The man, the myth, the legend.
Photo: Robert Voets/CBS
Spoilers ahead for “Act One of a Horror Film,” the season-49 premiere of Survivor.
World, meet your new RizGod. RizGod, meet the world. Tonight’s Survivor season-49 premiere was a strong opener, introducing nearly every contestant to the audience, explaining the eventual boot clearly, and showcasing all the emerging alliances. But it will likely be best remembered as the introduction of one Rizo Velovic. He is from Yonkers, works in “tech sales,” and got a solo spotlight as he battled his way through a challenge to score a shocking eventual win through pure dogged determination. Rizo, who calls himself “RizGod” — as in the internet term for a guy who has a lot of “cha-rizz-ma” — is a skinny Albanian kid with a bright smile and a goofy vibe. His meme humor and utter dedication to that god-awful nickname should be annoying. But in the premiere, his relentless enthusiasm and chipper choice to cheat won me over. It’s the kind of performance that makes you forgive the name RizGod.
His starring segment comes after his tribe, Uli, loses the first challenge. While the winning tribe, Hina, gets flint, a pot, and a machete, the two losing tribes must now choose one representative to go fight for their supplies. While alpha male Alex volunteers on Kele, nobody on the Uli tribe wants to go until Rizo caves while still cautioning, “If it’s a puzzle, we’re cooked.” But when the time comes to face off, it is, of course, a puzzle challenge: Alex and Rizo have to collect ten coconuts; open them to get their puzzle pieces; build the puzzle, which makes a map; then follow the map to dig up a ship’s wheel. To start, our RizGod is at about a thousand disadvantages: He’s slower than Alex at collecting the coconuts, he’s pathetic at the puzzle, and he misses opening one coconut, leaving him to try and solve the puzzle while down three pieces. It’s tragic.
Luckily for him, Alex’s struggle to find the ship’s wheel gives Rizo the opportunity to start copying his competitor’s puzzle. Technically, what he’s doing is allowed — the show would have stopped him otherwise — but he’s also not “solving” the puzzle. At one point, Alex comes over to recheck his map and, seeing Rizo attempt to analyze his work, flops over on the puzzle, causing Rizo to pause. But then when Alex leaves to go dig more, he neglects to break apart his puzzle to stop his opponent from cheating. “He proceeds to leave again, and my joy comes right on back,” Rizo says. “Oh my God, he didn’t break it! I’m going to cheat again!” So Rizo, a little bashfully but mostly just with determination, heads right on back.
Slowly but surely, his cheating works. Eventually, he finds his missing coconut and builds his puzzle entirely by copying Alex’s work. Then, thanks to Alex being completely incapable of digging, Rizo has time to dig around and somehow gets his wheel first. It’s a remarkable comeback, but what makes it delightful is his utter earnestness about it. To the camera and to his tribemates after he returns with his prizes, Rizo breaks down. He reveals that his parents are Albanian immigrants who are custodians, and he was the first in the family to go to college. “They always told me, ‘Rizo, we came to this country, and we want you to live your American Dream,’” he tells his tribe, saying he just wanted to make them proud. And somehow it doesn’t feel like a play. He’s just so earnest that his excitement over winning the tribe some supplies comes off like a true surprise. And it pays off, too — later in the episode, his tribemate Nate says he wants to ally with Rizo because he doesn’t think “even he knows his own strength.”
From the moment the cast was revealed, RizGod has been under scrutiny. “Who is this idiot with the stupid TikTok name and why is he on Survivor?” fans wondered. When his initial cast video came out, though, Reddit fans all shared the same opinion: “Damn it, I don’t hate him.” That shift is partially because he seems a lot less enterprising than a meme-based nickname would imply — RizGod doesn’t come off like an influencer trying to get big on TikTok via Survivor. He’s more like an enthusiastic middle-schooler using online references because they’re his natural language. He’s not a troll; he’s a dork. Even his “playing dirty” just feels messy, not rude.
Of course, what that sets up, in the game of Survivor, is someone ready to be corrupted. Survivor began this season by introducing its biggest character through his enthusiasm, his story, and a lighthearted copycat routine. Now, the fun is watching to see if he actually gets dirty with it. It feels reminiscent of season 43’s Carolyn Wiger, introduced as a purehearted wackadoo who then had to struggle her way through a game of deception. Can Rizo get truly dastardly? Is his enthusiasm too easily manipulated by the real schemers? I can’t wait to find out.
Source link
