Devens Blowing Shit Up

Survivor S38E7

What the fuck…? I sat down with my adult beverage and my computer ready to watch and take notes, not thinking anything out of the ordinary was coming my way. The episode starts and talking happens blah blah blah. I was taking my notes on all the post tribal council conversations not realizing what was about to happen. We had an Edge of Extinction drop by, but who cares now?

About 13 minutes into the episode, they walk up to the challenge area and Jeff says  they are doing an Immunity Challenge. Again, please remember we are only 13 minutes into the episode, and we have an immunity challenge, not a reward challenge! Gavin wins and the rest of the challenge doesn’t matter  with what is about to come.

Alright…I suppose a little context is warranted. It will help knowing where the alliances are sitting going into Tribal Council. In the beginning of the episode, Gavin approaches Kelley, Lauren, and Wardog to align with them. He said he would be able to get the other Kama people together and they want to take out David. After tribal the target shifted for the rest of Kama to vote out Kelley, which Gavin didn’t want to do. So going into Tribal, the two likely targets are David or Kelley.

Tribal Council

Yeah, this whole post is just going to be about Tribal Council. We hit the half hour mark with them walking into Tribal and I was shocked, and wondering what the hell was going on as I looked over to my girlfriend, Alli. What came next was one of, if not the most, crazy tribal councils ever. Half way through, as I’m vigorously typing down notes, I tell Alli that my post is going to be like 8 pages long with this episode and she proposed the idea of just writing about Tribal. So we all need to thank her for the brilliant idea to save on the read time on this one.

Tribal opens innocently enough. Jeff asks about being on the right and wrong side of a blind side to Julie, she says how she doesn’t trust anyone at this point since she was left out. She  and Ron both felt betrayed by Kama due to the Eric blindside last week. Aurora gets the next question from Jeff. He asks her what the fall out was from the blind side. She goes on a rambly answer about how you have to leave people out of a blindside sometimes, and how these people who feel left out had  left people out the time before. This is her first of two missteps that alert everyone to what is going on. Aurora almost single handedly ruins the entire Kama plan with her long answers. Wardog’s ears perk up as she’s finishing. She says “It’s not about each move that you’re left out, it’s the final goal you want together.” Jeff notices Wardog’s reaction and asks what’s up. To which Wardog says “we need to use a few people to take Eric out, this week we can maybe take out those same people we used to take Eric out.” Kelley agrees  with Wardog, and puts it out there that she thinks the Kama group are back together.

David is an analogy machine and it’s fantastic. Before this, he had the Pilot and Passenger Analogy. This week it’s the Shark and Minnows. He talks about how this morning he saw a bunch of minnows and eventually a shark came through and ate a bunch of the minnows, and with the reconstituted Kama Alliance, It’s likely one of the Lesu is a minnow. Jeff asked if that really happened and David said “Yeah!…while I was taking a poop, but yeah!” and I fucking died. Jeff jumps to Devens and asks where Devens is with the Minnow or Shark Analogy to which he answers that he might be the poop…again, dead.

At this point, you can kind of feel the tension building, but not anything out of the ordinary to Tribal Council since everyone is afraid of being voted out. Devens blows the entire thing up this episode a couple of times. He answers Jeff’s questions very direct and honest instead of playing word games, and it freaks everyone out. After the poop jokes, Devens talks about how the “hot dates” at camp were Gavin, Aurora, Julia, and Victoria. They told him they would get back to him about a plan but intentionally let the clock run out. Jeff tosses out a few other questions but they aren’t adding to the ticking time bomb of chaos. The next one to add to the timebomb is to Julie,who has an emotional breakdown because she is physically and emotionally exhausted. During her breakdown, she says that she feels like she has been left in the dark about people she trusted and no matter how much they tell her she can trust them, she doesn’t think the plan she was told is actually going to happen tonight. She thinks it’s going to be another blind side. Kelley panics at this and looks over at Julia, asking if they are still good. Julia chuckles and says “we’re good, we’re good,” and we get a nice quick shot of a Jeff side eye catching that exchange. Julia says she is a free agent at this point and she can’t trust anyone. Julia is full on laughing and Kelley looks shocked. Ron, who was also left out last week, like Julie, says this vote will let them know if they can trust their people or not.

Jeff is one of my favorite hosts in any reality competition show because he will straight up call your shit out. If he sees or catches something said and he knows it will be interesting he will bring it up in front of everyone. Jeff’s side glance mentioned before…yeah, he wastes no time bringing that back. He points out how while Julie is crying and pleading her case, other people are almost giggling and he asks “Julia, I know you have empathy for how she’s feeling, but from a game point of view, what did you find some interesting from what she said?” Julia says what she was laughing at was Kelley asking if they were still good. Devens immediately lets out an “OH!” and says that Julia just gave the game away, and hat he guesses the Kama’s are going with the Lesu3 (Kelley, Lauren, Wardog). This exchange brings out a long, rambling, nonsensical statement from Aurora. I wanted to try to write a short gist of what it was about, but I can’t…it starts going one way, then turns into something else entirely. The important part is it gets all the Lesu tribe, even David and Devens, annoyed with her.

It’s probably pretty obvious by my other posts, but Devens is clearly my favorite, and everything he did tonight reinforced that. In the middle of Tribal, in front of everyone, he throws out how there is a strong Kama group that doesn’t want Lesu people messing with them. He then says there are 5 Lesu and 2 Kamas that were left out (Ron and Julie), thats 7 people, and that those 7 can do whatever they  want, if Aurora really wants Lesu to work together. It was interesting to watch just how quickly Julia became unhinged. She was calm and collected, and as soon as Devens tossed this likely tongue in cheek idea, she got really aggressive, asking why Devens is putting this idea out there. Devens says, “No, I think Aurora put it out there, I’m just on board.” Julia calls him asinine and says “You are such a passenger”, while waving him off, to which he responds, “I’m a passenger!? I feel like I just laid out the GPS.” Julia chuckles and just keeps saying, “Rick, come on, come on.” Rewatching this now as I write this post, it’s wild to see how much she is clearly in panic mode, trying to save her plan but overcorrecting WAY too hard.

This part now would be harder to write about, and if I included everything we would still be at 8 pages. This upcoming point is where I referenced above about how I have no idea how to write this episode up. Devens essentially is on the fly, in the middle of Tribal, politicking like they normally do on the beach after, but everyone is together in front of everyone. Julia and Aurora are dumbstruck about how this is falling apart in front of them, still taking jabs at Devens trying to stop this from snowballing. Conversations are breaking out all over. Jeff says at this point he doesn’t even want to ask a question, he just wants to watch. The Tribal turns to chaos. Almost everyone leaves their seats to talk to other people. Leaving your seat and whispering is something that is becoming more popular in the show, but nothing on this level. Jeff lets everyone get up and talk for roughly 8 minutes. Jury is freaking out, jaws dropped and asking where the popcorn is. David asks Kelley what the original plan was and she straight up tells him that it was him. Aubrey is about to have an aneurysm over on the jury.

Everyone sits down again and things seem settled. Wardog says “Let’s vote!” and Julia is in full temper tantrum mode because she knows her plan is shot. She shoots back telling him to shut up. Some more chatter…and time to vote! Jeff asks for any hidden immunity idols. My running theory while Devens was blowing all this up was that even if he couldn’t get all of Lesu and Julie/Ron to go with him, he would draw the majority of votes to himself by playing so aggressively, then he would play the idol and he and David would control the elimination. Devens still used the idol, but for David, just for good measure, since it was outed that David was the plan tonight. David only got one vote, but I still think the immunity play was a safe idea, a good insurance policy. It didn’t matter though, because Julia was sent packing. Wardog leans forward and says the name of the MVP of the episode, “Rick Devens”.

What an episode…I feel like we are going blind into next week. No idea what alliances there are now, outside of Devens and David, then the Lesu3 will also be together still. The fractured Kama group will all be free agents. My guess is Aurora will be an easy vote out next week as it was a coin flip as to whether she or Julia were going home this week. I’m lowkey excited that we got rid of one of the Julia/Julie because that probably gets confusing to read.

Alright, that’s enough Survivor. I’m going to wrap this up and enjoy some of the NBA playoffs, not wondering about how these alliances are going to shake out.