Survivor S28E12
Changing things up a little bit and writing this on a Friday night. I know, it’s a wild way to spend the first night of the weekend. It’s really my only chunk of time I will have to write it though since I’ll be on vacation next week. Already going to be challenging enough to watch the finale and The Bachelorette premier, so my goal was to squeeze this in before. Luckily, it was a pretty straight forward episode, with a solid chunk of time waste on Edge of Extinction.
After tribal, everyone is asking Devens about where he got the idol from. He lies and tells them it was sent to him from EoE, which I thought was brilliant to get people to not look around camp for them. That got sussed out pretty quickly by Lauren, since she found her idol around the camp back at the beginning of the game. Lauren confronts Devens, trying to get him to tell her it was around camp, but Devens sticks to his story. Not really sure why Lauren was trying to joke around with him to get info and thought he was going to tell her. She has lied to him too many times for him to trust her.
Devens gets up in the middle of the night, when everyone else is sleeping, and starts looking for the idol. He does it all night and into the morning. Everyone else is awake and knows that Devens is out there searching, but no one is shadowing him. This might just be editing, it’s hard to tell, but after someone just used an idol why would they not be stuck to him like glue? Of course, later in the episode they do shadow him, but it’s too late since DEVENS FINDS ANOTHER IDOL THE FIRST MORNING AFTER TRIBAL!
REWARD CHALLENGE
There is a boring reward challenge that Gavin wins. He gets to pick two people to go with him to partake in the reward. First he chooses Victoria and says it’s because she has gone the longest without some sort of food reward. He then picks Lauren with no explanation. Aurora visibly reacts, upset. Jeff asks about her reaction and Devens says it’s because she has gone without food as long as Victoria has, which Gavin kind of shrugs off.
At the reward, Gavin, Victoria, and Laurn discuss whether they should be concerned with Aurora being mad at them for not being selected. Gavin says Aurora still has a better shot with any of them than going with Devens to the end, so she should make the smart decision and stay with them. They agree that Devens is the first target and Julie is next. We see a Lauren confessional where she is resistant to getting rid of Julie because they have a good connection. When they get back to camp, Victoria speaks with Aurora to reassure her nothing has changed. Aurora is thankful and says the logical choice is to stay with them. Except one thing, that is isn’t logical at all. The game goes to the final 3. Gavin exposed the pecking order right there. Logically, it would be better to go with Devens and at least get to the final 3 with him to have a shot to plead your case. The route she is going will cause her to have to make fire at the final 4 and being against the group of 3.
EDGE OF EXTINCTION
EOE was so stupid this week. Eric walks up to the group with a box and everyone gets excited thinking they were getting info on the competition to get back into the game. NOPE, they get letters, that they wrote to themselves before the season started filming. We got a lot of dramatic shots of people sitting reading letters. Great use of time.
AT CAMP
Normally I wouldn’t have hopped back to camp after EOE there since the Immunity Challenge happens here pretty soon. However, the segment before the challenge was so hilarious it needed to be included. Devens goes searching for the idol again, even though he already has it, to keep up the illusion he doesn’t have one. FINALLY people shadow him and join him in the search. Gavin is hanging around Devens and at one point he turns his back to look up in a tree and Devens just full sprint runs away. The afternoon turned into a big game of hide and seek where Devens was fake looking and people were looking for him looking for idols. It was a great moment.
IMMUNITY CHALLENGE
The challenge this week is different sorts of things put together that end in a word puzzle. Almost everyone starts groaning at the mention of the word puzzle, especially Aurora. Aurora says she is awful at them. Devens says he likes hearing when people say they are awful at things because it means he only has to be mediocre to win. He showed that he can be mediocre at word puzzles, because Devens wins himself another immunity challenge.
Back at camp we see a Devens confessional. It becomes pretty clear since he is safe, the next obvious target would be Julie. He wants to try to keep her because the other 4 are too tight for him to try to infiltrate, but he can hope to work with Julie. I was terrified that he was going to give Julie his idol. Devens pulls Julie aside and they agree to vote for Aurora.
Julie approproaches Lauren to talk to her about what she can do to stay. Julie points out that Aurora has a better chance of winning immunity than Julie does and that Julie is a safer bet to take to the final 3. Earlier on the reward challenge we already saw that Lauren is more inclined to keep Julie because of their connection. Lauren said she would talk to Gavin and see what they can do. Gavin seems on board with the plan but only wants to do it if Victoria is in, so he will go talk to her about it. Victoria doesn’t think it is a smart move, she thinks it is too soon to go after Aurora. Gavin just tells her that he is with her whatever she wants to do.
TRIBAL COUNCIL
So much of this Tribal revolved around Devens, even though he was the only safe person. Everyone was talking about the effects of Devens winning immunity and what it did to the plan, because it was very clear Devens was the target. Julie talks about how she knew the attention was going to shift to her as soon as he won. Jeff essentially goes person to person and has them talk about how much they want Devens out. Jeff asks Devens how he feels about this, and he just starts talking about everyone being paranoid and shadowing him and how they lost him. Devens says that when he was hiding, he found some interesting things. Aurora is asked what she thinks of that and she says she doesn’t even listen to 90% of the stuff he says.
Jeff asks Devens what he thinks of all this attention. Devens says there is all this talk about the tight 4, which it is actually a tight 3 and even if Aurora doesn’t want to admit it, she is on the outside of that 3. His point is that there shouldn’t be so much attention on him alone, but this strong 3 that are going to get to the end if unchecked. Devens decides to stir things up by pulling out his hidden immunity idol. He tells everyone he is going to use it on Julie and the two of them are voting for one of the 4. Everyone is rolling their eyes and Aurora says she doesn’t even know if it’s a real idol, or if he is going to play it. Also, even if he plays it, it still would be 4-1 odds. Devens makes a declaration in front of the Jury that it could very well be 3-3 with EOE coming back, extending an alliance offer to the EOE member before they are even back in the game.
Jeff’s last question is to Devens, asking him about his bravado, that if getting voted out once has brought this on. He says absolutely, that he went out so quietly and quickly the first time, but that he will go all out this time. Now it’s time to vote! Devens of course doesn’t use his idol, and it actually doesn’t matter because Aurora gets the axe. She is shocked and asks “How do you all fall for reverse psychology!?”.
Now…there is a lot of poo pooing Devens because the last couple weeks he didn’t actually control the vote or anything, but it looks like he is making great moves. The theory is the vote was going to be Aurora, not Julie, coming into Tribal. If I remember right, the name of the show is Survivor…and the goal is to survive to the end. Who gives a fuck how it’s done? Devens won immunity, and found an idol, which then forced the Aurora vote. Regardless of how Aurora was out, it was a direct cause of his actions. Just like the elimination next week will be a direct cause of his actions. Putting on the show for the Jury is part of the game and how you get the votes to win. If you are a purist and don’t like how he is using idols, be mad at the producers introducing them into the game, not Devens using the tools provided to him. Also, if you are coming up with conspiracy theories that production is giving them to Devens, just stop. People who think production cares or manipulates the winner are irrational and really overestimate production’s stake in who wins as opposed to having a good show. Which by the way, having a popular person get cut is good content.
That’s all for this week everyone! Hope everyone has a great weekend. Do some fun stuff and get ready for Game of Thrones on Sunday…bye!
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