Why ___ Lost: Survivor 48 Ep 3 with Dr. Joseph Darowski

[00:00:00] If you lost Survivor and you're feeling down, David and Jessica will turn it around. They'll break down the rules and they'll show you how. You played yourself and got voted out. This is why __ lost. This is why __ lost. Oh baby, this is why __ lost.

[00:00:32] Welcome back to Why __ lost. I'm David Bloomberg and I would never lie to my co-host Jessica Lewis if I lost my vote. I would never lie to my co-host either if I lost my vote. So, look at that. Yeah. We would be in a good position there playing this game together.

[00:00:51] Now, also joining us today as viewers can see we have a special guest, Dr. Joseph Darowski, an English professor who researches popular culture and he has a new book co-authored with Kate Darowski called Survivor, A Cultural History. It is coming out in May and he interviewed us for it. Welcome, Joe.

[00:01:14] Thank you so much for having me on. Very excited to have a nice and easy episode to come talk about. Yeah, we so straightforward. Very, very straightforward. We pick this one just for you. You know, it'll go down in cultural survivor history. So that's fair. That's a very fair point. Yeah. Now, I have had a very busy weekend as my son got married.

[00:01:39] I am still at a secret location for this podcast, which is why you may notice a difference in sound quality. Sorry. In a case you're wondering, because I've had a couple of people ask me that this week. Didn't didn't he say his son got married last season? And the answer is yes. I have two sons and they got married within five months of each other, both of them during survivor seasons.

[00:02:06] I'm sure that they came to you first and said, hey, dad, how do you feel about my wedding being right in the middle of a survivor season? They didn't. Can you imagine that? Why is no one thinking of your schedule? Your schedule. I know. Kids. What are you going to do? Yeah. Now, at the wedding, there were a number of Why Blank Lost fans.

[00:02:28] And I have to presume that every wedding or gathering of 100 or more people has at least half a dozen like he did. You know, there were, of course, a number of my cousins, but also a shout out to Eddie and Ilana, who are friends of my son and came up to me at the wedding. Oh, look at you stealing your son's thunder. Look at that. They're like, can we have a photo? Yeah. We should have gotten one.

[00:02:58] I don't know why we didn't. But but yeah. Also wanted to mention when Jordan Kalish was on. I believe that was last week. He said that he didn't think that, you know, it was a good sign that he and Rob had the same winner pick, Justin. Oh, because when they have had the same winner pick it, that person hasn't won. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jordan, you were right. Yes.

[00:03:29] And I did not pick you, Justin, as my winner pick, because as we all know, mine's already gone. Yes. Yes, we do. I wasn't even going to bring that up. Oh, yes, you were. No. You know, all the commotion. I forgot about that. Mm hmm. Sure. Sure. Who was your winner pick, Joe? Did you have one? Yeah. My family does a pool and I have even. Yes. Yeah. Look at this. The two of you have to share your winner picks now.

[00:03:55] I wonder if that will cause some stars not aligning appropriately for Eva. I wonder. See. So each. I just want to remind everyone that each week what we do here on this podcast is we compare what the player who's voted out did in the game compared to my rules for winning that I originally wrote way back after season one and have been updating ever since using

[00:04:22] all the non-spoiler information available to us from what we saw on TV, interviews, social media and secret scenes. And the newest published version of the rules can be found by going to Rob has a website dot com slash YX lost feed and clicking on clicking on the link bubble for the survivor rules. Before we get into the rest of this, Joe wanted to talk to you a little bit more, let you introduce yourself a little bit more.

[00:04:51] You know, I had mentioned the book. And so if you want to tell people what it's about. Yeah. So it's part of a series called a cultural history of television, which has books about some of the most important TV shows that have been produced. My sister Kate and I had done books on Frasier and Cheers for that series. And then the publisher asked us which series we, you know, asked us if we would like to do another series.

[00:05:16] And we were thinking about, you know, what TV shows have the like the cultural impact and significance and, you know, are transformative on the industry, but also that we would like to watch repeatedly. And pretty quickly we landed on Survivor for that answer as a show that we had both watched for, you know, for years and years. And once you start to dig into its impact on the television industry, it's like, oh, well, this is one that there should be a book about that, you know, that's going to explore, you

[00:05:45] know, the emergence of reality television and, you know, the long history of Survivor. So the books dive into three sections. There's a section about the show, about how it got on the air and its impact. And then there's a section about the game, about the gameplay and all the twists and changes that it had in strategy and some game theory talk. And then there's a section on the social experiment where we talk about, you know, race and gender, representation of culture and things like that. And then there's, of course, also an appendix where we do non-controversial things like rank

[00:06:14] the seasons and build a Mount Rushmore of Survivor players and break the series into eras, which everyone always agrees about. And there is never controversy when you. Oh, never. Yeah. I was like, I want to know where my season ranked. I'm very curious. Hmm. It was positively ranked, I will say. Oh, OK. That's good. That's good. A little spoiler there. I love that. Excellent. Yeah.

[00:06:43] You're going to have to write a whole new addendum for this episode, for the twists and stuff. So, yeah, you'll have to send out like pamphlets to anyone who buys the book. Like, like they do that with law books when they don't want to like recreate the whole book. They just send like the last like few pages, like just stick this in the end of the book and then you can all the changes you need will be there in this little pamphlet. Yeah. You'll have to do that because there was a chart of twists and advantages that have been introduced on Survivor. And, you know, just every season would be like, we have to update some more. Yes. Yes.

[00:07:13] Here's the addendum. Yep. Has my word. I might just I'm just going to say it. I'm not going to might say it. I'm going to just say it. I am very, very displeased with this entire episode. Oh, gosh. This entire episode. Everything about it. I'm just. I mean, it has everything that you love. It has a four person tribe. It has not one but two people losing their vote.

[00:07:43] It has a time. Journey. A forced journey where you have no choice but to risk losing your vote. Yes. It has. It's a game of chance. Right. Right. A game of chance. You have a tie and a tiebreaker that could have gone to rocks with complex rules. We were this close to a bag of one rock being handed from Jeff Probstown. Yep. Yeah.

[00:08:11] Well, that's why I wore this shirt to just remind everybody that I got a rock. And I will say that in Survivor, as I'm sure Joe can attest to since he's done research and wrote a whole book about it, there are a lot of twists and turns and things that happen in the game. But this entire episode was about none of the social components necessarily. There's a little small smidgen in there that I'm sure we'll talk about. Listen, we're going to get there. I know.

[00:08:40] No, I'm just going to disagree because it was a big smidgen. Okay. Okay. A big smidgen. But it was like, it's mind blowing to me that we even got to that point. And that's the part that infuriates me. Like it took away from all of the work that was done to create a relationship. And it's like, oh, by the way, we have all this extra stuff that we're going to throw at you and you're going to deal with and you won't be able to control half of it because it's like you said, a game of chance.

[00:09:09] It was Yahtzee for God's sakes. So anyway, I'm going to be on a soapbox for a lot of this podcast. I'm just letting everyone know because this is just not my favorite episode ever. Well, when I watched the episode, knowing I was going to come on the podcast, I started mentally thinking like, how are Jessica and David going to be reacting? And so far, you're checking the boxes of my expectations. Perfect. Perfect. Because there are so many boxes, I'm sure.

[00:09:39] Oh, goodness. But yeah, so there's a lot that we have to sort through and talk about. And I know that it has been a whirlwind discussion online about what went down in the tribal council. So yes, lots of things to address for sure. Yeah. And let's start before we actually get to the rules. Let's just start with the mechanics of the vote, because I know there were a lot of questions about that, including from me as it was happening live.

[00:10:07] But I also don't want to spend much time on it because there have already been a number of other podcasts, such as Rob having Dwight on to break it all down. So but I think we need to take a quick look just because not everybody watches or listens to every podcast. You know, when I was watching live, I interpreted the first vote where Mary canceled both of them as a zero zero tie.

[00:10:35] Which would have made the next vote a tiebreaker. And therefore, I thought it would have gone to consensus or rocks after that. Mm hmm. And so I was very confused. And I thought that literally Cedric had voted himself out by creating a tie again, because I thought that was the consensus time that they were supposed to be meeting.

[00:11:00] And so it seems that production just considered the zero zero to be a null vote, not a tie vote, just not count. It didn't count at all. So the first revote was the initial vote and then the tiebreaker and then consensus among one person. Meanwhile, we had the situation that normally, say, wouldn't get a vote in the tiebreaker because she was one of the tied targets.

[00:11:27] But the only reason she had a vote was because Justin lost him, which we saw happen once previously. And it's a good thing we did so that there was less to explain about all of this as it was happening. So with Justin removed from the equation, she goes back to not having a vote. Which leads to the tie again or to having a vote, which leads to the tie again. Yes.

[00:11:54] And then Cedric had to reach consensus with himself because then she was removed from the equation. And now you might think it's easy for one person to have consensus with themselves. But it turned out not so much, which, of course, will be the topic of much more discussion as we get into it. But at least now we have the mechanics of it laid out, I think. I still feel like it's not correct, though. Yes.

[00:12:23] And Dwight went through a lot of that. Right. And I know he did. Yes. It is. It followed the rules of the game. But the rules of the game seem incorrect because. Yes. Say, got her vote back, but then it was taken back away because she was one of the targets. Yes. And it just everything kind of falls apart when you only have four players. Four people. Yes. And only two of them could vote. Right. And then one of them is completely immune after that. Right.

[00:12:53] Seems like a problem. Yeah. So the whole thing kind of just crumbles. I'm glad that you also struggled a little, David, because you've podcasted about this for years. I've written a book on it and my kids were asking me what's going to happen next. I was like, let's let the story play out. Let's see. What? Let's see. Because we don't know. Yeah. Yeah. No, I really do feel like there. The interesting part about all of this for me personally is, is watching it.

[00:13:22] I thought to myself, as did you, David. Well, Cedric has to go home because I also fell into the. Cere world that we saw happen as well, which I know was advantage getting as a lot of people can recall that everyone was unable to be voted for for whatever reason it was. And she was the only one who was left. And so they were like, sorry, you have to go home now.

[00:13:49] And I know that that infuriated people. And so I was watching this. Except Jeff loved it. Oh, of course he did. Because he made up all these rules. I love you, Jeff, but I don't like these rules. Let's knock it off. That's right. Stick to my rules, not your rules. Right. Let people play the game. So in just kind of remembering how things were when I had the rock draw in my season, it was,

[00:14:15] I understand there's only one person, there's no consensus, but it's like, if you are saying, well, this person is now immune and this person is immune and that person's immune, well, then guess what? Now we end up with the three situation where the only person left is Cedric. So why then is Cedric given all of the power to go, guess what, Cedric? Or now you get to decide who goes home as opposed to you just literally voted yourself out because you're the only person left because you couldn't reach a consensus even with yourself.

[00:14:43] So that's the way I kind of look at it is that that should have been the, where we, where we ended up in all of this, that it shouldn't, he shouldn't have been given the power because that to me negates this whole idea of ties in general. Like nobody should want a tie like this. And now you're telling players when you get down to four, if you really muck it up, you get all the power and you get to decide solely who goes home.

[00:15:09] I mean, yeah, I understand why I don't agree with it. I like Dwight's answer better. Yes. And I, he should, you know, that he should have been basically forced to vote out. Justin because say there was, there was no penalty when it came down to the end, there was no penalty to Justin for having lost his vote. Now, of course we could argue that we don't like the fact that Justin was penalized by having to lose his vote.

[00:15:39] So, well, yeah, I don't agree with that. It starts to stretch backwards and you get twists impacting, you know, game mechanics. But I said we were going to be quick about this part. So. I know, I apologize. I said I was going to be on a soapbox. Now, moving to the other, to the, to the, to the actual people in the game. I feel like a number of the things that I would have wanted to discuss about the dynamics of each tribe won't matter anymore. I mean, sure.

[00:16:07] You could have one person plotting this or that against someone in their tribe, but the swamp is going to put, you know, shuffle everything around. They're probably in most cases, I think any animosity will be put in the back pocket. Um, and you know, they can pretend they were always going to work with them so they can make it through. So yeah, there are some duos and trios and quads that have formed, but those will only

[00:16:34] matter depending on how the swap goes, which we will discuss in our previews. So wait till the end for all of that. Um, a couple of things I did want to mention, uh, one was charity saying it's exciting to start playing the game. And my immediate reaction was start, start it's day six. However, I did post a video about that and Mitch replied to say, oh no, we've been playing since day one. And I said, Mitch, I can only go by what I see here.

[00:17:04] Uh, so, uh, I'm not really sure why she would say that if she had been playing since day one. Yeah. I don't know. I guess we'll just have to wait until one of them actually goes to tribal council and we get to see what happens. Yeah. But when the tribes are divided in such a way, we don't really get to see that very often. Uh, moving to the other tribe that hasn't lost yet. It makes sense that, uh, Joe did well out of the gate in the challenge.

[00:17:33] He's used to running through smoke filled areas with obstacles, you know? So having a blindfold on him and that was no different. Uh, and, you know, Jeff said they did a run through of the challenge. And so Joe was able to memorize that first part and just scamper right through it quickly. They did a run through. Yeah. How did I miss that? Well, no, no, no. We don't see it.

[00:18:01] It's one of those production, like where Jeff will say, okay, you people have to run through here, pull on this. Right. Oh yeah. I know that. But like, so I, I, I was thinking they had a chance to like practice, but it wasn't practice. It was the normal, like, walk through. Walk through. Sorry. I used the wrong, uh, two-legged term. Uh, are they changing the rules again? Oh my God. They did a walk through of it. You're right.

[00:18:25] Uh, so leave it, leave it to the English professor to, uh, to, you know, get, get the right term that I didn't think. Words matter, David. Yes, I know. I know. Um, now as for that, Joe, in other aspects of the game, he's, he's doing well there too. He has so many number ones. He doesn't know what to do with them all. The problem is they're getting jealous of one another and, uh, Joe, our winner pick Eva

[00:18:52] made a mistake by giving Joe the bracelet in front of everyone else. Uh, well, everyone would star. I, I, I guess star was once again out messing with the idol, uh, or trying to turn it into an idol. Um, I, I think that Eva just didn't think about how it might appear to others who believe that they are closer to Joe. And of course, Thomas eagle eyed Thomas, uh, he picked up on it right away and boom, wants to get rid of her.

[00:19:20] So whether it comes back to bite her or not later remains to be seen. Yeah. The dynamics are very different, but it immediately did make me think back to survivor Africa when the younger group made bracelets and shared them amongst themselves and separated themselves off from everyone else. And then was like, why is everyone getting upset? Why, why, why, why is this significant to anyone? Uh, and like the social dynamic is clearly different, but it is also this immediate line

[00:19:50] of demarcation of, of separation of like, yeah, we, we two here are paired off. Yeah. Friendship bracelets, not a good idea to pass those out on survivor. Probably shouldn't do that. Or by the way, on, uh, on, uh, deal or no deal Island, because the person who made a friendship bracelet on that show also faced some trouble without, uh, without spoiling anything there.

[00:20:14] Um, now there were of course other things going on and I have already put a bunch of it into my YouTube shorts at David Bloomberg TV. There's, you know, a couple more to go. Um, but before we get to how Justin did, uh, we want to mention that the rules we're about to discuss, uh, come in a shorter and much more colorful version in poster form, uh, go to rob has website.com slash YX lost feed.

[00:20:43] Scroll down to the poster, click on it and order it. And then our shipping department will rush it out to you. Of course, in addition to the poster, you can keep scrolling down and get the poster design on a t-shirt or the checklist design on a t-shirt. So again, that is rob has website.com slash YX lost feed. And, uh, just order away. That's right.

[00:21:11] It's a lovely gift as well. So buy it for yourself, buy it for others. Buy it as a wedding present. Ah, it's perfect. Did you give one to your son? I did not. First decor. Yes, I should have. You're right. You're right. That would have been amazing. There should be one hanging in some of these rooms here. Yes, I'll get one for every room of their house.

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[00:23:05] Starte dein Test nur heute für 1 Euro pro Monat auf Shopify.de slash radio. So Justin lost his vote through random bad luck that he had no influence over. But he did have the ability to try to counteract what happened. At first, it looked like he was going to pull it out. But one final plea from Say caused Cedric to make, frankly, a poor decision.

[00:23:31] What did Justin do well to get Cedric to stand by him two out of three times? What did he miss when it came to that all-important final choice? At RHAP, we know Survivor and we know why Justin lost. Now, we're going to do something different this week and start at the end with Appendix A. Because it really just wouldn't make sense to talk about everything Justin did

[00:23:57] without first discussing how the others in his tribe, specifically Cedric, arrived at a conclusion. And this Appendix discusses players keeping their end goals in mind when voting. And we talk about voting out the weak, then the strong, then the weak, then the strong, usually in the context of challenge strength and alliance strength. But in this case, challenge strength had literally nothing to do with it. It was all about alliances and relationships.

[00:24:24] We knew from last week that Cedric had a tight bond with Say, especially on a social level, with her reminding him of his daughter and her even calling him dad out there. We also know, and we'll discuss more in Rule 1, that he was tight with Justin. So tight, he twice voted to keep Justin in the game during this tribal council. But when it came down to it, after a long tribal council, much longer than we saw on TV, perhaps a record according to Justin,

[00:24:54] he changed his mind and voted Justin out. Now, it's a bit frustrating because Justin said in his interviews that there was a lot that wasn't shown. In the end, if Cedric thought that he had a better relationship with Say than with Justin, then he made the right decision. On the other hand, he already voted against Say twice. Yes. He showed he wasn't 100% loyal. If there wasn't going to be a tribe swap,

[00:25:22] he might have finally found the way to get Say and Mary to work together. Against him. Right. Which is a fascinating point because he took it a step further to say, listen, you all need to work together if we're going to do this, okay? And it's like, can you do math? Because once Justin leaves, there's only three of you left and two is a majority. And if you're telling them to work together, it's like fist bump. Okay, good. We just vote him out.

[00:25:52] Yes, absolutely. We'll work together. Because if we remember, wasn't Say just a little bit annoyed with like Kevin, who was even just like mentioning the idea that she might be on the chopping block. Literally, she was on the chopping block twice. Twice by Cedric. And now Cedric's like, all right, all right, listen, we're all going to play nice. You guys need to play together. Yes, they will, Cedric. Right against you. So, terrible. Just terrible.

[00:26:22] Dad mode came out. We heard Cedric's dad voice. Like, I will turn this game around if you two do not get your act together right now. But you actually don't want them to get their acts together. You want them to continue fighting. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, and that is why I think Cedric made his decision almost totally, if not totally, based on emotion. And I think what we missed in the parts of Tribal Council that didn't make it to TV was that.

[00:26:50] Now, Justin kind of hinted in interviews that there were certain things left out. And, well, he didn't hint it. He said it. And I think a big part of it is related to the relationship Cedric had out there with, this is my suspicion, that Cedric was pushing on it big time, which, of course, she should. She's trying to stay in the game. She could push every single button that she could. And so if she felt she had a relationship, if she felt she reminded him of his daughter

[00:27:18] or whatever it was, she should say something like, would you vote your daughter out? You know, anything. And I think that Survivor Production just thought it got too complicated, too convoluted, too whatever. And they simplified the Tribal Council. Yeah, but I don't think they simplified it in a fair way for the viewers. And I hate to complain about the editing because we do that quite a bit.

[00:27:45] But I will say this type of editing is unfair for the viewers. And it's unfair for Justin because Justin doesn't get the ability to let the world see that he tried, even though he's telling everybody, I tried. And they just they cut it out. It's one thing to cut out a small little component. It's another thing to cut out a large chunk. And someone I'm saying this from experience, when an entire relationship that you formulated

[00:28:11] with a player is cut out of an entire season, it makes people confused at the end when you're like, wait, why didn't she vote for him and voted for him instead? So there are certain parts to the edit that I just think is unfair to the players in addition to unfair to the viewers, because that's very significant, because everybody thinks that Justin just kind of rolled over and died and was like, well, Cedric, whatever you think is best for your own game. But Jessica, how could they have given him 30 seconds of airtime to show that he was arguing

[00:28:41] when they needed to show people rolling dice? Come on, Jessica. I know there's so many things that are more important, like playing Yahtzee. Can't handle it. Yeah, there were a lot of people on social media who were like, oh, my gosh, he deserved to go because he didn't even he didn't even argue. He just said, ah, Cedric, send me. You can still come to Luigi's. So, yes, I do think that the edit was unfair to Justin in that way.

[00:29:09] Yeah, I imagine they are making the choice to show what in their interpretation is like the key moment, you know, what where even if he had been fighting, would he essentially give Cedric permission to vote him out? That's what's going to make the flip happen. You know, the switch get flipped for Cedric. So we're going to show that. But as you've noted, Cedric is now forced to kind of defend himself like, well, that's not all I said. This was a much longer tribal council. I was fighting this day in the game. Yeah, Justin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:39] And, you know, now, the thing is that in this tribal council, Cedric could have ended all of this with much less drama by simply following through and voting out or voting Justin in the initial vote. I think I meant to discuss that earlier, but I think I forgot, you know, because especially since she kept insisting that she believed Mary had an idol.

[00:30:05] And if she did, say would have been voted out because she is who Mary presumably would have voted against. So that's why she was going to initially, she told Cedric she was going to vote Justin to protect herself against that. But I think she didn't for a few reasons. Mainly that Justin and Cedric convinced her Mary didn't have an idol, which, you know, that was true.

[00:30:35] And also because if she had voted for Justin in that situation, it would have shown that she thought he was third in their alliance, which, you know, from her standpoint, he was and could have caused some potential problems if Mary had just gotten voted out like she should have. And, you know, and say also clearly believed she was Cedric's number one and were shocked that he would turn on her.

[00:31:02] So she was sitting in a very similar position to Justin. Except that he actually had a better read on Cedric. Until he did. So convoluted. Yes. Now, incidentally, I do think this once again shows that despite what people critical have say have said.

[00:31:27] It showed her social game as she got Cedric to make a strategically worse move by pleading with him and appealing to him. And on top of that, like I said earlier, she was obviously going to say whatever it took at that point. And it worked. So especially in the first episode, but still in the second episode, there are some people who are saying, oh, she has no social game. You know, it's terrible. She clearly has a social game. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:57] And I think that but I think that it's a social game that is leaning very heavy into and you've already mentioned it, that emotional connection. She's being very strategic about what she is focusing on, I think, with each person. And in particular, Cedric is she's focusing on that father daughter type of relationship, which is a great way to play the game.

[00:32:22] If you can find what that person needs, if you can find what's important to that particular player and lean in on that, which is exactly what she's done, because I think in in say's world, she's going to cut anybody that she has to. She doesn't care. But she's going to make them feel like they matter at the moment that she needs them. And considering the way that she has been with Cedric, like in the secret scene that

[00:32:48] we saw when she was talking to him about following Mary around and like there is a there is this drive behind the way she plays. Right. And in this way that she speaks to people to really get them to see to see her perspective. But it's not it's not troubling Cedric. He's like, I'm just not I'm not here to babysit, so I'm not going to. So he's still able to have this idea in his own mind as to how he wants to play this game,

[00:33:13] despite the fact that she's like at him like you need to do this and this has to happen. So she she has to be doing it in such an incredible way because she's finding a balance so much so that, as you said, he made a terrible decision for himself based on her ability to like make him feel for her in that moment, which is just it's incredible gameplay on her on her part, for sure. Yeah, we do see her obviously make those emotional appeals.

[00:33:42] She does also have an appeal to logic where she points out, you know, he didn't tell you about his lost vote. So can you trust Justin now immediately? Justin should say, well, you've burned your bridge with say twice. And also you got her to flush her idle last time. So there's no way you're going to work with say again, like that trust should be burned. You can't cross that bridge again. But say is able to make such strong appeals that Cedric seems convinced that he can cross that bridge again, even though for us as viewers, we're like, well, that bridge has

[00:34:11] been burned multiple times. It's ash. Yeah. Yeah. Not sure how you're crossing that one again, but good luck. All right. So now that we have covered Cedric's decision, we can circle back and look at how Justin got to be in that position. Starting with the first and most important rule, which is to scheme and plot. Now, we know that Justin was doing pretty well in that regard. He made a quick initial alliance with Cedric and they became each other's number one.

[00:34:40] As we heard Cedric specifically say, at least twice during this episode. Not to mention him talking in tribal council about how Justin being his first ally meant he had to stick with him, which, by the way, Cedric, it doesn't mean that. But OK. You know, Justin also said in pretty much all his interviews that until that last one, he always knew where the votes were going and exerted control over them.

[00:35:07] Then, of course, there was that little problem of Cedric's final consensus. Yeah. Do you want to jump in? Yeah. It's just an interesting thing. Like, scheming and plotting can carry you so far, but then there's the aspects of the game that can rear their head that means your schemes and plots are blown up, right? Essentially.

[00:35:36] And so he was setting himself up well, but then there are these other factors that are going to come about with the journey and losing your vote and all these other things that, OK, now at what point have you set yourself up to this eventuality? Mm-hmm. And his scheme could have carried him forward, but it seemed like he wasn't able to pivot enough or chose not to or, you know, whatever, however we want to phrase it, that he was set up to be one of the ones that got off the sinking ship, right? Right.

[00:36:04] I heard him say in one of his interviews, like, we knew this ship was sinking. We were all just positioning ourselves to be on the life raft at the end. And from what we saw, he was doing that, but then kind of his life. Pulled away, I guess. Yeah. I did really appreciate this idea that he had where he always wanted to have, like, so many people in front of him so he knew that he wouldn't be the one that would be voted out. And that seemed to be the goal in all of the relationships that he was creating.

[00:36:33] And then there was this idea of, well, as long as there's at least one person ahead of me and I have someone in my back pocket or someone working with me, I should be fine. But he also, it was interesting how he kept kind of changing, I think, who that person was because Kevin was someone else. And he was like, you know what? Nevermind, I'm Kevin. Like, we can let Kevin go. But he had a reason for it. He was worried about the medical issue relative to Kevin.

[00:37:00] So at least he was thinking through things and still trying to follow that same idea where as long as there's at least one or two people in front of me, I'm going to be okay. But yes, when all of the terrible things align against you, the best laid plans in Survivor don't happen because Survivor production steps in and goes, guess what? We are going to sprinkle all kinds of delicious, terrible things in here and destroy your plans

[00:37:26] because we want you to play Yahtzee and force you to do it. They didn't play Yahtzee. Yahtzee involves skill. You know, that's a really fair point. That is a very fair point. This is literally like, no, you know what this was? This was, I actually, I put this on some social media. No whammies. It was a long-winded way of a coin flip. That's all it was. It was no whammies. Do you remember that game show? Yeah. Yeah. That's what it was.

[00:37:55] It was like, come on, no whammies because you didn't want the skulls. Yeah. Just terrible. Just terrible. Yeah. You know, as you said, something Stephen also said on know-it-alls that both Mary and Say were below Justin in the pecking order, or so he thought. And under normal circumstances, that would be a pretty good position. And he had, you know, he had good reason for wanting to stay tight with Cedric.

[00:38:22] He told Mike Bloom, I have such a good rapport with Cedric. He has told me countless times he will vote with me regardless of what happens. He will always be by my side. He will never write my name down. And he'll always stick with me. This is everything I want in an Alliance member. And technically, Cedric did not write his name down. It just occurred to me. That's a great point. Yeah.

[00:38:47] Justin was happy to have someone who he could talk strategy with, who was very rational, who didn't generally freak out. We'll have more on that last part later. He added that he knew he could beat Cedric at challenges later in the game. And if they made it to the end, he knew the jury wouldn't give a doctor a million dollars instead of a pizzeria manager. Now, personally, of course, I very much disagree with that sentiment. And I'm also not sure it's true. But that was what he was thinking at the time.

[00:39:16] And of course, he'd just seen how the jury behaved on Survivor 46. So, you know, I can understand why he was thinking that way. Yeah. I mean, it is again, it's it's great to have a plan in place and to try to bring that plan all the way through. But you also have to be mindful of the games that other people are playing who are on those

[00:39:41] very small tribes with you and how their games can negatively affect your plans moving forward. Yeah. Now, the second rule says not to scheme and plot too much and to keep your scheming secret for Justin. These two parts of the rule clashed a bit because he decided to keep a secret that he shouldn't have. The fact that he lost his vote on the journey. He had a very short time to make this decision and he made the wrong one.

[00:40:06] He said both in the show and interviews that Cedric does not like when plans change at the last minute. So Justin didn't want to risk that. So he didn't even tell Cedric after Cedric told him about Say's plan. But that's exactly why Justin needed to tell him by not doing so. Justin put Cedric into an even worse situation.

[00:40:28] And instead of Cedric getting flustered before tribal council when there was time for Justin to kind of help mold his view on things, he got flustered in tribal council instead. And, you know, I know what Justin said in all his interviews. Well, this was such an unlikely outcome and I decided to risk it.

[00:40:54] But OK, it wasn't likely, but Mary could have easily had an idol and it would have been very much the same. I mean, she was portraying to everyone that she did have an idol. Justin needed to prepare Cedric, not leave it to chance in the moment. Yeah, it was unlikely that her shot in the dark was going to hit, but it wasn't unknowable. And so he knew he had facts that he knew about his own vote, that I don't have a vote.

[00:41:22] And he also said, you know, he told us, Cedric, like, you know, things to change. Well, this is a big change that you can't undo. So you better warn him now, you know, ahead of time. Well, and I think, right. And I think to add to that, it's you have so few people. So it's not like you could say, well, I don't have a vote, but there's eight of us. So it's it's fine. Like, it's it's not going to stand out that much.

[00:41:49] I mean, the mere fact that nobody was really picking up on the fact that only two people were voting and they were like, oh, when they found out, like, Justin lost his vote. It's like, really? I think maybe somebody should have been like going to there's four. I journey today. Has anything ever happened on a journey? Like, who's on a journey? That's crazy. Oh, my gosh. You might have lost your vote. So maybe someone decided to play shot in the dark, but not use it. You know, they just they just played it. But then they decided not to actually give Jeff. They're like, whatever.

[00:42:19] This is fine. So this is why I just again, I know I've convinced about this before, but like these small tribes where you end up having these negative effects from the things that are being implemented by production relative to losing your vote. And so in this instance, absolutely, 100 percent, I think Justin should have been like, hey, Cedric, guess what? Because it's not a secret that you go on these journeys and you can lose your vote. So, I mean, did they talk about it? I don't even know. Yeah, they talked about it.

[00:42:49] And Cedric said to him, you still have your vote. Right. And he said, yes. But also Justin made up a whole story about rolling dice with question marks that were potentially going to give a reward the next day, which didn't seem like the greatest cover I've ever heard. Yeah. I do remember that weirdness now that you mentioned it as well.

[00:43:09] Yeah, I do think that there is there's something to be said about like because the numbers are so small, you don't gain anything by not telling your closest ally you've lost your vote. You just don't because you have to be able to figure out now what do we do? Because there's only four of us and we're all worried about Mary. So what happens in that world?

[00:43:31] And so I do think that, yeah, that was that was definitely the wrong decision considering all of the issues that were going into this tribal council. It seems like he was thinking odds are I'm going to get through this tribal council so then I can just clean up any mess that happens after. Sure. But when there's so few people, they should count the votes and say, well, we were short of vote. Why didn't you tell me you weren't going to be able to vote? So like he still would have had to deal with this even if he had made it through.

[00:43:58] Right. And he was talking in his interviews, you know, speaking of the small chance, he kept saying, oh, there's only a two or three percent chance that it would go this way. No, no, I don't understand why he was saying that, because Mary was obviously doing something. Either she had an idol or she was playing her shot in the dark.

[00:44:19] OK, even if we totally discount the idol, which I don't think he should have because they were not following her 100 percent of the time and she was acting very comfortable. So but even let's look at it in the best possible light for him. She doesn't have an idol. She has a shot in the dark, which has a 16.7 percent chance of hitting. So it's not a two or three percent chance.

[00:44:45] I don't know where he was getting two or three percent chance because at the very smallest, it was 16.7 percent chance. We've seen it hit. But this was the third time the shot in the dark has hit. And so this is not negligible. You can't just blow it off. I don't necessarily think you should pay as much attention to it as some players do, but you can't blow it off. And.

[00:45:13] If she did have an idol or the shot in the dark hit, Cedric already told Justin that it was writing down his name. So he had followed through and written down his name right away. That would have been it. He would have been gone without further discussion. Yeah. But even in the situation they were in, there is no way to put a percentage on whether Cedric was being honest to him or to say. And it became a battle of words.

[00:45:42] So what I'm really saying is that while this tribal council and the outcome, like if you follow every step along the way. Yes, it is very unlikely. It is very unlikely that he would be picked to go on the journey, that he would not have a choice, that he would not have a choice to play a game, that he would lose the dice. Yeah. All of those things added up becomes a very small number.

[00:46:03] But the one thing that he should have been worried about was not nearly as low a percentage as he made it out to be, which takes us back to why he shouldn't have lied to Cedric about losing his vote. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, Justin. Defended it somewhat by saying in interviews that the track record isn't great about telling people you've lost your vote in the new era. I'm not so sure about that now.

[00:46:33] I can't say I've studied the numbers. I don't know if you have, Joe. But my recollection goes along with what Rob and Stephen frequently discuss, which is that it's often not the person who loses their vote, but rather one of their allies who ends up getting voted out. If he had prepared Cedric. Maybe Cedric could have steeled his will to keep Justin. Like if he had pre-made the decision. Yes. It would have been more difficult to convince him.

[00:47:04] Maybe, maybe not since, you know, I already said it was an emotional decision. But it could have only helped to let him know, much like Bianca did with Thomas on the other tribe. You know, as Rob said on Know It Alls, if you have a good secret, keep it to yourself. If you have a bad secret, tell your close allies so they can help. Yeah. And I don't know that they would have been able to game out what's going to happen at Tribal Council.

[00:47:32] Like, okay, say that, you know, a shot in the dark is played and now you've lost your vote. You know, how is this going to bring down? Because it confused us as we were watching it live. So will they have been able to game out how this ends and how Cedric is going to end up with all the power to make the decision? I don't know on the island when, you know, you're on day six and Cedric arrived and yeah, if they've been able to get there.

[00:47:54] But as you said, if he had made a choice ahead of time that, okay, you're still my number one, I'm sticking with you, Justin, that maybe it would have been enough emotional armor. That means Justin is still in the game right now. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, the third rule tells players to be flexible. Joe, you had mentioned earlier about him needing to pivot. So how do you think he did overall in this rule?

[00:48:22] He locked in, you know, Cedric as his number one. But once the tribe's down to four, I don't know how much you can switch, right? Like the ability to be flexible once you've been to Tribal a couple of times in a Tribe of six is very limited. Like this is a rule that works great if you're starting Tribe of 10 or, you know, are at the merge. But I don't know that we can really knock him so much. Like once he doesn't have a vote and Cedric is number one, what could he do? As far as flexibility. Yeah.

[00:48:50] I mean, part of this rule talks about how players need to keep their finger on the pulse of the tribe. And we talked earlier about how he knew what was happening in each prior tribal council and even through most of this tribal council. You also mentioned how he told Mike Bloom that he knew the Vula ship was sinking and wanted to set himself up for later in the game. And, you know, part of it that he said was, I can grab Cedric, my partner in crime here, go on a lifeboat and get the hell off this island.

[00:49:19] He didn't care if they kept Mary or say as long as he and Cedric stuck together. And so that is about as much flexibility as you can have in a four person tribe. Like you said, he wasn't wedded to, you know, we must go with these three people. Yeah. It was right. I have to hang on to this one person. So it was just the one person that he was hanging on to that went awry. And it doesn't feel like he could have gone to say it's a me and you right now.

[00:49:48] Or, you know, I just don't think that was a really viable option. Right. Or when he I don't know how much time they had when he got back from, you know, from the journey. But it doesn't feel like it was a huge amount of time for him to try and make a brand new alliance with say and say, you're my number one. Not Cedric. I believe he said in his interviews he had basically time to talk to one person, which is another flaw. If we you know, I know, you know, already hit on a number of these.

[00:50:13] This is something we've talked about before, too, going all the way back to when Evie had to come back and only had like 15 minutes and therefore didn't have time to talk to both Voce and Tiffany with any for any length of time. You know, the same thing here. If you're sending someone on a journey, survivor, I know you need to get people to tribal council at a certain time and everything. You've got to give them time to time. Yes, very much so.

[00:50:42] And I do think that that's, again, an issue that needs to be addressed by production just to give the players time to play because you are limiting them so much in these very important conversations that need to be had. And it's not like Justin was unwilling to have these conversations. I mean, he was the one who was like, hey, listen, I think we should we should vote out Kevin. And so there was flexibility even in that regard, too, because he wasn't, as you said, locked in with it. It was Cedric. He wanted Cedric.

[00:51:11] But it was kind of like however we get there, we get there. And so he wanted to have those conversations. He was having those conversations. But then to be limited. So not only did you take my vote away from me, now I can't even talk to the people I need to talk to and try to figure out what we're going to do when we get to tribal council. So it's just it's an all bad combination of things. And it just put him in a really, really difficult spot in the moment that he needed to be having the most important conversations right before tribal.

[00:51:40] Although, again, he did have his most important conversation and didn't say what he needed to say. Of course. Yes, I'm not. I'm not giving him extra credit. Just saying. Yeah, there are a lot of constraints. Yes. All right. Well, the fourth rule tells players not to let their emotions control them. And Jessica, what did you think of Justin for this one? Well, I don't think he let his emotions necessarily control him in some. It's like the.

[00:52:10] He lets Cedric's emotions control him. That makes sense. He was like, whatever you want to do, Cedric, whatever is best for you. No, that's not that's not what you should be doing in this game. And I and I do think that what we've already discussed where he was willing to kind of play like however he needed to get off of the sinking ship with that one other person. And he was hoping it'd be Cedric. It didn't necessarily matter how how he got there.

[00:52:37] So I think overall he seemed to to keep his emotions in check and didn't necessarily make decisions based on those. But he needed to be playing with Cedric's emotions when he was watching they play with Cedric's emotions. So it's like he was he just was maybe he was a little too too even, a little too level.

[00:52:58] That's exactly what I was going to say for this one, that I almost need to see more emotionality out of him and a stronger, you know, appeal to pathos heading to Cedric at at tribal. He seems very mature, very even keel. You know, he wasn't letting his his emotions sway him. But it felt like from what we saw on television that an emotional appeal was needed in that moment. Well, yeah.

[00:53:22] And that actually takes us to the fifth rule, which reminds players they need to pretend to be nice and play the social game. So, Joe, Joe, you were just mentioning that. How do you think he did overall for this rule? I mean, we didn't see it like the most fireworks we saw on that tribe, you know, weren't weren't coming from him. So so it seemed like he was doing OK, that, you know, Justin had an OK relationship with everyone. You know, I don't know how tight he was with every member of the tribe.

[00:53:50] You know, with Mary, it doesn't seem like he's antagonistic the way that there's a respectful antagonism between say and Mary. So it seems like he had a good enough relationship that he could have escaped, you know, could have gotten out of the sinking ship that he was on. It just didn't work out that way in the end. But I love how Joe called it. He had an OK relationship with everybody and it was good enough.

[00:54:19] I just like it was like Justin just couldn't get it up high enough. You know, it's like and I completely agree with you, Joe. It was like like a sea. Yes. Like it was it was OK. It was good. It wasn't great. It was. Yeah, it was OK. He talked about I heard him say like his goal was to like not be too high or too low. Like he wanted essentially like droning competence. I want to be here in the middle because it's when you're too high, you're a target.

[00:54:47] And when you're too low and hurting your tribe, you get voted out. So he's trying to avoid that. I felt like he was also playing that socially with everyone. He didn't want to look too closely bonded with anyone in particular, which I think is not a terrible strategy for the first part of the game. Sure. You know, to make it to a merge or to a tricep, I think that's actually a pretty viable strategy to have. It's just a lot of elements that can come into play where you lose your vote and other people play hit a shot in the dark and all these other things can ruin that strategy. Yeah.

[00:55:15] I mean, I think I think that that that level was great. But when you are down to like four people and and it gets to a point where like what I'm sure David is going to be mentioning is the social component and the game and relationship that was developed between Cedric and say really was what kind of ruled the day as the decision maker and all of this. And so that's what Justin was like. He was OK and he was good with everyone.

[00:55:43] But God, he wasn't good enough. And it was like and that's where it really it ends up becoming an issue, because if that's your number one, that should really be your number one. Right. And, you know, I had mentioned earlier how Cedric picking say over Justin was both an emotional decision on his part and also help show that say does have a good social game. It doesn't mean Justin's was bad. You know, I think, OK, is a good word for it.

[00:56:12] It also it means that he had a different type of connection than, you know, and therefore, when the final moment came, say was able to better, better able to play on Cedric's heartstrings than he was. He had more of a strategic connection. Say had some strategy, but also that social, that deeper social bond. You know, Justin wasn't calling Cedric dad. Yeah. Right.

[00:56:40] You know, different people have different relationships. The two of them were clearly close. He just couldn't quite get over the finish line when it came to Cedric at that final moment. And so we will sometimes talk about how a player was out strategized or out schemed in rule one. In this case, we have a less common situation. I can't remember it happening before necessarily, but at least not describing this way. He was out social gamed by say. Yes. Yeah.

[00:57:09] And we see that like Cedric's relationship with with say is higher. It's more volatile. Well, there's higher variance in there where like he's saying, like, you've got to get your act together. Like he's speaking to her in a way we don't ever see him speak to Justin. That seems to be a flatter, cooler relationship. And he has a warmer relationship, meaning warm, like in both directions where he's getting annoyed with her. And he seems to have a tighter bond, you know, and is willing to change up his game at the last second to save her. Yeah.

[00:57:39] Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, the sixth rule warns against being too much of a threat. I think Justin did a good job downplaying his own threat level. We were you were just talking about it, staying in that middle realm there. I mean, like in Stephanie's interviews, she basically just talked about him chilling and making pizza references.

[00:57:59] You know, it clearly whether or not he was a threat did not have anything to do with Cedric changing his mind here or with, say, putting him in the tie to begin with. Both of those were due to other reasons. What other options do we have? Right. Yes. That's that's that's a main one. Yes. Yeah. We're back to that again. Right. Like there's no real options here. Crazy.

[00:58:26] So we can move to the seventh rule, which covers idols and advantages and game mechanics. And there were obviously a lot of game mechanics in play this week. We already discussed how tribal council went down. But I do want to start with the way Justin lost his vote. OK, we've already talked about this. There was literally nothing he could have done. It's something we've complained about previously.

[00:58:48] And again, here we had thought they'd addressed it because I think like last season, I don't remember seeing any of these where you have no choice and you automatically have to risk your vote. Yeah. Yay. They fixed that. No, they didn't. No. And so, you know, Jeff wanted that literal roll of the dice.

[00:59:10] They should have done something closer to Yahtzee where they could at least choose which things to pick and, you know, try to game things, use a little bit of skill. But no. Pure luck. I liked how Bianca was so annoyed as she described it to Thomas. We had to roll dice. And he's like, dice, dice, you know, and maybe I'm putting more emphasis on it than she did. But in my mind, that's what she looked like as she was clearly not happy with this. Yeah.

[00:59:40] And luck is always. Oh, sorry. Luck is always going to be part of the game of Survivor. Good luck, bad luck, you know, things that come up. That's always going to be it. But it should be despite not the main course. And, you know, with this kind of journey, it's being made the main course. There's nothing else there but pure luck. Yes. Yes. And I really think that if this is what Survivor wants to do as far as these damn journeys are concerned,

[01:00:03] if you are going to force people to go on a journey, then you shouldn't also force them to have to lose their vote. Like it should be one or the other. Like if you were if you get to choose whether or not you want to go on a journey. Well, then, once you get there, now it's now you're forced to have to potentially lose your vote as opposed to who do you want to send from the other tribes person over here who won or tribe over here that won. You get to choose who goes. And so that person has no choice in that. And then they have no choice in whether or not they lose their vote.

[01:00:33] I just feel like it needs to be one or the other. Like you can't do it all across the board. Exactly. And, you know, Joe, to what you said, of course, you know, there's luck involved in Survivor. Who's on your starting tribe? Who's on your swap tribe if one happens? Who stumbles over an idol? What type of challenges you face? And yes, players need to be able to navigate through that. But it doesn't mean production should make things worse by taking away votes at random and making it more difficult to navigate.

[01:01:01] You know, like you said, Joe, add spices to it, you know. But the game of Survivor should be the main course. Now, I, of course, will not blame Justin's loss on this one thing. Because at the end of the day, he does bear responsibility for playing his game. That doesn't mean I like it. And, you know, for his part, Justin sort of defended production, saying he's seen people online saying it wasn't fair.

[01:01:31] Me. And, you know, if he had had the choice, he would not have played. But then he took Jeff Probst's line, which Jeff also repeated in his own podcast, that if you're a good enough player, you can counteract it. And he chose to play Survivor knowing this was possible. It sounded like Jeff was in his head, you know. And I'm sure that's not the case. But a lot of players do start to adopt the Jeff mentality of things.

[01:02:01] Yes. Okay. Justin, you might not argue it was unfair. I will. Right. And you know what? Someone who has had that mentality and has been there, you want to give production all of the credit. And you want to say, oh, no, they really didn't mean to do this. Oh, no. And then the longer you're around and part of this community, you're like, maybe. Maybe I should necessarily feel about playing a game for a million dollars. That something like this ended up happening.

[01:02:30] And so I I was I was kind of stunned, but not surprised at how much he was defending all of these terrible things that happened to him. But as someone who's played the game, like I get it. I understand. And you don't want to upset the apple cart and you want to hope that maybe they'll bring me back someday and all of these things. But at the same at the same point, it's just like we love this game for a reason.

[01:02:58] And we love it because of people like Justin who are playing it. So it's like you're you're taking away that that part of it for all of us. We want to be able to just root for someone and not root for someone to not have all of these terrible like twists and things happen to them, which then formulate into whatever this tribal council was. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when the game starts, he has dozens to hundreds like forking paths that he could be taking.

[01:03:26] And I think we all enjoy seeing like their choices are now closing off paths. But in this case, production choices closed off huge numbers of those paths. Yes. Really limited. Does that mean he couldn't have shot that gap and gotten through? No, he could have. And we've seen players navigate similarly tricky waters and make it through. But it also does mean that a lot of the reasons that we're talking about why Justin lost aren't necessarily because of his choices in the game. Right. Right.

[01:04:21] All right. And I think Justin closed the door in his own game and opened the door for say's game when he said permission to vote him out. Even if he fought for the game harder than what we saw in the edit, while say was emotionally fighting for her game. Justin said, do what's best for you, Cedric. I hope you know that there's always a place for you at Luigi's regardless of your decision tonight. That may have been a mature, level-headed and honest thing to say, but it's also why Justin lost. Wow. Look at this.

[01:04:51] I have to follow a writer. This is great. Oh, Justin, I have so many issues with how you went out of this game, which I've complained about throughout this entire podcast. So I won't complain about it again. But I will say I had high hopes for Justin in hoping that he would bring, which he did, a very kind of even energy level to his tribe. And I was intrigued because he came with kind of a mixed background, right? He's got Yale, but he's not telling people about Yale. He runs a pizza shop.

[01:05:21] So he's just this pizza shop manager, owner. And so, like, I was very intrigued. How is he going to be perceived? How is he going to play this game? He comes in with a pizza T-shirt. He's really, like, leaning in onto this, like, this persona of himself. But unfortunately, that's what his persona became. He didn't become that threatening player that we were kind of hoping he would be able to manipulate through and weave his way through.

[01:05:48] Like, that whole part of him got lost, I think, in this structure that he found himself in where he had someone like Say who was really strong and very vocal and wanting to take charge. And he let her. And then there was Cedric who he was thinking, oh, that can be my number one. But the reason for him choosing him as his number one, he was thinking was to benefit him in the end.

[01:06:13] When in reality, he was ignoring the fact that Cedric was also looking at Say at the same time. And so I just feel like his decisions were not thought in the best manner possible for him long term, even though he thought they were. Kevin was there, but Kevin might be an issue later because if Kevin gets medevaced. Sometimes you have to play with what's in front of you as opposed to playing what's coming down the road. And I feel like that's what Justin was forgetting.

[01:06:42] He was forgetting there's the here and now and how I have to deal with the here and now. Mary is an issue. She might get an idol. She might get a shot in the dark. We have to figure that out. He kept thinking long term and he kept putting his faith and his stock and his belief in somebody else instead of himself. So I really just think that if Justin had spent more time focusing on him, it probably would have brought a little more flavor. I know in Gordon Holmes interview, he compared all of his tribe mates to pizza.

[01:07:11] I'm going to also do the same. And I'm going to say, Justin, you're a cheese pizza because cheese pizza is good. It's OK. It's not great. Some people might disagree with me, but I prefer toppings on my pizza. I want a lot of toppings. Justin, you needed to bring more toppings in my humble opinion, although some people might say cheese pizza is fine. And it is.

[01:07:34] If you want to play it easy, steady, no issues, get a cheese pizza because most people will be happy with a cheese pizza. But if you want to make it a little more exciting, you got to add some flavor, a little more sauce, a little more spices, a little more toppings. So, Justin, it was great. But unfortunately, too many terrible things happened. And here we are with a cheese pizza. I am one of those people who am perfectly happy with a cheese pizza.

[01:08:04] Now, you want to spice it up, throw some onions, some garlic, you know, but. More things. I am perfectly happy with it. And because, you know, there was one time go off on a tangent here. There was one time I was on a work trip and we went to a Chicago pizza place, Pizzeria Uno. And we were trying to figure out who wanted what. And at the end of it all, we ended up with a sausage pizza that nobody actually wanted.

[01:08:33] But everyone thought they would say OK to because they thought someone else wanted it. And so we have the sausage pizza that nobody wanted. You found the least objectionable option. Yes. Then go with cheese. Right. We should have. I know. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with cheese pizza. It's great. Yes. But it's better with more stuff. Unless it's all sausage. But it's better.

[01:09:05] And nobody wants and nobody particularly likes it. Some people love it, you know. All right. Well, I had noted earlier that Justin significantly underestimated the percentage chance that things would go awry in tribal council. There definitely did need to be a series of unfortunate events for him to end up in this position. However, some of those events were in his own control. Sure. It wasn't up to him to go on the journey or to risk his vote.

[01:09:29] As much as I hate the idea of Justin losing his vote without any say so or action on his part. And as much as I hate even more that Jeff Probst justifies this nonsense by saying it tests a player's ability to play around the obstacles they face. There is a grain of truth to it. And especially in what happened to Justin here. He shouldn't have had to try to figure out whether or not to lie to Cedric.

[01:09:56] He especially shouldn't have been put into a situation where he only had a few minutes to determine his best path forward. But he did make the wrong choice. And I still don't understand how he did the math to arrive there. He could have and should have told his closest ally about losing his vote before tribal council.

[01:10:19] While we know there was a lot of discussion within tribal council beyond that, that lie gave say the opening she needed to tell Cedric, I've always been truthful to you. Meanwhile, the guy Cedric called his number one ally had lied to him. She knew exactly the point to hit there.

[01:10:42] But more than that, although a lot of it wasn't shown, we can infer quite a bit about what else probably was discussed in that tribal council. As say persuaded Cedric to change his mind. We'd heard two things from Cedric previously. One, that say reminded him of him of his daughter and she called him dad. Two, that Justin was his number one ally. It was a clash of strategy versus social game and emotion.

[01:11:11] As I noted earlier, emotion won out because say was able to play on the social game aspect of things. The specific words she used are less important than the outcome. Cedric made the wrong decision from a game perspective. If he had kept say from the start, I would have been fine with that. But voting against someone twice and then deciding to keep them puts too many dents in the relationship going forward.

[01:11:40] It may well end up not mattering because of the swap, but that's not an excuse for the choice he made. But of course, that choice came down to Justin and Say arguing for their own game lives. Justin argued primarily strategy and then Joe, as you said, seemed to kind of just let it be.

[01:12:03] Say argued primarily their social relationship while also poking holes in Justin's relationship due to the big lie he had told. So, in the end, as I said earlier, Say out social game, Tim. She caused Cedric to make the incorrect decision while Justin could not get him to make the correct one. And that is why Justin lost. There we are. So, all right.

[01:12:33] Well, before we get to our predictions for next episode, I want to let everyone know that next week we will have a different type of doctor returning to join us. It will be Dr. Jeremy Faust. He will be taking a break from informing everyone about all the decisions impacting the Department of Health and the FDA and everything else that he is doing all the time on his newsletter. And he will come over and join us to talk Survivor once more.

[01:13:02] Which will probably freak him out more than the work that he does, which is so incredible and impressive. I just think it's hysterical. I don't know that it'll freak him out more than the work that he's doing right now. But, yeah.

[01:13:16] But I also want to remind everyone, of course, that, as we mentioned earlier, the rules are available in poster form and T-shirt form and checklist on a T-shirt form by going to robhaswebsite.com slash yxlostfeed and just scrolling down. Final. Final.

[01:13:41] So, in the meantime, Joe, where can everyone reach you on social media? Yeah, I'm on Blue Sky at J. Dorowski, just the letter J and my last name, D-A-R-O-W-S-K-I. And mostly I'll be talking about Survivor over there. In particular because Survivor Cultural History is going to be coming out in May. So my publisher is eager for me to promote that.

[01:14:08] I also do host a podcast called The Protagonist Podcast, where each week we talk about a great character, a great story. Nice. Okay. And people can look that up as just The Protagonist? Yeah. The Protagonist Podcast. You know, find your podcaster. You know, wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay. Me? Do you want me to talk about my social media? Because it's not as good as your social media, David. I am at JessicaLewis89 on Blue Sky.

[01:14:38] And I am also at JessicaLewis89 on that other thing called Twitter. And then also... Not called Twitter anymore. But yeah. I call X, whatever it is. That other thing that, you know, is still out there, weirdly enough. And then at JessicaLewis6789 on Instagram, I am not a social media butterfly like David Bloomberg, who is everywhere. And then some.

[01:15:02] So much so he does have that link tree, which David Bloomberg, if you show it to them, you can see all of the places that you can find David Bloomberg. I feel like it's... Oh, you have to scroll down on this one. Oh, yes. Oh, look at this family. I know. So many links. So David Bloomberg, where can they find you? So what you're seeing here is, of course, like you said, link tree slash David Bloomberg with a dot before the E in the URL.

[01:15:30] Or you could find me directly on Blue Sky as at David Bloomberg. I, of course, encourage everyone to come over there to discuss Survivor. It's just better. I have been posting at least, well, until, you know, wedding week here, at least usually four, sometimes more reality TV short videos every day on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, where I'm at David Bloomberg TV.

[01:15:53] Right now, they're a mix, of course, of U.S. Survivor, Australian Survivor, including many Y Blank Lost videos, Deal or No Deal Island, Extracted. Extracted is not really a good show, but it's had some moments that have made some great videos. I would not have expected Extracted to be among my top TikTok videos.

[01:16:18] Not so much in other platforms, but among TikTok people, it's just taking off because of some of the things that people have done on that show. Excellent. Do you get a lot of hot chocolate? I'm just curious. I've wanted to ask. Where? Me? Well, because it's, you know, because it's one of your links. Oh, oh, oh. No, actually, I don't. But, you know, I keep it there anyway, in case anyone wants. Come on, people. Let's send them some hot chocolate. Yeah.

[01:16:48] All right. Well, it is time for predictions. And this one's a little bit more complicated because why not? The whole dang episode has been complicated. Yeah. We have the swap. Now, I'm going to just say this. Duh. You know, of course it was. I have been saying it for seasons now. It is not a coincidence that when one tribe gets down to three players in the new era, there is a swap. It is built in. They don't have challenges that are made for three people. Right.

[01:17:18] You know, according to Mike Bloom, they had to change up the way this this challenge was run because they had built it for for five people. And so when you had one tribe that only had four, that's why you had a double and a single instead of two doubles running around. Right. So, yeah, a three person, they just don't build challenges for them that way. So, yes, there is a swap.

[01:17:45] Normally, we would try to guess what might happen based on essentially nothing. But Survivor put out a commercial and the eagle eyed Mike Bloom and maybe others, but I only know about Mike doing it. Went through to find out. Went through to find out. What the new tribes look like based on what could be seen. Since this was based on public information, we do not consider it to be a spoiler. Do I think that CBS should have put it out in a way that we could figure this out?

[01:18:15] No, but they did. And so if you are particularly averse to this sort of thing, if you don't want to know what the tribes are going to be. Skip ahead a bit because we're going to be talking about it. The new Loggi tribe will be Charity, David, Eva, Mary and Star.

[01:18:40] Now, I think we could already pretty easily tell from the initial preview that Eva wouldn't be on the same tribe as Joe just because of the way she was talking about it. And this confirms it. I worry about that a bit for her because the only person she's with from her own original tribe is Star. Those two clearly were not getting along. I don't even think they could pretend to get along.

[01:19:10] The only one benefit is they might never go to tribal council. And in fact, I'm going to predict they don't. I'm going to predict none of this matters because they don't go to tribal council. So now I'll move on to Vula. The new Vula tribe will be Joe, Camilla, Kyle, Shaheen and Thomas. With that combination of muscles and brains on this tribe, I think they're safe now as well.

[01:19:41] And so by default, we get to the new Siva tribe. It is here. What? Like you read my notes as I look at these tribes. Who do I think is going to be going to tribal? Yeah. So we have Bianca, Cedric, Chrissy, Mitch and say. And yes, I do think they will go to tribal council.

[01:20:04] And we will find out if say is at least temporarily willing to put aside Cedric voting for her twice before keeping her. I think she is smart enough. I think she is smart enough that she will. Which will put Bianca in the situation as the lone person from her original tribe. And so either the two duos could join together and target her or I think more likely she becomes the swing vote.

[01:20:35] Knowing what we know about say, I think she will immediately see this and lobby Bianca super hard to try to bring her over. And I think it also makes sense for Bianca to join with the beaten up tribe of three to target someone on the other tribe of six rather than to join in with the other. So I think that's what they'll do. And I think Chrissy will end up being the one that goes. Wow.

[01:21:06] That was very impressive. Well, it'll only be impressive if it's right. I reserve the right to be entirely wrong as I make a prediction here. Oh, go for it. I love this. We always do. I had the exact same logic as David. I was going to say Chrissy for the same reasons. I love that. I briefly thought about Bianca as being the odd one out. But then I remembered, like, I just don't think the old bullet tribes can be seen as a threat.

[01:21:35] So it's going to be harder to target them. Yeah, that is definitely. Oh, gosh. I feel like that's not what I want to see happen because I do really love Chrissy. I think Chrissy is great. But I'm also very curious. Oh, goodness.

[01:21:59] I mean, I feel like you've sold me on this as much as it upsets me because I don't want Chrissy to go home. I, I, I'm curious how, how is Bianca going to necessarily feel about Say if Say does come at her a little too much?

[01:22:22] Because Bianca is someone who, if you remember, I mean, huge, like, super fan, like, loves the show and like, really, like, had a lot of things that I was initially worried about for Bianca when I thought she was going to be more like a Say. That was when I was just kind of going through her initial interviews. I was like, boy, I hope she can like rein it in because if she doesn't, she might just be a little bit too much.

[01:22:50] And so I'm, I'm wondering if they, if they would end up butting heads and, you know, perhaps that might become an issue for Bianca. But I also do appreciate this idea of the Siva and Loggie wanting to take those numbers down. So, God, I got to agree with you and I don't want to, but I will. Who was it that won the extra vote last time? It was.

[01:23:18] It was, wasn't it Mitch? At the last journey, who won the dice game and got the extra vote? Was it Mitch? No, it was Camilla. It was Camilla. Right? But doesn't Mitch, didn't Mitch get something? Mitch, Mitch has something. He has a block of vote. Block of vote. Oh, he has a block. So that could be. That, oh, oh, see, now that, see, the Survivor production.

[01:23:48] People are getting involved here and that could certainly affect things. They're not getting involved here. It's just a twist. I think it. I would still think it will be the more of a Siva-Laggie war. And so Bianco would be targeted, but the block of vote would be my guess if he has a block of vote and chooses to play it. Yeah. So then it becomes 2-2. Wouldn't it be, okay.

[01:24:18] Would it be absolutely hilarious if it's 2-2 and they're locked up and it becomes Say's decision whether to switch her vote to Cedric or to have, you know, have a rock draw. Mm-hmm. I think we all know which way Say would go. Say switches her vote to Cedric. Oh, yeah. Okay. That would be amazing. You cannot script it better than that.

[01:24:48] I kind of want it to happen, even though I don't want Cedric to go, but I kind of want it to happen just to bring this whole thing full circle. So that we can be like, see? Yes. Yeah. Oh, see, that might be the key is this block of vote to see what Mitch does. So are you changing your prediction then? Yeah, I want to. I want to just because I feel like if that's what's going to end up happening where we've got Mitch is blocking Bianca's vote.

[01:25:17] So then we've got, I think Cedric, I think this is going to happen. I think that's going to happen because this is because it would just be, it would be so like poetic for Say to be like, oh, Cedric, I'm so sorry. Did you put my name down twice? Guess what? Bye-bye. I think that would be hilarious. So yes, that's what I'm going to say because I remembered Mitch had something in his pocket, which is a block of vote. All right.

[01:25:46] We will see. We will see. As we wrap up, I want to encourage people to check out the RHAP patron program at robhasawebsite.com slash patron. You can get access to all the special podcasts that are put out just for patrons, plus the Facebook groups and Discord. And of course, you support shows like ours and everything on the network by becoming a patron at robhasawebsite.com slash patron.

[01:26:08] And also make sure you go to weknowsurvivor.com where you can subscribe to all the RHAP Survivor podcasts. If you're not already. You get, you know, you can look through all the different podcasts that RHAP puts out about Survivor. Select your podcast server of choice. And you'll get all the great content like us, the know-it-alls, the B&B, Survivor International, and much more. So go ahead and do that. Weknowsurvivor.com.

[01:26:40] I guess now I can say thank you. I have to, you're pacing us, throwing me off a little bit. So I apologize. So I would like to say thank you to Scott, Jess, and Doug for all of the incredible work that you do with RHAP. Not only for Wide Blank Loss, but for all of the incredible content that you can find there. Weknowsurvivor.com. And we know all kinds of reality shows when you're talking about Rob Hasla podcast. There is so many things to choose from and so many things to listen to and watch. So thank you for all of the incredible work that you do.

[01:27:10] And also thank you to Will from America for the theme song that does exist at the start of just the audio version. Thank you of the podcast. So thank you for that. And thank you, Joe, for joining us today. This was fabulous. I hope you had a great time. I love your insights. It's so great to hear the ideas and thoughts of other people in relationship to these rules. So it's so much fun to have you. Thank you for being here. This was lovely.

[01:27:39] Thank you so much for having me on. I really did enjoy my time here. Good, good. Yes. Let me echo what Jessica said. Thank you very much. You know, thanks for your flexibility in terms of the scheduling of this podcast. And, you know, I encourage everyone to go out and get the book, you know, Survivor, A Cultural History. So and of course, Jessica, thank you as always also for your flexibility.

[01:28:09] And and, you know, we will see everyone in really less than a week because of, you know, this one being delayed. So it'll be a short, fairly short time before you see us again. But until then, you can find us on social media. Bye. Bye.

[01:28:48] We are Teresa and Nemo and that's why we switched to Shopify.

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