to get along with Rocksroy in this potential new alliance by telling him about Drea's extra vote, but he still doesn't trust Tori and in turn tells Drea that Tori is throwing her name around. This puts Drea on guard and also ruins Swati's plan to be stealthy, destroying her tentative trust with Tori.
At the Immunity Challenge, Taku once again wins (this time truly because of Jonathan's efforts) and Vati comes in second, which means Ika will have to go to Tribal Council. The edit of the episode set up the conflict in this tribe early on so that the audience could already get a feel for the disunity even before the scramble prior to Tribal. The theme of the whole episode is showing the tribes either beginning to splinter (in the cases of Vati and Ika) or becoming even stronger (like Taku).
Tori ends up ratting on Swati and telling Romeo about her plan, and now he doesn't trust Swati, and neither does most of the tribe. It turns out she's been telling almost everyone that they're her "number one", which is revealed through a montage of her saying that exact phrase to three of her alliance members. Swati does, however, notice the forming mistrust and makes her pitch to her alliance about why they should be voting Tori instead, since she initially wanted to vote against Drea.
Going into Tribal Council, it was unclear exactly what decision had been made, but Tori and Swati are both on the chopping block. Drea comments that it feels as though the tribe has not yet achieved unity, and what she's touching on is one of their biggest problems. There are no concrete alliances, so the votes are messy, and they can't even work well enough together to win challenges. Despite a valiant attempt to shift suspicion onto Tori during the Tribal discussion, Swati is eventually voted out 3-2. Rocksroy is the only one who wasn't in on this plan, and it will be interesting to see how this affects his relationship with his remaining tribemates. Players who are left in the dark when it comes to a vote rarely let it slide.
As a whole, the episode was fairly average. It might have been a little underwhelming compared to the rest of the episodes in the season so far, but perhaps a solidly average episode is exactly what's needed to break up the craziness of the season. The one important thing that this episode did was draw attention to the tribe dynamics, because those will absolutely affect the game, especially as the Merge draws nearer and players will need to decide whether to stick with their original alliances or try and make some new friends through cross-tribe connections.