Another episode of Survivor is in the books! Rachel retakes control of the game as we race our way to the final tribal council. Let’s dive in!
Rachel Crashes Her Funeral, Andy Digs His Grave
Post Operation Italy, there was one new mission for most of the tribe: get Rachel out. Officially deemed a threat by Sam, Genevieve, and Andy, they dismantled the underdog alliance with one lethal play and are prepared to sweep out the remains of the alliance starting with the head of the snake. All they have to navigate is her block-a-vote advantage… or so they think. Rachel has one advantage that no one knows about — a hidden immunity idol — and she is given a golden opportunity to retake the reins of the game with one simple and easy move.
Rachel first laid the foundation. She snooped on the Operation Italy afterparty and learned that Teeny has flipped sides against her. Good to know. Rachel no longer has numbers. Next, Rachel secures her alliance with Sue by divulging the secret of her idol. Rachel has learned from her previous experience of sharing the block-a-vote advantage with Sue to know that all you have to do is share a secret and you’ve locked down Sue for life. She doesn’t have to worry about Sue leaking her idol. Next step is ideally winning the challenge, but she loses to Genevieve. This means she has to use her idol in this vote, unless she can somehow flip someone over to their side. Her target is her former Gata tribemates, hoping that maybe a reunion is in the cards.
The reunion was not happy. Rachel plays the bitter ex-tribemate and immediately gets a no from Sam, who logically and honestly points out that Rachel rejected an alliance with him earlier in the season so he doesn’t have much interest in saving her. Andy is more open to flipping back to an alliance with Rachel, and Rachel chooses to convince Andy by berating his game and telling Andy he sucks at Survivor and the jury does not respect him and that he needs to flip back again for another big move. Andy does consider the pitch but ultimately rejects a late alliance with Rachel.
Ironically, it is this moment where Andy seals his own exit. Andy rejects Rachel and goes on to butter her up on the way out in a not-so-subtle effort in jury management. Maybe if Rachel respects me a bit before voting her out, he thinks, it will rub onto the rest of the jury. His pitch ironically works, because it makes Rachel second-guess her opinion of Andy’s game and deems him more threatening than Sam.
Andy’s zero-to-hero story this season was a highlight for me. We see so many early burnouts nowadays that when people are able to exceed their early impression it tugs at my strings, especially when we get a fun character out of it. Andy’s clumsy, imperfect, nonserious, yet very serious approach to the game won me over as the season went along. He also wrote himself into the Survivor history books as the mastermind behind Operation Italy, a guaranteed top five, possibly top three move of New Era Survivor.
Going into tribal council, it was clear Rachel would be going home… which made it all the more satisfying for Rachel to take the stage, whip out her idol, and wow the jury. Idol plays don’t get much easier than this, and Rachel is aware enough to not overthink it. Given that four people had already confirmed to Rachel they are voting her out, all Rachel had to do was play into her apparent doom and do the best she can to impress the jury, which she played to perfection. She no longer has to pretend to be under the radar and can play as showy and in-your-face as she wants, and with Sue by her side she can smell the million dollars at the end of the road.
It can be tempting to blame the Operation Italy alliance for falling into their own trap by not splitting the vote, given they had the numbers four to two. I assume they didn’t split because of Rachel’s block-a-vote, which makes it a coin flip that Rachel gets two votes instead of one. At this point in the game, it is required for Rachel to go home tonight, given that Genevieve is still very much a threat to be removed. Genevieve and Rachel surviving this vote means one of them likely makes final tribal council as the strongest challenge castaways left in the game, which means an uphill battle for anyone sitting next to them. Also, there was zero inkling that Rachel had an idol, so I’m sure the idea that she did indeed have said idol did not seriously cross their mind this late in the game.
At the end of the day, Rachel gets her big moment and Andy goes home, leaving Genevieve as the only serious contender in Rachel’s new path to victory.
A Not-So-Teeny Tragedy
I think it’s worth eulogizing about the Teeny masterclass of how not to play Survivor that reached its appropriate conclusion this episode. Things have built up all season in Teeny’s game that reached a climax with an utter disaster of social and strategic management in these two votes, indicative of the Teeny’s game as a whole.
First off, Teeny was out of the Operation Italy vote, and it caused a lot of shock and insecurity to bubble up. Upon returning to camp, Teeny immediately jumps ships from the underdog alliance to instead join up with the Italy trio, declaring that Rachel needs to go home next. Which is weird, given that the episode before Teeny was adamant that Rachel was not a threat and that playing with Rachel meant Teeny had a good chance to win. But after a single vote Teeny completely flips opinions, going as far as to believe the pitch from Andy, Sam and Genevieve that this blindside of Caroline was just one big “happy accident”. Andy didn’t have any calculated vote split plan; he was just a silly goose who wanted to flip!
What is on display here is Teeny’s propensity to whole-heartedly believe and support whatever is the last thing told to them. After being shocked by a big blindside, Teeny wholeheartedly joins the Italy group in an effort for banal self-preservation, going as far as to spill all the secrets entrusted to them during the very short reign of the underdog alliance.
Fast forward to the reward at the Sanctuary, where good things happen. Teeny gets to go eat food with Genevieve and Rachel, and after having one too many glasses of red wine, Teeny blabs about Genevieve’s idol in front of Sue, the new enemy and Rachel’s loyal soldier. Ironically, this ends up being good for Genevieve, because the idol is fake. Teeny, after being flashed the idol one time a few days ago, wholeheartedly and unquestionably believes this to be a real idol and has no problem feeding into the lie they were told.
Fast forward again to the fallout of Rachel’s idol reveal. Teeny was all in with the Italy agents so it comes to quite a shock for them when flipping sides does not pay off. Rachel follows this up by winning the final challenge and this means that it is time to call Genevieve’s idol bluff. Sam makes the decision even easier for the group by revealing that he helped make Genevieve’s fake idol while on reward with Andy. Sam is all about preserving his place in the game, because if the other three castaways believe Genevieve has a real idol, then they won’t risk getting idoled out and Sam gets the boot. But Sam also can’t make any move that looks like sucking up to Rachel for the sake of his slim chances to win against her in the jury, so he has to disseminate the information through Teeny.
At first Teeny wholeheartedly believes Sam. Of course the idol is a fake! But after consulting Rachel and Sue with this information and getting a negative response Teeny starts to question. Teeny is scarred by all the times Genevieve got one-up on them all season and is paranoid that Genevieve has concocted yet another scheme to outfox them. Confronting Genevieve and getting what we know is the honest truth does nothing for Teeny. Teeny’s mind has melted from their time on Survivor, and after a multitude of failures Teeny no longer knows what is true and what is false. And at the end of it all, after a lengthy deliberation in front of the voting parchment, Teeny voted wrong. They wrote Sam’s name, despite Rachel and Sue believing Sam and voting Genevieve.
Two super-superfans came onto this season, and played Survivor with vastly different trajectories. One was Andy, who after a horrendous first day slowly found his footing and made some smart successful moves. The other is Teeny, who after a strong start on Lavo has slowly leaked all confidence and became a lost goat set up to be slaughtered at the final tribal council. Teeny’s story has taken a tragic turn for me. While some may laugh at the constant misplays especially in the wake of their overconfident and entitled actions over the last few episodes, it’s sad to see someone who loves the game and wants to play well fall to a point of being completely overwhelmed to the point of becoming an impotent Survivor player.
Genevieve Can’t Bluff Her Way out of This One
The final five immunity challenge was the tedious task of stacking balls and cups while on a wobbly plank, and the tense challenge ending with Rachel winning the necklace over Genevieve. The tale of these frenemies ended at tribal council where Rachel and Sue correctly determined Genevieve’s idol was fake and voted with Sam to take her out.
Genevieve finishes her time on Survivor 47 with a satisfying story arc and a solid reputation as one of the strongest pure strategists of the New Era. Genevieve broke onto the scene with a defining blindside against Kishan that brought her into the spotlight of the season. She further honed her merciless gameplay into the merge by blindsiding Sol out of nowhere in a big move, but it left her on the outs as tribemates flagged her as a threat to win. While surviving on the bottom, Genevieve reassessed her own view on how to play Survivor, regretting her decision to avoid friendships with her fellow tribemates. As she reckoned with her game, she found a place within Operation Italy and helped orchestrate the biggest blindside of the season, but after Rachel’s idol play and subsequent immunity victory, her Survivor wick had finally burned out. The killer grew a heart by the time she finished her stay on the island, and it made for a much deeper and enjoyable Genevieve experience for me. Her and Andy are my clear favorites for inclusion in Survivor 50. Genevieve’s ending feels like unfinished business, and if she was given a second chance to play a more personable style of Survivor, could she make it all the way to day 26?
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Best Social Lubricant: Red Wine
I think Teeny’s legacy will not be defined by the poor gameplay, but their propensity to get sloshed on rewards. Teeny is just a wine mom at heart and I’m glad they had the opportunity to indulge.
Best Dick Measuring Contest: Genevieve and Rachel
The passive aggressive ego-maxing compliment party between Genevieve and Rachel, both sure that if they beat the other in the upcoming challenge then they would clearly win the season, made for some unexpected comedy. It probably would annoy me to hear two of my tribemates giggling about how they play the best Survivor games as they prepare for their gladiator battle before this final vote, if I was Sam Teeny and Sue. This scene would also age like milk if somehow Rachel doesn’t win.
Most Unpopular Opinion: Rachel is… Overrated
Yes, I have to get ahead of it and lay out my case to slow down the Rachel hype train before she wins and fans start calling her the greatest player of the New Era or whatnot. This was an unpopular take while watching the episode with my friends who were all cheering for her to win. I basically got booed out of my own home.
But listen, I think it’s unavoidable to look at Rachel’s game analytically and not conclude that she had a lot of good fortune to be where she is at now. Pre-merge Rachel’s alliance with Anika lost out against Sam, Sierra and Andy. She would have been a shoo-in to go home before the merge during that split tribal council against the five Tukus but was straight up spared by Sol due to being given the Safety without Power advantage. Some might say it was Rachel’s “fantastic social game” that made Sol want to give her the advantage, but I think Sol was more interested in causing chaos and weakening Tuku by forcing them to vote out one of their own. I think Sol would have chosen to save anyone in that position against the Tuku alliance.
Rachel promptly follows this up by realigning again with Sam and Sierra to replace Andy and link up with Lavo, an alliance that failed immediately and left her to pick at scraps at the bottom. In the process she abandons Sol, who saved her earlier, but then Tuku implodes on itself, and she aligns with Caroline and Sue. She goes along with the Tuku duo to vote out Gabe and Kyle and ingratiates herself in that group. However, she wanted to vote out Genevieve both times and didn’t get her way. Things like this make me wonder if the result of the season dictated the point of view given for the presentation of this alliance. Like if Caroline was about to head into the final four and Rachel was voted out in Operation Italy, would this underdog alliance have been formed by Caroline and Sue, bringing in Rachel to help eliminate her Tuku rivals as a shield because of her shifty gameplay?
The underdog alliance forms but the first tribal council right after consolidating power she is blindsided by Operation Italy. She would have been voted out in final six, but she has an idol because she happened to buy food at the auction that contained a clue to a hidden immunity idol. Here’s a quick reminder that because of the modern twist on the auction, Rachel was motivated, dare I say “forced”, to spend all her money on that item to guarantee she didn’t lose her vote… and as the person with the most money she was bidding against nobody. Some might point out that she cut the idol out of the tarp in the middle of camp, but I don’t think it is that difficult to find an idol in a weird public spot when no one else is privy to the information she has. Plenty of people have found idols located in the shelter, or under the shelter, or around the shelter. She didn’t have to wear her idol in a palm frond hat to save her vote or climb a 100-foot cliff with a ladder to get her idol. She was given a signature move by the Survivor gods… though someone who buys into conspiracies might say she got a little… outside help… though I should say upfront that I don’t believe the show gets rigged to a degree anywhere close to what this would entail.
Rachel is basically a subtler Dean Kowalski, a Ben Driebergen with better PR, a less entertaining Rick Devens. Her path to winning will be defined by being “gifted” advantages. A key difference between Rachel and the above list is her social game having this “aura of competency”, which has given her a reputation among her tribe as a smart player, even when I’d argue her batting average in strategic ploys has been quite low. She has also been good at challenges at the most important time to be good at challenges, so if she wins her way to the end, she can point to that to cover up her mediocre strategic game.
Ok, got all the venting and criticism out of the way. Every win involves a bit of good luck, and it doesn’t mean that Rachel doesn’t deserve her laurels. I promise to be much nicer about Rachel next week when she inevitably wins. Unless she blows it in firemaking.
MVP of the Episode: Rachel
She is in a fantastic position to win the season, as her two biggest competitors are now out of the game. She also got to relish a satisfying idol reveal to save herself from going home.
Goat of the Episode: Teeny
Genevieve got the last laugh… Teeny’s downward spiral as a Survivor player only continued this episode. Teeny is a goat now and completely irrelevant to the end of the season.
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PLAYER TIER LIST:
OUT OF THE GAME
18. Jon
17. T.K.
16. Aysha
15. Kishan
14. Anika
13. Rome
12. Tiyana
11. Sierra
10. Sol
9. Gabe
8. Kyle
7. Caroline
6. Andy
5. Genevieve
NO CHANCE TO WIN
4. Teeny
Lived long enough to become a goat.
CHANCE OF WINNING, IF THEY DON’T SIT NEXT TO RACHEL
3. Sue
In a shocking turn of events… Sue kind of has a case to win, though she was certainly given a boost up by Teeny’s complete nosedive of a post-merge game. It hit me hard this episode: Sue’s not dumb, she’s just really, really loyal… probably the most loyal castaway in New Era history. It stands out like a sore thumb because there is no room for loyal-to-a-fault castaways in the modern era of Survivor. And yes, that loyalty is certainly misplaced right now and will be the reason Rachel likely sweeps the jury vote against her. But I now think it’s not passivity or willful ignorance: it’s just her strategy. And maybe… just maybe… the jury rewards her for it. If Rachel isn’t in the final three, then I think Sue’s commitment to her strategy could be a worthy pitch for a million dollars against Sam. And even if Rachel is sitting with Sue at the end, perhaps she steals a vote from Caroline or Gabe as a repayment of her loyalty to their day one Tuku alliance.
2. Sam
If Sam wins the final immunity, I think this would be one of the few times where it would make sense to throw yourself into firemaking to take out Rachel, the one person who is sure to beat you in the end. If he doesn’t win immunity, he’ll be making fire regardless as the only person Rachel is remotely threatened could beat her. Sam’s case is a little bare, as he has mostly just been scavenging around on the bottom and trying to get to the next day whichever way he can. However, his honest approach to the post-merge and survival as an active player despite being an outcast should theoretically leave him with a positive enough jury to beat Sue and Teeny. Against Rachel, maybe he steals one vote away from her.
FAVORITE TO WIN
1. Rachel
What can stop Rachel from winning at this point? Nothing other than losing the final challenge and losing firemaking. If she makes the final tribal council, the only two scenarios I can imagine Rachel not walking away a millionaire is if either the jury is bitter/emotional and wants to vote for either Sam or Sue, or Rachel has an awful FTC and sabotages herself from winning. Both scenarios seem very unlikely at this point.
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Does Rachel complete her victory journey or does someone else swoop in to take the million dollars? Find out next week!