Shannon Guss Weighs In on Survivor 50 So Far | Survivor Global
Survivor 46 RHAPApril 26, 20262:09:19

Shannon Guss Weighs In on Survivor 50 So Far | Survivor Global

Shannon Guss Weighs In on Survivor 50 So Far

Shannon Guss checks in from maternity leave with Chappell to discuss everything from Survivor 50 so far. The duo talk about the players’ legacies, the big votes, the edit, the twists, Jeff’s major moments and declare a Chissy winner for the season.

Survivor Global is back as Survivor 50 enters a pivotal stretch, with Shannon Guss returning from maternity leave to join co-host Chappell for a no-holds-barred analysis of the current state of the game. The two dive right into the aftermath of Christian’s exit, examining how production twists like Blood Moon and Tied Destinies are shaping the game and impacting both players and viewers. Shannon Guss shares why these overpowered twists make it tough to get invested, especially when fan favorites risk being swap-screwed or boxed in by shifting rules.

This episode of Survivor Global dishes up honest takes on Survivor 50’s “character season” editing, the surprising effectiveness of the cast, and whether strategy is being suffocated by production’s new-era mechanics. Shannon reflects on standout scenes like Cirie’s triumphant Exile Island return, the heartbreaking exit of major characters, and the rise of underdogs like Rizo. Chappell balances the debate with thoughts on boot order satisfaction and what it means to root for your “case” in the game. Their debate on the season’s quality is anchored by detailed breakdowns of cast performance, the edit’s gender dynamics, and the struggles of returnees navigating unpredictable twists.

– Blood Moon’s triple swap-screw and the disrespect to Survivor icons like Colby
– Cirie’s masterful social game, bouncing between alliances while never becoming a target
– Christian’s forced self-vote and why losing agency makes twists frustrating for fans
– Rizo’s journey from overlooked to superfan standout among returnees
– The evolving “Deal or No Deal” landscape as jury cases and favorites are knocked off the board

Will a legend finally break through and win, or are production’s unpredictable twists destined to throw the game into chaos? Can anyone outmaneuver Cirie, or will another fan favorite fall victim to a production shake-up?

Tune in to hear Shannon Guss and Chappell dissect the latest Survivor 50 moves, emotional exits, and strategic showdowns!

0:00 Shannon Returns
4:02 Blood Moon Twist Sparks Controversy
7:22 Survivor Legends Eliminated By Twists
13:25 Dynamic Cast Exceeds Expectations
22:35 Cirie’s Exile Triumph and Episode Eight
29:46 Is This Cirie’s Best Game Ever?
36:00 Christian’s Blindside and Painful Exit
50:07 Debating Mike White Versus Emily Move
56:56 Rizo’s Surprising Impact and Legacy
1:04:34 Ozzy and New School Players Rise
1:13:32 Rizo’s Jury Odds and Social Game
1:26:34 Returning Player Baggage and Redemption
1:33:05 Fan-Voted Twists Face Scrutiny
1:36:39 Billie Eilish Idol Flop Explained
1:43:14 Jeff Probst Competes in Challenges
1:49:59 Final Thoughts

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[00:00:00] We all love Survivor and in my first ever book, The Tribe and I have Spoken, I'll tell you how this little show evolved from that juggernaut first season on the beaches of Borneo all the way into its landmark 50th season. I'm like a storyteller, that's what I do. What role did the greatest players, the unforgettable moments, and Jeff Probst himself have in shaping what Survivor has become today? And what contribution did we play in building this worldwide tribe of Survivor fans? Love you, bae!

[00:00:28] For you future players, I've also included my Ultimate Survivor Playbook to help you win the million dollars, unlike me. It's fun, you know what dude, it's fun. This hardcover edition is filled with beautiful Survivor illustrations in every chapter and is an amazing addition for every Survivor collector. I'm a meat collector. Pre-orders are everything for a book launch, so to say thank you to everyone who pre-orders, you'll receive an exclusive digital bonus chapter

[00:00:56] called The Ultimate Rites of Passage, my personal tribute to all the players who have ever competed on the show. All 751. This is huge. I needed this. Pre-order wherever books are sold in hardcover and as an audiobook at robhasabook.com. That's robhasabook.com. Nicely done, Rob.

[00:02:00] Hello everyone and welcome to RHAP's coverage. The coverage of Survivor 50 for Survivor Global on a special podcast. I'm your host Shannon Gus, here to weigh in on Survivor 50. How many episodes are we in? I should know. Nine? I'm gonna guess nine. If you've seen it. Christian just went home. I hope you've seen it. So I'm here to weigh in for the first time on Survivor 50 after being on maternity leave. I have many, many thoughts.

[00:02:27] I'm gonna look back at the season at large to where we are now and to talk about it. I have a wonderful co-host who I always love talking about Survivor with. It is Chappelle. Chappelle, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me, Shannon. I'm very happy to have you back on the mic talking about this show. We just wrapped our coverage of Survivor AU and that was so much fun. I loved hearing you talk with the mic. And so I was extremely jealous that we had not got your opinions about this season of Survivor US.

[00:02:53] And so I am happy that I am the chosen recap uncle to be able to hear and break everything down with you and get your opinions about some of the things that have been going on. Yeah, I mean look, AU was fantastic for anyone who hasn't watched the latest season of Australian Survivor. It was really, really good. It was, I won't spoil AU, but in many ways like so opposite to what is happening here. I feel like this is like the character season, but the strategy is very limited. Whereas like the strategy in that season was phenomenal. I mean, what's happening in 15, we can talk about it.

[00:03:21] Like it's not that interesting strategically to me. Like I think probably the most interesting vote in this season of 50 now I'm coming in already as Debbie Downer, but like probably doesn't crack the top 10 of the interesting AU votes that we had. So I wanted to prioritize AU obviously like that's my beat. I was listening to you guys and we did some check-ins there, but now that that's over here to talk about 50 and I will come in. I mean, okay, look, I don't want to talk to fully as Debbie Downer. We're going to talk about the good and the bad, but this podcast Genesis Chappelle, a couple of days ago, I texted you and I said, I think I'm ready to call it. I think 50 is bad.

[00:03:51] And we, we talked about it a bit. We were chatting about it. And, um, and then we're like, maybe we should talk about some podcast. So we're here to talk about the, you know, the twist, the big moments, the characters, but, uh, maybe we can try to convince each other about where the season is at. Yeah. The overarching question is, is this season good or bad? Right. It's a very binary question. You know, obviously there's a lot of nuance to it and I hopefully, hopefully y'all fill our comment section with, you know, your opinions about, you know, the nuance of this,

[00:04:19] you know, because we're, we're going to try to narrow this down to yes or no. And I think that the, the question is good, but Shannon and I are very obviously on opposite ends of this. And I think that we kind of landed on, you know, it depends on what you're looking for in a season in the twist and characters and strategy. But for me, it's the boot order, Shannon, the boot order has to serve me for me to enjoy a season of survivor. A lot of times.

[00:04:44] And I personally with, uh, you know, recent events, notwithstanding, uh, I've been very happy with the boot order, uh, this season and to see, you know, my fave and yours. And a lot of the people listening to this face to read kind of at the center of making a lot of this stuff happen. I've been very much enjoying the seasons. I think like the boot order is part of it, but it's actually not all part of it because when we came in and we saw this cast for 50, like I was pretty critical of it. I think that the cast has exceeded my expectations.

[00:05:14] Like everyone's kind of there to do something interesting. Like they're really giving it their all. And the boot order is not amazing for me. And we'll talk about it, but it's not just that. Like for me, it really is how overproduced the season is. And I think what it was, was like, firstly, the tough thing with 50 is like, it's never mid. Like it's either incredible or not or terrible. And there's no middle ground. And the stakes are so, so high because it's doing this with returnees that you care about. So there's that aspect.

[00:05:43] And then I think like, I was enjoying it so much. Like episode two of this season, like gave me life. I watched that episode the day I came home from the hospital from having my baby. And it was the best part of my week. No, me, it was up there. It was really, that episode was, episode two was so like, and that I was really enjoying it. And I am still enjoying huge parts of it. Like last week alone, that scene where Sari comes back from Exile Island, I watched that too many times to count. Like that scene alone gives me life. Like watching Sari every week gives me life.

[00:06:11] Like so much of what these characters are doing, which we talked about are amazing. But I think something in my soul died the night of the blood moon. Because in all honesty, like Camilla and Colby and Genevieve, none of them were like hugely my rooting interest. Like, of course, I'm like always kind of rooting for Genevieve. She's like, but she was like my top person. And Camilla, I wish the best for Camilla. Interesting and like a new era, second chance. I didn't kind of need to see her back immediately on this, especially not with like three 48ers.

[00:06:39] And Colby, like actually, I Colby exceeded my expectations on the season. But I like, I was actually harsher on casting him to begin with. Um, so like it wasn't that it screwed over the three of them, but it was that anyone could be disrespected to that level of like, overproduced bad TV. There's nothing they can do. They get completely swapped, screwed all of them. Their hands are tied behind their back and they just shot like fish in a barrel. And I thought it's not, it didn't happen. It could have been so much worse. It could have happened to Sari. And in the future it will.

[00:07:08] And it stopped me from being as invested because I'm like at a point, this will come for my faves. And with Christian in, we can talk about it. It kind of did. And it's painful to watch. And I think once a blood moon happened, like something inside me shifted, that I've never been able to get past in the season because I know what they're doing. And it's hard to trust. It's really hard to trust the seasons making this many bad decisions. And it's almost getting lucky with the good stuff. And that's all cast based. Yeah. The editing has been very weird.

[00:07:36] People talked about how it's um, um, balanced and very clearly it is, especially at the, at the, um, you know, I guess the detriment to the women mostly. Uh, and so with the blood moon, we losing two of the women in this season, it does feel like their story wasn't really explored too much because they were going to go out like this, especially Camilla. Right. Uh, I think Genevieve had a little bit more of a story because she did, uh, find an idols that she could not use, um, which is crazy that she had to give them away.

[00:08:04] And that the one person who does need them is the person who had to give all of hers away. Uh, so yeah, I think that that's very disappointing when watching. Um, but like to me, the twist itself, like, yeah, it would have swapped through basically anybody, you know, it could have been anybody. And it just like, it's almost like the roulette wheel start is like landed on those three people. And now all of a sudden they're just out of the game. Um, like you said, Colby gets a little bit more of a glowing kind of edit, I guess for Colby, the bar was already in hell, but, um, yeah, for Genevieve and Camilla,

[00:08:32] it does feel like we were robbed of seeing some of the magic that made them want to get put back on the show as well. Uh, but I didn't really, I didn't take the blood moon as hard, but to your point, had it been one of my faves, my big rooting interest, oh, I would have been devastated. Exactly. But that's, but that's the thing. And then I see people so much. It's like, people just don't like when their favorites get screwed. I'm like, none of the people were technically like my favorites and I, and I don't like that. But the thing is actually like none of them deserved. It was just so disrespectful. It felt so disrespectful to Colby. I'm like, this is like a Mount Rushmore name.

[00:09:00] Like if you were, if you were to quiz a casual, quiz my dad, the first person he says, the guy who's on Curb Your Enthusiasm, like Colby is up there more than a Tony and a Sandra for the real casuals, you know, like Colby, Hatch and Johnny Fairplay in Boston, Rob. Yeah. Like probably. And this man is doing better than we thought he was. Like he, he's coming in. Apparently he's like the head of the snake. And I actually liked it. He was trying to like wield that power a little bit. I was like, okay, Colby, like we didn't get to see it because it didn't matter because he's going to get screwed. So we'll talk about the boot order,

[00:09:26] but this was something on AU where we felt like, you know, you have favorites and maybe they do it to themselves. And then it's like, it's sad, but it's earned. And part of survivor is being hurt by survivor. I've said it so many times this year, I can handle it. You know, I'm not going to love a season where the boot order is worse and we're left with the worst cast, but if they do it to themselves, I can handle it. But I don't want the show to do it to them. I don't want to feel like people have no room to move. I end up feeling so sad about it. Colby doesn't even have a shot on the dark, which is kind of a funny thing to put in the same sentence,

[00:09:54] given the different eras those things are from. But like, and then I felt that with Christian this week is I was like, once they didn't let him bluff, he's just standing there getting pants by Jonathan. Like, you know, he was like putting his head in the toilet while his hands are tied behind his back. And I just, I don't think that's great TV and we can talk about it, but I think a lot of the twists are so limiting and the format of the new era with the smaller votes and everything like is so limiting. And it just doesn't give the scope for someone like a Christian or Devin who are trying to be really creative and innovative. And this cast is trying to be really creative and

[00:10:22] innovative and there's no space for that and what they're doing. So that like, that's what is killing me with the production, I think. Yeah, I think that, you know, Terrence made this point on Big Brother before too, that a lot of times the twists don't enhance the game. They just kind of limit the gameplay. They make people play a lot tighter. Everything's a lot less interesting when the twists are driving the game. And in these moments, you kind of question, like you said, it's very disrespectful. You question why you would bring

[00:10:50] back these legendary players to put them in situations that don't allow them to do the things that they're legendary for, right? These like you give them more space to get more votes, to rally more people, give them chances to play a social game, a political game, a strategic game, even a, even a physical game. But when you're limiting them to like, all right, let's put you back on tiny, tiny tribes. It's like, that doesn't give anybody any wiggle room to work any magic. Don't get me wrong. Some people are able to for sure. But if I'm a legend of the game.

[00:11:18] Yeah. Yeah. But if I'm a legend of the game, like, don't, don't bring me back. So where the, I feel like I couldn't even leave it all out there. You know, I couldn't give it my all because I was limited by the parameters that you set forward. So I totally agree with that. Uh, but like I said, the blood moon to me, I think it probably would hit harder for sure. Like, I'm not trying to be a hypocrite. Like I completely acknowledge my bias that it would hit harder if it was somebody that I did not, uh, really want to see go or that I was really rooting for.

[00:11:46] But at the same time, it was so ho-hum, you know, like it was supposed to be this big thing. And it ended up being a lot of lore. Yeah. Right. And it was just three scrap the swap screws, uh, as a big twist. It was actually not that historic at all. It was just, it wasn't even like, it was just, it was just three swap screws in one episode, which you say it like it, it obviously

[00:12:10] stifles gameplay. And I feel like so many of these twists firstly, like really make people rely on pre-gaming. Like you should be pre-gaming if they're going to quote unquote merge you. And then the next day have you in tiny little tribes of people you barely know. And the Billie Eilish boomerang idol also did that with the pre-gaming. Like you would think that like, okay, you need to have these connections on the other side. So it's like, why are we really encouraging the pre-gaming? And yeah, it stifles gameplay because you want to be more conservative, but you also want to be like

[00:12:38] really congenial. Like we see Camilla, she did like one vote that left out a couple of people, which you should be able to do on Survivor. You know, like it is obviously like being congenial is like you're having a comprehensive social game. Like that's a virtue, of course, but the show shouldn't want that. The show should want the people like that was some of the best stuff like D and Jonathan fighting. Like it should want the drama. It should want these big votes with if you have two sides and these lines and people are left out. Um, the show should want that,

[00:13:04] but it does not at all encourage that because what the players should be doing is, you know, having only friends, never having any enemies. Like Genevieve had like one ops and like, sure, you can go for one ops. They might have an idol, whatever it is, but like you can't, you can't just have like one negative person because it's not even a series of decisions that will lead to you going out. What will happen is like, if you just pull a rock with that person, that's enough. You can't have any, you can't, shouldn't leave anyone out of votes. Who knows if they just have the numbers next time you shouldn't have one person who you're against because they could have all

[00:13:32] the power next time. And it's not even going to be okay. Well then did you blindside them wrong? Or whatever, like a series of decisions that could lead to a demise. It could literally be one negative relationship and a rock draw. So everyone should just be friends with each other. And I don't know that the show knows that that's what it's encouraging. Um, so, so many questions. Did I expect to come on in for 12 minutes just random? Yeah, kind of, I did. Kind of, I did. Yeah, that was the point. We came here to vibe. We came here to vibe, but I will say this that again, I'm not, I'm not so mad at the season as a whole because you're,

[00:14:01] you're right. The, we were all critical of the cast, but it wasn't that we were critical of the people on the cast. These, all these people have been good TV in their own right to whatever you want, whatever you look for in a survivor player, right? There are people on here who are known for drama. There are people who on here who won their season. There are people on here who are known for chaos. Uh, you know, we got all, all into the spectrum on this cast. It's just, it wasn't a cohesive cast, but seeing them on the island together has been very fun. You know, this idea that Ceres,

[00:14:30] uh, top two Alliance members are Ozzy, somebody she's known her whole life and Rizzo, somebody who she's never seen play survivor before ever. You know, like to me, that's very interesting. And I've been enjoying, you know, what it looks like when we have one of the most ambitious, uh, crossover events in survivor history. Yeah. I mean, look, the character moments have surprised me. Like, did I think I needed like the South Pacific redux? No, like not one part of me is a survivor fan for any moment was like, where, where would I go with coach and Ozzy? Like these two captains

[00:15:00] that came in and I loved it. Like I was loving so much of that stuff. Um, people, again, I was critical of them casting, like again, Colby, we didn't see it, but like he was trying to play this new era game. Um, and apparently doing well at it, like coach and your mileage may vary on coach. I actually like enjoy coach. Like I'm the kind of person who's, I don't want to be as harsh from people who are just trying to make TV, you know, it's up to the editors. Um, if they want to put that in and obviously like some of it hits more than others, but like a lot of the stick for coach

[00:15:27] actually does hit for me. I acknowledge she's trying to make TV on a TV show. I think there are worse crimes. And also like the best part of coach is like, he has no idea what actually makes him the most entertaining. Like, obviously he came in the preseason interview. It was like, coach is quite self-aware now. Like you might have a chance. And immediately it's a immediately like crying about how Ozzy says he doesn't have integrity. It's like, oh, you were, you can't help being who you are. There's such a wonder, you know, either people change or quickly change back. Like 11 can't change in spots and coach cannot either. And that's so

[00:15:55] entertaining. So like these characters, a lot of the time, I think I'm enjoying a lot more than I thought, but I will say it's still a disparate cast. Boot order still matters in these returning seasons. I think anytime you have a returning season, that's not like pretty much the Kyrus versus Zulz is great, but like you got to keep it, I think like tight on theme. Like second chances is great because it's, it's not disparate. Like it's one time, as we know. Um, and I think that if you have the whole scope of the season, like multi-time players and like, obviously you're going to care

[00:16:23] more about people you've known maybe possibly for decades or, you know, you've played multiple times, like you put investment into these disparate casts and then the boot order matters. And we were talking about this. My brother came up with this thing where he was like, I feel like where we're at is we currently have like our top, like where we were at as fans, my brother and I, and everyone's going to be different on this, but like we have our top two cases in Duel or No Deal. We have Serene Christian at the time, and then we've lost like a lot of cases. And now we have like a lot of bottom cases still in the game. And that is, that is true for me.

[00:16:53] And it makes me upset that I haven't been ordering all returnee pass. Yes. As Duel or No Deal cases. In the future, I'm going to be doing this because it really, I think it helps me track where I'm at, but at the moment I'm all in on my million on the case. Like I have Serene there. I have the banker calling being like, will you take a Rick Devins win? Right. And I don't like, should I deal or no deal? Like, I don't, you know what I mean? Like, and that's, but I've lost a lot of my top cases, Chappelle. So that's going to like, that's going to impact how people feel about the season.

[00:17:21] Right. And you and I famously, we disagree about winners at war as far as how good that season is. And I like, you are a pro winners at war person. I am very anti, it's like, I, it is a season of television. I do not see myself watching again. Uh, and uh, you know, there are survivor seasons that are way worse than when is it war that I have actually watched again. And I'm like, it's, it's been several years and I've yet to go back and like go through when is it war and be like, let me see if I can find the joy in this, but it's largely because of the boot order.

[00:17:49] It is all of my deal or no deal cases just falling, like just dropping like flies for, I want to say at least six episodes in a row, I was losing top cases. And then I'm left with the Ben Dreebergen case, the, the, the Nick Wilson case, the Denise case. And I'm just like, what am I going to do with these damn cases? And then the Tony case, that was that a good deal in the end? The Tony case was like the best possible deal. No, it wasn't to me. Honestly, the Natalie Anderson case,

[00:18:19] I would have taken the Natalie Anderson case, you know, um, maybe it's worth a little bit less money. Right. But that's the thing too. All of the, all of my cases were over there sitting on the edge. And as a, as a diehard fan of this show, it's so, it's so hard for me to be like, okay, but like, what if one of my good cases comes back? And then we just like steal the season. I don't even know. Exactly. But that's the edge of extinction, right? Like that's the whole point. And so yeah. You can get my million kiddola case back. Like what do we, I could just have it.

[00:18:48] Imagine the outrage. Imagine the outrage if they're allowed to do that. It would fundamentally break the show. Right. Well, I mean, we, which we did during edge of extinction. Like we've literally had these conversations before. Right. And so I couldn't even put my heart behind. Okay. I'm supportive of something like that happening. Right. Like the idea that Tyson came back, it was like the silver line. I was like, wait, it's like, I'm like, like wiping tears from my eyes. I wait, Tyson can win this. And then I like, oh no, you can, you know, like it got to the point where I didn't even know what I was rooting for anymore. So all my cases were gone. My big cases were gone.

[00:19:18] And so I really did not enjoy a large portion of that season here. I love these cases. I love these cases. We got the Sari case, you know, that's the billion dollar case. God doesn't allow me to have nice things. And so that billion dollar case. Right. Like that's that case so big that they don't even bring it out. That's like the, the secret bonus case that you don't even know exists. It just, to me. Yeah. It's so bankrupt to show like that, like, like what actually happened. Yeah. That's, that's David. That's David destroying Dondi. Right.

[00:19:47] Like this is like, if you get the Sari case, like, what do we do next season? How do we do next season? That's why I'm not taking the deal because I'm like, yeah, that's still out there. I gotta take it. I gotta take the deal. But then of course, like I am a big Aubrey fan been enjoying her. What do you think about Aubrey's story throughout this season so far? I like I defended Aubrey, like, yeah, that she should have won her wrong with my dying breath. And like, I still think that that's like a really good example of like crazy juries. It's nothing against Michelle. It's against Scott and Jason.

[00:20:17] You trust them to make the right decision. Right. So I've, I've always been like a huge Aubrey fan. She's been like pretty dour on the season. Like I'm, you know, people can like feel their emotions, but wasn't she crying when they like brought out Zach Brown? Like what is happening Aubrey? Like, I feel like she's not having fun and I'm not having that much fun watching her. Although that one little clip where she and coach is dancing is one of the best parts of this. I mean, like, I didn't know that I needed to see Aubrey again. And I don't think she's changed like right now.

[00:20:43] Cause again, Aubrey's come back every single time that's been available to her since she played in Co-Rong. Yeah. And she hasn't changed my mind on that. So she's not like a high case for me. And you know, it's the tough thing about the deal or no deal version of survivor. You can see what the cases are when they're debating between it. It's like episode three, you've got like my top three case in queue versus like Stephanie. And it's like, okay, what do I, like what choice are we making? And everyone in that alliance that went down, it's like, you know, that Stephanie's right there. Like, She's right there. Right there. Right. Every time it's like,

[00:21:13] damn it. You've taken a really good case for me. And there was another case and that's just unfortunate. Um, and when I lost my Christian case, my number two case, now I'm all in on Surrey. Um, I lost a lot of good cases in a row. Like I feel like for my boot of what there was like, so Q was like the beginning of the entity. I was heartbroken. And then we lost like Mike white and Angelina and Charlie. Like those are like four of my top six cases probably. And at that point I'm like, well, the board's looking pretty bad compared to winners at war. When is a war?

[00:21:42] Obviously we lost a lot of the legends early. There were a lot of legends to choose from though. Right. It was really hard to swing a swing and miss at a legend. I think the winners of war cast is a lot better than this class. Generally, like, you know, and we were left with a lot of the bottom cases at the end. Um, I mean maybe higher on someone like Denise and you are, but again, obviously I'm way higher on Tony. Like Tony was my David. This will break John D case. Um, it was impossible. Like that Tony was going undrafted. And like as a huge Tony fan, like it was a fever dream.

[00:22:11] He was my sorry case. He was my like David case. And he won. And I, I, I got the best possible deal. And I had Jeremy who was like, maybe my second case means Sandra's there, Harvey's there, but like possibly top two. And they were tearing it up. And like, I was pretty good with my top two cases. I wasn't as low as on it as you, but this brings me to now. So like if so repos, a Tony and wins, the season is different, obviously. Like obviously if Sari wins, I mean, anything was, anything was worth it. I've been saying for ages, they should be doing a bad redemption island type season

[00:22:41] for Sari to win for ages. Fields versus the field. It should be Sari, possibly some of the field family. We can play. Okay. I'll definitely play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We could get Izzy. We could get Lisa. We could get Ozzy and Rizzo apparently. Yeah. All of these people and we could have a field and they could be against the field. We could just find the dumbest morons ever. She doesn't even need it to be honest. Everyone's a moron compared to Sari. Right. But for her to get her win, a redemption, like whatever, like anything would be worth it. Obviously for my top case,

[00:23:10] like I hate to be results oriented, but that would usually change the season. It would also change like these twists for me, even though it's not as enjoyable week to week. Like if Sari wins, God damn, has she earned it? You know, like blood moon. Like she was, she had the extra vote. She was good with everyone. Like she actually can never go then. Like she's beyond the twist. And that Tony was as well. Like there were dumb twists of winners at war and Tony beat the twist. Like someone didn't come off the edge. You went like, he beat the edge. That's how well he did. He beat extortion. So he kind of minimized the negatives of that season. So we would do the same thing.

[00:23:39] Like, obviously that would change if I got my billion dollar case. However, I will, I refuse to believe she fell. I refuse to believe that she's winning. She's not, it's not, I can't, it's not, I will, I will not be hurt by this stupid show again. I will not be there. Like, like, you know, what? Seven times more shame on me at a point. Like I can't, I'm not letting the show hurt me again. I have to remain positive because, uh, in episode eight of this season, the double the fun, double the demise episode. Shannon,

[00:24:06] that's arguably the best episode of Sari on survivor ever. You think it was the Eric episode. Yeah. Because that was an ensemble cast. That was, you know, that was partly Natalie. That was the part, you know, like it was Amanda doing her thing. We all know real ones. No. Okay. Who was the mastermind behind that? But it was very much spread across. Yeah. Yeah. It was spread across the, the, the, the table for everybody to get some bites. Episode eight.

[00:24:36] Was the Sari show, the Serena's aunt, as I've been calling it. she goes away to exile islands someplace that she, yeah. So she's been, she went away to exile island, a place that she has been multiple times. So I was like, okay, she can do this. She, she's done most exile. You know, I'm, I'm walking, I'm walking with her all through this journey. She gets there. They got 2000, 2000 coconuts. The fact that they even took the time to put 2000 coconuts on that beach is actually crazy. So disrespectful, by the way, I was like, how much he's been through? You give her the, I mean, they were, they were closing up on it a lot.

[00:25:05] So they would kind of, you would think it's like, it's this one, but yeah, don't need to relook through coconuts. What are you doing? Right. And while this is happening, yeah, her, her strategic ally, Ozzy has now taken the reins of their game. And he is like, we're about to do something. That's really bad for us. Let's do that. And they're like, seemingly everybody's kind of on board for it. Sari wins immunity. That's what I've been calling this episode. Cause as far as I was concerned, she did, she was immune and she won a challenge, you know,

[00:25:36] individually. So in my mind, this was an individual immunity challenge. Can't make it. You can't make me change my mind. She does. She does find the coconut here. And then she comes back and she completely alters the course of the game. We are given it that this is the Sari move. She comes in, looks around and says, no, we're not doing that. And everybody's like, you're right. We're not doing that. And we even get Ozzy and confessional being like, who am I to have strategy? When Sari is the strategy.

[00:26:05] What was I do? No, it was like his learner's permit. You know what I mean? Like he wasn't allowed to like get in the car without the chaperone yet. And unfortunately, like he was gone. So he's like trying to drive and he's like hitting some mailboxes. And like, he's crying tears in his eyes. I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready. His apprenticeship had not been completed. Now Ozzy has been playing the game for decades. One season after Sari's side, he's still on the learner's permit. Ozzy. I think Ozzy's like my Winnipeg, by the way, but I still, I love him. No,

[00:26:35] I definitely enjoy him a lot more when he has a Sari bump. Of course, he's like, yeah, I find the cases a little bit, but yeah, look, the scene, as I said, when she comes back from exile, I have watched multiple times. It's so good. It's so good. She comes back and literally it says, Sari's back. Yay. And then everyone's like, yay. Like everyone's cheering. It's like, it's, it's actually comical. It's actually like the, the, um, everyone should be saying, where's Poochie when Poochie's not on screen. I'll survive.

[00:27:04] And they all have like identical confessionals. Christian's like, thank God. Sari's back. I've been hitting all these mailboxes. And then Aubrey's like, thank God. Sari's back. And then she's like, also talking to Chrissy. Like she's so good across the aisle. Here's the thing with Sari. Firstly, I said to Peter last week, I'm like, I think I'm underrating Sari. He's like, I'm sure that's not true.

[00:27:33] She makes it look too easy. And then people don't recognize it. Like, because she's pendulum strategy. Across three different alliances. Like she shook out D, shook out in the blood moon, shook out the on integrity Alliance. She's now taking out Christian, not being targeted as the center of everything. Like it's really hard to pendulum swing because you're voting up people, obviously in an alliance, you have to go back and work with that Alliance. And there are two ways until now to do that. One badly, you know, you think about will, well, like I'll just do that. You know, the thing that actually Rob says, you know,

[00:28:02] invented no, it's really hard to do that. Like people have tried and failed because it's like a very high level of strategy. Then you talk about the people who are doing it well, like Rob, as an example, like Tony did in Kageyan and it's done very well, but it's really obvious. Like this person is swinging back and forth. Like Sari isn't swinging. She's floating like a butterfly for real. Like the fact that when you watch it on screen, I don't think people are even noticing what she's doing. It's so seamless and so intuitive and so subtle, so implicit that I think that if you need to be a,

[00:28:32] any kind of explicit strategy explained to you, then like you, you might struggle to see it. That's how, that's how perfectly seamless it is. Like, is this her best game ever? Such an interest. That's such an interesting question. And the bar is in, is in space. Like, I would say we're comparing this to like Micronesia and that has like flash and we still have a few weeks left, obviously like Micronesia to me, like she pretty much won that season. Let's be quite honest. She made it to the final three. Let's come with this. Yeah. Let's see.

[00:29:01] Let's kind of, she kind of won. And with Micronesia, like obviously it has the Eric movement. It has the Aussie movement. It has this flash. This is so individual and everyone is so much below her. I think, you know, like the next two people for me are, are like the Aussies and the Rizzos who she's like leading. Yeah. So I just, I, I think maybe it is her best game. Is it a best game of reality TV? Could we compare it to like a traders, which is like a perfect, I don't know. Traders, I mean,

[00:29:29] no notes on this so far and traders is perfect. So I, that's a, that's a really tough question, but like the fact that we've been having this conversation, like this woman, she was born to play this game and thank God she's played it so many times because what a waste if she'd never found survivor, we'd, we'd be, you know, it'd be like having, I don't know. Yeah. Like you never get the Michael Jordan. You never get messy. Yeah. You never get these people who are at the top. Yeah, exactly. No Beyonce ever exists. Exactly. You know, you can't. And then it's like,

[00:29:58] how can we have missed that? How can we miss out on something like that? This is how she played big brother though. You know, it was like her, she was the power structure of the house. It was wherever Sari is going. That's what we're doing. And she used to do that multiple times a day. And big brother is just such a long drag. I mean, Shannon, you even watched that season and it was like, okay, what do Sari and Izzy want to do today? What does Sari, Izzy and Jared want to do? Okay. Well, this is where Sari wants to go now. Here are the people she wants to work with. Okay. Here are the people she doesn't want to work with. Oh wait, it's only Monday.

[00:30:28] She has to do this all the way to eviction night on Thursday. And then she has to do it again. And we saw this woman work and work and work, but to see it kind of happening in an accelerated pace on Survivor, it is very impressive. And I just, like I said, maybe this isn't her best game. I think it's too early to tell, but as far as best episode, you cannot tell me. There is not a more Sari centric episode with such a positive outline as the, as episode eight, double the fun, double the demise. Like even the three, two, one vote is not a Sari episode. That's a, that's Sari strategic, like,

[00:30:58] like, you know, like master stroke, but it wasn't the Sari in a nutshell episode. This is the Sari. If you want to show who Sari is as a Survivor player, you show her this. Well, I think we could get more. And this is what I'm saying. I don't think that Sari is going to win. Like, I don't think she has a winner edit. I think that you people confuse the winner edit. I don't know. It's hard for me because I'm trying not to get hurt. Like, obviously like I don't trust the show. So I don't trust that she's not going to get screwed over in some incredibly stupid way by some sort of advantage.

[00:31:27] Get in that is sponsored by some sort of solution. Celebrity. That is so irritating to me that I don't want to open my heart, but I'm like, I don't think this is a winner edit. I think Sari is incredible. I think we should be seeing more of this. This is what I'm saying is like, is it a winner edit just because everyone's like, thank God Sari is here. Or is every person in confessional saying, thank God Sari is here. That's the storyline. They got to show it. Like she's incredible. She, she doesn't have that many confessionals. My brother sent me the time confessionals today. And she has now the most, like the second most in the game, but there's like a few around that 10 minute mark.

[00:31:57] I mean, it's not dominating to win like this. Like I would think, we could get even more, but we can talk about it the way they, I'm actually, I didn't even think to talk about the edit of the women. We can't talk about that. Yeah. The way they might edit like a woman dominating compared to like a Boston Rob would be probably be quite different. I don't think this is a winner at it. Like, I think this is Sari is incredible. I think she's yeah. About to be like screwed by a twist. It's so, so stupid. We can't even imagine what it is. Like I, I'd hate to try and brainstorm it with you. We could never come up. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. No, no. Cause Mr.

[00:32:27] Beast is showing up next, this week. What the super beware, super beware advantage with the beast face on it is going to mean. I don't want to talk about that. But I, I would. It's been against my will, by the way. I've never sought out any information about Jimmy. And yet here we are him in my life. That's it. I think this edit is probably more akin to Sophie Clark. And when it's at war, you know, like Sophie does not win and she's not, but like there were definitely moments where I was like, is Sophie the greatest player of all time? You know, I was like, it's Sophie that girl. And of course,

[00:32:57] Sophie is right. But we saw a very different side of her and South Pacific, right? A very specific, well thought out strategy that worked. She stuck to her plan. She executed it. She won. But seeing her in winners at war exact, so much control over the social dynamics of the group. And just like being the epicenter of all the things that were going on. Tony had to get Sophie out of the mix in order to run the game. And it was a credible move, right? It was the best move of, of the season for sure. One,

[00:33:27] one, one, it's up there, right? But it has to happen because Sophie was about to run this game, like the, like the Navy. And I think that Sari is getting that similar edit. Like she can't, she, we cannot allow her to win because that would be not Sari. Like, you know, like the lore of the, like the idea of Sari is like even bolstered by the idea that she just cannot win. But at the same time, it feels like we have to give this lady her flowers because look at the material. We have so much concrete evidence of the things that she's doing. This isn't just like the show,

[00:33:57] freaking biting a bunch of people to saying nice things about Sari. No, this is you cut to whoever and having people being like, no, I love her. No, I love her every time they edit that out. Yeah. You have to give us the content, you know, so there's hot eyes. Like that's what it is. You can't there. That's just how we're walking around. And so, yeah, so I'm very happy that we got that much, but I have to ask you about your second case, Shannon. Oh, wait, I have more on Sari. Oh, of course. Well, how can we just do this?

[00:34:28] There's a couple of things that irritate me, which is the tagline of this podcast, by the way. One, when people are like, well, they're just keeping her in because they know she can't win at the end. Firstly, well, she can't get to the end. Firstly, she did get to the end. She did get to the end. Like she would have gone to the end, like multiple times. Like even in Panama, she's pretty much at the end. Like in my community, she got to the final three. They all thought they were getting breakfast. I can't have this. She never, she got there. Okay. The game changed. That's like, yeah, it's like if you're running a hundred meter race, you're, and then,

[00:34:58] and then you get there and then the finish line is accidentally 10 meters further. That's not the race she was running. She made it to the end. Secondly, it doesn't matter if she can't get to the end. Quote, unquote, she did though, but it doesn't matter because she's screwing you now. Like that's right. Like this was like, like, oh, well she can't even like with people like, like Rizzo as an example or whatever. It's like, they can't win at the end. I always think, or like Xander was a good one. It's like, well, he might screw you over because he's going to win challenges. Like, so it's the re and general is right, by the way, like justice. Yes,

[00:35:29] because it doesn't matter if you feel like, well, I'll just take three out at five or at fire, whatever. We can talk about it. That's not how this works. I bet a lot of people regret it now because you know, I mean, I don't know if he regrets it. I mean, he made mistakes, like obviously telling her about Aussie, but like she outplayed him. She will outplay all of you. It's about being outplayed. It's like, even if someone else beats her, you might lose. If you end up on the wrong side of her, which Christian did like momentarily hit you to his own mistake. She will outplay you. Like why take the risk? So I can't take that. Like, well, we can beat her at the end.

[00:35:59] It's like, you might not get to the end because she's that good. Another thing I wanted to say about Sari, it hurts my heart because I had a baby. Not that part. That was good, but I couldn't cover the season. So there's been no Chizzy. And Sari probably almost definitely would have won the Chizzy. Should we, should she, should she win? Did she win? Honorary Chizzy winner. I think you have to. I cannot sign it. She would have got a lot of points. I can tell you why I would have been giving her points. Like, should we be giving her the Chizzy mug? Like, did she, did she kind of win?

[00:36:29] Did she kind of win in the background? She's getting points in a lot of episodes, right? Like, so there's no world where she doesn't. Last week's three. Yeah. There's no way. Because I thought like blood moon, like she's like the one person who's never going to go even on the rock. That to me is three. D vote. I don't know. The premier. Deprived. The premier actually, I actually would have given three points to Kyle. I would have given a point to Sari. You know, I would have given points in those early posts. I'm giving you. Yeah. We know about Kyle. I actually would have given that.

[00:36:57] What Kyle did in that premiere was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. Yeah. But yeah, no, she's getting, she's getting like a, she's getting a lot of points. I think Sari probably won the cheesy. Like we should send her a mug. I wish it's in her mug. Yeah. We should wait for the season to end, but then we should send her a mug. She won the cheesy. For sure. Yeah. So from the fields is to, to mama fields. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. In Michigan, you can feel the energy everywhere in the fresh breeze of a riverfront stroll

[00:37:25] or nightlife that hums with electricity. Let it bring you together in pure Michigan. Find your season at Michigan.org. Introducing home care plus a new subscription service from Lowe's that helps make life easier by giving members a hand with home maintenance. Let Lowe's tackle the tasks you keep meaning to do like electric dryer, vent cleaning, replacing hard to reach light bulbs and more subscribe to home care plus for just $99 a year and consider your to-do list done members.

[00:37:55] Give more at Lowe's available in select zip codes only cancel anytime, non-refundable fee product purchase required terms and service restrictions apply details at lowes.com slash terms subject to change. When I found out I was going to be a parent, I immediately felt a lot of anxiety and worry. So I went on to better help to try to look for a therapist to help me with that. My relationship with my family and with my boyfriend and with myself were suffering. I really needed help. I was ruminating a lot,

[00:38:20] really getting those thoughts out to a therapist and getting feedback was just life changing. Discover what better help online therapy can do for you. Visit betterhelp.com today. But I do want to talk about, I do want to talk about your second case because, because I know that, I know that you and I were both emotionally invested in Cerise's success as you should be. Comma,

[00:38:47] but I think you and I both pretty high on our emotional investment into Christian specifically. Like I am a Christian fan, but I'm a fan of Christian as a human and also a survivor player. Second, you know, like that's almost second. So he comes in and I'm very happy to see him in this position. Christian is a one time, one time player. He was a legend to me as far as survivor goes, right? Like he dominated that season as far as like screen time and confessional. Like he was such a big star in that season, but then at the same time, like he gave us so much.

[00:39:17] He's good. He's good in confessionals. He's good at challenges. He's good at the strategy. He's very social. I mean, like this is what you're looking for in a survivor player. Like if you build one, you know, they used to say, Oh, Kobe was like built in the survivor factory. Cause it was like the archetype for what you thought would do well in survivor. Uh, there's like a charismatic, pretty man who can win challenges. And we learned so much, like so many seasons in that that's not, that's actually not what you're looking for. And survivor, you're looking for somebody who can do, a lot of things really well, right. Or do and do, and the things that they can do,

[00:39:46] they like excel at them and exceed expectations. And Christian does that in so many different ways. I've been so much enjoying Christian at the very beginning of the season. And then we got kind of quieter around the merge. And I started to think, Oh no, it's coming. And then once I was able to kind of look at the Alliance structure, you know, how he's in the middle, even though it's really the bottom, uh, I was like, Oh, okay. It doesn't look great. Rick Devens has a fake idol. And I, so I started to speculate. I was like, is this the week Christian goes, but Shannon,

[00:40:15] I cannot stress enough how I hated, hated the way Christian goes home. Even if you feel bad that this episode was the worst episode of the season. I hated it so much. I was not having fun at all. This was not it. This was not it. This was Rob and Ian getting, getting, uh, killed out of the traitors within the first, you know, two weeks of the show. This season, like, that's how it felt. Like, I don't, my heart, Shannon. Uh, so yeah. How did, how,

[00:40:45] how was this from your perspective? I mean, yeah, I, I, again, I did put, put me under the line of like, I think the season might be bad. Um, Christian may, you know, I wanted him to make his own mistakes if he goes. And in ways he did, because he goes to Sari and tells her Aussie and he admitted that was obviously a huge mistake. Like he did it to himself and I'm heartbroken to lose him, but it, but he did it to himself, you know, that's, and that's the agency we give people on survivor, but it, and like voting against yourself is,

[00:41:15] is against the core tenants of survivor. Like I'm against that anyway, but it was that they didn't let him bluff watching him come back and have to read a note and not have anywhere to move. Again, it was the same as the blood moon where I felt that they tied up these people with their hands behind their back and just punch them in the face repeatedly. And I don't like seeing it happen, especially to Christian. Cause my thing is like, if there's no journey, Christian seems like he was going, if there's no journey, and we don't know, but you know, in terms of like, definitely they were like targeting that nerd alliance.

[00:41:45] Um, so it didn't look great. Um, and he seems like he could have been the target. Obviously he does. It, it, it, it's immense it when like he, he comes back and reads the note, but if he, he goes on the journey, knowing he's in trouble and what he should be afforded at the very least is the bluff to come back and be like, I have nothing. And then they're like, I don't know. Do they want to split on what becomes him and Devon's knowing that they both could have something like, let them be scared or let them take the risk. Let him be outplayed on his bluff, but to not give him the opportunity. Like,

[00:42:15] what are we doing? The best and most interesting parts of these journeys are pretty much people coming back and lying or true. Like there's so much agency. What should I do? What should I say? How will I pull it off? And then there's the agency back. Do people believe it? Do they read through it? This is what survivor is coming back and lying and bluffing and making those decisions. And then the interplay and the push and pull of whether people buy it or whether people still take the risk, whether people don't care and they still put it on you or they can split on you or whatever it is,

[00:42:42] that survivor taking that from him was painful. And I think if he can come back and bluff, I don't know that he does go home. You know, I don't know that they take that risk. I think maybe it is Emily. So that is the thing that really, really pained me about the Swiss. And then like losing Christian generally, like I love Christian. He absolutely came in as my second case and like, no one's touching the first and I, it was more than that in the season. Like he was even better than I thought he could be. And it's funny when you have these people who are like people,

[00:43:12] you consider like friends in your life or, you know, and you like them as podcasters and as humans and it's like members of this community. And then you see them on TV. It's like, Oh, you're a TV character. And not only are you a TV character, you're like one of the best TV characters probably in this franchise. And that's why I fell in love with you to begin with. And I forgot that because I got to know you as a person. And for Christian, like I think he had it all as a character. Like again, some of those moments are my favorite moments of the whole season. I loved watching him tear it up with Rick Devins. I loved the personal stuff. I mean, this man went out when he had a six week old baby and I now have an

[00:43:42] eight week old baby. Like the amount, like two days before I gave birth, I watched him call Michael his due North. And that has stuck with me. And all of that has stuck with me. Him saying to Michael in this episode, you know, it's not, it's not like what you do when you fail. It's like what you do. Um, you know how, how you basically you handle that. Like that, that's like my, my, my mantra of parenting as like that, that spoke to me so, so much because that is true. It's like, I say that to Rory all the time. I'm like, I, I can't promise I won't make mistakes,

[00:44:11] but like I'll always promise to try my best and learn from my mistakes. Like I feel, I felt that so much from him, like those moments where you feel like you're failing. I feel like he had like the, the, the meaning. I feel like he was like, he had the beautiful stuff. And he was also having so much fun. There was an episode where he like pooped his pants. Like what? Like, and in one, and then he was like, like there was so many things. It was better as a character than I ever could have imagined. It meant so much to me through this like very murky postpartum period. And I did not want to see it end at all,

[00:44:40] but I really didn't want to see it end like this. Yeah. I totally agree. I think that while Sari had one of the best episodes of all time for her and like for me, for survivor Christian had like the worst episode that he ever experienced. And there's not even close, right? Like the, this, this, this awful, awful thing that happened, right? Like we watched the slow moving train wreck throughout the entire episode. And it's like, it's coming for him. The monster was coming for Christian. There was nothing we could do, but sit there and watch it. Just like the walls closing in.

[00:45:09] And every time you thought there might be a way he could get out there, like you could, there was never a way, right? Like, so Jeff does this wager where it's not a wager at all. It's just like, okay. Thank you. It's not a wager. Thank you. It's just like, it wasn't a bet. They weren't wagering anything. It was driving me crazy. I was like, did I miss something? There was nothing there. It was just like, Oh, do you want to do something fun? It was a reward challenge. No, it was a reward challenge. It was a challenge, but it wasn't a bet. It wasn't a bet. You didn't wager anything. They didn't wager anything. So like, okay.

[00:45:39] I was so confused. I was like, if they don't get right, but if they take the bet and they lose, they don't get rest. It's not a bet. They don't get right. There's nothing here. There's nothing here. People were like, no, but if they don't, if they lose, they lose the rice. They weren't going to get the rice. They're not going to get the rice. I don't understand what's going on. Yeah. There's not, there's no bet. There's no bet. Yeah. Yeah. So to me, like, yeah, that moment, you know, obviously like we could talk about the Jeff stuff, but I think for me in that moment, I thought Christian, okay, he's good at endurance. This might be okay. All right. No,

[00:46:09] he doesn't win this. Okay, cool. Oh, wait, he wins rock, paper, scissors. Okay. He's getting a journey. Let's get him a, an idol. Let's get him an extra bow. Let's get him something we can work with. Okay. Cause we know they're probably going to try to split or something like that on him and Devin's. We got to get Christian some extra. Oh, look, we get to the journey. It's a puzzle. Perfect. He loves puzzles. And then we cut to Christian saying, I like puzzles. I'm like, yes, yes, you do. You beautiful human. He's about to kill the puzzle because that's what he does. And then he watching through the puzzle. And I'm like, wait,

[00:46:39] is he not going to complete the puzzle? And then my dreams of watching Christian go really far into this game, just like get thrown into the ocean, drag down into the, to the ocean floor, like this damn puzzle. And I think, well, okay. He's already got a vote for himself. Well, no, I know. I think, okay, we don't know what this letter says, but it's probably going to lose his vote or something like that. I don't know, but it's going to be tough. We get back to camp and he has to do the humiliation ritual of reading the

[00:47:07] damn disadvantage to everybody and finding out in front of everybody that he has a vote. He has to vote for himself. He doesn't have like a penalty vote, right? Like in big brother, sometimes they'll say like, if you break the rules, we'll put a vote. You already have one vote against you. That's that's, that sounds fine. But to actually force me to physically write my name down so you can get the shot. It wasn't worth it. Survivor, was it really worth it?

[00:47:35] So you could say that you had somebody vote themselves out of the game. Literally was all of this. Worth that one moment of Christian writing his name down to, because to me, Shannon, it was not, it wasn't worth it. It wasn't, it wasn't an interesting twist. I don't think. Right. Like even, even the advantage of what it would have been, Christian, you get to put a vote into the urn for somebody else early. If you win, I was like,

[00:48:02] why would I want to vote before I know where all the votes are going? What, what, what is, what is that? Exactly. That, that actually could be bad. Like having to call your shot on a vote and it was an extra vote. And then there was an extra thing that they didn't read out. Cause he never won. That was like, you could bank your vote. So then because that becomes your vote, you can then bank your vote, which I also think is pretty minor compared like if there even is an advantage, that one aspect, I do agree. Like putting in a vote before all of the, before you've had to try to do that.

[00:48:32] That's an active disadvantage. Banking your vote, maybe a tiny advantage. I don't think it matters that much voting against yourself. You lose your vote and you have a vote. So that's like the double negative. And then being unable to bluff so that you're just like the world's easiest target is by far like the big, like it was completely unbalanced in terms of the disadvantage. I mean, I don't think it's a fun twist. I know that Jeff like loves Christian or who Vicky, he would call him. I hope that Jeff feels bad that he had two last namers go on these twists. Like as he snuffed Colby's torch and Colby was apparently doing well. I thought,

[00:49:02] I hope you're upset about this Jeff. Like, I hope you're as upset as I was during advantage. Get it like, and, but Jeff saying, this is one of the best seasons of all time. So I guess maybe it doesn't like matter to him, but yeah, I mean, this was like a really painful way to go because again, I really don't like seeing anyone, especially my favorites have no room to move. Let them try and wriggle. And if they can't wriggle, then it's on them. And if they can, that's interesting to watch, but like, don't, you can't give them nothing. But I think what's an interesting thing to like,

[00:49:29] look back at Christian now that this is like his boot episode that we happen to be talking. Do we think like, as a character, I think, I think, I think Christian's mentioned himself as like one of the greats, like really like one of the greats, like two seasons of that, especially those first few episodes. It's, it's hard to like, even think back and remember like how many moments, like, you know, in terms of like when he's, when he's talking to Emily, you know, and like telling her to stop so many fun, so many fun things as a player. How do you feel he played this season?

[00:49:57] Do you think that this was a good showing? Cause I think there's been some debate about, cause like as a player, yeah. How, how he was. I mean, I mean, what are we looking at as far as like his, let's say his strategic ability or let's start with the social, right? Christian comes in and he's pretty, he's pretty good. Like he's not in any danger at any point in the pre-merge. So socially, I think I could say he's probably fine. If not, you know, above average, he's fine.

[00:50:27] He works his way into a line structure that's super, he has a couple of shooters. But strategically, yeah, maybe there were some mistakes made, you know, I think that him kind of misreading the Ozzy situation and being like, Oh, let's blindside. Right. Let's blindside Ozzy. That'll, that'll be fine. He was the middle. That was a good, but then immediately he was bad. He went to the read with that. Yeah, exactly. So it was like you blindside Ozzy. That's not great. And you, the flip side of that is like,

[00:50:55] you see Rizzo episodes later being like, we cannot blindside Joe. He won't come back to us. It's like, yes, that's how Christian should have been looking at Ozzy, but he made, it was a mystery. Right. But he was not at, he's no longer like, he's not at that point, like out of power. Right. Christian is still able to maintain his position in the game. So I wouldn't say he played a bad game just off of the strength of positioning alliances. But yeah, I have questions about some of the votes he did. I know he has his own reasons for the Mike and Angelina stuff. I mean, you know,

[00:51:24] maybe that's not great for him, but I don't know if you can say that's a net negative voting out. Mike White. What do you think? I actually was never on board with the Mike White decision. I mean, obviously I'm not looking at the stuff as closely when I'm not podcasting, but I thought like, man, Emily is not a good ally, not on purpose. Like she clearly stayed loyal to him. Like, it's not about that. But this woman pretty much got devoted out. Like she brought in an ally from pregame that she played the game with and accidentally got her voted out. Like it wasn't anything that she was doing on purpose to make her a bad ally,

[00:51:54] but I wouldn't want to work with her. Like it was, it was like 15 strikes and you're out at a point. It's really hard to think about like what the show, what, what the landscape would look like if Mike White and Angelina are still in and it's like an incredibly different game. So do we know it would have gone better? I don't know. But at that time I felt like, yeah, cut Emily. What is she doing? And I understand he was like, we will be a real big target of David versus Goliath. And Christian is always playing against what's going to be like a big reputation and like his archetype that he just looks so, so intelligent.

[00:52:22] And he can't hide that because he's like what people would draw in the dictionary. If it was like, draw like a smart nerd, like they, they would draw Christian. So like, he's always going to seem like too smart for his own good. He's always playing against that. But I was never on board with the Mike White decision. That was the best vote of the season though. That was like the one, like really interesting. I thought like the three, two, one, like the way he did it and the decision between Mike White and Emily, I thought was really interesting. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think I agree with that decision, but I have to credit the fact that he was, you know,

[00:52:51] in positions of power to make these decisions and like how much game he has to play. Cause the new era is not created equal. I encourage everyone to just go to the Wikipedia page of the voting charts of this. And then like compared to the Australian survivor season and just look at the pre-mergers, like the pre-merging of Australian survivor. And even though there was like kind of a wonky, you know, in terms of people going to tribal council, even in that there's so much game being played. And then you go to the U S survival one and the 51. And it's just like blank spaces because people aren't voting. People are so like,

[00:53:21] so few people are voting all the time, but Christian was voting. Like he had to survive so much. And he did, he was making calls, which is rare. Like that in itself is like, he played a pretty good game. I think Christian again, wants to innovate. He and McDevins are trying to have fun with his idol, but this is not a format that will enable you to do that because it is so limited. So was it a fantastic game? Like, I don't, I'm not going to say it was a bad game. He got outplayed by Sari. Everyone is right. Exactly. And what an honor. He made a key mistake.

[00:53:51] He until then had been Sari's number three. What an honor. Um, so I think socially there's a lot there. I think that in the pre-emerge and how much he had to survive, there's a lot there. And he's probably been to more tribe. He probably in the pre-emerge went to more tribal councils and some people still have now. I haven't done the math. Um, so I'm not going to throw all of that out. Um, like with like the bathwater of this boat, but, um, yeah, so I think, I think it actually, it was a good game with some key missteps and being outplayed by like, you know, one of the,

[00:54:19] one of the best players of all time, again, yeah, I don't think it was a bad game. I don't think it was a bad game. Like, uh, I think that we've, we're so far removed from bad gameplay for a lot of these people. Uh, you know, like bad gameplay is the stuff we saw in, you know, the early seasons of survivor in the first, let's say the first 30 seasons where people would be on the bottom of alliance structure. And then against all logic, they would stay loyal to that alliance structure. Right. Or like, Oh yeah, I, I'm just willing to go down the ship. I'm loyal. All right.

[00:54:49] Like, hopefully this person chooses me. Christian was, uh, yeah. Agency. Yeah. Agency throughout the game to make decisions that he made. And from his point of view, they looked good. And it's not like, again, the Mike white decision. I think you could really, you know, like really split hairs with that decision because he knows Mike white as well. He knows Mike white. He's known Mike white for years. And he also knows that the first time they played together, Mike white, wasn't going to let a Christian sniff that money. And so, you know, it's not like it's a binary decision between woman. I'm good. I'm, I'm aligned with versus man.

[00:55:18] I'm aligned with it with Emily and Mike. Like it's woman that I, you know, have grown to trust a lot. Whereas Mike, I've been proven that I cannot trust him in the game of survivor in the past. And now I have to kind of reconcile with those wounds that I have and expect for Mike to do something that's against his best, against his best interest. Honestly, Mike white, taking Christian to the end to me would be a mistake. Yeah. But the end was so far away. Like I actually thought he got a little bit caught up in like, not really knowing like those relationships. He was on the white loader. So I know he has like an out of game relationship with Mike white. Um,

[00:55:47] or had an, an out of game relationship. Yeah. And I think he got a little bit like Emily is my friend in the real world, but like Emily was a bad ally on survivor, not on purpose. Whereas Mike white, I feel like he's like, Mike is a, you know, he, he was looking too much at like what Mike had been to him in the game. But ironically, Mike has become a good friend to him in the world. Like Mike white in David versus Goliath isn't necessarily going to be the same person he was him on 50 because their relationship has grown since.

[00:56:16] I felt like he put too much stock in Emily's real life relationship with him and not enough stock in what had become his real life relationship with Mike white, not knowing those relationships, but that's how I saw it. Um, I don't think Mike white was coming for Christian anytime soon. So yeah, yeah. For me, I think you have to juxtapose that with Christian being like, like I'm good with Mike and Angelina. And then you get the confessionals from Mike white being like, and now I'm about to manipulate Christian. Right. And Mike white kind of showing a peek at the wolfy side of him to Christian.

[00:56:45] It did make the alarms, like the alarm bells go off. This wasn't Christian being like, Oh, Mike white has shown me nothing but loyalty. He's shown me. He's always been on board with me. He's been on the level, blah, blah, blah. There's no reason for me to vote about. It looks like he's like, we, we've turned a corner in our friendship and as allies, we will go far in this game. He saw Mike white basically being like, Hey, it's me, Mike white, the big bad wolf. And he's like, wait, what, huh? What, what are you, where'd you come from? And then that's when he starts to look at Mike white as somebody he needs to get rid of.

[00:57:10] Obviously the Angelina and Mike white and Christian Alliance would put a big target on him. So, you know, to kind of minimize that, I could see that as well. And there was the Aussie connection, which I, by the way, I disagree that Aussie was looking for a cameo on white Lotus. Like Aussie wanted like an Alex style role. Yeah. Like that. Like he was like specifically the, yeah, the Alex role, right? Like in that very specific. Literally, I can kind of imagine him in that role. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, maybe if Alec was there,

[00:57:39] that other guy that was there, that could have been Aussie in a different world. I see it. And I wish to unsee it, but yeah, I mean, look, I, I, that's what I'm saying. This was by far the most interesting. I thought like other than everything Ceri's doing, which is fascinating strategically. This was like the most interesting, like actual vote. Unfortunately, it came after 40 minutes of Zach Brown, but it actually was the best vote of the season. I see it both ways. Like, I think it's like, it's such a tough decision that I think you can't call either. Terrible, but it wasn't the way that I would have leaned.

[00:58:09] It's maybe like a 60, 40. And I just thought like, Emily, please stop. Cut her now. That's how I felt at the time, even though she was loyal to him, but like at what costs, again, it wasn't anything she was trying to do. So I kind of felt like I would have been interested to see him go down with the David versus Goliath crew. But again, that doesn't make for a bad game. I don't think anything until now makes for a bad game. And then you can look at like what he and Devin's did. And I thought that was really Devin's led with the, um, the South Africa style. Yeah. Yeah. Fake idol tribal. Well, not even Pelesa.

[00:58:37] We had like a bunch of people like Shona and Seamus, both of them in the same season did hide a fake idol. I saw Devin's talked about this, I think on Instagram where he said that he, he had seen that season, but he'd forgotten that happened. So it like, kind of like implicitly put it into his mind, um, that he had, that I think that he had done that. Um, they just want to have fun. I think that, you know, it was an interesting idea just to have it. You never have to use it. And that's what Christian was part of. You can't blame Christian for the, how it went with Rick Devin's and with Devin's like,

[00:59:06] he obviously created a target when I don't think he needed to. Um, when he, he got out the idol, I actually liked his lies. Like, Oh, I like, I thought that there was things that are interesting. What, what, and I haven't listened to enough content. I'm sure there's been talked about the death. What celebrity is he using for his fake idol? Like they can't just be a fake idol. Like, is this the Adam Scott tribal idol? Oh my God. Oh yeah. Is everyone talking about this? Cause I'm too much. Cause I, yeah, I don't think anybody was like, you, your fake idol needs an identity. Everything has a thing.

[00:59:35] So we can't just have a tribal idol. It has to be like the Megan Mullaly tribal idol. Yeah. But it's like, it's a, it's a series extra vote as gifted by Ozzy. Uh, so graciously, does it have, is it like the, the Mayim Bialik extra vote? What celebrity got cut out of being right. You just like a little extra vote. It's like, you're kind of like a B liberty, like a C liberty. It's like the Kathy Griffin. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's an extra vote. Really? Am I like, it's not famous enough. So, so not everybody has an identity.

[01:00:06] How unfamous do you have to be that Zach Brown's so much more famous than you? I'm not a country music fan, but I looked it up at the time and I was like, how famous is Zach Brown? That's his name, right? Zach Brown? Yeah. Zach Brown. Yeah. He has way fewer Instagram followers in Boston. Like, I just think that if you're going to be a celebrity on the show, like you should be like way more famous in Boston. You gotta be more famous than all the players, right? Like at least with, with the exception of Mike White, like you have to at least be famous. Cause you have to be a celebrity. That really got to me too.

[01:00:35] That really got to me too. Mike White is a better celebrity ambassador than Zach Brown is. One hundred percent. Zach Brown's like, I've always wanted to play. I'm like, where's your application? Mike White is right there. Like Mike White is very, very famous. That's what I said. And I tweeted that. I don't know if people got it. I'm like, there's only one, there's only one colored last name celebrity that I'm watching this for. It was Mike White. And Zach, I always wanted to do it. Why isn't Mike, why just coming in for a reward? All my takes are so old, by the way. I haven't talked about this. Thank you for allowing me to give all the takes about all season.

[01:01:05] Yeah. There is no way that Zach Brown should just be able to do that. Apply for the show. We had like Jimmy Johnson, right? Right. Jimmy Johnson. No. We've had celebrities play. We've had celebrities play. So. Yeah. Let them play. Let them play. Yeah. Play. Let them play. Why do we just spearfishing as a reward? Sorry. I got, I got, I did not, I didn't expect to go on the tangent. No, no. You're talking about the fake idol, right? Yeah. But he must've given it a name. He had to have given it a celebrity name. I don't think you have to.

[01:01:35] I don't think you have to. You have to. You have to. I don't think you have to. I mean, now. In retrospect, you have to. In retrospect, you do have to. Especially because it was meant to be the innovative thing. An extra vote is an extra vote. Like no celebrity came up with it, but it's like, you can imagine. No. Megan Mullaly and Nick Offerman called Jeff and said, we want to hire something, a tribal. Jeff said, I don't want to hire them in a tribal. I've said before, I don't want to hire them in a tribal. They said, Jeff, please. He said, okay, Nick Offerman and Megan Mullaly. I can't say no to you. It's a Nick Offerman and Megan Mullaly. Travel either.

[01:02:04] Because it's a new and innovative thing. Of course you have to give it a celebrity name. It has two celebrities. I don't really need to give it a celebrity name. Because if they didn't give it a celebrity name, that's like a real tell. I'm telling you, the extra vote didn't get a celebrity name. The extra vote's not new. That's not a new twist. Oh, okay. It was. Yeah. Like, like specifically branded as that, the Jimmy Fallon earned vote. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

[01:02:32] he's taking a lot of heat for something he clearly did not come up with. No, no, no. He deserves that. Celebrity, stop calling Survivor and trying to push your, your, your, your image onto the show. Tyler Perry did it. Yeah. Tyler Perry did do it. I don't think Jimmy Fallon did it. I believe that as much as I believe about the fan votes. 63%. By the way, I was never allowed to vote. I didn't actually. They never let me vote in Australia. You voted for this. it's fine. Those results, you know, those results were going as they were coming through,

[01:03:00] just like right into like a shredder and the, right. Cause, cause who gives a damn? They don't, they don't do what they want to do. Well, okay. Yeah. I think that they gave it a celebrity name. I really want to know. I don't think so. They had to, but before your question and remember it, keep the question in mind. Um, do you blame Christian at all for what happened with Rick Jevons and like the target that is on Rick Jevons? Like that put it all on their back with what happened? No, no, I don't blame Christian at all for this. I think the target was always going to be on them. Like I think prior to knowing,

[01:03:30] like they were, they were in the, they were next on the hit list. Yeah, exactly. They were swinging, right? It was swimming. Right. Like we all saw it coming. We, yeah, we all saw it coming. But the thing as well with, um, I don't even, I don't know how much they believe this idol because they didn't flush the idol. Like they secondary on Devin's with the quote unquote idol. Like if they were really worried about the idol, you'd think that they would be like, all right, we'll play it or go home. But they didn't. So I don't even know how much they believe it. But, um, if they do, I guess he's bought himself some implicit immunity, but again, they could have split. So it's not even implicit immunity. Um, yeah, I think he,

[01:04:00] I think he bought himself a little wiggle room. You know why they don't believe it? Why? Because it doesn't have a celebrity name. It doesn't have a celebrity name. Okay. You're making points. You're making points. You're making points. Uh, I do, I do think there's too many. It's too ambiguous, right? Like they, I don't think anybody has a, uh, knows for sure. I mean, except Emily flipping who Devin's told, uh, who has not kept one secret throughout the entire season, but her out. No. So he told her,

[01:04:27] but the crazy thing is D like D was scuppered by Emily. Like, like it wasn't even like, she's like, Oh, and I told Jonathan, but like, that was like a side point to the fact that Emily had already, what is she doing? She's high up on the board, but like, what is she doing? Who among this cast? Has subverted your expectations in a good way. Yeah. Like, and not, and not, and not the people who are gone. I don't want to hear that Colby did way better than you expected. Okay.

[01:04:57] We've been through that. I'll talk about other people left. Who are you most impressed with? Not named Sari. Firstly, it's both ways. Like, I feel like Emily has been episode one of 40, 45, Emily. Yeah. Like you spent that whole season being like, I'm more than that person. I'm like building herself up. And now she's just like broken herself right down. She wanted to do that. She said in the preseason, she said, I didn't like the edit that I got. It's just like, kind of like, Oh, I'm brash. And I got like, I, and my personality is,

[01:05:26] is a little bit like a front facing and people don't love me too much, but I had to like minimize myself and make myself small in order to be a good survivor player. And that's not what I want to put out into the world. She's like, I can just be me and still do well in this game. And I'm like, okay, interesting, interesting, uh, thesis. Let's see what happens here. And she does it so earnestly too. She's just asking questions and being, what do you, what Emily, what, what is happening? Like, so,

[01:05:56] so Emily has been your surprise. No, well, I've actually, I don't even know if I've Mandela affected Christian's confessional about Emily when she was giving information to Ozzy, but I do kind of feel like the, like in my head, I'm always like, Emily, why? And that's like a new kind of like go-to quote that I have, um, which was really, really fun. Um, I feel like the Emily Ozzy stuff, like he mentioned it, which was good, but like a lot of these stories don't end up, um, panning out. I guess we still have Emily and Ozzy there, but like,

[01:06:26] it's kind of just like, it was so weird. It was like, she was fully against him and then she was fully with him. And now she's like against him. So that's like a bit of a, maybe just a tough story to tell me. That's just that relationship. I do feel like a lot of these, these relationships kind of end up, um, being like the storytelling, which has been largely very good because the characters are great. Like is then ruined by the, like where it goes from a twist perspective. Like the Genevieve Aubrey thing was like such a huge storyline. And then it was just like, oh, they get into this, like, unfortunate, like swap. It wasn't like so earned.

[01:06:55] And I think there's a few examples of that, but in terms of like, would you actually ask of the players who've surprised me for good and bad, maybe? Um, well, you said what, only people who are still in the game or. Yeah. Only people left. Cause I want to kind of know what we're, what we're leading to as far as like, are these people's legacies? I think a lot of people went out of the game. We, we get it. Well, I have a couple, I have a couple of people. I have a couple of people left. Go for it. As I said, three cheesy points. And that premier that he got many back from so upsetting. Kyle has personally tried.

[01:07:25] And I take it very personally, um, to prove me wrong for the way that I analyzed 48 at every turn. And boy has he, you know, and like, I didn't get it while I was watching it as much that how sparkly he is. My God, like sparkly guy. Not only did he win the season when I didn't think he would win, then he came back on the season and he was a late draft pick that I got. I was like, he's never going to win. He's never going to do well because he won last week as we drafted it. And they went out to Fiji.

[01:07:54] He had won the week before he was DOA and he gets there and he isn't just like accepted. Like he was their king. It was kind of weird. The Kyle cult that they had, like they were all so like, he left and they're like, I love you so much. And even later, like Rizzo lies to him in the middle of being like, Kyle told Kyle's like an old brother to me. And he told me to work with you. And she's like, that could not be true because he was there for two days. It was like, he was using it. Yeah. All of them were like, I would die for Kyle. I would die for Kyle. I was the most impressive thing I've ever seen.

[01:08:24] Like it genuinely was, was, I'm like, he's one of the greatest players of all time. Even in the next episode. Genuinely. Like even in, you know, I just, I just did the new year rankings. Like he, he's a winner. He's higher up. He's so good. Like the next episode. Like the next episode, they're all just like, and it was a sad way to go out, but it wasn't just that they were, he was their king. He was feeding them. Like it was, it was weird. And all of them across, across Alliance lines. Genuinely.

[01:08:53] So I'm glad that two months later, I've had the chance to say this because I wanted to go on the record to say, Kyle, stop proving me wrong. It's annoying. And it makes me look bad. Who else? Look, I think I would, if I have a winner pick right now, it's Aussie. Um, which is actually crazy. I think Aussie is going to have a Mateo type thing. I know Mateo didn't win. I was like, do you, do you remember Mateo? But it is. It's like the, you know, Frankenstein's monster apprentice style. Like Aussie, you know, hasn't got his,

[01:09:23] like his proper license yet to strategize, but he's going to get it enough to cut Suri. He's going to put himself in fire against Suri. He doesn't need to. Oh, I mean, actually to be fair, I actually think like Suri has aligned herself with Rizzo, who is like notoriously like really bad at challenges and fire. Yeah. Much worse than her. She made a fire in AU versus the world. I know the people on this feed. I know people on this feed. No, the rest of these people who didn't watch. Yeah. The rest of the people who didn't watch AU versus the world, they're like, Suri can't win. She can't make a fire.

[01:09:52] She did lose two fire challenges on that season. But she made the fire is the point. Like we saw the fire get made. It used to be, can she make a fire? Now it's no, no, faster than this, than this young lad. I think Ozzy has to put himself by her against Suri to take her out. I think that's the best bet there for Ozzy. I don't know, man. I think it's so funny though. How, how far we've come in survivor history where Ozzy looks like a legitimate winner pick. He is my winner pick currently. I mean, look,

[01:10:22] people ask, how can Suri get to the end? Is she going to win the challenge? Like probably not. I mean, she did. She, I mean, she won touchy subjects. People forget, but I don't think they're going to do touchy subjects as the final four challenge. I don't, I mean, maybe I would have voted for that. But yeah, if I could, if I got a VPN, I could have, but it wouldn't have mattered. It would have gone right in the shredder. Yeah. I mean, she could win fire. She could beat Rizzo in fire and she could get taken because she did. She made it to the end. People forget she was in final travel council. So Ozzy could win. I mean,

[01:10:49] who else has really surprised me? I mean, Rizzo, Rizzo is fun. Like I have fun with Rizzo. I love him. You know, I'm a sucker for the, I guess the archetype that I would be, which is like this, like who feels like they want a contest, like the Adam Klein at windows at war, super fan. Who's there like quoting things. It is. It's pretty self-identifying. And he had so much reverence. Like, I love the way, I love the way that firstly, everyone who just like immediately sees Rizzo,

[01:11:18] they think he's an idiot. Like we all did when we heard R-I-Z-G-O-D, Riz God, baby. And then like in the first episode of 49, I was like, all right, you know, like I got it. And it takes that one conversation for people to get it. And like Colby came around and, you know, everyone came around on Rizzo. It's really fun. Of course that he's working with Sari, but I also just really love that reverence type super fan player. It was funny because everyone's making fun of when he told coach that he changed his life. And then Emily made the face. I teared up at that. I teared up when he said that. At the face.

[01:11:47] I teared up at Rizzo saying that. I thought it was meaningful and emotional. It really got me. Coach has that effect on people. You know, that's the, that's the weird thing about it is that I can't even say it's tongue in cheek. Cause you know, it, to me, it definitely feels like some shit. I would say that like, I don't really mean like, Oh yeah, you changed my life. You're icon. Like, yeah, coach is an icon. He did not change my life, but that's a through line throughout coaches seasons. Even Steven Fishback, JT, they spoke very highly of coach. You know, it wasn't, they weren't even working with him directly. You know, obviously they had like,

[01:12:17] they were aligned with coach as everybody else was aligned with them, but they took him out so early in the game. But we saw like when, when coach comes back with, from the martyr approach or whatever, Steven is like, Oh my God, coach, are you okay? It's like, yeah, he's fine. That's coach. You know? And so for, for a reason I'm saying that he affected him on that level, I was not surprised. I totally agree with you though. I love result. I think that for me, I always root for super fan. I always do. Oh, I always, because I am that I am a super fan too. Right. I probably don't look the archetype,

[01:12:46] but I definitely got that same vibe to where you put me around these people. Huh? You podcast about survival. Like no one here denying that you're a super fan. Yeah. What I'm saying is that like, I don't necessarily see myself in Rizzo. Yeah, exactly. I've always said you're too cool for this podcast and they, you know, you shouldn't really be hanging out. But you know what? When I started podcasting, I did feel like the make a wish kid. I felt like, Oh my God, how did I end up here with all the people that I listened to on the podcast? This is crazy. And they keep allowing me to say things and no one's told me to shut up. This is wild.

[01:13:16] I was there in your first audition. And I was like, even then, like, are y'all crazy? Like, this is crazy. Don't hire this man. And no one's with me. Do you definitely, listen, I was like, I'm coming in for blood. And like, cause I thought I was on borrowed time. You did? You were fighting with Bryce? I mean, yeah, among us. Yeah. Yeah. It was. Yes. I think like I have wounds to pick. And then you were just like yelling at us. And I was like, this man needs to be on the podcast. We can, we can tear it up. Right. But in my mind, I was like, well, that was fun. They'll never call me back.

[01:13:46] And so I definitely understand the idea of like, I am such a big fan of these people that, uh, you know, like I wouldn't know how to act, but to see him assimilate and then not only assimilate, but become one of the power players. Talk of the relationship between him and coach is interesting. But when you see stuff like coach being pulled to the side by Rizzo and being told we don't win survivor at tribal council, we don't slay dragons at tribal council. We slay them at camp or whatever. exactly. It was Tyson all over again. And this is Rizzo,

[01:14:16] a man he's never seen play survivor. They think, they think Rizzo's 16. And he's like, coach, what have we learned? How do we play the game? I was like, how do you not love this? This man who's a fan, like Shannon, these are the conversations you would be like, you always talk about how the, uh, you can work for the production because you would be like, no, this is dumb. This twist is dumb. This, you would be telling them, no, I'm not doing this. Like if you were a survivor player, you'd be like, no, none of this makes sense. Don't make big moves. Right. These are the, this is the type of advice you give to people when you've seen them play

[01:14:44] the game and you kind of know they're the, the back of the baseball car, you know who they are. Rizzo is now giving coach that advice. It's so fun. If you don't think this is fun, I'm sorry. You're not watching it the same way I am. Yeah. No, Rizzo has been good value. I mean, what a crazy couple of months of his life. Like, yeah. You know, this is the thing in Judaism, Dianu, like it would be enough. Like if he just played 49, like Dianu, if he made it to the end, Dianu, then he gets cast on 50. Then he gets, then he's in a relationship with Sari. He's in a throuple with Sari and Ozzy.

[01:15:14] Like this is, Sari and Ozzy. Like, you know, like these are, these are people who played like probably when he was a very small child. Yeah. This is a mad lib. These are just random words and phrases put together. If you were to tell him in like, I don't know, like before, when did he get cast on 49? Like before he's even been cast for nine. It's like in like within it, within six months, you will be in a throuple on survivor in a, in a landmark returning season with Sari and Ozzy. No one could believe that. No,

[01:15:41] like that genuinely sounds like winning the lottery. Right. It's correct. He's no, and he's, and he's playing well, like in terms of like Sari's apprentices, like, why are you doing better than Ozzy? Ozzy, you've been playing this game for 20 years. Right. People are full of surprises, especially when you travel together. Thankfully, Vrbo is not. When you book a Vrbo, you get Vrbo care and 24 seven live support. So your house doesn't surprise you like your friends might.

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[01:17:09] Dream team. New habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly working at it. Zootopia 2. Now available on Disney+. Rated PG. The question is, is he better than Ozzy, right? Like, will these people... Is there any world where these people... No one's gonna vote for Rizzo to win. Will vote for Rizzo. And why do you think that is? What's your opinion about his win equity? He's 16, I think, because he's 16. It's really hard for people to do that. That's why I'm so high on, like,

[01:17:39] the Matt Haywoods of the world. Or Marianne, even. It's really hard to respect these, like, young people. Especially because it's a lot of, like... It is actually a lot of older parents who do enjoy Rizzo, seemingly. But I just think it's hard to give... It does happen we get these young winners. But I think you're up against... You're up against it, in terms of, like, respect from the jury. I just think he's a little bit more unserious. Although, the way that they looked at... Like, they specifically looked at Rizzo in 49, with more of his, like, showmanship that he hasn't had as much of here, that doesn't seem to be around the season.

[01:18:09] So I don't think that he's even earning any of that. I just think it's a really tough archetype. But yeah, I mean, I guess if he's against, like, a Joe and a... Oh, Jonathan. Yes. Yes. I don't know where y'all... I feel like people have overinflated Jonathan's game at this point. What is your opinion about Jonathan right now? Um, fine. That's where I am, too. And I've been getting the sense that people are like, no, he's playing a really good guy. I was like, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. We get a lot of Jonathan.

[01:18:38] We get a lot of Jonathan, but I don't know... We get a lot of him explaining what he's doing. It's kind of like the opposite of Sari. Like, Sari, you just kind of, like, we're seeing some of it. Yeah. And, like, they probably have a similar amount of confessionals. And, like, Jonathan, I feel like we're getting, like, all of it in Dense. I'm like, even the shot in the dark thing. Like, he took the shot in the dark. Christian couldn't even vote. And then he gave it back. And, like, are you giving Jonathan chizzy points for this episode? Like, not me. Yeah. Like, I'm giving the middle of chizzy points every episode. Sari, Rizzo, Ozzy. Yeah. What is Jonathan doing?

[01:19:07] Like, he was at the bottom of an alliance that is, again, being outplayed by Sari. They lost their members. If he had been with Coach or Chrissy had been with Jonathan, they probably... Like, if they were the two honor and integrity pair, which we can talk about side destinies, he's going home. Like, no one has that much agency other than the Super Wizard of Oz. So... Yeah. I was... I'm not a fan of, so far, but the game, I... You know, I think we're getting a lot more nuanced to his character than we did the first time. I think he was very much, like, you know, the challenge guy, right? And I think, like,

[01:19:37] now we're getting a lot more of, like, his strategic takes and this, that, and the other. I think it's fine. You know, like, he's not in a great spot and I don't think this is a winning game. So I think, like, Rizzo could beat somebody like that for sure. I think the thing with the superfan archetype... The banker is cold, Chappelle. Will you take a Rizzo victory? Absolutely. Deal or deal? A Rizzo? Yeah. It's not the biggest box, but at that point, the other box has got to be, like, come on. What are even the other boxes? It's like, we're looking at the Rizzo win as a real option. And then he has to see us a re-block, obviously.

[01:20:07] That's the issue. Listen, I'm never, I'm clinging to that box, dear life. All in, yeah. Yeah, all in. But yeah, I think that for this particular archetype of human, like, if you are the young superfan, I think that you have to sit next to people who play demonstrably bad games or, like, or that they've shown some, like, level of incompetence. So you'll see, like, Todd Herzog, right? Like, I don't think Amanda played a bad game, but, like, the competence was really leaning on, on, like, okay, this is Todd.

[01:20:36] Todd has been running things. He's, like, the clear mastermind of that. Three, you know, the, I mean, his second place goes to Courtney there, you know, not to say that, you know, Courtney didn't play a good game, but, like, look at, look at his competition there, right? He got Courtney and Amanda at the end. That's how he wins that game. I think Adam Klein is sitting next to Hannah and, um, what's this man's name? Um, the guy, the guy. Ken, yes. There's Hannah and Ken. And then they're, like, demonstrating how, you know, socially

[01:21:05] they have not been able to ingratiate themselves. And he's, like, the clear, like, clear favor with that, right? I don't think people go in looking to vote. Rizzo comes across as even younger than these people. And he's not younger than Todd was. Like, Rizzo is older, but, like, Rizzo actually does come across like he is, like... Like he's younger, right. Because he's so much the newbie as well. Like, they literally... It even exaggerates it more. He has a very young energy. I think we've always said about Rizzo. I think Marianne is probably the best example for something that he could have... He would have to, like, exude

[01:21:34] to win the game, right? It's not only am I sitting next to people who might not necessarily have the strongest game already, but they also aren't as socially ingrained in the tribe as I am. And they are not able to articulate themselves as well as I am. So if you put Rizzo next to Joe and Jonathan, and both of them are like, well, I won three challenges to get here. Cool. But if Rizzo's like, okay, I didn't win any challenges, but I had to get out Sari, and she was my number one. And then I had to figure out a way to get out Ozzy, you know? And then, like...

[01:22:03] So I made the decision to sit next to you two because I knew that you would... You would take out Ozzy in fire, and I was never going to beat him in fire. You know, like, if you could go in and articulate yourself, I do think there are people who would vote for Rizzo. And I think that it would still be a very fun season for our flagship season 50 here. This big moment in Survivor history to go to, like, our recent New Era standout, you know? And he can kind of be, like, the face of the New Era going forward. Yeah, that would probably...

[01:22:33] That would probably, like, teach the wrong lessons. I think so. It would be, like... The New Era, like, it would be... I also find it so funny. It's, like, old school versus new school. But, like, the old school alliance at this point is, like, two-thirds, like, Joe and Jonathan. Yeah. And the new school, at least game style, is, like, completely led by Suri, who is, like, the godmother of the new school. But she started playing a long time ago. Yeah. You know what this is as well? It's just beach and shelter people. We've been saying this since Cambodia.

[01:23:02] Like, that's always... But is it... But is it... Because, like... Because who is really a shelter person in the new era? Apparently that's not a thing they do. No, but, like, in this season, like, Stephanie and Coach and Chrissy and Joe and Jonathan, like, the shelter. Like, this was the shelter people. Yeah, the integrity folks. They were always going to be building the shelter people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is a dichotomy as old as time. That's a dichotomy, like, back to when, like, Rob was, like, the young, new era-type superfan in season six, you know? Like, I... Yeah.

[01:23:32] I mean, I definitely think, like, there are scales and the scales have shifted over time. But it's been, like, obviously a really big theme of this season. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, a few... Do you have more on that? No, keep going. Okay. There were a few things I wanted to talk about just in, like, looking at the whole season. Do you want to talk about the edit? Because there was obviously that debate about women in the edit. Was it a debate? Was it a debate? Because I'm pretty sure we were all, I mean... People debate. People debate in the comments. To me, I'm like... What you think would happen is that they were, like, women are getting edited badly on the show

[01:24:01] and everyone was just like, yeah. No, I mean, like, I think it's pretty clear that women are being under-edited. I think that people started to argue that, like, maybe it was somehow warranted. And I'm thinking... Yeah, that one's a hard one. Right. Because then you say, like, what are they doing that would need more editing time? Are they a big character? Would you need to show them? Were they doing anything that stands out? And that's always hard because then it's like, are you saying women are just, like, less entertaining than men? Because, like, questions abound. Right.

[01:24:30] Or are women cast worse than men? In some ways in this season, like, they did do the kind of, like, almost homogenous, like, big, like, gregarious man archetype, and they're going to get more screen time compared to some of the women. But then maybe that's an issue in casting. But I do think, like, it clearly is an issue. I mean, obviously, like, the history of editing on the show is, like, deplorable. So the show earns no goodwill. But I think you can see, like, it's not even just in terms of, like, are they just casting

[01:24:59] more brash men? And they can just tell those stories easier. Like, again, to a degree. But then you also look at, like, like, a similar, like, level of character and the women lost out in the edit every time. Like, so Rhi has an episode where she gets zero confessionals. Coach is also a legend. Like, let's put them in the same category of, like, great screen time, big legendary characters. Like, let's just put them. Coach would never get zero confessionals, I don't think. Right. And then you look at, like, Q and Angelina, two people I hugely enjoy. It was devastated to lose both.

[01:25:29] Angelina got, like, nothing. Q got to, like, show his character in the short time we had with him. And, like, thank God for that. I wish we got more of Angelina. You look at, like, Jonathan, who I think is, like, not the best narrator and try to put in, like, I actually think Tiffany's been really fun. But say Tiffany's, like, one of the more, Tiffany and Jonathan are both more of, like, the questionable decisions from a casting perspective. Like, Jonathan, Tiffany's made it up a bit now. But, like, has gotten, I think a lot more. Definitely the time of this debate was happening, you know, a lot more. I think that if you were to, like, categorize, like, put everyone into tiers of, like, men and women

[01:26:00] of the same category of, like, quality of casting, women are often, like, two tiers down in confessionals. And then, but then I think the thing that's sad about it is, like, if it's one season where that's true and it's, like, okay, well, maybe, like, Christian is just bringing that much good TV and I did want to see as much of Christian as we got. I loved it. You know, maybe, like, Devon's is doing a lot and Koji's doing a lot and, like, this is just one of those seasons. You're like, all right, well, that happens from time to time. Like, sometimes there'll be, you know, a lot of seasons where women do better and I know, like,

[01:26:29] 49 was probably, like, the one season where that was true. But unfortunately, the history of the show doesn't afford that grace that this is, like, one season where men just kind of, like, were taking the reins. Because, again, I think some of it isn't earned. I think, like, someone like Sarri could even have more. I think there are players who could have, we could have seen, like, even, like, Dee have more. There were a lot of times where questions, Angelina was the big one, like, questions actually should have been asked about the people on the season. And even if that weren't true, how can it be true of every season with the history being as terrible as it is?

[01:26:59] I shouldn't write notes on this, but, and my thoughts of it, obviously, months old, but that's just what I was thinking at the time where it's, like, it's so clear because the history is, like, so terrible. And it matters so much because it matters how we tell these stories because, you know, obviously, we only see as much as, like, they give us. And if they give us less, like, of course people question that more. People need, like, their hand held often in the show or, like, we need to see what people are doing, obviously. Like, it's not even a negative thing. It's just true. And it's such a disservice to these people and their legacies to bring them back

[01:27:29] and then not show them because then when we talk about them as characters, as players, we're like, and then they didn't really do anything in the second season. You know, like, she made it pretty far in that season. Doesn't she make it to the finale of that season? Something, something like that. And, um, Ty was fourth, fifth. Yeah, she was. Yeah. Yeah. So, but Aubrey game, you're like, oh, she was kind of like, she was there, you know,

[01:27:58] like, we don't get as much Aubrey as we would have, like, as they could describe her gameplay in that season, despite her going to the final five, right? There's not a lot to say about it. And it is not a mark on her game. It's a mark on what you show from her game, right? And you, it's the editor's responsibility to tell a cohesive story. Jeff likes to say there is no winner edit. I push back against that completely, but whatever he, I don't know, whatever he, whatever he says goes, I guess it's his show. But I would definitely say that there are definitely seasons where you can watch

[01:28:27] and just tell by the amount of screen time and amount of confessionals you get that you are looking at somebody who the show wants to highlight. And normally, if they're spending that much time with a character, it's, it's the winner, somebody who comes really close to winning. And so if you come close to winning, I'm expecting you to get maybe like a comparable amount of screen time, you know? But you're like dominating the confessionals to go out pre-merge and then there'll be people who make it deep into the merge or at least to this point of the game where you seem very little of, but they outlasted you.

[01:28:58] It's hard to reconcile. And so I totally get that. I think in season, what, 48, it was the say show, right? At the pre-merge, which is like, it was all say everything, right? And so we get to the end and we're like, well, it went from being a say show to the Joe show. And so it's gotta be Joe. You know, that was pretty much the analysis because that was all we were showing. You were seeing everything Joe did. It was all in a positive light for a very long time. And so we look at everybody and be like, well, there's no possible way they could win the game because they're not showing the things that they're doing to win the game. Obviously,

[01:29:28] Kyle has like a late surge, but for a lot of that season, it was just, the editing was very unbalanced when it came to a lot of characters. And so this is just, to me, very sad because you clamor to have some of these people play again. I love a returning player season, but damn, don't bring them back and then not show them. That's not fun. Yeah. I mean, and I think that like the thing that's hard is that I think that like the detractors of this, like that there's an imbalance in gender in the edit would say like, well, you know, it's not wrong for these people to get content.

[01:29:57] And I think that that is true. Like, I'm not saying it's like every single time, like that it's just like men getting confessionals is bad. Again, I'm saying a lot of that is earned. In fact, some of the stuff that people are saying like, oh, well, like why was Colby the last one in the blood moon? Like they're making a TV show that tribal council was some of the only good stuff they had in that episode. And Colby is the biggest legend here. Like he should get his flowers and even like coach versus Chrissy. But I don't know about that. Yeah. Like, I don't know about the coach versus Chrissy though. And that one's kind of weird to me. Like, yeah, it's, I don't think so because I'm, I apologize to Chrissy, but like coach is coach. It doesn't, it's not saying anything about Chrissy,

[01:30:27] but like coach is coach. He's one of the biggest characters of the season. He's one of the biggest characters in Survivor history. They're going to focus on coach that he's going to be the main event. Right. But, but should he outplace her? Oh no. I mean, that's stupid. No one should outplace anyone. But she, I'm very, very worried about how this is going to affect the Vivertl, by the way, which is in my life. I wait all day for the Vivertl to roll over to the next day. It's really. That's what Jeff said. They just tied. That's not what Jeff, that's not. Well,

[01:30:56] that's actually not a gender problem. That's just the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Generally. In terms of like, who gets the moment of their torch snuff last, like coach is coach. Like he should get that. And it's not for me. Like it's, if it was coach three, we change, you know what I mean? Right, right. The order changes. I mean, if it's Chrissy, Jonathan, even like, yeah. Yeah. But again, if she's the 11th person, they tied. They didn't say you tied. No one said tied. I mean, no, all of this is so,

[01:31:26] like even the blood wound people, they should all just be tied 15. That's not how this works. Well, that's so dumb. We've had plenty of double boot episodes where that is not the case, right? The grenade is a grenade. That should be true. But that was bad then. That was stupid then. You feel tied. Here we are. Here we are. Or if it's based on meaning, like, like order you dropped in the challenge. Fair. Legitimately differentiated in some way. If it's not, and it's just TV order. I mean,

[01:31:55] Coach and Chrissy were a literal pair. So like, obviously they tied. Yeah. They tied. Well, they should have tied. But when we, when we go to snuff their torch, one of them is the 11th person voted out. And the next one is the 12th person voted out. Well, that's. And the next member of our jury. That's just a stupid thing. I don't, I don't know what to do with that. This is a stupid thing. And if that was going to affect the Vivertel, was that what's happening with the Vivertel then? Is that how you pronounce the Vivertel? I've never explained it. I don't play that. I don't play it. Why not? It's so fun. You know, I don't like the games. Oh,

[01:32:25] Chappelle. I can tell that you're not someone who's feeding a baby for 10 hours a day because. you can tell. Yeah, you can tell. That's the patriarchy. Because I literally wait for my puzzles to roll over and I get my minute cryptic and I get connections and I get word on. I have survivor. And I wait for 2 PM, which is when it rolls over. And then I do my Vivertel. And I'm really just, it's a great game. Anyway, what we said, but okay. The edit. Anyway, my point with the edit is like, it's not inherently bad when men get confessionals,

[01:32:53] but if you see a man compared to a woman who are the same caliber of character in some way that can be compared and they, women are always losing, something is wrong and it's been wrong through history. Anyway, enough on that. Should we talk about more of these twists? We mentioned Tied Destiny a little bit. They took that from Survivor South Africa. Did you like it on Survivor South Africa? No, I mean, I was in production on Survivor South Africa for that season. And LaRue took it from French Survivor actually. And we said, don't do that. And he was like, I want to. And we're like, okay, well, I don't know. We're just consultants were saying no. I always think Tied Destiny is like just fine.

[01:33:23] Like for me, firstly, it would be so interesting. And on Survivor South Africa, they picked rocks in this. Obviously they chose what they assumed was like a 48 star challenge. If they were choosing the actual Tied Destiny, there would be so much agency here. Like we could do a three hour podcast on just how people make that decision. It's like the layers of decision-making to choose a partner that you will have a Tied Destiny. What do they call it? Double duos? Tied Destiny with? Yeah, silly. There's analysis there, but they didn't choose it. So like that kind of decision lacked meaning. But for me, kind of like firstly,

[01:33:52] every vote is a six person vote on this fricking show. You can't. Even the 13 people vote. It was a six person vote. Yeah. Yeah. But I also think it kind of just necessitates for me, like it doesn't draw these binary lines. Like it often necessitates a bit of a compromise vote. Like who can we kind of part with? But this vote just was thankfully just happened to have meaning because they ended up having like a full nerd pair and a full integrity pair. And so we can make that decision. And like, maybe if the integrity pair is a little bit lower stakes, like the Stephanie or Jonathan,

[01:34:21] like maybe she takes the hit at the nerd first. Maybe they're just like juicier nerd targets because she is swinging. But like mostly I feel like if she was like, no, we're doing integrity today. Like she got her integrity pair and it actually allowed these lines to be drawn a little bit because we happen to have pairs of both and they were just getting hit of two people instead of one. But I do think like most of the time it ends up being like a bit of just like a, just like what we can agree on. Did you like it? Yeah. Yeah. It was fine. It was fine. It was fine. Exactly. It was fine. It was fine. Yeah.

[01:34:51] Yeah. I thought, I thought, Oh my God, is this the thing that's going to screw Saree over? No, she, she actually got individual immunity. Yeah. She actually got individual immunity for that too. So I'm, I'm fine with that. Yeah. No, I watched it and I was like, Oh no, this is, this is interesting. It was fun, but it wasn't like nothing that I thought was crazy. Well, we probably never see it again. Right. Because this is the only time that we have such a huge cast at this point. Um, so, you know, go survivor for doing something that didn't destroy the show for me. You know,

[01:35:21] like, like I think the blood moon was really just like a nothing burger. This at least was an interesting conversation. Yeah. I mean, it's more just like, please stop with the twist. Yeah. I liked how they showed Christian saying, I don't think they like we, the fans voted for that specifically. Right. It's all going in the shredder, Christian. They, there's no records on what we quote unquote voted for. I need to see that data. Yeah. As chaos cast would say, you know, I would like to see that. Like, yeah, I, um,

[01:35:50] I'm sure like you're in some sort of record. Did anyone, did you have to enter your email address to vote? I don't remember. I don't know. I thought I might've, I might've opted out of the vote to just be like, you know what? Cause I didn't want to be blamed. I didn't want to be blamed. You know, it was like, uh, an extension is not, uh, it's not, uh, to say that you are now above being blamed because I am being blamed as the fans. Cause I voted. Maybe we wouldn't have some of this, uh, wacky shit going on. It really irks me how they're like, well, we're screwing you over now, but it's the fan fault.

[01:36:20] It's like, why do you take pleasure in this? Even the way they painted it, right? It's like, do you want a dynamic season of survivor with twists and turns and fun gameplay? Or do you want dynamic strategy? Right. Or do you want classic pogongings? It's like, okay, I vote for the twist. No, I don't. I want classic survivor. I don't want classic. No, you don't currently. But we don't know. Cause even that's not classic, you know, that's got, that's got twists and turns. Uh, you know, this was just, this was like, they would like,

[01:36:49] that basically like, do you want, do you want, uh, you know, the new era or do you want, yeah. Or do you want Borneo? Yeah. Right. Yeah. I choose classic, but I didn't pick it. I'm picking Borneo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want idols? Do you want like advantages as well? Or do you want no idols and no advantages and boring gameplay? Shannon. I mean, the votes were made for us, man. The gameplay has been limited with this dynamic quote unquote dynamic, uh, format that we have.

[01:37:19] Speaking of idols, Billie Eilish boomerang idol, obviously we're two months in on that. Um, they clearly did it because they loved everyone going home with the idol in 46. So they're trying to like manufacture that magic, which I think is like, sometimes that happens with, I mean, it happens often in, in when you're producing, I think that you're like, that was great. How can we try and like create that? Then people were trying to vote someone out without idols. Wait, why? So you think they like the Billie Eilish idol because it'll incentivize people to get voted out with the idol. Cause it's putting a target on their back. Yeah. Because then it,

[01:37:48] it should incentivize people to vote people out with idols. And they saw in 46 people kept going home with idols. And that was such a great organic moment. They thought like, how can we create that again? In a weird way. I think that could be interesting if it ever happened like that, but instead Shannon to me, I got, Oh, Genevieve found two idols that she was not able to use. Oh, painful. It's also so painful that like Christian and Genevieve were like further screwed by twist when like they were the two that found the three Billie Eilish burying idols that they really could have used at some opportune times. And actually like, then they like ops had the idols at times. Um,

[01:38:18] tough. Yeah. It's interesting because like, it feels like it should be fun, but it's so hard to game. Like there are other tribes, like how are you going to engineer people going home with an idol in their pocket? Like it really only could have been a social tool and maybe had some upside if it went South. Um, and I think that's the only way it could have been played. And in that way, I actually much prefer what we saw on Australian survivor of like the different tribe idols to like create those like cross tribal connection. If that's the best part of it, I would have just preferred that. Um, and miles had a great tweet about this.

[01:38:48] Like in the moment, it wasn't so clear about how much it would kind of stagnate the idols in the season. And I'm sure a part of that is that like Ozzie and result, it's so much in control and they have the idols, but like, yeah, taking idols to the point where like, you're not incentivized to keep it a secret because you don't get to keep it. Now they're public now. And they can't be views on anyone else. Again, not Australian survivor, but like some of the big moments are like, you're going to play the idol on some of the biggest moments in, in survivor history, you know, poverty playing idols on, on Jerry and Sandra. Like that makes, this idol dynamic,

[01:39:16] like they're very stagnant right now. Like again, like you only know who has, who has the idols and, um, they can't be played on anyone else. You can't buff with them. They're really like very defensive tools right now. And I don't think even in the moment, any of us realized production certainly didn't realize like how stagnant that would make the idols on the season. If anything, you want to vote out the people who gave you the idol, as opposed to the people who are incentivized to vote you out. And because they also know you have it. Yeah. Well, and then everyone knows. And the thing is like, it's like,

[01:39:45] well then just hide from them the secret, but there's three of them. So like, eventually like they will find out what the mechanism was. Cause for a while they were just calling it the Billie Eilish idol, because I think that like the boomerang aspect was getting a little off, um, on purpose, because you don't want someone to know you sent it with possibly an ulterior motive. Um, but yeah, I mean, you're going to find that out. And then, yeah, you kind of like shouldn't work with them. Like, I don't know, none of this, it kind of feels like it should have created these complex dynamics, but it was just too hard and vague. Again, you don't have that much power on that person going home with an idol. So you might as well just treat it as like,

[01:40:15] let's be friends. And if you happen to go home with an idol, like at least I'll get like something in my pocket. Um, it didn't work out. It might've been fun as like a one off idol on the season, but you can't do that because it has to be this like tribal thing because you have to send it to someone else. So how could they decide one tribe to have it? Maybe the kind of thing where like an Australian survivor where you like, you win a reward and you get like an additional thing, but then that's too many idols. And it being the idol mechanism of the season, that was true of all the tribes didn't work. And there's no way for it to be an additional idol. So it probably should have been scrapped.

[01:40:45] I don't blame Billie Eilish. This woman has never watched survivor. She's not. She'll never watch it. She's never acknowledged it. No. She doesn't know what is happening with this. well her and, um, her friend was on. No, that was Chaperone's friend. It was on survivor of 48. Um, Oh, who? Um, he was the music producer. Oh, yeah. Yes. Him. He's a music producer. Thomas. Thomas. Thomas. Um, he, no, no,

[01:41:14] cause he produces Olivia Rodrigo. I didn't know that he was a Chaperone thing, by the way. And Chaperone to me is Chappelle Rone, but you did that. Yeah. I mean, thank you. I got to, I got to get the name, the win on that one. Just, you know, I, I, I try to be, I try to be, um, you know, I was looking at the vote so far for these, uh, these in the hands of the fans, you know, we have a couple of votes left that we still haven't explored. Do you know what, you remember what they were? No. Well, we did a vote for the tribe colors. Obviously we landed on orange, teal and magenta,

[01:41:44] uh, rice, 60% verse, uh, voted for make the players earn the rice. Um, the vote reveal and reunion do it in Las Vegas ends up winning. As we know, uh, advantages, dynamic power, uh, tribe switch. Yes. Immunity necklace, a decorative bird, uh, tribe supplies, make, make them earn their camps of lies twist. I love twist. Bring them on and idols. Yes. Uh, 80% said no. Now that said,

[01:42:13] we still have the final four challenge, uh, to vote on. Well, to get the results right in the shredder. Well, do you remember what our three options were? There were three options, three options for the final four challenge or pinball. What was it? Challenge. Let me have a file. No subjects. Uh, no pinball. Was it the obstacle and some motion? Yeah. Those are the big three. Which one do you think is going to win and be our final four challenge? And just a couple of Billy Eilish life.

[01:42:43] Um, and yeah, and who are we naming after? Yeah. Well, you, well, you won't have to name that. Why not? Where's Neil Patrick Harris? Right. Brown. Yeah. The event. Yeah. The survivor. Yeah. The celebrity Brown. The survivor Browns. Yeah. The obstacle. The event. Nicole Brown. Pinball wizard. I can see it. Which, which one is pinball wizard? Is that the one where you run up and drop the thing and then you come down?

[01:43:14] Yeah. I think so. Like the Plinko. Yeah, I think so. It's kind of like. I don't know that. Full body's emotion. Yeah. Big. That's what I thought of it. Full body's emotion. Uh, yeah. Look, I think Sari has a better chance at emotion. Right. And yeah, the last thing, final four fire making, keep it or lose it. And we don't know the results to that, but I'm, I think we know. I'm just, I can't, I can't stomach it. I can't stomach it. Cause you know, it's going to be like the 80% said, but they didn't. They didn't say that. They didn't.

[01:43:42] I will not be blamed for this. 99.6% of the fans said, keep the fire. Yeah. No, they didn't. No, they didn't. No, they didn't. Now at McDonald's, a McDouble is two 50. So you can get your gym gains on or just get lunch for only two 50. Get more value on the under $3 menu. Let me time. Only prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher for delivery. There's no one like you.

[01:44:11] And there never will be from the producer. Bohemian Rhapsody. There are many legends, but there is only one. Michael rated PG 13 in theaters, April 24. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing.

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[01:45:09] plus an exciting range of daily and weekly prizes. Don't miss your shot. Official rules apply. Learn more at GoAllInAndWin.com. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa. Whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon

[01:45:37] and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habanero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Should we ding, marry, kill the Jeffisms? Well, I mean, there's so many, but to me, the big one is definitely the playing along with the challenge. What else are you going to put in the running for the ding, marry, kill? The rap. And the impressions.

[01:46:07] Yeah. Oh, okay. Because I'm marrying the impressions. The rap's going to die. The rap's dead. And I'm going to marry the impressions. I thought they were really funny. I thought it was good. I thought it was good. I think I'm going to marry the challenge. Really? You liked it that much? I did. I thought that was so much fun. It was low stakes. As you and I both agree, there was no wager. It was just fun and games.

[01:46:37] Some shenanigans. But I think it made a rather stale challenge. So fun to watch. You know, endurance challenges, especially on US Survivor, are so boring. It's just, we're just standing there. I think on AU, there's a lot more strat chat and across, you know, like they do that kind of stuff on AU a lot more. Although I kind of want to yada yada the challenges, sometimes I'm afraid I might miss something that's actually, you know, interesting as far as like conversation goes.

[01:47:06] But I mean, US Survivor, I was like, okay, maybe we're going to get Christian filibustering again. You know, maybe something like that. No, we actually got a lot of entertaining content out of them trying to heckle Jeff. Jeff having the shoe on the other foot. You know, a lot of us are Monday morning quarterback and all this stuff and talking about what we would have done, should have done, what these people could have done. But we don't actually go out and do the thing. And so we'll never really know. I think Jeff is just like us. I mean, he's a lot closer to the action than we are.

[01:47:34] But in a lot of ways, we got to see clips of Jeff completely shaming people for how they did in the challenge, only to basically lose to the majority of the people left in the game. And he he narrowly beat Sari. Like Sari almost beat Jeff. Yeah. So, yeah, it was pretty good. Right there. They beat him. They beat Jeff. And I'm like, wow, this is crazy. But I thought it was so much fun. It was funny that it was seven and a half minutes. I mean, look, mine would be 20 seconds, but I enjoy all the montages.

[01:48:02] Other than when they showed that damn balance beam. Why is it always a balance beam for Sari? Show me the three, two, one. The show doesn't understand why Sari is magic. They're like, what did she do? She voted out Eric. That speaks for itself. And that balance beam, my God in heaven. I wish you'd never see it ever again. I enjoy all the montages. Again, like I enjoy the part of the season that is like the reverence for the show. So I enjoyed that. I kind of think like it was fine. I'm not watching the show for this reason. I enjoy the dynamics, but I think the dynamics,

[01:48:32] people play out themselves. Like as you're right, if Jeff isn't doing this, like Christian is doing something entertaining. Christian is filibustering. Like the most, the best part of this was that apparently Christian was asking for the deep dives. And I heard that was amazing. You pointed that out to me. I loved it. That's what I'm here to see. Like while it was fine, it didn't, it wasn't like, it was, that's why it's like down to the middle one for me. Like it's pretty neutral. But like later on, we kind of get this glimpse of Joe speaking to his sister and asking if you give him strength as he wins the challenge. That to me is why I'm watching.

[01:49:00] That's much more interesting to me than Jeff playing the challenge. But like, I'd like to see that you can't see people for a reason. Let them stand there creating entertainment, but it doesn't kill the show for me. It's fine. Even the rap, which is the one we're killing. Like it's fine. Like, give me that over the twist to break the game for sure. No, I don't know about the rap. I'm good. I just did. Kill it. Kill it. Burn it with fire. Yeah. Burn it with fire. You know. I feel like that's what you think Hamilton is. Yeah.

[01:49:27] It's like, it's like rap being history. This sounds great. I would, I would love to see. But it's not like Hamilton. I mean, and I've listened to you rap. Hamilton more times than I would like to admit. And against my will, just like everything I learned about Mr. Beast. Never asked for that. But it's fine. We'll still take it. I would love to see Jeff have done the, the poverty hang on the pole challenge.

[01:49:56] You know, that's, I think that's more entertainment than just this. Get him in his, not even his swimwear, right? In his underwear. Out in the water. Get him to do one of these big obstacle courses like that. Maybe a hero's challenge against it. Could you ever see Jeff doing another challenge? Now, do you think he has the, like the bug? Oh God. Well, don't do that. Well, don't, don't even put it out there. We saw it. It was fine. I don't hate it. What if there was a real wager? Like if y'all beat me, then I will double the amount of fire y'all have. No, no.

[01:50:25] And if y'all lose, then obviously, you know, like half of you. Don't ask for the wager more things. That's the concern. Whoever I beat will lose their vote. Yeah. That's something like that. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. That's awful. That's awful. It is awful. But I just want to see Jeff do more stuff. I think that was fun. Can you imagine if they made people lose their votes for losing against a challenger, Jeff? That would have made me angry. I'm glad it wasn't a wager because that would have broken the game. So Reed doesn't have a vote because she shouldn't be Jeff in a challenge. Like I wouldn't even be here to talk. I'm at the level where I can at least be here to complain.

[01:50:56] You know what I mean? Like I don't want to get a little bit past it where I'm just dead. So. But yeah, I thought this was fine. I thought it was simply fine. You know what I liked about it? I liked that it didn't take 40 minutes. Like Zac Brown. I don't remember like a time before I was watching that. Like in that moment. God, it went on and on. Sheamus, he seems like a sweet guy. It's not his fault. It's productive. It's not his fault. They're making the decisions. They're making the decisions of how much time we devote to Zac Brown. That's not again, like much like coach and Chris.

[01:51:25] It's not his fault. It's not his fault. He didn't ask for all that screen time, but man, I hated it. Just like I'm mad at Jimmy Fallon about this Christian thing. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I have that idea. And Jeff said, Jimmy, I don't know if we can give you that. He said, damn it. I'm Jimmy Fallon.

[01:51:54] He said, okay, you are Jimmy Fallon. You are Jimmy Fallon. Even on his show with Christian, he kind of indicated that's not what happened. He's like, yeah, I have ideas. I didn't watch that. You didn't watch it? I can't because I want Christian to like, because I'm like secretly hoping Christian like will flip the table and he won't do it. I'm like, well, Christian, we have to take our power back at some point. We have to, you know, I'm not going to say we need to assault Jimmy Fallon, but if he did, I would look the other way. No, he didn't. No one assaulted Jimmy Fallon. I would look the other way. That was Ed.

[01:52:24] We don't know. It's not the fans. What? What'd you think of Dee? Dee's great. I love her. I think she's like, I think watching her play this season, this was like, it was like solidified, right? Like, yeah, she did 45 and that was good. But to me, this was like, no, like look at Dee, she has chops. It wasn't Kyle. Like she wasn't God out there. But, and this is the thing that's with the new era. It's like, I really enjoy Dee. I thought she was great, but like, she didn't get to go to that many tribal councils, but it's not her fault.

[01:52:54] Yeah. I think Dee is great. I thought she brought a lot of entertainment as well. Again, I didn't get to see enough either way, but like. She's one. She's, I still think he's played the best like new era winning game. I think Kyle's probably the best winner though. I'm with, I'm with Dee still, but Kyle is definitely number two. But I was very impressed with him. I always thought Kyle was the one that I would, I always said I would choose Kyle as like, if I had to like bet on one as a player, I always thought Dee played the best winning game.

[01:53:23] Those two were different. And like, I think that remains even truer now that I know that Kyle can start a cult within 24 hours of being on that Island. Yeah. No, I'm very, I'm very high on Dee the way she performed in this season. I also was very high on Savannah. I thought that Savannah with the spot that she was in as a winner on this particular tribe with this makeup of tribe. And, you know, I just, there's something about just like that, the gamer squirrel, like type of player, right. Where it's like in them, where it's like, no, I am, I'm here to compete.

[01:53:53] I think Dee has a lot of that in her, but Savannah for sure is like, like that, like that switch goes off. Right. And she is competitive and she's going to play hard. And I loved seeing her too. I think all three of the winners that they brought back really made decent showings. While, while I think it's very early for them to be coming back a lot, but, and I definitely wouldn't want to see them back on a season where they're the only three winners. Cause they're so outnumbered by all these other people who have not yet got to like capture the crown for themselves.

[01:54:21] I would love to have seen any of them play again, even now, you know, now that they've all played twice, I'm still kind of like, I would, I would watch the Savannah, Kyle and Dee return again, do it all over again. When is it? I think they kind of like, it shows like they've been a lot of the time. They probably shouldn't have brought back Savannah. Like, I think that that was validated, like for her own sake, like what an impossible position. Really, really tough. Like they haven't seen her. They're really scared of that. She doesn't have like the inroads, the time that Rizzo ended up getting to kind of get past that. And she's the winner.

[01:54:51] Like so tough. Like I'd much prefer, I'd prefer to see her later. And I, like, I'm sure we still will. And I hope we still do. She did insult Taylor Swift in the preseason. And that one's been hard. She got Taylor's karma. Then she was like, then she was coming for Saria a bit. Tell us like Savannah. There's going to be a third strike. Like if you come out against Hamilton raps, like Chappelle is now, like, unfortunately it's going to be done for us. But I did not bring up Hamilton raps, by the way, for the record, for all the Hamilton heads out there. It wasn't me. I just didn't deny it.

[01:55:21] Yeah. I know how you, I know how you think. Yeah. It was probably, it was probably a bad spot to bring her back. But look again, the cast have exceeded my expectations. It's just kind of like running against this wall. Was I too, too negative on this podcast? What did people, what did people expect? I actually, like, I had this interaction with, with Josh Kettles yesterday when he was like, oh, I've like missed your coverage. And I'm like, well, I probably should have been kept away because like, I'm kind of down on the season. He's like, no, that's what I missed.

[01:55:48] I feel like I'm, I'm hopefully coming in because I have people been enjoying the season. I've been too much of a casual, I think people are enjoying it more than me. And I wanted to come in here and just ask the question, is the season bad? And in talking with you, like, I don't know where I land. Yeah. I think, I think that, no, I think there are bad seasons of Survivor. And I think that they'll, for like various different reasons. I think this season has taken big swings and some of them are definitely whiffs, but I wouldn't say that they're bad. I would say that all of them are bad. Right.

[01:56:16] And I don't think it's been enough to make the season bad. Like, um, which twist in with the double, the double, uh, double trouble, uh, double duals. It was just fine. It was fine. And fine is okay. Fine is not bad. That's not the best case scenario. Oh, I'm just saying, we're not looking for the best case. We're just making sure that this isn't a bad case scenario. And I thought it was fine. Um, I think that to me, the season of Survivor are the ones that really put the players in a situation where the game is not what they were told.

[01:56:45] And I think that they, these people were told this is going to be wacky and twist field and crazy. And that's what they're getting. Uh, this isn't the edge of extinction. So, I mean, that's, I think pretty universally agreed on that. That's a bad season. Right. Yeah. Right. But I mean, but that's what we're looking at when it comes to bad seasons. To me, this is middle of the road somewhere. It's more entertaining than a season that gets like a typical pogonging or like one side versus the other. And we just all eat that one side. And then we get like a challenge beast kind of emerge at the end.

[01:57:13] And like, this has been dynamic as Jeff would say. I like dynamic. I did enjoy, um, another thing I'm thinking of now that I'm going through, I enjoyed the Charlie stuff. Like he got a little too real with Maria, but I thought it was like very funny. Um, yeah. Charlie talks to your character. But then it was like also sad because it's like, it's like, wow, that's really like, I think quite fairly like eating him alive. Like he really went through something with that. Like people like were coming at me a bit when I was like, this is kind of a trauma. It's like, he lost a million dollars on the betrayal of a friend.

[01:57:42] I know that there are people out there like who lost handily and didn't get like a close friends vote. And that ended that relationship, like let alone like the winning vote. Anyway, I've spoken a lot about the Maria Charlie stuff. Um, and like, I think like he was, yeah, at the time. Oh, okay. I thought you made it. I think that I thought that the Maria vote was like the most important vote in survivor history jury votes in Sioux Hawke. Um, I think it was a, I think, I think it, and I think it's probably the most compelling moment of the new era.

[01:58:12] Interesting. That's what I, that's what I kind of loved about it. Like, because it was like, this is like legacy. Like there's an actual like new era legacy. We're getting a lot of that, like 46 stuff, like Q was being fun. And Charlie brought this baggage, which again, like as a human, I really feel for him. Cause I think it's real and I think it's earned, but like from a TV perspective, I was like, this is like a, you know, what is affecting him is a historic moment in the show. Um, it's compelling AF. It's sad, but like, yeah, to lose, to lose a million dollars by being like that betrayed by someone you care about.

[01:58:40] And like, again, I don't want to relitigate all the jury stuff. I'm definitely not going to right now at the end of this podcast, but like, he's a lot of to feel that type of way about it at the very least. Um, and clearly it affects him. I thought that was great. And then they like flashback to it. Every flashback kind of gets me balanced. Yeah. About this, especially not that one. I, I liked looking at kind of how the traumas of these people's past, like past games have kind of manifest themselves in this. Yeah. Because I think it does. It's the point of the returning player season.

[01:59:07] Like obviously you don't get that in a, in every season where people are able to look back and say, okay, here's the thing that I want for redemption, you know, not to, you know, wink at a, you one more time, but you know, we saw, you know, uh, Christian and his old Mike white, uh, you know, trauma that he has to navigate, uh, you know, even some of these other people, like, like even Savannah, right. A person who won the game is still looking like, like, Hey, the final travel council was kind of rough. What did I do wrong?

[01:59:37] What can I change? You know, it was a war like they were winners who had their baggage and they brought it in. And that's one of the things I found the best about that season was like, they all had something new they were trying to earn. Yeah. Aubrey Rick Devons. Like all of these people have a little bit of baggage that they were. And I liked that the show was taking time to address those things. I think the Charlie thing was a way over the top. I don't think it was necessarily Charlie. I mean, don't get me wrong. It seems like they put them on TV for a reason. So he's an entertaining guy. Uh, he's obviously a showman and he's leaning into this, but I do think that it bothers

[02:00:07] me a little bit that his legacy will always be Maria. And to me, like in Charlie is more to me, Charlie is a better game player and a better survivor character than just the Maria moment. I think there were more egregious things that happened that season than the Maria vote. Uh, so like. I mean, there were a lot of, we talked about this when we did the defining moments. And I think I fought for that and it ended up being the I'm pissed moment. I get it. But I just think for me and like what I love about survivor is like someone making a really personal vote that there's like heartbreaking thing.

[02:00:36] And it being like the deciding vote that's just survivor to me. And it's hard to get that in the new era. We talked about this a lot in Australian survivor where we did get a lot of it. Like that to me is like pure human dynamics. Someone goes in and they're hurt and maybe they shouldn't be hurt. They were coming for you. But like you can't, I don't know, you can't fight against those feelings when you're like in that position as a juror. And you make a decision like that against a friend that's been like almost a defining relationship of the season. And it's the deciding vote like that to me is the most just like pure survivor that I

[02:01:06] feel like we pretty much have got in the new era. That was like the last time I remember being like, and again, that seasons I enjoy a lot in the new era, 42, 45, 47 as well. But 46 was so raw and real. And like, that was the time where I remember being like just floored by, by a decision. And I like that it bled into the season because I do think it's survivor history at the very least. And it is upsetting that it does, both Charlie and Maria's legacies get consumed in it.

[02:01:33] But like, at least it's a huge moment to be consumed in because it was a big moment. Yeah. Is there anybody we under edited on this podcast and left out and didn't give their flowers to any words for Jenna Lewis? Jenna. She was right. She was right. She was right. I mean, I hated that she said it. I felt physical anger. Right. Because why would she say that? Yeah. Why would she say that? Like, so, and like, the three is messed, obviously. I mean, she was wrong to do it as a player because how is that going to go? Like the real, like all the things you're saying is why it's not going to work. But she was right in theory.

[02:02:04] Who else? Who else from this cast? I mean. Well, you've kind of talked about Q. We got some shenanigans. It was fun. Q was my top three case for me. Yeah. Wild to me. I love you. Wild to me that you. I think Q was possibly the best casting of the new era. So like for me of everyone, Marianne. I mean, yeah, I was like, come on. You always. Marianne, Carolyn and Q are the Mount Rushmore and that fourth spot.

[02:02:33] I'll definitely give you Marianne and Q. I'm kind of like on the fence about Carolyn right now. Just like in general, because it's been a few seasons since that. Two more and three. No. Yeah. Yeah. But that I'm talking about in Survivor. So I think that the Tika three doesn't age well. And maybe it's just 44. But I think that, you know, like the I don't know, because I thought people were higher on Jam Jam and and the whole Tika three is as whole. And then I heard y'all talking about. Yeah. It was like winter rankings.

[02:03:02] And I was like, yeah, now Kyle is going to go up because Kyle's a god to these people. But he's also played again. Right. And Jam Jam has not. So, yeah. So I don't know. So I definitely will give you those two spots. Yeah. I just sit around and think about it maybe as the big characters of the new era. Who are the players of the new era? If you don't mind me asking, like who are the characters? Back to my baby. But who are the who are the players? Yeah.

[02:03:29] The like the like if we have like our Mount Rushmore of Survivor, like overall. Right. Old era. Right. Up to up to 50. So Kyle is on the. I waited two months to give Kyle his flowers. Do it. I'm not going to stop you. I love Kyle. Kyle D. You got to look at the winners first. Right. Yeah. Because like what we have, like Boston Robbins, Andrew Parvati. Well, I mean, are you doing some new era players? No, I'm saying like like in comparison to like the old era players. Right.

[02:03:58] Like so we had Boston Rob, Sandra Parvati. Who's in our fourth spot? Kim. Sari. I mean, I'm taking Sari over Kim for sure. Right. Tony. You didn't say Tony. Tony. Yeah. So Boston Rob, Sandra Parvati, Tony. Right. That's the big four. You tried to sneak Tony away from me. I heard you. No, that's the big four. No, I'll give you that. I'll give you that. That's the big four. I just literally was drawing a blank. But and then like Eli. Like and then like Sari is like the patron saint of everybody who was good at Survivor

[02:04:28] but did not win. So like she can she can have that. But like here. OK. Give us like the big the big four of the of the last nine seasons. Do that on the spot. That's impossible. You ain't been talking about nothing else. You got time. Let's do it. We got to get there's only there's only nine winners to talk about. And you just ranked them not too long ago. Only winners. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think you would like like you start with the winners and then we'll have to expand that. So I think you just did this. Yeah. D Kyle Marianne.

[02:04:56] And who are the winners? Yeah. And then is it Jam Jam Jam Jam. Jam Jam. I think it's Jam Jam. I think we did that podcast like Jam Jam did the traders and like Kyle did this. And like I feel like the rankings maybe changed a little bit. I didn't enjoy Jam Jam on the traders other than like I guess like the stuff against Rob. But he's entitled. I shouldn't say that. I guess not. This is RHP. Who's the fourth? Were we putting Marianne? Yeah. Is it not Marianne? I think it is.

[02:05:26] To me, I was like Marianne is completely underrated. Like what are you talking about? I agree. Very, very, very, very, very. I will tell you I watch whenever I watch the Marianne final travel. Counsel's speech when she reveals that she has the idol. She's like, this is the idol and this is the note. It gets me every time. It gets me every time. Because it was like it was in that moment. They knew they fucked up. I was like, oh, yeah. Now y'all know. But yeah. So we got that Mount Rushmore of winners. But like are any of these players that we've seen come back and play again? Like we kind of like having a resurgence.

[02:05:54] Like whose stock is now going up? Aside from Kyle. Obviously. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm like this is a great season for Devin. I love Devin. People, a lot of Devin's get so much hate. Like I enjoy Devin. He's just going to have fun. And it's fun for me. Like I'm having fun with him. I honestly think he's a great time. I drafted him. You what? I drafted Rick Devin very proudly. Yeah. I don't know. I've learned much more about him as a player. Or as a character. I've always.

[02:06:22] I think he's like a pretty good player who I've always really enjoyed. And like he is. I will take the deal. Banker. Take the deal. Yeah. Give me the Rick Devin's win. Give me the Ozzy win. Give me this re-win. I think I drafted Ozzy and Rick Devin's. Stop that. Now you're just bragging. I'm just saying. You're going to win. I mean or Rick Devin's. I think Rick Devin's can win the season too. You think so? I would love Serena win. But yeah. I could see Rick doing it. Do you think Tiffany is our like. Our sleeper pick. You know.

[02:06:50] I mean because in all-star seasons we typically get that person. She didn't get enough. She's been fun though. I was enjoying it. Like once we finally started hearing from her. Stuff that I think has been enjoyable. I love Rick Devin's. I love what he and Christian were doing. I had so much fun with it. I love. They were having fun. And I was having fun watching them. Who's your win-and-pick? That's the last question. And we're done. I mean. I mean. Serena's my win-and-pick. I'm like you. You're going to get so hurt. And I will be there for you. No. I can't be hurt.

[02:07:20] I can't be hurt. You can come to me. No. And I'll be like. You moron. I think with Coach. Part of the journey is that. Coach is always going to fail at Survivor. That's just him. And so like. You know. You have to take the good with the bad. You have to take the awful. Awful days. Or you're like being like. Who is this jackass? Only to then. Watch him get voted out. And be like. That wasn't the worst thing in the world.

[02:07:50] I could watch that again. Like exactly. Right. Exactly. It's fun because. He's like. You're like. They're against him. And then it's going to like. I actually didn't think that was a great way for Coach to go. I guess. Just in Tide. It kind of was up to go by Tide Destiny. I was also thinking this season. It's just so wrong. It's like watching like a dog walk on its hind legs. When you see these old school players interact with these new era things. But he's like. Coach is like. I'll play my shot in the dark. And I'm like. It doesn't feel. Why do you have that? Yeah. You shouldn't be allowed to. Yeah. Exactly. That's why Coach is fun. He's a foil. Right. I say.

[02:08:19] I say all that to say. I think part of the journey with Seri. Is going on the journey. It's the roller coaster. It's. Watching her kind of be like. At the bottom of the tribe. If we're talking about Panama. Or something like that. That was perceived to be like. Oh. On the outs. Or something like that. And then we get the story about. She gets off. The proverbial couch. And then she goes on to do these amazing things. And you're on there. And you're with her on the journey. And then. Like when she hurts. You hurt. When she cries. You cry. You go on that journey. And so it's like. If it means Seri is going to lose. Then. Eff it.

[02:08:49] That survivor. That's what it's been. But if she wins. Shannon. If she wins. It's. It's the best win. Of all time. Regardless of how it happens. There could be three Marias on this tribe. And. It doesn't matter. If they all vote for Seri. It means nothing else. Yeah. So I think. I have to be able to go with it. I think that Seri is my winner pick. But like. I take the. I take the Aubrey case. I take the Rick case. I take the Tiffany case. I take the.

[02:09:19] The Ozzy case. I take the Rizzo case. I have five cases on the board. Shannon. This season. It's fine with me. And that's outside of Seri. Yeah. Okay. Well we feel differently. We have a very different. Dondi. Dondi board. Yeah. You only have one case left. It's three. Yeah. I mean. No. I. I'd be happy for like Rick Devins. I think Rizzo has gone up in stock as well. But yeah. Like most of my top cases. You know. Like it's not a great. It's not a great thing. Like Chrissy Teigen. The banker. Is definitely. You know. Got.

[02:09:48] Got more cases than I do. But. And again. Like. Dislike most of these people. You know. Like I like Joe. I like. I don't. In the. Like. You know. I like him as a person. But like in terms of like. The player. No. Joe is dope. Joe seems very very kind. And very nice. And he also gets a lot of hate from someone. For someone who's just like. Kind of trying to. Advocate. To play the game. And be nice. And be nice. And be nice. I get it. But like. I don't know. I also think that kind of crazy. Just like. Yeah. But look. Look.

[02:10:17] People like Coach do that to everybody. Right. Because when they. Like and if you lie in this game. Yeah. You know. It's. I guarantee you won't win the game. Like Coach. Who the hell dare you. You know. Just decide that. You know. They were like. They were like. Less great than the sum of their parts. Like it was like. These people could all be fun. But if they link up. We're done. Like if they're all alone. They could all be good. But if they all get together. Then they're all down. And then like that was happening. And then we had an honor and integrity alliance. But again. As a foil. We're okay.

[02:10:47] But yeah. I probably should go. Chappelle. Thank you so much for letting me. Just like. Brain dump. Two months of thoughts. On the season. Had a great time. Tell us where to find yourself. Look. They know where to find me. Recapkickback.com. Is where I'm doing my thing. Talking about. You know. Sometimes reality TV. But mostly just whatever I want to talk about. So I got. Flavor of Love content over there. We're actually talking about. VH1's Charm School. Which if you were around. At that time. God bless you. But Chantel and I are talking about it live.

[02:11:17] Gia and I still have our Abbott Elementary coverage. We are. We still haven't recorded our. Season. Season finale coverage yet. But it's coming soon. So tune in for that. And Mari and I will be talking about. The Michael Jackson movie. Michael the biopic. That has recently been released. We'll be talking about that soon. So we got a lot of content. Coming your way. But Chantel. Of course. I love talking about Survivor with you. I love listening to you talk about Survivor. And so it has been very. Boring around these streets. To not have you talking about it constantly.

[02:11:46] So I was very happy that I was selected. To be in this role. To get to chop it up with you. And vibe. About the season. And hopefully you start feeling better. Because I know. Once the Sari win happens. We will all rejoice in her power. So I am very excited for the day. That that comes. And looking forward to hearing the rest of your takes later on. Well he won the chizzy. Okay. So whatever happens. We'll always. And it was a fair. Is anybody shocked? Fair and true. Give her the mug. Because it's done. But. Yeah. This was so much fun.

[02:12:15] This is mostly for me. Right. Like it's great for my. Yeah. I'm going to talk about this show. Hopefully some people listen to it. And enjoy it. But like. You know. I want to talk about 50. I didn't get to. You know. To talk about 50. And maybe again. Every week. Probably would have been too much. For my blood pressure. But. I think this was like a good spot. To put it. Follow me. Ask Shannon Gates. I'm hoping to do Augustine around soon. We're really hoping to like get to that. To actually go through the last. Two-ish months of our life. Which has been a lot. A lot of it really good. A lot of it really hard. But a lot of it really good. Feeling great today.

[02:12:44] Got a lot of sleep last night. So. If any of the takes were bad. That's like fully on me. Not on my baby. Please don't blame her. Please don't send in hate about the baby. Thank you so much. This has been great. Thank you to our team behind the scenes. Thank you to everyone for listening. And when will I see you next time? That's a good question. I hope to do something. Maybe. Maybe after the finale. Talk about the last few weeks. Okay. And then I gotta come to Australia. Yeah. But you always say that. And then you don't. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. You see how good the finale looked.

[02:13:13] In the reunion of Australian. Yeah. I literally said. Oh my God. I've never considered this before. But I should go to Australia. That was the moment. Yeah. I was hoping that people would think it. Because it looks so good. And I won the draft. I know. And you're going to win this one. Probably. I hope so. I mean. Unless the rewins. Which is better obviously. But yeah. I will take the Emily case. That's the worst one. My draft pick. Yeah. I'll take the case. In the draft. Whew. That's. That'll be interesting.

[02:13:43] Let's see. Yeah. Look. I love fun TV. Let's see. Let's see if we can make that happen. All right. Well. This was great. Again. I'll see you guys next time. Thanks so much. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.