Don’t Hate the Player

Survivor S38E13

Here we are folks! The season finale of Survivor: Edge of Extinction. Survivor has been putting out some fantastic seasons as of late and this one is no exception. On our trip to D.C. last week I missed the live viewing of Game of Thrones and Survivor. I knew social media would be spoiling things so I had to stay off until the following mornings when I had time to watch. Believe it or not, it was much more difficult to avoid Survivor spoilers than Game of Thrones. Guess that kind of shows who I follow on social media… This was a long episode so the post will probably reflect that, sorry in advance! I won’t be writing about the reunion because the way Survivor does their reunion show is crappy and useless.

EDGE OF EXTINCTION COMPETITION

So the episode technically starts with Jeff talking to the viewers in front of the live audience back in the States.Then he follows up his introduction with a bit of a recap of the season and the remaining players. Boring for our purposes here though, so jumping right in to where the episode actually starts!

Opening shot we see is of a challenge all set up. Jeff brings in the remaining contestants, then brings in the EoE group. It’s time for someone to come back into the game! It’s a long obstacle course that ends in a table maze. It’s neck and neck for most of the challenge, with Aurora, Joe, and Chris all looking like they could win. Finally Chris, who was voted out 3rd and been on EoE for a long ass time, wins and is back in the game!

Back at camp, Chris is telling everyone he feels out of it and needs to recuperate. He is intentionally trying to downplay his game to reduce the size of his target. He tells everyone that if he goes home tomorrow it’s cool, he is just happy to be back. Victoria in a confessional right after this line tells us she knows Chris is full of it and that you wouldn’t hold on that long at EoE to just be happy going home.

Devens and Chris go to talk on their own. Devens hopes that Chris is more in the game than he is leading on. Chris says he wants it to be them until the end, that he wants to work with him from here on out. Devens is a bit nervous since Devens stabbed Chris in the back weeks ago, but is hopeful that Chris isn’t playing a revenge game. Chris asks Devens to confirm the idol is real, which Devens is a little hesitant to do, but does tell him it is real. Right after this conversation, Chris talks to Lauren. Chris tells Lauren that Kelley told them about her idol, but he wants to work with her. They seem to make a bit of a connection, but Lauren doesn’t know if Chris is being real with her or just looking around for the best option. At this point we are kind of on the edge of our seat regarding whether Chris is going to team up with Devens or Lauren, and they leave us hanging as we go right into an Immunity Challenge.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

This challenge was a pretty complex one. It contained an obstacle course, balance beam, combination lock, and circular puzzle. It also wasn’t just an Immunity Challenge, but a reward challenge as well.

Julie was pulling away with the competition and Lauren started rooting for her. Devens reminds her that they weren’t rooting for her when they were going to split the vote between the two of them. Julie is close to winning when her puzzle starts to fall over and almost falls apart. Chris, who was right beside her, started coaching her through it. He was nowhere near winning so wanted to help her out. Devens was pissed about it, but I think it was a pretty good idea when you are just coming back to try to make any connection you can, and helping her is a good case for getting chosen to join in on the reward.

Julie wins and is able to bring two people. She first picks Chris, which is a good easy choice. Her second pick is Lauren. Devens is visibly upset about this and Jeff asks him about it. He says he’s gone to bat multiple times for Julie and she never does it for him. Also, Lauren has been on more rewards than anyone.

At the rewards, Lauren and Julie are talking to Chris about Devens. They are all talking about the idol and if it is real or not, which they ask him directly. He says he wants to feel out if it’s real or not. This was reassuring that he is truly working with Devens, because at this point he knows for a fact the idol is real but isn’t exposing him. Chris pitches splitting the vote between Devens and Victoria just in case the idol is real, and the others seem in agreement. Victoria and Gavin are talking back at camp about going after Chris and propose the idea to Devens. Devens listens, but doesn’t commit to anything.

When they get back from reward, Chris and Devens talk again. Chris again tells Devens he is 100% loyal to him. He says yes, he was betrayed by Devens in the past, but Devens was voted out right after. They made amends on EoE in a genuine, true way and now they are completely even. Devens wants to believe it but he is still nervous. Chris asks what he can do to prove his loyalty to Devens. Devens asks what he got in his bag when he got back. Chris keeps a straight face for about 3 seconds, then cracks a smile. He pulls out the same idol Devens got, where you have to give half to someone else and after the next tribal council, when the sides are reunited, it becomes one idol. He gives the half to Devens.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

Not a lot of interesting talk at this tribal. Asking Chris how it feels being back, talking to Julie about who she chose. Nothing that crazy or fun. Victoria did say Chris is an easy vote but they have a target who they have been gunning for all along, so why rock the boat?

While the talk was boring, the things happening after the vote, were not. Devens plays his idol, which is real. Lauren looks upset. There is some hesitation, then Lauren gets up and plays her idol…ON CHRIS! It ended up not being needed as Victoria was voted out with more votes than Chris had against him.

BACK AT CAMP

In the middle of the night, Devens gets up to go Idol hunting again. Before he begins hunting, he hides two idols that he has been making the last couple weeks, which he wrapped in the parchments of his prior idols to make them seem more real. It doesn’t take long for everyone else to join him and shadow him. Which it’s about fucking time, but a few weeks too late. It actually didn’t even matter because Devens still found the idol, right in front of everyone! Everyone is really bummed and it’s hilarious.

Lauren and Julie are talking about Idols. Lauren is still mad she played hers for Chris and regrets doing so. In a confessional, Julie says since two of them were played last night, that must mean two have been rehidden. Julie keeps looking and she finds one! She is yelling for Lauren and running to her. They are hugging and all excited. Devens is sitting with Chris when this happens and can hear them in the distance. Devens tells Chris that he thinks she found his fake idol. A little bit later Lauren is walking and sees the parchment saying there is an idol hidden above the camp. She goes back and finds it and is ecstatic. The whole time she is searching Devens is peeking around a tree laughing and shocked his second fake Idol is working so well.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

As usual, they are really amping up these final challenges. This is a giant platform above the ocean that has 6 different obstacle course paths to get puzzle pieces. It was a really fun competition to watch, which is a lot coming from me. Devens wins another immunity, his 4th, and he came from behind to do it! Devens has been getting unwarranted criticism for playing the idol hunting style that got Ben Driebergen his win. For the record I loved Ben, and I was so glad he won. A huge difference between the two though is that Devens didn’t just rely on finding idols. 4 times, when he was target number 1, he won immunity and was able to keep going.

Devens can’t use his most recent hidden idol as they become obsolete at the final 4. He is going to be able to use his idol on someone else, but his ally Chris already has one too. He approaches Gavin and says if he uses it on him, and Gavin wins the final immunity challenge, will Gavin promise to take Devens to the final three. Gavin agrees, but in confessional says that it would be a terrible plan to take Devens to the final and if he has to go back on his word, so be it.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

All the talk at this tribal is about who has the best chance to beat Devens. Jeff asks Devens how it feels to have all this attention on him. He said he would have thought that it would be cool, but it’s not at all. So many people became laser focused on getting him out that they let the game go right by them. They show Kelley rolling her eyes at this, which is kind of silly, because he was right. So many people trying to get him and not work with him is what made him so fun to the Jury and such a force that he can’t be beaten if he got to the final.

Votes are placed and Jeff asks for Idols. Julie plays hers, Jeff reveals it is fake, and she just hangs her head in her hands. Lauren plays hers, but it is also revealed as fake. Lauren’s response is “That’s amazing”. Devens plays his for Gavin, and Chris plays his for himself. The Jury is going bonkers here. Lauren gets the boot.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

Very difficult final 4 challenge, which is par for the course in the past seasons as well. It is a rocking balance beam where they have to stack 6 boxes on the end. Chris wins it, not easily, but he seemed to struggle the least with it.

Back at camp, Devens and Chris are talking. Devens asks if there is any chance he will take him to the final. Chris asks if Devens has practiced fire. Devens said yeah, which Chris tells him he should keep practicing. Very clear that Chris isn’t taking Devens, in fact Chris goes to train Julie and Gavin since they will need to go against Devens. Chris says whoever can make fire best will be the one making fire against Devens.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

There was a move that was teased to us in Ghost Island but Dom didn’t end up going through with it. Giving up your final 4 idol and making fire yourself against someone to secure your place in the final. Chris does exactly this by giving his immunity necklace to Julie and saying he and Devens will be making fire against each other. They have to make fire up in the voting booth because the wind is so bad. Devens struggles a bit getting his started. Chris got his going pretty quickly. If Devens had another 30 seconds he likely could have won, but it was too late and Chis won the fire making challenge. Devens was finally fully eliminated from the game after so long and so many people failing to do so. While watching, I knew that his was a game winning move by Chris.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

After the last tribal, they go back to camp and they each give a monologue, but there isn’t anything exciting in them so we are going right to the final Tribal where the jury gets to ask questions. There are a lot of questions that are asked and I don’t think it would be fun reading for you to have me go over all of them. Instead I’ll just give my impressions of how the 3 answered their questions.

Chris stumbled at the beginning when he asked Gavin an aggressive, defensive question and the Jury wasn’t feeling that. They wanted him to leave the questions to them. After that, Chris answered all the questions really well. Very clearly painting the picture why he should win. He had very little time to play the game but he did every possible thing he could have to win the game in that short time.

Gavin played a pretty solid game and I think deserved to be in the final. He really botched his questions though. He spent a ton of time talking about how unfair it was for Chris to win. His point was that Chris hadn’t been in the game long. Sure, mention it once, but maybe a majority of your time to talk should be spent on why you should win, not why someone else should lose. He was trashing how unfair Edge of Extinction was and how it was an easy route, to a bunch of people who had been living on EoE for the whole game fighting to stay in. Perfect way to sour jury members on you.

Julie was…a non-factor. At the beginning she tried claiming that her getting emotional and having breakdowns was an intentional game move to manipulate people. Which, just to be clear, absolutely was not. Her freaking out after being left out of votes had no impact on how votes went after that. The most it did was show she was a weak player they could keep around and not worry about winning. This bull shit answer told the jury right away she had no business even being considered for votes, and she pretty much received no questions after that point.

Everyone votes, Jeff leaves and we go back to the live audience show. First vote is for Gavin, then Chris, then Gavin. After these I knew that Julie wasn’t receiving a single vote since Jeff would have read it so each were tied. It goes back and forth between the two guys for the 8 votes where they are both 4-4. We get 3 additional Chris votes for him to win the title of Sole Survivor!

I have no issues with Chris winning. As he pointed out in his jury questions, he played really hard in the short time he had. He didn’t get to coast to the end. It’s not like Edge of Extinction was Ponderosa and he just got to chill and stay strong in comfort. He was playing hard, even out there surviving every day, in arguably more difficult conditions than the people still at camp. It is such a lazy take to criticise him winning because he played in the confines of his seasons theme. This goes for any season or twist in any show. Chris didn’t CHOOSE to be voted out, he didn’t CHOOSE to play on this season, they don’t know the theme when they get taken out there. He was presented with the rules, and he played within the confines of them and won the game. Literally the whole point of the phrase “Don’t hate the player, hate the game”

Thank you so much for reading along everyone! This was a blast and I hope I provided some entertaining writing for you throughout this season of Survivor. Big Brother starts soon so that will likely be my next big show but we shall see, maybe I’ll write about The Bachelorette! Until next time…bye!

Hide and Seek

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!

The Mastermind’s Collapse

Survivor S38E11

I can’t believe how close we are to the finale! It feels like this season just started, and here we are with two more episodes left. I’m actually going to be in Washington D.C. on vacation the week the finale is airing, so that’s going to be challenging to watch and write about but we’ll see how it goes!

Another week, another Devens blindside. Devens thought Wardog was going to be safe next week and Ron lied to him, again. Ron recognizes everyone is happy with him at this point, except Devens, and he needs to do something to try to fix that rift until they vote him out. He does this by giving Devens his expired advantage menu that has the immunity idol as an option. Of course this expired weeks ago, but Devens doesn’t know this. Ron is hoping that it makes Devens feel at ease and not search for any hidden immunity idols.

REWARD CHALLENGE

Really quick challenge for us this week, maybe 3 minutes into the episode. It is the Loved Ones visit episode. I’ll be honest, the Loved Ones episodes in these shows usually fuck me up and get me feeling emotional. Something about pure unfettered happiness really gets to me so when the contestants break down, I feel things. Get off me.

They bring out everyone’s loved one, one by one, so they can hug and cry and what not. The challenge was a pretty exhaustive one where the survivors run down to the water, scoop a bucket, and toss the water to their loved one’s bucket where they catch it and pour it into a pail. First to fill the bucket wins. I explained this challenge when I normally don’t because I wanted to show that while it seems simple it is pretty exhausting to have these starved people run a decent distance to the water, scoop, and run back. Viewers who didn’t watch the older seasons probably think people like Victoria are weak competitors because they gassed out in this one. We get almost no camp life shown in the seasons anymore so it’s hard to tell just how little food they are working off of. But enough reminiscing about old seasons…

Ron and his husband win! Ron gets to pick a couple pairs to join them on their reward. He picks Julie and her husband, and Gavin and his wife. I’ve already made it known I wouldn’t want to accept any family visit, aside from the initial hugging and what not, in order to garner favor with other people. It just needs to be mentioned again that winning the Loved Ones competition can only hurt you, you also immediately make the other people you didn’t choose feel bad. Life is just a lot easier to not rock the boat unnecessarily like that. For example, Victoria says in a confessional that she is rethinking her connection with Ron since he didn’t pick her.

Everyone hanging out at the reward are having a good time, and they all agree that if Devens doesn’t win immunity, he is gone. In private, Ron is bragging to his husband about how he is running the game by cheating and manipulating people. His husband reassures him that it’s okay and he can do whatever it takes to win the game. Womp womp, here is that foreshadowing of someone saying they are running the game, pretty much saying they are a puppet master…lets see what happens!

Devens goes out looking for the idol, the rest of the people at camp are all against him, and someone half jokingly says they should look through his bag to see if he has the idol. Aurora grabs his bag and starts looking, while Devens walks back into camp and catches her. Instead of owning it and saying sorry, she overcorrects and becomes an asshole, not caring that she was caught and trying to act tough about it. Devens says he will be bringing his backpack with him everywhere.

Devens is looking all over and no one is shadowing him, which is strange since these people would have seen Ben Driebergen’s idol streak, but whatever. It pays off for Devens as he finds a clue to an idol! He is so pumped that he is ready to go get the idol and says he doesn’t even care if the other people see him get it, luckily he takes a beat and says he will sneak and get it. This turns out to be pretty challenging as it’s in a tree really high above the shelter. He waits until everyone is asleep and in the pitch black night, shimmies up the tree that is supporting the shelter, rubbing the beams together, making noise, but is able to get the the idol with no one expecting anything.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

Time for another endurance immunity challenge. Devens drops in about a minute. It’s a really difficult challenge so it makes sense if he accidently fell, but it seems it would be beneficial to try to get the immunity necklace to extend the idol. Devens calls out that he knows he’s being sent home, and tries taking a shot at Aurora saying she would be the next target with two immunity wins, this is mostly ignored by everyone. Gavin wins the immunity.

Everyone back at camp is largely ignoring Devens. They are all sitting around a fire eating and he’s trying to talk to people about random stuff and they appear to all be ignoring him. Eventually in private, Ron, Julie, and Devens are talking and they tell Devens the plan is Aurora, and Devens asks Ron if the idol is real, he looks him in the eye and says yes. Ron and Julie leave and Julie is telling Ron how awful she feels about doing this to him and Ron says the game is called Survivor for a reason. Ron explains the master plan of everyone voting against Devens and Devins voting against Aurora, this way if Devens does have a real idol, Aurora is out.

Just going to say it now, Victoria and Lauren are geniuses. The two get together and realize they are both free agents at this point and why not work together? They are able to recognize Rons plan with no clues and propose a plan to foil it, both of them vote for Ron. That way if Devens gets the most votes, and Devens votes for Aurora, then their 2 votes would send Ron home. Lauren and Victoria bring Aurora in on the plan, then they approach Gavin. Gavin is resistant since Ron gave him the time with his wife but is still listening. To try to win him over Aurora gives Gavin her second vote.

TRIBAL COUNCIL

Jeff asks Devens about dropping out so quickly in the competition. He says it’s easy when you know you’re the target (I don’t really understand this logic). The whole Aurora digging through Devens bag comes up again with the same annoying reaction from Aurora, the jury is floored by this news. Jeff asks Ron about his choices and he says he feels bad for not picking either of the Father/Daughter options because he knows that bond is important. Lauren and Victoria both roll their eyes and Lauren says it’s really telling about who he picked.

Jeff asks a bit about alliances and how they are going. Julie says she has multiple alliances because this season with all the blindsides, the alliances are always shifting. Jeff asks Devens if this is reassuring since he feels he is on the outs. Devens says not really since no one is listening to what he has to say so the alliance formations don’t matter.

It is time to vote! Jeff tallies them and asks if anyone has any immunity idols. Devens announces he will try to order something off of the advantage menu and tries Ron’s idol. The way Devens is wording it, you can kind of tell he doesn’t 100% think this is a real idol, but wants to try anyway. Jeff announces what the advantage is, but says it expired on day nine and has no power. Devens looks back, calling Ron and Julie villains, saying he was already going home, and did they just want to make him look stupid so his kids think he’s an idiot? Then BAM! He says “Except…. You’ve proven time and time again you’re untrustworthy and disloyal, and Julie has proven time and time again she loves lying to people’s faces!” as he is walking back to his bag to get his real immunity idol. He ends his speech with “You guys are gems.”

Jeff starts reading the votes. Devens gets the first four and Aurora gets the next one. Things seem to be going Ron’s way and then Jeff reads a Ron vote which surprises him a little bit. Jeff reads a second and Devens starts clapping. Jeff announces one vote left and Devens says “Peace Bro.” Ron is gone. As great as Devens is with these Tribals, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Victoria and Lauren came up with this move and deserve most of the credit for figuring out two peoples plans and coming up with the best plan to deal with them.

I have never seen such a emotive Jury and I’m absolutely loving it. They are all freaking out, clapping, and making noises with everything Devens does. They love this guy, and if the other people still in the game are seeing how the Jury is eating up everything he does, they have zero chance at beating him in the final. I’d love this since I’ve been unabashedly rooting for him since day 1, but I can’t imagine a scenario in which he can get there. I’d have to imagine next week will be an EoE person coming back into the game, and likely going right back out, unless the Devens target is just that large.

That’s all I got this week! I have been thinking a lot the last couple days about how close we are getting to Big Brother time and I am SO PUMPED! I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with 3 episodes a week and trying not to spam everyone on my social media with articles they probably don’t care about…but we’ll see what I come up with! Until my next post…bye!

Back to Earth

Survivor S38E10

I’m having a hard time concentrating to write this post. I’m going to see Avengers: Endgame in a couple of hours and the big battle in Game of Thrones is tonight. I never want to skip an episode of a show I’m writing though so here we are with a new Survivor recap coming your way!

The last couple weeks have had some epic episodes, it was only natural that they would come back to earth at some point. This episode wasn’t bad by any means, it just was a good straight forward classic episode with a pretty predictable result.

After tribal, everyone gets back to camp and Lauren is still shocked. We see a confessional where she doesn’t know who would be best to go after: Wardog and Ron to avenge Kelley, or Devens because he is such a threat. Gavin and Wardog start bickering. Gavin really hates how Wardog was talking to him like a dog, which really struck a chord with him since he mentions it multiple times throughout the episode.

Gavin is forced to jump alliances quite a bit since everyone is blindsiding everyone in any alliance he is part of. He approaches Victoria and Ron, wanting to come back to them; they seem to accept him. Later on, we see Ron apologizing to Julie about leaving her out on the vote. She says it’s okay, it’s better to not always vote together. Seems like a strange thing to say when she had a meltdown a couple weeks ago when she was left out of the vote…but whatever.

The next morning there is a conversation between Devens, Wardog, and Ron, all discussing how they are such biggest players in the game. They are each other’s biggest threats and greatest hope. They discuss how it will be tempting to take each other out but if they can resist that then they can get to the end together. This kind of conversation in an episode is never a good sign; almost always foreshadowing someone’s doom.

Reward Challenge

WHAT!? WE HAVE A REWARD CHALLENGE! I was kind of hoping survivor eliminated them because they are so boring and inconsequential to viewers. I get they are huge for the contestants to get the food and comfort to survive; but rarely do the results impact anything. Julie, Devens, Lauren, and Wardog win the reward. It doesn’t matter what the actual comp was; some sort of race, obstacle course, and puzzle.

The winners got to go to a mud bath spa place. Had some funny scenes of Wardog and Devens rubbing hot mud all over each other. Pretty stark contrast from Devens and Wardog being aggressive to each other after Devens got back in the game. I was happy to see Devens making changes and playing less emotionally. It can’t all be good for Devens though, they show us a confessional where Devens says he isn’t wanting to talk strategy with Julie and Lauren since they aren’t even playing the game. Of course this is immediately followed by Julie and Lauren on their own plotting to take out the two men. Lauren pitches Devens, Julie pitches Wardog; we don’t see their final decision at this time.

Back at camp, the reward challenge losers are hanging out. Ron is bummed after losing the reward but happy to have alone time with Gavin, Victoria, and Aurora. They are trying to figure out who to target. The consensus lands on Devens; Gavin wants Wardog but is willing to vote with the group that has the numbers. They also show us that Ron gives back the extra vote to Aurora to garner trust. I don’t get it, but if he thinks it will help, good for him I suppose.

There is a scene that is shown that felt really weird and out of place and it took me awhile to figure out why. Aurora is making rice, and Ron and Aurora start arguing about how much to make. Aurora says they are both drama queens and she isn’t going to give up an argument. Ron calls her the Rice Nazi; which is a fantastic Seinfeld reference. The scene seemed so out of place and random, we don’t usually see things like this on episodes. Then it hit me what it reminded me of. The way Survivor is currently played is all politics and game play; you get almost no actual camp life and survival. I’m currently watching Season 13 Cook Islands right now and back then there were decent portions of episodes showing camp life and daily annoyances that they had to deal with. The Ron Aurora fight was a good throwback to that.

Edge of Extinction

Man, EoE is pretty damn boring when there isn’t a hidden advantage being hunted down. Kelley is struggling with EoE life and getting voted out with an idol in her pocket. Joe and Aubrey are comforting her and bonding (Where you at David!?). Reem tells us how she is really happy Kelley is finally out and calls Kelley out to her face how she ruined Reems whole survivor experience voting her out first. This was actually not boring at all and pretty funny to watch

Immunity Challenge

It’s the first non endurance individual immunity challenge! It’s an obstacle course with a puzzle at the end. It was a pretty exciting comp resulting in Devens winning again! I was so pumped when it happened that my cheer caused my cat to bolt away and hide on the other side of the room. This was a must win for Devens as it seemed everyone was on the same page to vote him out. I really hope Devens is searching for hidden immunity idols now and production just isn’t showing us because he doesn’t stand a chance otherwise.

After the win, everyone was scrambling for a moment to find who they would target instead. They pretty quickly settle on Wardog. Ron is a little apprehensive because after Wardog, he thinks he will be the biggest threat. Which is a little bit of ego because on the threat level he was 3, behind Wardog and Devens. Wardog of course isn’t going to take this lying down and is trying to get numbers for Aurora. Julie seems to possibly be considering it and Lauren is okay with Aurora going home over Wardog as she states, “I know the Devil I’m working with”. Meaning she knows Wardog more than Aurora and can try to read him better.

Tribal Council

Jury comes in and Kelley looks at Wardog, shaking her head, he smirks at her. Jeff asks how things are going at camp as there are less and less people. Wardog says it’s tough as everyone is talking to everyone. Gavin reacts surprised which of course Jeff calls out and Gavin says Wardog hasn’t spoken to him since right after the Kelley vote where Wardog spoke to him like a dog and he doesn’t like being spoken to that way.

This whole tribal has one buzzword that is used a million times…”Threat”. I was tempted to rewatch tribal and count up how many times it is used and then changed my mind because the number would be so high. Jeff basically goes person to person asking everyone about who they see as a threat and how much a threat they see themselves as. No one is directly naming anyone, which is a smart move. Wardog acknowledges he is the biggest threat after taking out David and Kelley. He groups Ron in here saying THEY did it which made Ron’s eyes get real wide. Jeff calls this out and Ron does accept responsibility for his part in it.

Vote time…and Wardog is gone, shocker! Kelley is ecstatic and mouths “I love you” to Lauren. Which is funny that she loves her so much even though she outed that Lauren has an idol to the EoE group, which means one of them is coming back into the game. Wardog tells them on the way out that they all made the right decision, and that he will be back. I really think Wardog is confused about what the word “threat” really means. Sure, he is a wildcard and would turn on anyone at anytime, but that’s not strategic or anything. It really just puts a huge target on you because you prove no one can trust you. Threat is someone who can strategically take out people and smooth it over after, or make moves to protect you. Wardog burned all of his bridges until he was reliant on two other big threats to cover himself. Also, Wardog can’t win any competitions so that is a huge portion of being a threat he just isn’t capable of doing.

See, it wasn’t a bad episode, but a pretty straightforward one with a predictable ending. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be writing about Devens elimination next week which a pretty big bummer but what can ya do. I really wish the alliance between him and Victoria worked out. There is still time though! I really feel like a floater is going to win this season which will be quite the disappointment from the last few great winners. Well, I have to go get ready to be blown away by Avengers: Endgame and post a bunch of spoilers for everyone…bye!

“Puppet master” curse strikes again

Survivor S38E7

Thanks for everyone who checked out my post last week! Please let me know any feedback you may have. I do this because It’s fun to write about, but also don’t want to torture anyone with terrible writing. Now onto the show!

Last Week Tribal Aftermath

Once again we start the show with no “previously on” or title sequence. I really don’t mind actually, I always find both unnecessary and would rather see more of a show anyway than the 7th time listening to some music and clips of the contestants.

After an episode of pushing Kama Strong so heavily, the rest of Kama kind of poo poo’d that by excluding one of their members in the plan to vote out Joe. Aurora, who was very close with Joe, had no idea he was going to be cut. I have no issue with not telling her; she can say in hindsight all she wants that she wouldn’t have told Joe if that was the plan, but how many times have we seen in the past where someone close to the target was let in on what was going to happen and blew it all up? Regardless, Aurora was very betrayed by being left out and we can now clearly see a rift between her and the rest of Kama. After we are shown Aurora dealing with the hurt of being left out of the blind side, we cut to people already trying to jockey for position in the game. There are a couple important conversations back to back with Ron, David, and Devens and another one with Wardog, Lauren, and Kelley.

We get a confessional from Ron about how David and Devens owe him one now and they will trust him and are loyal to him now. Cut back to this 4 way conversation and Ron blows up Lesu’s plan to vote one of them, making sure to toss in how they were “evil about it” in regards to the way Lesu wanted D&D out. Ron made a great move by working to make the rift between these two and the rest of Lesu as wide as possible. Which we soon find works for one of them, but not the other. We also get the first mention of the apparently coveted Family Visit in this talk, that’ll come back later, many…many times.

Wardog is perplexing to me. I hate his nickname so much, that when talking about the show, I refuse to use it, but will use it here for clarity. I question how much he actually strategizes versus just throwing out every idea until one finally lands. ANYWAY…Wardog throws out the idea of trying to win D&D back to the Lesu side. He wants to tell them they they can be mad Lesu voted for them last tribal council and get revenge, but be at the bottom of Kama, or they can work together and pull in Aurora and take Kama to rocks.

Reward Challenge

My least favorite part of Survivor is reward challenges. I don’t really care about challenges much, aside from their ramifications to the game, and this early when it isn’t a “pick who you like more” reward, they don’t hold much weight to overall game play. Aurora, Eric, Devens, Julie, Wardog, and Victoria win and the biggest effect this had was that Kelley and Lauren could approach and convince David to go with them against Kama6 and also that David needs to convince Devens to join (which David thinks should be easy to do).

NO ONE should ever call themselves a “puppet master,” or they WILL be cursed. The moment you feel confident that you are running everything, you will lose it all . Around the point in the episode where Ron called himself a puppet master, I figured that something was going to happen to Kama.

The best moment of the episode was Devens and Wardog walking through the jungle. It was an overly aggressive and not well thought out conversation by Devens but it was hilarious to watch. Wardog pitches the old Lesu and Aurora plan and Devens is saying how much he’s dying to get back with them now that he knows he can trust them. When I was hearing this, I thought I heard some sarcasm in his voice, but brushed it off because no one is that overtly sarcastic when talking to other contestants. I was wrong. Devens finishes by saying “I really wanna get back with you all…except that I don’t fucking want to get back with you guys at all.” I thought Wardog was going to shit himself. He looked hurt and thrown off that someone would call Lesu out for backstabbing them. Wardog tells Devens that if he stays with Kama, it will only get him 8th or 9th, but with Lesu, it will get him further. Devens makes the great point that he knows it will get Wardog and Kelley further, but he doesn’t know it will get him further. Although I don’t agree with how Devens handled the the situation, I agree with his point. He will be at the bottom of the resurgent Lesu since they already went after him twice, or he could go with Kama and be at an unspecified rank, but not guaranteed bottom with them.

We were able to witness what seems to be the beginning of the end of the D&D partnership. As mentioned earlier, Devens is all for Kama, David is with Lesu. They seem to be at an impasse regarding a plan. The craziest moment is when Devens says he thought David would have given him back the half of the idol and David says he is going to hang on to it for now. It really sounds like David might be looking for a new ally.

Time to check in on Edge of Extinction. They all received messages in a bottle as clues to find a hidden advantage. Everyone goes looking, but Aubrey finds it! She gets to practice for the challenge they will have to do to come back into the game. To me, practicing a challenge isn’t a great advantage. I get that it does help, but if I’m finding an advantage, give me an extra vote or an immunity idol, something big. Lucky for Aubrey, this practice advantage also comes with an extra vote she can give to anyone, which she ends up giving to Aurora.

Immunity Competition

We have another endurance comp this week. Everyone stands on their tip toes and pins a block between their head and a bar above them. There is a scary moment that happens during the competition that may expose how big of an asshole I am when it comes to these games. Lauren is still in the comp and mentions that she is getting dizzy, but stays in. She ends up saying that she can’t see anything and is about to blackout, when she suddenly drops to the ground. Jeff and medical rush to check her out. People out of the competition tell Victoria and Aurora that people are taking care of Lauren and to keep going. While Lauren is being checked out, Aurora starts talking to Victoria, trying to convince Victoria to drop so she can win immunity and feel safe after being left out of the loop last week. Julie and some of the other players are upset that Aurora is talking game while Lauren is passed out. This makes NO sense to be mad about. I’m sorry…I thought the point of coming on this game was to win a million dollars. EVERY win, regardless of what is going on, matters. What happens if Aurora drops and goes home because she was being nice and didn’t make an effort to get the win. She would have literally given up 1 million dollars for someone who ended up being fine anyway. It’s the perfect time to have this conversation because you’re down to one other person you need to convince, and maybe their emotions are high due to what happened, making them more vulnerable. WIN IMMUNITY CHALLENGES. Victoria doesn’t end up giving in, but it doesn’t matter because Victoria drops and Aurora gets the win.

After the challenge, we get back to camp and all the Kama people are talking, planning what to do for tribal council. Maybe I’m forgetting, but I can’t remember seeing people in a group pushing “get to the loved ones” this strongly, but there is Eric and Ron tossing that out over and over to try keeping Kama6 in line to go after Lesu. Again, the point of this game is to win a million dollars. I love you mom and dad, but I’d be in the game to win the money, not see you guys on an island.

For sake of the length of this post, I’m not going to go into all the politicking that happened after the Kama meeting. Many different ideas were tossed around and it wasn’t clear if and how much the plan was going to change. One particularly important exchange was Wardog making a great move by first recognizing what Eric and Ron were doing with Derek and Devens, but then relaying that to Julia so she was aware of the backup plan in their own group.

Tribal Council

It was very interesting how in private meetings last week, the group was called Kama6, but in tribal council in front of everyone, the name switched to Kama7 to include Aurora. Devens goes as public with his Kama support as Ron did exposing and bragging about the Kama allegiance last week. Devens says he was out of the Lesu allegiance when they voted him out of it and will do whatever he can to show he is loyal to Kama.

Second week writing, second blindside! Julia and the other Kama members turned the table on the “Puppet master” and his partner and voted out the partner, Eric. Watching Eric’s face as the votes were read was hilarious, as you could see him doing the math in his head and then when the number got high enough to mean his own tribe turned, you could see the shock in his eyes. We get reaction shots of others and Ron “Puppet master” looks livid and Devens looks upset since he is immediately back on the bottom after connecting himself with Ron and Eric.

I’m torn on how this has been going, with Kama members getting voted out even with the majority. I like a lot of the members of Kama more than I do old Lesu. However, I really don’t understand and have always hated the “stick with your old tribal lines” bull shit. If there is a better game move and you can build a relationship with someone, it shouldn’t matter if they were arbitrarily placed on a different tribe at the beginning of the season as you. With these Kama’s being picked off, hopefully it will encourage more formal tribal mixing, making everything all the more interesting.

This Might Be One of Them!…But probably not.

Survivor S38E6

After I wrote my intro last week I was excited for a new episode to air. The episode opened with an overhead shot of the challenge grounds and no “previously on,” so I knew something big had to be happening. I was a little surprised by how quickly they yada yada’d through the tribe merge that finally would give the poor old Lesu tribe members a fighting chance. Little did I know that we were about to witness THE MOST ICONIC REALITY COMP MOMENT OF THE DECADE!

Jeff begins explaining to the newly formed Vata tribe that certain moments in Survivor become iconic. Some take years (still trying to think of an example of this…let me know if you have any…) and some become iconic the moment they happen. Now while this shpeal is going on I’m thinking to myself, “HOW PERFECT IS THIS!?” considering I had just talked about how much I love iconic moments. Then Jeff is throwing this soft ball right over the plate ready for me to knock it out of the park.

This moment, however, fell flat after Jeff had just tried hyping it up. Jeff gives a shout to “come on out!” and all the previously eliminated Survivors come marching out of the woods.What we got was a Big Brother Buyback that we have been seeing for years. The eliminated players are going to get a chance to compete against one another to get back into the game. Now, the competition itself was a pretty good one : lots of different old comps put together, ending in a really neat curved dragon vertical ball maze. The challenge was pretty close between Chris, Devens, and Wendy. I was hoping it wouldn’t be Wendy, because I still can’t get over the ridiculous hypocritical sudden vegetarianism. Both Chris and Wendy almost pulled it out, but much to my excitement my guy Devens pulled out the W!

Jeff gets a little savage at this moment and went through the rest of the Edge of Extinction (EoE) tribe, giving each of them their big moment to say why Survivor is important to them. It absolutely felt like he was going to send all of them home with a big thanks for playing. Suddenly, BAM, he reveals they get to go back to EoE and everyone goes nuts screaming. Keith’s reaction of dropping to the ground is especially humorous coming up later in the episode, where he and Wendy almost immediately raise the white flag and leave the game. Wendy wasn’t particularly enthused when she was given the news, which is highlighted by standing next to Audrey who looked like she was ready to go through a fucking wall to get back in the game.

The most exciting part of this merge was that we are bound to FINALLY get some screentime with other contestants who we know almost nothing about. The new tribe is all getting to know each other when we get the first glimpse of Kelley’s concern that Devens is back. Which doesn’t really make sense since he was the only person who left Lesu on good terms. Almost everyone back on extinction hates her and would be gunning for her, so Devens was best case scenario for her. From here, we get to see some other “new” faces. Julie is making strong connections with Devens, which he desperately needs with the returning member target on this back. During this, she says in a confessional about there being no way she would want to send him back to EoE.

Now it’s the time for the politicking and getting votes, one of the best parts of a Survivor episode. This is the real game time: making deals, and getting your hands dirty. The first we see is Kelley working on Joe and the old Kama (majority alliance) to go after Devens. Merge episodes are a bit chaotic with the politics. Everyone is sending out feelers and the editing is jumpy, trying to fit it all in. We immediately follow up Kelley and Joe’s talk with an All Girls meeting. The connection Devens made with Julie is almost instantly paying dividends when Kelley and Lauren are pitching him as an easy vote for the merge, which Julie is not on board with whatsoever and eventually makes moves to derail this.

Devens gets a little help though when he is going through his bag and finds a secret advantage. It’s an immunity idol, but with a twist! He needs to give half of it to someone else, and survive this elimination, then if he does, the two halves will become one idol which can be used after this week. He of course gives the other half to his closest ally, David.

Immunity challenge time. I won’t go on too much about this one, partially for length of this unnecessarily long post, but also because nothing wild happens. It’s an endurance comp where they have to balance a statue on a pole while standing on a balance beam. People start dropping fairly quickly and we get down to Julie, Joe, and Lauren. Surprising I think everyone, Julie pulls out the win!

The politicking takes a turn after the immunity challenge when Julie lets Victoria know she wants to go after Kelley and get one of the returnees out. Julie also exposes everyone else’s idea to Devens: they want to go after him, but she isn’t going to let that happen. Basically everything is blowing up.

A majority of the group decides to try to capture the chickens that Wendy released. Joe, of course, couldn’t be bothered to do anything, so he was staying back working on the damn flag instead of being in strategic conversation. Ron asked him what the plan was and Joe decided to be vague and dismissive. No matter what, when someone asks you about a plan, if you don’t have some sort of confident answer, you’re immediately making them nervous and they are going to put a target on your back. Ron realizes that Joe is valuable since he is known to win many comps, so he brings the idea to go after him to one of my budding favorites, Victoria. Victoria brings the Joe idea to the Kama6 and everything still seems up in the air.

Tribal council was a bit aggressive this week. Ron was incredibly open about the Kama6 alliance, rubbing it in the face of the other tribe members that they have a majority. It was not tactful. Victoria makes a vague comment about going after a bigger target than Devens, and Captain Jack Sparrow…er…Joe, took immediate offense. Victoria tried to talk her way out of it, but the cards had already been shown. The votes seem scattershot as they are being read between Devens, Kelley, and David. Then the turn happens and Joe is given the boot! All the Kama6 members have big smiles on their faces while everyone else, including the EoE members who are sitting in the jury spot, are completely stunned. The funniest reaction is Reem over on the jury saying, “Lame”. Could be because she hates Kelley so much, she wanted her gone over everyone, or now she knows she needs to compete against Joey Amazing to get back in the show. Joe is quite angry about being voted out and makes the easy choice to go to EoE.

There has been a lot of criticism of voting out Joe and giving him a chance to come back into the game. I disagree with this. Yes, I’m aware it is highly unlikely that Joe wins every immunity from here on out. However, the longer he is in the game, the more chances he has to make a “Meat Shield” alliance with others. We saw it last season where Nick made it to a point where he could win multiple immunities back to back and he was nowhere near the comp beast that Joe is. It is a much safer idea to get him out now and risk only a chance that he can win his way back in.