Why ___ Lost Survivor 50 Ep 12 w Sam Phalen

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[00:00:30] If you lost survivor and you're feeling down, David and Jessica will turn it around. They'll break down the rules and we'll show you how. You played yourself and got voted out. This is why blank lost. This is why blank lost. This is why blank lost. This is why blank lost.

[00:01:06] Podcast and 25th anniversary of why blank lost as a concept. I'm David Bloomberg. And even though I predicted. Sari would go this week. It doesn't make me any less sad. Or co-host Jessica Lewis, and we have our special returning guest Sam Phalen to talk through two really huge players this week. Yay! Welcome back, Sam. Welcome back, Sam.

[00:01:29] Sad episode. Yeah, happy to be here. This is like, you guys invited me to a funeral without telling me that this is a funeral. Not just Sari, but we lose the great Rick Devins here this week too. So there's plenty to mourn. I think two players I'm sure we'll get into that just had incredible runs and were so fun to watch. Gameplay aside, everything else aside, two of my favorite characters from season 50 that made it the most memorable. So very sad to see them go in.

[00:01:57] I'm surprised. Another thing that I'm sure we'll talk about in predictions later on, but I'm surprised that we are pushing both of these people out the door before the finale, because I think these were two of the more rootable, you know, forces that we had left in the game. That I don't have to look forward to next week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All, all very valid points and a very sad why blank last episode to come.

[00:02:23] Yes. So here we are. Yes. Uh, but before we get into that, Sam, how have you been doing since we talked to your last season? I'm doing good. I'm, I'm very busy, but, uh, you know, I'm, I'm loving life a little bit. Uh, you know, doing, doing my work in sports and, you know, day to day grind and whatnot, being a cat dad and a bit, busy work body trying to get my workouts in and, uh, kind of day to day, but time flies. I like, I looked up, I'm like, wait, we're at the end of season 50.

[00:02:51] We're already in the spring. Uh, so can't complain too much, but, uh, I'm good. Yeah. It's already time for, you know, the, the cub sock series. Uh, so, you know, it's already here. Yeah. We're, we're about to get, here's the crazy thing is that we're going to meet the survivor 51 past in a preview next week, which that was really mind blowing to me for, you know, we were introduced to the concept of season 50 before I even filmed survivor.

[00:03:19] It was before we went to go play 47 that Jeff kind of teased this idea of all returning players for season 50. And I feel like it's kind of been hanging in the back of everybody's mind ever since, whether you were on the Island playing back at home, hoping to receive the phone call in the casting process or in this buildup that we had of, of anticipation for this season.

[00:03:40] And now here we are, it's about to be over. Like, this is crazy. You know, and it, you know, it, it's just like the reminder of, you know, every year that goes by the further removed you get from playing, the more you're like, wow, that feels like forever ago that we were talking about my season, but, uh, all good things, I suppose change is hard, but, but good at the same time.

[00:04:05] I excited for whatever survivor brings post survivor 50 and seeing what, um, I guess what takeaways they have from the new era that can influence the next iteration of the game. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, according to Jeff, we're not going to have to wait long for, uh, returning players again. So we'll, we'll see what that brings. Yeah. Uh, but, uh, also I don't think I've seen any cast leaks about 51, which is just mind boggling to me.

[00:04:34] Right. Especially there, they've done, they're done filming right now. Like I, they've finished filming and I mean, you would think so. Right. With the live finale and stuff. So, um, but yeah, I mean, outside of like survivor David, I I'd be remiss not to mention too. Like, I think part of the reason time flew for me was because we, I had a great winter rooting for my Chicago bears.

[00:04:59] Um, I had a great winter and a great spring rooting for, uh, our fighting Illini. And, uh, you know, sometimes I, this is what I ask of my sports teams is get me to the next one is like, can you be competitive enough to get me to the net? And that's what I loved about, uh, you know, the last few months in particular is I was like, Hey, I was, I was putting all my effort behind the bears.

[00:05:22] Once the bears were eventually eliminated. I'm like, I have a great Illinois team to, to back here in the root for it. They get all the way to the final four. I look up it's MLB opening day. So it's been, uh, you know, kind of nonstop without really dragging my feet, but do you want to shout out the bears in the Illini?

[00:05:37] Because, um, I know that you have the same rooting interests there. Yes. And then of course there's the shooting, the shooting, the rooting interest we don't share, which is the Cubs. Uh, and, uh, so, you know, they, they had their, uh, survivor, their survivor 50 day, which I'd love to show everyone except the, uh, on the 50 is this yellowish green that my green screen really does not like. So, uh, but yeah, there was, uh, there's of course the, uh, the Cubs survivor 50 night.

[00:06:07] So there's that, that overlap for me as well. So, uh, I, I would, I would love if survivor would do a survivor night with my favorite ball club. I don't think they're going to do it though, because they're front runners. You hear that survivor, you're front runners. You won't go and hang out with the white socks at rate field. Do I blame you? No, we don't want to go hang out with the white socks at rate field, but I'd like you to think about it.

[00:06:32] Maybe think about, think about, think about thinking about releasing a white socks survivor hat. Cause I would buy it. I might be the only one, but I would buy it. Well, listen, I'm going to jump in here. I'm not going to, I'm not going to talk about sports for a minute, but talking about weird connections with companies and survivor. I got a gift the other day and look at this, look at this box. Whoa. Dogfish head with survivor 50, right? Isn't that fabulous?

[00:07:01] I got this lovely little buff and I got this lovely little glass. It's a survivor 50 glass with dogfish on the back. And I'm not even a beer drinker. However, coconut etiquette, everyone. Ooh, you lost me at coconut. Oh, it says hazy. I don't know. Well with coconut and passion fruit. So there you are, but I'm not a beer drinker.

[00:07:26] However, it is an IPA. So, you know, maybe, maybe it tastes delicious. I don't know. I'm curious enough to try it for sure. I was going to say they may, they may lose you with just about any fruit from what we saw. That is a very fair point. Let me tell you what though. Coconut, like Jessica, I'm sure you can relate to this a little bit, but by, by day four, I mean, I think my body was like throwing up, rejecting coconut.

[00:07:54] Anytime I put it in my mouth, like at all, I hated it so much. I had never really had a chakra, right? But like it was okay. But I think, I think the big thing that for me was like the variance in good coconut to bad coconut. Cause you wouldn't really know until you started like drinking it or eating it or whatever, if it was like, it tastes good or tastes bad. So you get some bad ones in there. And I think by day four, it was just like, we need another flavor.

[00:08:19] So it was just rejecting from my body as soon as I would try any coconut. So even now it's hard. My wife and I went to Jamaica about six, six weeks or so ago, we went on a trip to Jamaica and everything is coconut something in Jamaica. And I was like, all right, we're going to have to get over this real quick because you know, it's open bar at the, at the resort, but it's all coconut rum.

[00:08:43] So, Oh, that's hysterical. Yeah. I will say I was not a coconut fan until I went and played on survivor. And then all of a sudden all I was eating was coconut and I was like, wow, this is actually really delicious. So now I like coconut, but I like fresh coconut. Like I'm, I'm not interested in like the candies that have coconut in it. Like I want an actual coconut cut up and just eat it. And I think that's delicious.

[00:09:05] So I was in the opposite camp where I, all of a sudden I was very much looking forward to coconut while I was on the Island and then off of the Island, just fresh coconut. So yeah, I probably enjoy all of the coconut flavored things in Jamaica. The trick for any future survivor players out there is to cook your coconut. You just put it in the pot and just, just char it up and it might look burned and it is a little bit burned, but it starts to taste a little bit, in my opinion, like mushrooms.

[00:09:33] It's very good. It's mushroomy kind of like people have said it's kind of popcorn a little bit, but it's coconut popcorn. That's what we called it. It was so good. A little like shards of coconut and just dump them in the pot and cook them. And then it becomes a much better palatable. I would say. It's a different flavor. That's a different flavor. Yes. Should you lick the coconut first, stick your tongue into the coconut first and then just say you're going to cook it anyway.

[00:10:03] Probably not. That was horrifying. That was horrifying. Yeah, it was a tough watch. Also, who wants to eat dry rice? Like, I mean, just dry rice. I've tried it before with like dry pasta, you know, like relatable where I was kind of like, I don't know, I'll just like pop a couple of it. It's awful. Why would you do that? It's not like it's stuck in your teeth. Yeah. Just the poor guy was so hungry. And the thing is, he was talking about how hungry he was and I didn't eat anything at the auction and this and that.

[00:10:33] There was a secret scene the day before of him going to both camps and feasting on their rice during the split tribal stuff. So that he ate so much that he was full. Now, listen, I want to comment generally about rice real quick. Can we take because one thing that I will say that I cannot wait to hear from some of these old school players that have played.

[00:11:00] On season 50 have played in the no rice era and obviously they've gotten rice recently. We've kind of heard some behind the scenes of like, hey, is Rizzo wasting away so much so that they need to just like give them a bunch of rice? I'd be curious what the difficulty level is compared to like, hey, old school with rice.

[00:11:21] And I mean, like sometimes I throw on these real old school seasons and it's like they've got a fruit basket and like, you know, stuff like this to start the game. It's so much different than what you have of like having nothing to start the game. Now, I would love to hear some contrasting of, you know, because just from my experience, it did so much for day to day life. Having just like that leaf full of rice every day in the post merge versus like early on when it's eight days maybe of not eating anything.

[00:11:50] So want to hear more about that. But if there is a reason to give people rice, I think you've seen it play out a little bit on season 50 because we have now had not one, but two and maybe even three disputes and spats because of rice at camp. And this is the good stuff that I think a lot of people miss about old school survivor and about, you know, I hear the critique all the time, right?

[00:12:17] We don't see enough of the people surviving on the island. And one of those elements is, do you agree to make this much rice or that much rice? And do you agree to let the pot boil or lick the rice while it's dry? And people just kind of do things in these contexts that are annoying and grating to people. And so I want to see more of that. And, you know, we don't get this scene with Jonathan.

[00:12:41] We don't get Emily and Sari bickering about the rice earlier in the season if we don't have rice on the beach. Yeah. Listen, we had a whole food issue at the when we got to the merge and they gave us like the merge feast, basically, which was a whole bunch of food in in like a container of sorts. And somebody stole a bunch of food and buried it. And then that's the whole thing. Yes.

[00:13:08] I mean, so like all of a sudden everyone was like, where did all the food go? And it was in a jar buried by Taylor. So, yes, I completely agree that those moments are really incredible moments because you're already in each other's space 24 seven. Every little thing that people are doing around you can set you off. You can be annoyed. You're dealing with everybody's personalities and then you're hungry.

[00:13:33] And then on top of it, you have these food issues that are rising while you are hungry and it makes it that much worse. And there were a lot of instances in my season where like food became an issue and it was something that set people off. And we've seen it time and time again. I don't remember her name, but one of the players in a much older season, she threw all the rice in the fire. Do you remember this too? Like, yeah. Yes. Yeah. And so alumni of the university of Illinois. So like these things happen.

[00:14:00] So I, I very much think that it's, it's a great added component to the game because you do have these fats, but you also allow players the ability to actually, I think, play better because they're not starving and they're able to put more into the, the challenges and they're able to actually like focus a little bit better. So there's something to be said also giving them sustenance for that reason as well. Yeah. That's, that's the key for me. I mean, everything you, you said is absolutely right, Sam.

[00:14:29] But the key for me is always, if you want them to play the game, you need to give them a little bit of sustenance so they can play the game. So they're not just sitting around because they have zero energy, zero ability to process everything. And so let me add another thing here too, because as you were speaking there, Jessica, I started to think like what I would do in your shoes on millennials versus Gen X when Taylor is hiding food and burying it in the sand.

[00:14:58] And what I think is really interesting about this is the fact that it kind of like fuels a vote, you know, like it gives you a reason to vote Taylor off. Yeah. But then the other side of that is it gives you a reason to not vote Taylor off.

[00:15:16] And one thing that I think is fascinating that doesn't always translate through the screen for a viewer is when we talk about the social game of survivor and there are things that you can do on the, there is just general Island aura. I think that players have of, are you respected? Are you, are you somebody that just kind of has this aura of winner about you?

[00:15:40] And if the answer to that is no, as much as you might be well-liked or you might even be able to play a good game, there's just kind of something about you that doesn't allow people to vote for you at the end. And it can come down to things like how you behave around camp. Do you help build the shelter? Do you do crazy things? I remember on season 47, there were little things like we had, we had gotten all of these eggs from our, we had exchanged the chickens for eggs and we had all of these eggs.

[00:16:09] And then we were like preparing actually before we exchanged the chickens, rather that the chickens had only laid like two or three eggs, but we had two or three eggs. So we were going to make eggs. And as we're getting ready to go cook them, Andy, like drop the pot and it broke all three eggs into the sand. And so like, I thought it was hilarious. I was just sitting there laughing, but like you could see Annika, like stormed off down to the beach, angry. She's going to go like talk to Rachel and be like, you won't believe what Andy just did.

[00:16:38] So I'm sitting in the hammock, like laughing my ass off and just like, you know, like I can't believe that this is reality right now. It's things like that can kind of compound to be like, even if I liked you, even if you play a great game, there were just like things that I'm like, this is unserious. And because it's unserious, I can't vote for you at the end. So now Taylor is burying food. Hey, we might all like Taylor. Taylor could get all the way to the end and win a bunch of challenges, whatever.

[00:17:06] But you're doing something now that is actively making everybody else upset where we know you can't win. So now maybe is there a reason to be like, hey, come to the end with me, Taylor. It adds a fun variable of like gameplay of do you take the vote that gets you to the next round? Do you take a vote that keeps you safe or maybe helps your alliance build numbers? Do you try to like weaponize the guy that's on the bottom and that, you know, is like looking like a zero vote finalist?

[00:17:33] It's a fun variable that adding things around camp, things like food, things like comforts, things like shelter. All of those things become part of the overall strategic game in a way that they don't. As David said, when we're all just laying around being like, this sucks, huh? You know, and so those are the things that I think people often miss when they talk about 39 days and watching the survival aspects of the show. Yeah, I think. And I do think that. Oh, I'm sorry.

[00:18:02] I used to talk about, you know, in the in our predictions later. Yes. Not quite to that extent, but yeah. But yeah, there is something to be said about that third seat and how you're going to choose to try to fill it and who you're sitting. Yeah. And I think that was a big discussion that we did see this episode. And those were conversations that people were having, not necessarily for all of those reasons. But yeah, I mean, I really do think that there's a lot to be said about who do you decide to sit there with?

[00:18:30] And is it someone that you're doing it because, you know, no one's going to vote for them? And is that person a threat? Right. Like maybe not at this stage at the final five, but I think we see now let us transition into the episode here. But like, I think we see with Tiffany at basically both tribal councils here. The idea of a Rizzo has an idol and he could be somebody that everybody wants to take to the final three.

[00:18:54] If you're someone like Tiffany, who's trying to figure out what your path is to just get there, you're confident that you can win. If you can just get there, that person who's got like their ticket punched in your eyes, that person is a threat to you now and needs to go. Even if you feel like you can beat them, if everybody's planning on having this person next to them at the end, that's one less spot that there is for you at the end of the game. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:20] Like I said, we'll we'll talk about some of that at the end after we talk about Sari and Rick Devins. Now, I do want to say the big twist in this episode was so weird because follow me here. They had a challenge. They strategized. And then the whole group went to tribal council and just voted someone out. And then they did it again. What is that all about? What is this sorcery? It's like Survivor. One on one.

[00:19:50] Now, I don't disagree. But if I'm going to play devil's advocate, these were probably the two most boring votes of the season where we had two unanimous votes. So, yeah. Yeah. But you know what? I much prefer that sometimes than the last thing we talked about with Jonathan and getting devoted to separate tribals and all of that, I think was insanity. So I'm OK with this. We didn't like that. Being boring gets sad. No, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't mind that one.

[00:20:18] The two that I that one, I think, was neutral. I'll say I love, love the double duo twist. I think that's a fantastic twist. Oh, we did not like that one. I love that one. Going forward, I won't mind it as much because people will know about it, although they obviously won't know about it if it pops up on 51. But right. Going forward, people will know if they come in and say pair up. People are going to be like, OK, we have to strategize why we're pairing up.

[00:20:48] Kind of like in Squid Game. You know, the very first Squid Game, the challenge. People didn't necessarily know, although they maybe should have known. Should have watched Squid Game. Yeah. Yeah. You know that. Oh, you don't want to pair up, you know, mom and son or boyfriend and girlfriend or whatever. But by the second season of it, people were like, hold up there. Let's figure out. Do we want to be together? Do we want to be apart? That sort of thing. Yeah.

[00:21:16] So going forward, as long as people know, I'm OK with it. It was the main the main fact that we talked about this. I don't want to go too much into it. But the main part was that they didn't know why they were pairing up, which puts them at a disadvantage strategically. I agree with that. I will say, though, like that does exist for every twist that has ever been added to the game all the way down to like, hey, a hidden immunity idol. Right.

[00:21:41] Like there was a there was a time and place where people didn't really know what a hidden immunity idol was like, how it was like supposed to be played. They messed around with it having to be played before the votes were cast for a little bit. You know, like it took some time to kind of find its footing. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes it takes, hey, you got to get it out there so that now the existence of this twist or advantage can impact the game.

[00:22:04] But I think like the general format of it moving forward, as you said, David, I think that it'll be really fun and good because I do like the extra layer of strategy that it adds to, you know, like who you target, who you pair up with. And, you know, it's an it's a simple thing that, you know, what we always say is let the players play. And this is an example of like it is in the control of the players. It is on the players.

[00:22:30] It just gives them another like thing that they have to account for without meddling a little bit too much in the decisions and the results. Yeah. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers.

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[00:24:44] So this week, as a result of the non-twist, we will look, of course, at the games of both Devins and Sari to see what they did right and what went wrong by comparing their gameplay to a set of guiding rules for winning I originally wrote way back after season one and have been updating ever since. We'll use all the non-spoiler information available to us from what we see on TV, interviews, social media, and secret scenes.

[00:25:08] And the newest published version of the rules can be found by going to robhazwebsite.com slash yxlossfeed and clicking on the link bubble for, of course, the survivor rules. But before we get to the rules, we always have some other things to discuss. And I say always, and we do have a little bit this week, but less than usual. It's very limited this week because, as I just mentioned there, thankfully, weren't any twists to talk about.

[00:25:38] And most of the action was indeed leading up to the Devins and Sari votes since we got two full cycles in one episode. Under normal circumstances, we would probably talk about what we see in the edit and, you know, who will win, who will make it to final three. But with the finale being next week, that'll go into our predictions, like I mentioned earlier. So instead of using that time here, although we've already, you know, I'm sure people are like, wow, you've spent a lot of time already. Yeah, you know, it was fun time, though.

[00:26:09] And we will do all that discussion of the edit and how we think things are going after our conclusions and social media information when we normally do our predictions. So make sure you, you know, stay tuned. Don't change the channel or anything after all of that. And you can hear what we have to say because it's, you know, with the predictions, it tends to be for the finale a bit longer than usual.

[00:26:36] With that said, I can't disappoint people. We do, of course, have our regular segment for the season. The CBS Mornings crew is wrong about blank. And now you may have noticed that I just enunciated that a little bit better because my son told me I need to be careful because apparently all season, the way I've been saying it, I've kind of merged mornings and crew. And it sounded like I'm saying the CBS Mornings screw.

[00:27:04] Which would be funny if I were purposely calling them like morning screw ups. But, you know, so so I got to enunciate a little bit better there. But. What did the clueless CBS Mornings hosts do wrong this week? Well, Gayle King wasn't there, so it was somewhat better. But they still made their usual clueless mistakes.

[00:27:32] One of the co-hosts whose name I looked up earlier in the season but have since forgotten and don't care enough to look up again. Still can't pronounce Suri's name. He calls her Suri, like rhymes with curry. Even right to her face. He's like, Suri, what do you think about this? Suri about that. Stop it. Learn her name for God's sake. Mm hmm.

[00:27:58] And he thinks Devon's is still doing local news, which he's not. Now, I understand asking him to do a shtick. And yes, Rick did it on the season itself. And it's still fun. Don't get me wrong. But the co-hosts clearly had no idea that that was old news. Well, but they didn't ask your favorite question. I know. I'm sitting there. I'm watching, waiting.

[00:28:26] How are they going to work in the question we were all expecting? The question that annoys me every single time. And they didn't ask it. No one said. So who do you think will be the last person standing? Who do you think will win? The segment ended. I almost fell off my couch watching it. Maybe they've been listening. I honestly.

[00:28:53] So earlier in the season, I started to surmise that maybe it was someone in management stupidly making them ask that question. But the fact that they didn't when Gail wasn't there takes me back to my original idea that it's been all Gail being completely clueless all along. And without her, the others didn't want to jump in on that nonsense. Maybe that's what it was then. It was all Gail's fault. I just like somebody should have put a stop to that question.

[00:29:22] Like they do monitor all of these things. They've got somebody there in person listening to all of it. But after the first one, you feel like they're like, hey, can we cut that from the from the itinerary there? Right. I don't know. I guess they I guess they like it. As long as the people are well prepared to answer it, you know, and not caught off guard, I can imagine that if you're a jury member, that it would catch you off guard a little bit.

[00:29:47] Or maybe they feel like it's OK because the the winner was not revealed at final final tribal council like it has been for the new era. So the votes are not read yet. Yeah, Jessica, I'm sure you had no idea who was going to win your season all the way up until the the live finale. That's where you found out for the first time where everybody else voted. We had no idea. Yeah, we had no idea what was going to happen. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:14] I mean, that was a sad that was a sad night at Ponderosa for a couple of people and a very fun night at Ponderosa for one particular individual. So, yeah. No, you didn't know. Yeah. I think the first couple of people were probably taken off guard and stammered through it. If if we look back at the history of it, one particular person who is known to be a horrible liar, did a horrible job lying, like literally looking at the ground and doing all

[00:30:42] of her tells that we saw on the show and other people. Yes, they redid the question. They learn to not, you know, answer the question that was actually asked of them. But again, if you keep asking the same questions and no one is actually answering that question, change it. Uh, so yeah. Yeah. Well, a question we will not have to deal with probably ever again, because I doubt that,

[00:31:08] uh, I doubt that for Survivor 51, they'll be back on CBS mornings. Uh, so, so, you know, we, we had our run, uh, and, uh, it's over now. But besides that, I did want to double check. Do either of you have anything or anyone else you want to discuss before we get to the rules? I'm ready. I don't. Yeah, let's do this. All right. Well, there were, of course, other things going on.

[00:31:34] I'll post, uh, you know, some of it to my TikTok and YouTube at David Bloomberg's at David Bloomberg TV. Uh, and before we get to how, uh, Rick and Sari did or Sari, uh, we, we want to mention that the rules we're about to discuss come in a shorter and much more colorful version as a poster. Yes, they did. You can go to robhasawebsite.com slash yxlostfeed, scroll down, click on the link and order it.

[00:32:05] And in addition, you can get the poster on a t-shirt and you can get the checklist on a t-shirt. So again, go to robhasawebsite.com slash yxlostfeed for all of your Y blank lost, uh, merch needs. Yes. Well, Rick Devins and Sari were two of the biggest players this season, but in different ways.

[00:32:34] Devins was out in front in everyone's faces, making waves, playing with exuberance. Sari was behind the scenes, mastermind, aligned with everyone and seemingly never in any danger till now. How did they end up going out back to back? Why did the others decide to vote each of them out at this moment in the game? At RHAP, we know Survivor and we know why Rick and Sari lost.

[00:33:03] Now, the first and most important rule is, of course, to scheme and plot. Obviously, both Devins and Sari know how key all of this is in Survivor. Though, as I just mentioned, they went about it in very different ways. Devins is obviously more open and freewheeling in his dealings, not in a sense that he would make and break alliances willy nilly because actually he was quite the opposite and played in a way that should have made people like Joe proud due to the amount of loyalty he

[00:33:32] showed to his allies. But he had the understanding that Survivor is a game and sometimes you have to lie and not tell people things. And also in the way that he was willing to put it all out on the table, not being afraid to make a move when he believed it was necessary. As he said at times when there was chaos, he could often flourish.

[00:34:02] Yeah, I do think that something to be said about Devins that's so impressive is his ability to find a balance that I think so many players have a difficulty finding where you can play that loyalty game. But at the same time, you can kind of wreak havoc for people around you. And it's a really impressive maneuvering. And he actually explained it very well at one of the tribal councils where he was like, no, look it. I was willing to put Rizzo's name out there and I wanted to vote this person out.

[00:34:31] He's open and honest, like this is what I'm doing. But I'm not going to vote Emily on a revote because that's how loyal I am. And it was just a very interesting dynamic to see because I do think that people like Joe struggle with that idea of being loyal and what that means. Whereas someone like Rick is actually like putting it out for everyone to see like, no, I actually am really loyal. And I'm not just saying that. I am completely I'm an open book.

[00:34:58] Like, you know exactly what I'm doing because I'm telling you what my game is and I'm not making anyone question where my loyalties lie. But I'm also willing to work with you. So it's a really incredible thing that he was able to do that. I just don't feel like very many players are able to pull it off that way. Yeah. Rick to me. I don't know if Rick plays very well from the top, but I think the best thing about Rick Devins is that he's one of the best players at playing from the bottom in Survivor. I just think that's where he's meant to be.

[00:35:28] That's where he shines. He is this this showman. And there is elements of him and his personality that just kind of come out in a really lovable way when his back is against the wall. He adopted a strategy this season that I used a little bit on my season that I feel like everybody else should, which is what you mentioned, Jessica, that honesty can be a weapon. And when you are on the bottom, being able to present everybody else in the game with

[00:35:56] this idea that I am so honest, I'm telling you I'm coming after Rizzo. But guess what? Stephanie's not telling you what she's doing. Jonathan's not telling you what he's doing. I'm airing everything out, right? If you're another player in the game, there is this sense of, yeah, I'm scared of Rick, but I also like I can box Rick in and know what he's doing. I know exactly what's coming from him where some of these other players are a little bit more shaky. He does a really good job of doing that. It's the Game of Thrones quote. Chaos is a ladder.

[00:36:26] And when you're on the bottom, that ladder is great for you to climb up some rungs. And what he did in this season was find himself at the bottom quite a few times. And he used chaos as a ladder to push himself to this final seven. Very similar, as I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit later on, because I have a lot of more in-depth thoughts on this. Very similar to his Edge of Extinction game that just was like a little bit more short lived here.

[00:36:53] Didn't have quite the same run, but there's a lot of similarities. And so this is just who Rick Devins is. He's an awesome character. I can't imagine season 50 without him. I enjoyed the emotional vulnerability that we saw from him throughout the season, especially in this week's episode. There was something about that comment about looking at the stars that really got me emotional

[00:37:19] and gets me emotional even thinking about it because I felt like I was in his stool and I felt like I was right there with him that I thought was really cool to watch play out. So I loved Rick. I will always love Rick. You could put Rick on every season of the show, in my opinion, and I would have a great time. Yeah. So yeah, it was all the things you guys mentioned. Yeah. And you both brought up that Mr. Beast Tribal Council where he completely blew up Jonathan's

[00:37:46] and the other woman's spots even before he flipped the coin and was safe. Yeah, we discussed that at the time, but he said he knew he was at risk and they foolishly gave him a ton of information that he used to explode those spots. And he told Mike Bloom that this was the move he was proudest of in the season. Noting nothing personal came out of my mouth. I didn't say, oh, so-and-so is a bad person or anything. It was strictly gameplay.

[00:38:16] They told me too much information. Now I'm sharing with you. And they were completely flummoxed. They were just shaking their heads, being caught in lies that were so obvious. It caused Tiffany to point out it didn't make sense for the other woman to tell the person she's trying to vote out that she had an advantage. And Rick said in interviews that when he saw Tiffany and Saree jumping into the discussion like that, he knew he was in a good spot. Yes.

[00:38:43] And this, again, it's such an incredible reaction because I do think that there's this idea or this construct where I have to keep talking because I've started this thing. I've sent this people in this space and I want to keep the momentum going. And he was like, nope, I did exactly what I needed to do. I just, I sprinkled some things into the world here and now they're all reacting to it.

[00:39:07] And it was, he just has such a great ability to read a room and respond in kind, which is, again, it's an incredible thing for a survivor player to have that ability because you are not fed, your brain is not working at the speed it normally works at when you're out there. And you're realizing like your thoughts are not coming as quickly as they should, but he was still able to read that space and the way that he did and respond the way that he did. And he was doing that throughout the whole season.

[00:39:37] He always was reacting to what was happening around him in an appropriate way for his own game, not necessarily for other people's games, which made it so lovely. And I really, you know, I really appreciated that about his gameplay so much. One thing Rick is awesome at is I think of the people on this cast, he's one of the more aware contestants about his perception about how the other players view him in the game.

[00:40:03] I think that that's an underrated skill, especially on a returning season is understanding what, how big of a threat are you in the eyes of the other returning players? You know, everybody's a returning player. Everybody thinks that they're, you know, God's gift to survivor and whatnot, but like actually accurately putting yourself in that totem pole and knowing how you're perceived is really important. And I think he does that really well because we see him kind of weaponize that route the season. This idea that I'm Rick, I'm Mr. Chaos.

[00:40:32] I'm, I'm, you know, I'm this big showman. That's always going for the biggest, baddest move possible. That is clearly how other people think of him. But if you're Rick and you know that, right, you can try things like he does with Emily. You cannot be afraid to like blow up a spot when you feel like the heat is on you. You know, I've got nothing to lose. Of course, I'm going to flip the Mr. Beast coin. And so there, there is just like a sense that Rick understands how everybody else views him.

[00:41:01] But because, you know, Rick is chaotic and Rick is messy, which are not necessarily bad qualities, by the way, that he can use that chaos and that messiness to air out other people's laundry and be an asset for other folks in the game. And so I really enjoy watching that because so often we see people who don't accurately have a perception of like, hey, am I a jury threat? Am I not a jury threat?

[00:41:28] Like it's very like disillusioned as far as how people actually view them. And I don't think that's the case at all with Rick. And it's fun to watch somebody turn this reputation that he has into part of his game strategy. Yeah. Now, there was one person that it turned out he did not necessarily have a great read on going back in time a bit to his original tribe. We know he had some issues with that one person who was not so happy about the way he played.

[00:41:57] And it started with an admitted, bad, unnecessary lie that Devin's told Joe. But that could have been it. Get past it and move on. Not with Joe, though. As we saw Sari sarcastically say to Devin's at the time. Let me see. I don't think that whole thing. We lied on Survivor. Yeah.

[00:42:25] Sometimes it pops in and it plays perfectly and sometimes not so much. But yes, you know, that was the that was the famous Sari quote there. And Joe doesn't like that concept, which something I'm sure we'll be discussing when he loses in the final three next week. But it turned into a huge blow up with Devin's saying at the time, I am over it with him as a game player. You're a survivor player, bro.

[00:42:55] We're allowed to lie and backstab. What are you doing? This is like going on to the football field and being like, I'm a pacifist. Sorry, I don't touch people. Good luck for your team trying to play with you. And we're his damn team. Now, they eventually hugged it out. And Devin's thought all was OK. But we've been seeing all season long from Joe's perspective that it most definitely was not. That's a different issue, but it does kind of play into what you said. He had a good read.

[00:43:24] I mean, he still knew Joe didn't want him around. So that part was a good read. He just didn't know Joe had wanted him gone every moment of every day, you know, from that point forward. And they seem to be fine now, according to Rick. So that's good. But, you know, just looking at Rick's overall strategic game, I thought his, you know, his strategizing was good.

[00:43:52] And just the biggest issue was that he, Christian and Emily got outplayed by the other person we're discussing today. I so I'm going to not to rehash this too much because it was obviously like episode two or whatever that we saw this. I am on Joe's side of this argument. I am. And I love Rick Evans. I could say, you know, in case it wasn't clear, I'm a huge, huge, huge Rick Evans guy. Um, but I do like, look, I understand.

[00:44:22] Hey, it's Joe is a frustrating variable to play the game with. Is that how I would play the game? No. Do I think it's good for the show? Hell yeah. You know, like I think I think people like Joe make survivor great because I think a a varying moral compass is we need more morality needs to be on a spectrum with our cast. We need people who maybe are disillusioned in their own morality and live on 500 hypocrite Hill or whatever. Sari said, hypocrisy Hill.

[00:44:52] I think that's great TV, but I will say, yeah, you're allowed to lie in survivor. Absolutely. If you get caught in a lie, though, I don't think it's outrageous that that person does not trust you and wants you out of the game moving forward and takes that personally. And what I, I thought it was a bit odd that like Joe catches Rick in a lie. Joe was like, what the hell, bro? I kind of want you out. I don't trust you now.

[00:45:18] And then everybody's kind of freaking out over like, oh, Joe's not okay with lying. It's like, well, you lied to Joe. You had this idea that like, well, you're he's were his team on the football field and he doesn't want to hit people. It's like, actually, it's like you tackled your own teammate and your teammate was like, what are you doing, dog? Like, I don't know why you would do that. And that's kind of what happened here. So like, if somebody lies to you, you should not trust them. You should want them out. That being said, lying is also part of the game.

[00:45:47] I think both those things are true. I didn't like how this spiraled throughout the season into this kind of like, actually, you should lie. Lying is amazing. And then like this other cohort of people who said, if you lie, you're a bad person and should like be out of the game, which is obviously so hypocritical of everybody on this beach. I didn't like how it kind of turned into this bigger picture argument. It can exist in a vacuum of like bad move by Devin's got caught. Not great. Joe wants him out. That's fine.

[00:46:16] But also, I think Rick did the good thing of like trying to repair the relationship and keep moving forward. So we don't have to have an in-depth discussion about that. But that's a thought that I needed to get off because I feel like I haven't liked how that's been like treated by the other players in the game of like, how dare you lie? It's any one of you. You catch somebody else lying to you in the game. And like, again, that's my guy. We saw Rick Devins on Edge of Extinction calling out Ron and Julie being like, you guys

[00:46:46] are liars and snakes. You guys just wanted me to go home. You were lying to me all day. It's like, yeah, when people lie to you, you don't trust them and you want them out. That's fair. And that was a fair reaction from Joe at the time, even if he is, you know, being a little bit of a baby about it throughout the rest of the season and like needs to get over it. Right. Because that is another part of Survivor is, hey, you're mad at Devins for a round. Four days later, you got to be able to like let bygones be bygones and try to hang on

[00:47:15] with the number in the game. Yeah. Let alone two weeks later. Right. But also, I do want to say I from everything we heard in interviews, there was more to that blow up than we saw. Yeah. And that is what that's where I feel unqualified to speak on it because I'm like, yeah, you guys know better than than I do for sure. Yeah. Because like every player, there was a quote from almost every player in that episode against Joe. Yeah.

[00:47:42] And then people like Savannah come off the show and in interviews say things like everyone on the beach was saying this about Joe. So I think that based on just what we saw, I totally understand what you're saying. And yeah, I think that there was I think he blew it up a lot more than we saw. And, you know, even going into the going into recent episodes, it wasn't just I'm upset. He lied to me.

[00:48:10] It's I I couldn't figure out why I'm not having fun. Oh, it's because of Rick. Oh, yeah. Well, and there's this like general idea to like it's a fast Rick is one of these people. I love that he kind of pointed out in his exit press. Rick has this. I don't know, like there's just this stereotype of Rick as being a chaotic, messy, distrustful like player.

[00:48:36] And when you actually look at the resume, Rick and David on edge of extinction, they are locked in a rider. Guys. Yeah. He's like, this is my guy. This is the only guy I know that I can trust. And he he's willing to go down and be the only vote with David when they're like the targets of everybody else in the game. Then he's on an island by himself and he's looking for anywhere, anybody that'll trust him. He does that this season with Emily. Like it's just like, hey, it's us too. And then he's on an island again.

[00:49:04] But Rick is a very loyal player. And it's like just because he's deceptive. And this is like obviously the nuance that the honor integrity folk don't see or can't justify in their own brains is like just because he's deceptive to the other alliance. Yes. Doesn't doesn't mean he's not a good ally to have. Rick is an ally you absolutely want to have. He's right. One hundred percent. Yeah, he's creative. He's a shield. He's loyal. He's everything you could possibly want in an ally.

[00:49:34] But there's a lot of people that get scared off by the theatrics and can't get over that. But, you know, we see this throughout Survivor history. There's actually quite a few people. I know it's a completely separate conversation. We don't need to give this guy any airtime. But like Gabe from my season has a theory that Russell Hance is actually one of the most loyal players the show has ever seen. You just don't think of it because you think he's this he is this nasty villain to everybody else.

[00:50:02] But if you look at him with his foe of foe of folks, you know, he takes him all the way to the end. He locks in with Parvati on day one and takes her like all the way to the end. He doesn't turn against his alliance. So sometimes there are players that like you view as like, oh, that's messy and chaos. But if you really look at the root of who they're riding with, they're very loyal. Yeah. Yeah. We could get into a huge discussion about that, but we won't. So, yeah.

[00:50:30] And I will have more to say about some other of those more nuanced views. I don't remember where I'm saying it, but I have it in here somewhere. Yeah. One more thing on Rick. Sorry, just about this, because this came to mind. I meant to mention it earlier. I mentioned how he plays from the bottom. Yeah. It is very much this as well. This idea that on two seasons now we have seen Rick be like, hey, here's my people. And I know who I'm against. And I've been in that spot on my season where I was like, hey, it's me and Genevieve against

[00:50:59] seven other people. It's us against the world kind of a thing. And you're very much aware of where the dynamics lie. But why I think we love Rick Devins, why I think Rick Devins is awesome TV. And it's what he says out there is that he's just he's fun. He's positive. The game becomes so much more fun to play when you're very when the lines are very clear to you, when there's no more of this like I'm having to manage every have my finger in every

[00:51:27] single pot and manage relationships and not know where I can trust and look over my shoulder. Like when you kind of know, here's who's with me. Here's who's against me. How can I make waves in this like push and pull back and forth? I think the game becomes a lot simpler and it becomes so much more fun. And I think that's why we see Rick and we're just like, this guy's so fun because he you know, he doesn't have to worry about whether or not he's actually with Jonathan or not. Like he knows, all right, Jonathan's on the other side.

[00:51:54] Now, is there something that I can do to fix that? And it it leads to this very like joyful, jovial, childlike spirit that he brings to the island. That's really fun to watch. Yeah. All right. Well, we can move on to Sari. And as I said a little while ago, she outplayed the Sela 4 Alliance or at least of the Sela

[00:52:19] 4 Alliance by by leading them on until she decided not to do so anymore, which mostly coincided with Christian bringing up Ozzy's name. But Devins said in interviews that she had clearly made her decision earlier. And we basically saw that when she told us Ozzy is a number one alliance. Christian is a number three. And that's really the key. She had this huge web of alliances going.

[00:52:47] Emily told Rob that after the merge, quote, everybody was thinking that they were working with Sari. Stephen described her on know-it-alls as effortlessly dominant. Took more effort to say that word than it did to. Going back to her original tribe, Savannah noted to Rob how quickly she was in with Devins, Christian and Emily, not to mention Ozzy, of course. So, quote, she wasn't going anywhere.

[00:53:13] And Savannah also told Dalton Ross, she is truly a social and strategic queen. She truly embodies what it means to be an incredible social player and an incredible gamer and strategist. From my position, it looked very much like Christian was pulling the levers and calling the shots. But even more powerful than Christian, where he has his two other close allies, you have Sari, who has a way of just getting to people, getting people to do exactly what she wants.

[00:53:41] And then Sari has control of Ozzy, Christian, Devins, and Emily. That's one person. Sari, low-key, has the majority in the tribe just because she's that freaking good. Yeah, she really is that freaking good. And it's scary because when you really look at who Sari is, she is the type of individual, and Sam, you were actually talking about this earlier, who realizes what her qualities are, the perception of herself, she totally gets it.

[00:54:11] She knows I'm not good at challenges. She knows I'm not good at finding idols. She knows the things that she is not going to excel at, but she knows what she is good at. And that's her ability to form relationships and have social capital and have the ability to communicate with individuals in a way that makes them feel heard and makes them feel important to her. And it's that it's kind of like Rick is so good at the Rick things. She is so good at the Sari things.

[00:54:38] And the fact that she is able to make every person that she has a conversation with really walk away from that conversation, that person walk away from that conversation going, wow, she's with me. Like, this is great. Like, Sari wants to play with me. And that makes them feel significant in her world, which allows her to maneuver through all of these relationships without making anyone feel like she's backstabbing them or that she's choosing someone over them. She's making them all feel important for a different reason.

[00:55:08] And it makes it very personal. And it's such an incredible talent to have when you're playing something like Survivor, where we've talked about it. When you when you feel like someone's lied to you and you feel like someone's been disingenuous, how that can affect you negatively. Sari lied to people constantly, but it just didn't feel like a lie. You know, where they'd come to her be like, we want to vote on Ozzy. And she'd be like, OK, that sounds like a good idea. But it wasn't for her. And so she would she would react differently and she would.

[00:55:38] And I thought it was really incredible how she described the I'm not going to fight in the forefront to keep someone. I'm going to fight in back here. I'm going to I'm going to do it in a way where no one necessarily sees that that's what I'm doing because I realize that will put my game at risk. And so her ability to find that balance was just so incredibly impressive. Loved that about her so much. And I don't think we've ever seen anyone play Survivor in this way, the way that Sari does.

[00:56:05] She really is just just insanely, insanely good at what she does. I thought Sari was better this season than we've seen her in a while. Mm hmm. But just from a. How active she was point of view, I don't like. I don't know. Game Changers three makes it to this very same spot. I seem to remember. And obviously some of this could obviously be the edit.

[00:56:32] It didn't seem like we saw as much of Sari being as in who this. And this version of three was really refreshing to me because I didn't know those for a lot of these four or five time players that were coming back is like how in they would be. And she seemed to be having a lot of fun and be very invested and be very like committed to playing hard. And I really liked that.

[00:56:58] I my favorite thing is watching how how she interacted with people. And you can even see, hey, she's bashing Joe and her confessional. And she's having a conversation with Rick being like, oh, you lied on Survivor. But then she's also sitting on the beach with Joe cracking up laughing at his little impression of Rick that he's doing. And she's like finding a way to be like, hey, Joe and Rick are beefing with each other. And both of them are talking to me about it.

[00:57:26] And I'm making both of them feel good and warm about it because she's laughing and giggling and egging both of them on. So watching her little one on one reactions and how she speaks to people, that was my favorite part of watching Sari on the season. I will have when we get to some of these rules, I will have some critiques of Sari's game here, which I think had a lot of potential and a lot of really good and kind of went wrong here

[00:57:52] over the last few weeks with how she deployed some of the agency that she gained. And but yeah, I mean, it was it. It's so good. And it is what you said, Jessica, like her ability to. To have people and I like that she lies to people, but she finds a way to sort of it's very Tony ask. She finds a way to push it back onto them, right? That was Hagi on Tony would would blindside you'd be like, well, the thing is, you actually

[00:58:21] went to woo and you were trying to talk to woo about me. And so then I had to turn it around and I had to get you before you got cast because you went against the alliance. And that's like Tony's whole thing. And and so now Tony has betrayed everybody sitting on the jury. But some of the people like, wait, was it my fault that I actually backed Tony first? I think Sari has a way of doing that, too, where she's kind of like, you know, like. As much as she would be like, I can be mad at Rizzo because this she's like blaming Ozzy.

[00:58:49] Ozzy shot himself or like, oh, you know, Christian, you did this. So like I had to vote you out. You went after Ozzy. So I had to vote for you, you know, like so now if you're Christian and you were, you know, talking to Sari and she's at the final tribal, he's like, you backstabbed me, Sari. You like complete what he's like. She's like, well, you were here. Ozzy was up here. You came like, what do you want me to do? And you justify her actions. And she does a really good job of doing that so that it's not just like, oh, sorry about

[00:59:19] you. I had to do what I had to do. There's like a reason behind everything, which I think helps her social game, helps her strategic moves not be held against her from a social perspective. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to what you have to say, because I suspect I know what it is and I already have arguments against it. So we'll see how that goes. If I'm right. If I'm right. But, you know, talking about her different alliances and how she had to turn on them,

[00:59:46] which obviously, you know, if you have that, if you're aligned with everyone, you're going to have to turn on them. I think I mentioned this in a previous podcast. I know I did in a video. But every time this topic comes up, all I can think of was when she got into a big argument with Corey on Big Brother. And she said, well, I didn't want to be in 75 alliances. Because we know she actually did want to be in 75 alliances. Right. And that's how she controlled so much of the game. Yeah.

[01:00:15] The difference was, and I think I mentioned it here, she wasn't caught. Yeah. I mean, people talked about it, but she wasn't like called out. You know, it was just, yeah, it's just what she's doing. And like you said, Jessica, the Aussie thing was a perfect example of where people should have figured it out, but she had a way around it. And they'd come to her about Aussie. Boom, they'd be gone. And obviously there was some magic going on there.

[01:00:43] And you got to it, which was the part about her hearing them out, not arguing. And we especially saw that. We didn't see it so much leading up to this point, but we especially saw it in the split when Jonathan came to her for permission to vote out Aussie, which by the way, permission, you had to get permission from, you know, from the head of the mafia. And she was like, oh yeah, sure.

[01:01:12] Which apparently was how she was all the time. The difference was, as you said, Jessica, she would back channel normally. This time she couldn't because of the split. That terrible split. Yes. And so she talked about this. She said that she learned from heroes versus villains when she fought so hard to keep Candace and it cost her the game. So, you know, I, I'm sure we've seen people do this before. I just can't think of who off the top of my head.

[01:01:41] And I certainly don't know of anyone who did it better. And to the point that we talked about this last week, Emily went to Ceri to discuss voting out Aussie because she literally thought it was Ceri's idea. That is how convincing Ceri is in agreeing with you. Oh, it's her idea. And, you know, we have the Ghostbusters provisions of the rules here that says if someone asks

[01:02:07] you if you want to be in an alliance or in this case, make a specific move, you say yes. Ceri went above and beyond that. She said yes each time and then immediately set about turning it into a no. Yeah. It's just amazing. Absolutely amazing. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but this will start our debate so we can move it along and come back. Okay. Okay. Well, Tiffany, well, what rule are you looking at for that? Maybe rule two? Well, I don't know.

[01:02:36] We'll see when you bring it up. But Tiffany said in her episode nine video, for people who don't know, I've referenced these a couple of times. Tiffany's been making videos each episode. She tends to post them the day the next episode is on. So I usually don't see them until afterwards. But, you know, she answers questions and stuff like that. I haven't seen anything that's even remotely a spoiler. She's very good about that. But she said in her episode nine video that Ceri had the most impressive game at the time.

[01:03:05] She saw it out there, but even more so watching. Everybody would run information through her, even the people who were not working with her. And again, you know, I just talked about this with Jonathan going to Ceri about Ozzy. Tiffany, when Tiffany approached Jonathan at Final Seven about going after Rizzo, Jonathan was like, I'm not making a move without talking to Ceri.

[01:03:32] So she gave people good feelings by making it seem like she was on their side right up until the moment when she wasn't. And another good example was that, you know, the woman that Ceri has known for so many years who said all sorts of things about Ceri in her interviews, telling Mike Bloom, Ceri is constantly saying to me, you're like family. We're going to the end. It's going to be like me and Parv. I swear I'm not going to write your name down. I mean, up until the night she votes me out, she says this to me. She's good at what she does.

[01:04:01] And I believed her. Now, I have to say, I don't know if I believe Ceri said exactly that, considering Ceri shot down another thing this woman said, you know, in her interview. She's like, I didn't say that. She has revisionist history. But she also told Dalton Ross about Ceri. I think she's a manipulator, but good on her. You know what I mean? Ceri is made for these games. She's cut out for this. Yeah.

[01:04:30] I want to know what this debate is going to be. I mean, we can kind of it. I don't know. Well, we'll save it. We'll save it. All right. OK. Now, another thing Ceri, of course, did was basically strategizing for her entire alliance. How many times did we see Ozzy or someone else come up with some plan that we at home realized was a bad idea? And then Ceri would swoop in to clean up the mess and get people back on track. Even in this episode, Tiffany and Jonathan, this may be where the debate comes.

[01:04:59] Tiffany and Jonathan wanted to switch the vote from Devin's to Rizzo. But Ceri kept this from happening. And now some people, maybe Sam's about to, have said this was a mistake on her part. For example, Rob said on know-it-alls that she should have kept Rick so that the focus would stay on him. But then Ceri told Rob in her interview that she knew Devin's wanted her out, was really beating that drum and would not go to the end with her. So she couldn't keep him.

[01:05:26] I do wonder if there was some middle ground she could have tried. But with Devin's, it's so difficult because he could find an idol or win an immunity challenge at any time. And you just don't know. Okay, so this is not exactly where I'm going to jump in. But I wanted to go back to a little bit of what you were saying with the 75 alliances and just highlight another thing that I think Ceri does very well.

[01:05:54] Because you also bring up the idea of by the time people realize that she's against them, it's when their name is being read as being voted out, right? We see this with a number of people throughout this post-merge of like, oh, I guess I wasn't that close with Ceri. Well, now I'm out of the game. Or you realize it and now you're firmly on the bottom. She also does a really good job of doing things like voting out Stephanie and then keeping Jonathan close enough where Jonathan still feels like he has a relationship with her

[01:06:23] and needs to check in with her on different things. And one thing that I think that Ceri does very well in order to do this is she makes any agenda feel like an us agenda. It's why we in our group need to do things. And she presents that to every group that she's speaking with and then sort of figures out where she can fit in that, like where she actually votes with all of these plans to best position her game.

[01:06:53] Now, this is a really hard thing to do. You know, one for like the actual social chops that it takes to be able to pull this off, but then also to be able to puppeteer things without it blowing up. Um, it is so hard. I had a brief, uh, brief stint. My pre-merge was a lot like this on, on my season where, you know, you're kind of like running the show and you have like your, your finger in every pot and you're, you know,

[01:07:21] you have every relationship and you can have your will done regardless of what you want to do. And it's so hard to not get people to cross check information or not get people to be like, Hey, what are you doing? You know, like when you vote somebody out, usually their allies are going to be like, so you weren't actually with us. They'll press you. They won't trust you. They'll be angry with you. And it's so hard to maintain that. And what she does a really good job of is like I mentioned earlier, justifying why she

[01:07:49] does the things that she does, but then also presenting things as like a group decision of like why we needed this, why we need to do this in order to preserve her options for as long as possible. And I mean, you see that when she votes against the coach and Chrissy, she still goes to the next tribal council with Jonathan and Stephanie thinking that they're with her and like that this old school Alliance is still in tech, even though she just took a very clear shot at this old school Alliance.

[01:08:17] And, and that is a really masterful thing to do is find a way to, and then like, Hey, Rick Devens maybe doesn't want to work with her here now that she's like voted out Christian and voted out Emily. And it's very clear what sides they're on, but Rick is also on the, on the bottom and he doesn't really have a ton of people that, you know, can rally around him to vote out Siri. So that's another thing that I think she deserves a lot of credit for it's it's so hard.

[01:08:42] People don't realize how hard it is with how much survivor players talk to be playing a two-faced game and also not get caught playing a two-faced game. That's right. That's tough stuff. Yeah. I mean, this, this goes back to Brian Heideck in that beloved season, Thailand, you know, when he was doing exactly that, he had each person convinced he was with them.

[01:09:09] He had the web of alliances and then he would viciously stab them in a lot more viciously than Siri, you know, stab them in the back and they would never see it coming. And we have seen this web strategy used. I talk about in the rules, a few of the, the times we've seen it, Dom and Wendell kind of acted as one person together with that web strategy. Carson in 44 acted similarly with that web strategy.

[01:09:38] And so obviously, you know, like with Siri, you don't always win doing it, but I, you know, you can, you can use it, but it, like you said, it is very difficult. And I think I even mentioned this in the rules. You can do this, you can try it, but damn, if two people took the wrong, two people talk you're cooked. Yep. Yeah. And that's all I tell you. And it's, it is so, so stressful. Like, I, I mean, I remember early on early days of my season, I, I had Andy locked in

[01:10:07] as like my number one. I had Sierra locked in as a number one. Then I had this four person alliance with me, Sierra, Annika, and Rachel. I had the idol in my sock and I, Andy was telling me that he found the idol and put it back. And then I was, I pinned it on Annika. So now Andy thinks Annika has the idol and wants to vote her out. Meanwhile, I have the idol and all the girls know I have the idol. And I'm just sitting here. Like every time I was in a confessional, I'm like, if one person goes and talks to

[01:10:33] Andy on the beach right now, I could be so cooked that our next tribal count, like it's just so hard and stressful. And so to watch somebody like Sari do this from day one and then like run it as long as she does with the level of composure that she has, it's. And like you said, Dom and Wendell do it maybe as good as it's ever been done. It's a lot easier to do when you have a second person that's kind of like helping you with that. And like, you have to do it all yourself, which she does have to do here.

[01:11:02] And what I think she does a really good job of, you know, twofold. I think she convinces a lot of other people that they are her Dom and Wendell. And it's like, Hey, Riz, you and me, we, we, we both build this web of alliances and we protect each other. People don't realize how close we are. Hey, me and Oz, people aren't going to realize how close we are. She kind of does this with Tiff and she has enough people that kind of think that it's

[01:11:27] really, it's the two of us that are building this web that allowed her to singularly build a really big web. But it, man, I get stressed talking about it, thinking about it. It's, you know, so she's dealing with it for 20 something odd days here. It's, it's impressive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, one thing that helped with all of this, uh, or I don't know if it helped or, or knowing

[01:11:54] it helped her, but you know, it was a perfect example of her understanding the whole game board. So like, even though nobody told her as soon as Tiffany won immunity, Sari knew she had become the target. Uh, in interviews, she shared a little insight into how she realized it, noting to Dalton Ross that, you know, we saw that scene of her asking Rizzo what would happen if Tiffany won immunity. And he's like, oh, I don't know.

[01:12:24] Uh, and Sari said, I'm like, what do you mean you don't know? Because I knew then if Tiffany were to win, they would come from me. And I wondered at the time, was that why they showed that scene? Because one thing we often hear from good survivor players is that if you're hearing about a fake plan, they don't have details. And clearly Rizzo saying he didn't know indicating, indicated he was probably lying or someone had lied to him about what would happen in that instance.

[01:12:54] And Sari knew it. She wasn't able to do anything about it, but it just showed again, how well she understood all of the pieces on the board. Yeah. And I think that that really comes back to the relationships again, because she, she knows the relationships that she has with Tiffany and she knows the relationship she has with Rizzo. And as soon as Rizzo is not sharing information with her, that's when the red flag goes off, you know, where you're like, but wait, it's irregular. Yes. Right.

[01:13:22] This is someone who has been sharing information with me the entire game, almost to his own detriment. And now all of a sudden there is no plan. So I really do think that, that again, just it, it speaks volumes of her understanding each person individually and how the relationship that she's formed with them has developed over time. And then she can utilize that to her benefit because then she can use that lack of response that she would normally get from Rizzo to know, I know exactly what's going on right now. Yeah.

[01:13:52] Yeah. All right. Well, I think we can move on to the second rule, which says not to scheme and plot too much and to keep your scheming secret. And this is an interesting one for Devin's because I think everyone's first inclination would be to say, no, he didn't keep it secret. He was very open about what he did, but that was really only the case when he was in a situation where he needed to do that or that people knew ahead of time that he would be.

[01:14:22] And one reason, and I started to reference this earlier, but one reason for his big argument with Joe, aside obviously from being caught in the lie, was that Devin's did want to keep certain things secret. He told Mike Bloom, I think our difference in opinion is I feel like as an ally, I'm taking care of you. If I'm protecting you and if I'm never coming for you, if I'm looking out for our interests,

[01:14:51] but I don't think that means I need to tell you all my secrets. But I think Joe from watching the season, it's like he really wants you to tell him all the secrets and be filled in. And yeah, I agree with him on that. Devin's definitely knew. You don't need to tell everyone, not even your allies. You don't tell them everything. And I think he was right. And we did see that from Joe.

[01:15:18] You know, we saw it when someone else talked about, oh, when I told him about my steal a vote, he got very upset and, you know, formed off because I hadn't told him sooner. He really did feel if you're my ally, I need to know every single thing. But Devin's is right. You don't need to tell them anything that doesn't impact them directly. Well, and I think that this is a very hard balance to find again.

[01:15:45] And this is this is I just have to compliment Rick for finding this balance, even though it did frustrate people like Joe. Your allies do expect you to be sharing information. And we see this time and time again on Seasons of Survivor when someone finds out after the fact, like, why didn't you tell me about that? I thought we were in alliance together. Why didn't I know about this thing? And and you have to be ready for the response.

[01:16:10] And I think that, unfortunately, Joe is just not someone who can necessarily play survivor on that type of level where like, oh, no, that does make sense, Rick, that I didn't need to know that information. But but the fact that Rick recognizes this, that, no, that's not directly going to impact the person. So they don't need to know because really information is so important and so significant when you're playing survivor, because now with the advantages, you know, maybe you don't

[01:16:37] want to share everything with everyone because there might be someone who has an advantage that can steal something from you. And so it's playing survivor at a different level, recognizing how this could impact this person, but not necessarily that one. And so I agree, too. I think that this is one of those very difficult situations where you have to decide who needs to know this information. But if you decide someone doesn't need to know what's your response going to be to them if you get called out on it, because that can negatively affect the relationship

[01:17:07] that you have with that person. So you have to be ready for that conversation as well, because it's likely going to happen when that person finds out. Yeah, I mean, Rick is absolutely in the right in that regard that. But I'll say like, it is tough, you know, like you hear that your ally has something or, you know, did something that you didn't know about. And there is a level of like, well, are you closer, especially if it involves other people?

[01:17:34] If it's a steal a vote and it's like, hey, this person or an idol that they didn't tell you about, but nobody on the board knew about. I think there is a level of like, OK, fair. You were looking out for yourself. But if it is like, wait, you had to steal a vote and John knew, but I didn't know. All of a sudden that is like, are you closer to so and so than you are to me? That can be very concerning. So I get the initial thought from from somebody like Joe, why that would be worrisome.

[01:18:00] But there's definitely a level of composure and nuance that's required to be a good survivor player of being willing to put that like initial gut feeling reaction aside, even if you're pretending to put it aside to maintain this relationship and this alliance that he doesn't seem to be able to do. But Rick is absolutely correct. And we see throughout the history of the show that you can have somebody's back. And yet you also know, hey, like there's one winner. And if you have a leg up on your own alliance, like.

[01:18:30] Like. It's nothing like it's like if you make a five person alliance, you're still thinking about who's your three in the five. Yeah, you should. You should be thinking about that if you're smart and like you should know where your outs are. Hey, when we get to the final five, do I have a path to get to the end with this group? And if you're not, because you view that as like disloyal, I think you're a step behind what it actually takes to get ahead in the game.

[01:18:57] And I think Rick does a good job of looking out for his people, but also keeping Rick's things, Rick's things so that he has an independent resume to stand on if he does get to the final tribal council, which is an important aspect of anybody's game is you don't want to be lumped in with everybody else in your alliance. You have to stand out. So yeah, yeah. And, you know, we saw in this season just telling one other person or two other people, all

[01:19:25] of a sudden you get to merge and everybody knows everything. Right. Yeah. I mean, Rick is closely aligned with Emily throughout the entire season and Emily's telling everybody everything. So like just because you tell your closest ally a piece of information doesn't mean that it's not going to go anywhere and is like better for your alliance because it can completely kill your alliance. Yeah. If it gets to the wrong years. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that that's an interesting point too, to bring up as well as is when you

[01:19:53] tell your alliance, the information is also significant because we saw Christian kind of screw that one up. Right. When he decided to tell Emily like on the mat, like as things were happening, like, hey, by the way. And she was like, I don't know what's going on anymore. And so it's not only like knowing what to tell them, it's also knowing when to tell them and how to tell them. Because if you throw something on someone like that at the last minute, then you have someone like Emily who's like, I'm going to go tell everybody what you just told me because this doesn't make any sense to me. So it's just one more component that you have to be cognizant of.

[01:20:23] Yeah. Like you don't have to tell them I've had an idol for the last week and a half. Hey, I found an idol. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They don't need to know the whole backstory to it. Yeah. Mm hmm. So, yeah, I don't think this was an issue for Rick, this overall rule. And I also don't think it was a problem for us to read. I talked earlier. Hang on real quick, because I think like this stuff out in the open. I do think this is that this is the rule I have the issue with for Rick. OK. Here it comes.

[01:20:53] I don't disagree with any of like this stuff that we've said, obviously, I fully agree with all of our points. My thing is, and Rick says it himself, and it's what I love about that. Like, if there's one thing I love about season 50, it's this and any returning season. It is the fact that oftentimes the winner of this season, the people that go very far, that do very well, are the people that correctly adjust from their previous mistakes.

[01:21:21] It's the people that kind of understand what went wrong, understand why they didn't win or why they won in the case of our winners. Right. And then are able to make the necessary adjustments to that. What I find interesting is that so often people come out of the game and they don't understand why they didn't win. They don't they didn't listen to why blank loss. They don't know. And they or they just have like kind of a disillusioned sense of what costs them the game.

[01:21:49] And so the adjustments that they're making are not the right adjustments. I think Charlie is somebody we see that with on the season who has this thing. My number one didn't vote for me. And that's why I lost. And that becomes so ingrained in his head that it affects his gameplay. And there's it's like there's other things that are the reason why you didn't win. And there's other things that you can do better this time around to ensure you get that far again. Right. The other thing here is that there's there's always going to be a handful of people

[01:22:19] who know the adjustments that they have to make. And yet they succumb to nature. And I think Ozzy is one of these people. Yes. Who is like Oscar, Oscar, Oscar. And then he goes back to Ozzy and he has these emotional outbursts after tribal councils. And he gets a little too confident towards the end and goes home with the idol. I think coach is one of these people who, you know, like he knows better than to be like haiku coach who's running the show and rubs people the wrong way.

[01:22:48] And from what we hear, he does fantastic at the social aspect of the game. So often we're like people kind of like him right up until they don't because he becomes old coach again and kind of goes back to his old ways. And Rick has a quote at his boot tribal council where he says, I was trying to build relationships and do this kind of like social game this time. And I couldn't help but become old Rick. And I love it. You love it.

[01:23:17] Like we all love it as viewers. But is old Rick really the way to win the game? Is this showman loudest guy in the room? Flashy gameplay. Is it the way to win the game? I don't think so. Because regardless of whether or not like regardless of, hey, was it wrong to necessarily keep things secret? The one thing was clear is that publicly Rick is perceived as a schemer. Rick is perceived as this guy that's making all these moves. And by proxy, he's perceived as a huge jury threat.

[01:23:48] And now you have a little too early in the game at 9-8-7, made yourself the guy that is at the very top of the chopping block totem pole. And he did this in Edge of Extinction and goes on this great run with immunity challenges and idols and almost hits the one outer to win the game. And he does do it again here where you go from being in a great, maybe like solidified position within an alliance that has legs to go far to then being a little bit loud to make yourself the center of attention.

[01:24:17] And oftentimes, being the center of attention just means that you're the easy vote out for everybody else in the game looking to advance themselves. So if there was a rule I think that you could nitpick and critique Rick on, it is this plotting a little too much, scheming a little too much, doing it all a little bit too loudly. Even if all of it's fair and he is overall like a loyal player, it does make it the Rick Devins show at Tribal Council every week.

[01:24:44] And other players are going to want Rick Devins out naturally as part of that. And it's like, hey, even if he survives at seven, he's going to go at six. He's going to go at five. You put yourself in that spot where you need the five immunity challenge wins in order to get to the end. And I just don't think that's good gameplay. Yeah. Like, or ideal gameplay, should I say, for like any player going in. And I think, I think Rick knows that. And I think that's why he's like self-critical at the, at the Tribal Council here being like, He can't get away from himself.

[01:25:14] He can't. And I love it. And that's why we love him. And that's why I say put him on every season of Survivor. But also like, if you could dial it back just a little, I think you could actually just like win every time. So I interpreted him saying that a little bit differently. Oh, okay. My interpretation was he was doing it until he couldn't anymore. So basically once Sari had made the decision, I am cutting from the seal of four,

[01:25:43] which of course Rick found out once she voted out Christian, he was, I don't know that he had any other option. I don't know who he could have gotten in with. Sari had made it clear. You two are on the outs. We heard lots of people talking. Now he didn't necessarily hear this, but we heard lots of people talking. We got to get rid of the middle people, a bad name for them, but that's what they were called. We've got to get rid of those two.

[01:26:13] We've got to get rid of those two. Once they were at that situation, there was no way. I mean, Joe, we know was certainly never going to work with him. Jonathan did not want to work with him. Aubrey did work with him for a time, but also knew I can't work with him long-term. Sari didn't want to work with him. There's just not too much there though. There is like Sari splits from the seal of four

[01:26:39] after Rick does his fake idol fiasco at tribal council. And he's not going home at that tribal council. Like it seems, it seems like from everything we've heard that there was enough votes to take out coaching Chrissy where he could have like maintained his spot. And you, you do this thing that obviously like pushes a couple extra votes onto, to, to coaching Chrissy and get them out almost unanimously.

[01:27:04] But it does now make this contingent of Rick, Christian and Emily very top of mind for everybody else in the game is like that needs to be dealt with. And Rick having the idol saves him and actually pushes the target onto Christian before it pushes it onto him. But I do, I do think there's an argument to be made there that there were, that was a set. And I think from Christian's perspective

[01:27:33] or, and we hear from Aubrey and from Christian Aubrey's kind of like, yeah, this is great that Rick did that because now this makes Rick the center of attention. We hear from Rizzo and Ozzie saying, this is great that Rick did that because now everybody wants Rick out. We hear from Christian being like, this is not good because this, you know, he didn't seem too pleased with the fact that Rick went and pulled the fake idol when he did, when that could have been used a little later in the game. It could have been. So I do think that there's an argument there that Sari got pushed against that group

[01:28:02] based on this idea of making, making that group a threat when if you stay a little quieter for a round one Christian is probably an easy target to go ahead of you anyways. You can always then pull the fake idol thing and try to like get yourself another round with your friends still in the game. Like there, there was a lot of different avenues. I think you can go from there. Um, so I don't, it's an interesting conversation. Yeah. I think it is a debate that cannot be answered

[01:28:31] because, you know, Rick said in his interviews and he thought he realized he might be sick, but he didn't know. And as he said, I don't trust what people are saying now. Yeah. Because people are looking back and changing what was going to happen. That is fair. That happens a lot. Revision is history. So he said, and we talked about it at the time, you know, we, we say, we always say, if you have an inkling, if you have a real idol and you have an inkling

[01:29:00] that you may be the target, use it. Don't hold on to it. So the same kind of applies to a fake idol. You know, if you have a fake idol and you think you might be going, pull it out. So I can't argue too much with him having done that. Here's, here's an interesting one. This is a side debate. I just kind of thought of even though. So let's say that that's okay. Right. Right. Maybe the play is one thing that I,

[01:29:29] I admire so much about a Rizzo and what, how he plays the game and what he said throughout his two seasons. Now is seven is four is two is 11 is 15. Like, I don't care. I want to win or it's, you know what? Like you're playing to win the game. Right. Should Rick have held onto his idol with that same theory in mind when Emily is going like, you kind of know that the, you know, the votes are probably going to go onto Emily

[01:29:57] because you have this idol that you're very publicly going to play. And if you hold onto that idol, Emily goes out the door. Now you're at seven with an idol that has to be played. Like there there's just like, Oh, and nobody really knows that it has to go at seven. And we've seen Rizzo like bluffing with the idol and stuff. Rick has bluffed with fake idols in the past. That is like that to me feels like the, Hey, I'm going to take a swing. And if I go out with the idol in my pocket, because they sniff it out and like vote,

[01:30:26] vote me out at the, at final eight, going out at eight or seven doesn't really matter to me, but like having that idol with me at seven could be the thing that propels me to six to then win a challenge to then get to five. And like, you start to close in on a world where you're in the final tribal council. I think that Rick was thinking the same way that Emily was. This is a game winning move. If we're talking about that, if you two can work together to get rid of Sari, he plays the idol though. And like, that's the thing is like, you know,

[01:30:55] maybe he doesn't need to. Right. Right. Yeah. Like I think in that may be like, is it loyalty to a fault for Rick there that he's like, this is a game winning move for me and Emily, but was there a game winning move for Rick specifically that requires throwing Emily under the bus? You know, they stack votes on Emily. You say, see a girl, I'm actually not going to play my idol, but I'm going to be alive at seven with an idol and an opportunity to get Sari or get some legs in the game and go, go a little bit farther.

[01:31:24] Um, so it like, there is an element of this is a game winning move. If both of us pull it off, but I think it's a game winning move for Emily because Emily pulls out Sari there. You still are at seven with Rick Evans having a note, like a publicly played idol and still being a big threat where he can go home before her. And now Emily has legs to get to the end. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was going to say something earlier and now I can't remember what it was, but the, the, Oh, I, I, I think it goes back to just, you know,

[01:31:53] interpreting the game in the moment also. And I think that, um, you know, even going back to when he pulled the, the fake idol and the timing there of when Sari had cut him, everything that you had brought up. Um, I do think in Sari's mind, that Alliance was already cut. I know that we didn't see the action of it until she, until, uh, Christian is kind of bob and weave between the two sides. It's like, Hey, take out coaching Chrissy,

[01:32:22] then take a shot against the other side. Yeah, exactly. And so, and that's pretty much what she was saying all throughout. And then, like I said earlier, when, when Christian came to her about Ozzy, she was immediately like, well, Ozzy's my number one. Christian's like a number three Alliance. So she had already made that her mind up, even though, so even though it happened after the fake idol play, I think the wheels were set in motion for that before, you know, like maybe a couple of votes before the fake idol play.

[01:32:52] And so, um, so I don't think that the fake idol play, I guess a correlation is not causation. You know, we would say, I think that he was already on the bottom. He just didn't know it yet. And so once he did know it and started doing all these big things, I think at that point, like I said, this is a discussion that could go on forever. And I don't know that we would have an answer as to, did he, you know,

[01:33:21] did he go back to old Devons because he had to, or the thing here though, like with this play, because I can hear that. And I agree with that, you know, is that he was already on the bottom. And like I said, chaos is a ladder for those on the bottom. And like a great job of making chaos. One of the things I think he could have done better this time that he does very well in edge of extinction is find the times to try to like tuck

[01:33:50] onto his rung and not be so worried about like climbing the ladder. Um, you know, we see edge of extinction. He blows up some spots, but then he also is like, all right, there's a tribal council. David get, David goes home and he's willing to like, you know, pick up Lauren for one vote so that they can vote against Ron Clark. And then, you know, once Chris Underwood comes back, now he has a guy that he can work with. And like, granted, Hey, the, the idols and the, uh, the immunity wins are doing a lot of heavy lifting.

[01:34:18] They're helping him ingratiate himself with people because he has safety, which is obviously a tool to, uh, you know, like strategically align yourself with other people. But I think he does a really good job of like, not every tribal council needs to be Rick doing something. And, you know, if you can take one off and then maybe, you know, blow something up at the next one, like there, then you give yourself like more legs and it does feel like here. And maybe this is just causation of his positioning being different this time around.

[01:34:47] And he doesn't win immunity. He doesn't have the same number of idols, but, uh, it feels like every round he is the center of attention here and he never allows it to kind of like pump the brakes on him ever. So it's like, Hey, his realistic path to the end on this season is win, win, win, win, win, win, win all the way to the end. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do think a lot of it was just the people were focused on him and Sari was keeping the focus on him. And other people were to,

[01:35:15] when you have this many other threats in the game, they all want to point to someone else. And he was the easy person to point to. And like you said, yeah, he never got, he never got a tribal council off. He, you know, I think part of that is the new era game. You don't have a day off. Yeah. Well, that's actually a great point because we, we talk about that with the down day, right. And the three day cycle and like how much in 39 day survivor, can things change over the course of three days where it's like, Oh,

[01:35:45] well Rick was going to go, but now the war dogs pissing everyone off. So like, he's going to, you know, he's going to go next now because he's doing too much. And you don't really like in new era survivor, you wake up the next morning, you're already planning who you're going to vote out that night. And so it's kind of nonstop and it gives, it gives you less area to hide. That is a great point. Yeah. And when, when you don't have the down days and then when you're also losing the people that you've been aligned with. And it, so it's like the domino effect. It's like,

[01:36:14] it just keeps kind of going in that trajectory. It is very difficult to try to get your footing again without. Pushing all the way down on the gas, which Rick kept doing because he's hoping to make something happen because you really don't have the opportunities like you did before where he did have those extra days or he did have that, that time. He wanted to go look for an idol and he was told not to. And he was like crying in the hammock because this is not how he plays survivor. And so, you know, I do think there's something to be said about feeling like the

[01:36:42] pressure is on and there is no ability to take your foot off the gas because of the speed at which the game is moving. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well now we can move on to Sri. And you know, I, I think she was fine here. Like I said, even with her 75 alliances, even the players I quoted earlier who talked about her being aligned with everyone never actually put her in danger at that point. Right. Again, because as I mentioned earlier, Emily told Rob,

[01:37:10] everybody was thinking they were working with Sri. And this is an incredible skill. We've, we've seen it from good players before, but probably never done quite so well. The ability to be aligned with almost everyone and have each of them believe they are your true close ally. While everyone else is being fooled. We talked about it earlier. It is incredibly difficult to pull off. It usually leads to problems in this rule,

[01:37:40] but not for Sri. Yeah, no, she was the queen of the hammock. Everybody came to her at the hammock. Yeah, I agree. She was great here. I have actually a comp for Sri that I will get into when our debate finally gets sparked, David, but I'll, I'll let us go on. Trying to figure out when this debate is going to happen. I know. I'm so, I'm so intrigued. It's like throwing me off a little bit. On their toes. I know. Always keep them wanting more, you know. Love this. All right. Well,

[01:38:09] we can move to the third rule for, for Devin's, which tells players to be flexible. So Sam, what did you think of Rick here? Yeah. I mean, Rick is kind of like the most flexible. He, you know, he, he's so unpredictable and so unexpected. But I think that's what makes his game really compelling. It's what a lot of people don't like about his game is how not rigid he is, you know? And I, and I think that's makes him great TV. Um, I think,

[01:38:39] but I think Rick, like I said before too, and you see this over the course of his career, edge of extinction season 50, regardless, like this ability to diagnose. I, so I think Rick was very, he played the game face up on edge of extinction for eight days or whatever it is, or 10 days until he gets voted out and he gets blindsided and he gets this second chance to come back into the game.

[01:39:06] And I think that kind of like unlocked this feeling inside Rick of that guy that I was for 10 days that went home early. That's not what I want my survivor experience to be this idea of like, Oh, I was trying to play by the book with my allies. And then I went home unexpectedly. And like, that's just it. And so he plays this very free loose game that is flexible and ever changing, but it's fun to watch. And it, but I think that carries over here into season 50.

[01:39:35] So I have no issues with his, with his flexibility. And I think that it's a, Oh, you know, a blessing of an opportunity that he gets being on edge of extinction and having the second life and a blessing for all of us as, as survivor fans, because without that edge of extinction twist, we don't come to know Rick Devins like we do now as viewers. And he has brought so much to the show over the last, you know, over his two seasons on it. Yeah. Very true. The one good thing to come out of that twist.

[01:40:05] The only good thing. For Underwood, baby. No. As a person, great guy, but you know, we'll, we'll leave it at that. We, we did enough on the pot, the, the Y Chris one podcast that Chris came on to do his deep dive with, with Rob and was like, Oh, Bloomberg, man. Yeah. He said the same thing to me when I met him, I was like, I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. But,

[01:40:35] but yeah, I think Devins was obviously willing to work with just about everyone. Unfortunately for him, the same was not true in reverse. Once the merge hit, he Christian and Emily were erroneously named as the middle people. Yeah. Others basically shunned the idea of working with him. He had those two. He thought the Sari and Aubrey, you know, until they believed it was wiser to go in a different direction. And, you know,

[01:41:04] not for lack of trying on his part though. Yeah, for sure. So Sam, now I have a softball question for you. All right. How about Sari's flexibility? The most flexible. Again, you know, like the reason game is, uh, yeah, I said, Rick was the most flexible. I guess I forgot about Sari because yeah, I mean, she's, she's miss options. That's her, that's her survivor. MO is, um, give yourself as many,

[01:41:30] give yourself as many paths as possible and maintain those paths as long as you possibly can to not have the doors closing in on you. You see the writing on the wall when you are a survivor legend and you're a great player like Sari is to, Hey, at some point, you know, the walls will be closing in and I'm not sure I have the physical ability to clutch up and win a challenge when those walls close in. Um, and so it is imperative to every good Sari Fields game to maintain as many relationships and

[01:41:58] as many strategic avenues as possible. And she does it again here in season 50, maybe arguably as good as she's ever done it in terms of, the web of alliances. We've seen her be great socially all the time in the past and she is great socially. I don't think this is necessarily pound for pound her best game, but I do think that this is the best job she does of flexibility and, um, keeping her options open.

[01:42:29] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, we just spent quite a while talking about her many alliances, the way she moved through them with such ease. Uh, you know, Devin's talked in his interviews about how strong, how strong this, the Sela four Alliance was, but again, at some point, Sari realized her other alliances were better for her. So she dropped them. And that was the case over and over as the game progressed. She had, we talked about the web. She had many paths forward and she could change them as circumstances dictated.

[01:42:58] It was even something she talked to about, uh, regarding Joe. She talked to Rob about it saying to me and survivor. Sometimes you have to be a little more flexible. Yes. You know, obviously true. Yes. Very true. So we can move on to the fourth rule, which tells players not to let their emotions control them. Now, Jessica, we know Devin's certainly played with a lot of exuberance. Did that translate to his emotions playing a role in decision making? I don't think so at all.

[01:43:28] I mean, I really think that he was, and I've said this before, he's able to find such a good balance with everything that's going on. The only time I really think we saw any type of an emotional response was the issue with Joe that we've already talked about, that maybe there was some reaction there where he was getting frustrated with how Joe was responding to him. And so maybe that was coming from more of an emotional space. But again, we don't know what else happened on the beach. It sounds like a lot of things happen with Joe.

[01:43:57] So that was probably fair in a way for Rick to respond the way that he did. But overall, I think all of the decisions that Rick was making came from a game place and he wanted to further his own game. And so he was willing to do whatever he needed to do, even if it was to make a big show of something. It was all game mechanics. It wasn't an emotional response in any way, shape or form. And I think if anything,

[01:44:24] he was able to kind of keep his emotions in check because there were things happening around him that were a little frustrating. And that were probably things that, that could have caused him to respond differently than he was when he knew that the middle was being targeted, when he knew that, you know, Emily was, was going to be the focal point when he knew that Siri was turning on him. There were things that could have caused more of an emotional response,

[01:44:48] but I think he still looked at everything from a strategic standpoint and how can I still move forward in this game, despite all of these things that are happening around me. So I think overall, he did great here. Yeah. I mean, I think, um, I think there is like a slight little bit of like emotion dictating his decisions, but I think it's all in a good way. I think, I think emotion is kind of like paramount to Rick Devins and who Rick Devins is as a survivor player.

[01:45:15] I think it's what makes him so rootable for a jury is that you're watching a guy. I think some of the showmanship is some emotion. It is a little bit of like, take that I'm back against the wall. I'm kind of kicking the door down. Um, but I don't think that's bad because I think, I think, like I said, I think it, it, it really makes him endearing to a jury. It makes him really rootable. It makes him real and, emotion just from Rick, as far as a viewer is concerned is one of my favorite things about him. Um,

[01:45:45] he's one of his edge of extinction journey is one of the most fascinating, I think we've ever seen in survivor. And I think it carries over here a little bit. It's very similar. I relate to it a lot. And it's part of the reason like his, his quote about, about the stars and stuff makes me very emotional is because I, you know, you see this version of Rick in edge of extinction and here, that is this, it, he's just this really confident, fun,

[01:46:15] um, energetic player that, that you think like is just having the best time and doesn't take the game too seriously. And he seems very strong and level headed, like all of these great things where you're just like, ah, like, but there is a lack of vulnerability behind some of that stuff. And yet when we get close to the end of the game, um, you know, like he does, he's very, uh, he's Rick, the, the, the energetic Rick, all of edge of extinction.

[01:46:43] And then he loses the fire to Chris and Jeff is kind of talking to him about it. And it's not until his journey is over. And he, and he kind of like takes a moment to reflect on what he just went through and how close he got and how disappointed he is, but how proud of himself he is at the same time. And I just think that it's a really beautiful thing to watch. And what I loved about this iteration of Rick is that you see a little bit more of that emotional awareness while he's doing it.

[01:47:13] And he is taking the time to look at the stars and to appreciate what's going on around him, um, in a way that he maybe didn't his first time around and probably missed for a very long time while he wasn't playing. Um, and so like, I just find, I find his emotion from a guy who seems to be kind of emotion lists and confident and, and all of the stuff and like the way that he plays the game to know that what's going on internally and to have him share that with us as viewers,

[01:47:43] I think is really cool. Um, so it's not gameplay related, but I think it is, it is, you know, essential to who he is as a character in the survivor lore and, and why a lot of fans love him so much. Yeah. Yeah. Even when he did his little dance for the camera, he noted in his interviews, nobody else was around to see that, you know, I walked off and people were like, where's Rick going now? And then he went off. Rick's going to dance. Yeah. Rick's going to dance. Uh, so yeah, I agree with everything you both said.

[01:48:13] I do want to mention some people might say that he shouldn't have voted against Sari the second time after the tie, knowing that the vote was going against Emily. I think that's equally strategic as it is emotional. Yeah, that is strategic for sure. Exactly. Changing your vote in that situation is meaningless. Sari knew what he tried to do. It's ridiculous to believe you could suddenly get back in the good graces just because you changed it when the math was obvious. So yeah, that was common sense and strategy, not an emotional.

[01:48:43] And a loyal standpoint. Yeah. The strategy of being like, Hey, I, maybe I can come to Sari next round and vote and like work with Sari where she might feel like if I'm like, yeah, I tried to vote you out last round. Sorry about that. Here's why I did that. But maybe we can both be benefit. Like we can both help each other moving forward. Like there is, that's more believable. If you're Sari, than if he's like, Sari, I, you know, I pivoted. I was like loyal to you at the end. You know,

[01:49:12] like now it feels phony. And that's kind of what I was talking about earlier with like, honesty is like a weapon. There is a sense of this is what it is. And I'm going to lay it all out there. That then gives you a sense of empowerment of if I can be blunt with you and tell you straight up what I'm thinking, maybe you're more inclined to believe it and then have, you know, a sense of like, I, you're a, a variable that I can quantify. So therefore I'm more willing to work with you than if, then somebody who I still don't know if they're actually with me or not

[01:49:41] because they're hiding their allegiances. Right. Well, and he actually did that. I mean, we've talked about it already where he was willing to say Rizzo, I wanted to vote you out or I was willing to say your name. I mean, so like there is something to be said about just that honesty component of it. Like, no, this is what my game is. And so you can get some more footing if you're willing to have those types of relationships and you can admit to people, no, I, this is what I was doing. And then in addition to, you have to think about Emily, because if he's,

[01:50:10] if he ends up in the final three and she's on the jury, she knows that he's loyal to her to the end. And, and I think that that can help get a jury vote as well. So there's something to be said about maintaining that loyalty, but then also having the ability to have that honest conversation. If needs to be with Sari, because you're not lying to anybody about what you're doing. It's, it's very apparent and he's, he's utilizing it in a strategic way. So it's just, it's a, it's a nice little package that he's putting together,

[01:50:40] even though it's a shitty spot, excuse my language to be in, because you do have to like maneuver it in such a way where you're like, yeah, this is going to be terrible going back. I'm voting for Sari again. And I'm, I might have to deal with this, but I think it, it can benefit him in more ways than people realize. Yeah. Yeah. Now, of course, Sari has been a master of this area for a long time. And it's really a requirement for playing the game, the way she did.

[01:51:08] You can't have a bunch of allies that you know, you're going to need to cut and be emotionally attached. It just won't work. Yeah. We saw and heard about several examples of her connecting with people while preparing to get rid of them early in the game. One moment, she was comforting Savannah when Savannah was being emotional. The next moment, ruthlessly voting her out. I mentioned earlier, the woman Sari has known for years, talking in interviews about how Sari said,

[01:51:37] a number of emotional things to her while leading her like a lamb to slaughter. And we even saw it at the very end of this episode. Sari talked in interviews about how close she is with Aubrey, how Aubrey has been at her house. This she didn't say in the episode, but later in interviews, was the first survivor player to meet her granddaughter, things like that. But when Sari realized she was the target, she knew it was kill or be killed. So she tried to flip it against Aubrey.

[01:52:04] I think what she's so good at doing is utilizing other people's emotions against them and not letting her emotions get in the way of the decisions that she's making. And that is just a gift that she has where we've talked about it already. She can make other people feel so important, so significant, like her number one, and then savagely takes them out of the game, but nobody holds it against her. It's a really fantastic thing to see. I mean, just to know that she's,

[01:52:34] the relationship she has with Ozzy and the relationship she had with Rizzo and how she had to balance all of that. And really, I mean, I think at one point she referenced having to babysit Joe. So she's very aware of other people's emotional needs, and that's what she steps up. And that's what she's able to kind of control and almost manipulate, but in such a way that they don't know that that's what's happening. So I think overall, like that's really her superpower here is just utilizing other people's emotions against them. Yeah.

[01:53:04] Superpower is the word. It is the ability. It's what makes her scary to everybody else is you can be such a good social player that also doesn't really have any true allegiances or loyalties because you're able to remove emotion from it and play as cutthroat as you need to, which is why she's great. It's why she's very scary, but yeah, she's kind of the example, I think for this rule moving forward for future players. Oh yeah. Yeah. And we even saw this back when she was on the traders, you know,

[01:53:33] the exact thing you, you talked about Jessica using people's emotions. One reason that the two faithfuls she brought to the end was so mad after the game, besides the fact that they didn't understand the game was that she made them feel so close to her emotionally. They would talk about how the three of them were going to do certain things with the money. And the other two talked about things they were going to do for themselves or for their families. And she encouraged that.

[01:54:00] And she knew she needed to do it as a game move to ensure that they would take her to the end. So she could win. They didn't understand that. And I think they're still bitter about it till today, but I do wonder, and this kind of just came to me. I don't know exactly what type of nurse Sari is, but I do wonder if there's some, not every nurse is going to be like this, obviously, but as a nurse, as anyone in the medical field, but especially a nurse,

[01:54:28] because I think nurses tend to spend more time with patients than doctors do sometimes. If there's someone there, you know, you have to take care of them. You, it doesn't matter. You may know their terminal. Yes. You, you have to be there emotionally for them. Well, you, many nurses do, you know, and I think she is probably like this. Obviously I haven't, you know, seen her on this aspect,

[01:54:55] but I just wonder if that played into it, that she knows how to, to deal with people, but also she knows, you know, they're, they're not going to be here forever. Right. She might be accustomed to dealing with people and some of their worst times of their life. And then to have that bedside manner and to make them feel like this is okay. And that they have someone with them. It very, very well could come from the work that she does. And she's also a mother.

[01:55:25] So I think there's a lot of components there that really are working to her benefit. And you know what to lean into and you know what to avoid. And if she's leaning into that caretaker kind of mode, it's clearly working every season that she's ever played in every show she's ever played. Yeah. All right. Well, the fifth rule reminds players they need to pretend to be nice and play the social game. Now, Sam,

[01:55:50] we saw at least one person who hated Devin's in the game with the fire of a thousand sons. Was that due to bad social play on Rick's part, which you have brought up somewhat already, or did he generally do okay in this? Yeah. I mean, maybe that one example was due to bad social play, but I also think, you know, if we're, if we're taking, you know, Rick and his, at his word and what he's kind of said in his post game interviews and stuff,

[01:56:16] he seemed to have a good relationship with Joe down the stretch, you know, game, gameplay aside. And that to me is the social game. That to me is where it really, where it really hits home is, Hey, Joe might not have wanted to work with Rick. The entire game, because if he didn't like how he played, but did they connect enough on a human level that if Rick was sitting in the final three and Joe was on the jury, would he have, would he have voted for him? Maybe, maybe not,

[01:56:45] but also who's he sitting next to? And I do think that we saw, you know, Rick with Ozzy, you know, bonding about personal stuff and kind of just being enough of like an open person to, to connect with a lot of people in a real way, which she says was a big focus of his, his game this time. And I do think he did a good job of at least pretending to play the social game. But I think one of the things about Rick that makes him very good is his ability to put game differences aside to bond with people.

[01:57:15] I think he did that a lot in his first season. And I think you see him do that a lot here as well. Despite being on the bottom, he seems to have good connections with a lot of the other people in the game. Yeah. Yeah. I think this was specific to Joe. You know, I mentioned this earlier, even going back to their initial big argument, everyone who was interviewed or talked about it took Rick's side. And when we saw Joe complaining to people, Aubrey was just kind of like, okay, didn't give.

[01:57:45] Or even when he tried to prod her into agreement, Sari actually fired back to point out the flaws of what he was saying. It would have been easy for everyone to jump on the bandwagon, but they weren't interested. And Devin's told Mike Bloom, I was surprised during the season at how much I was on his mind. I'm not a bad person because I'm playing a game hard. I keep all my commentary to gameplay. I just did not realize that I'd gotten under his skin as much as I had as a game player. So yeah,

[01:58:13] I think it was a Joe problem, not a Rick problem there. And Rick's wife told him have the spirit of playfulness. And he definitely did. I mentioned at the time how much I loved that. He called Joe and Jonathan smug sons of bitches and said, they can't wipe the smile off my face. And you know, he wasn't out there to hurt or bad mouth anyone. He was there to play a game and have fun. And I think he, he did both. Absolutely.

[01:58:44] Yeah. So Jessica moving on, do we even have to ask this question? Technically it's our job to do it. I know it is. How do you think that she did in the social game? Oh my gosh. Like I said, she was the queen of the hammock. The fact that you have people, multiple people this season who are saying, well, we have to check in with Siri first. We have to ask Siri.

[01:59:10] And that she was able to just create this world around her where everybody really, she was like the mafia. God out there. You know, there's a fear too, which is unique to Siri. Social game is like, everybody loves her. Everybody wants to make Siri happy, but I think you're also like a little afraid of the, of what happens. You have to come back and have Siri, not happy with you. Yes. If you've not explained to Siri ahead of time, what you're doing.

[01:59:40] And she finds out after the fact you were going to be in trouble. She, and so I just, it is, it's so incredible that she is able to create those relationships where it is. Yes. You, you fear her, but you respect her and you're only going to do what Siri says is that you're allowed to do. And the fact that even, and I realize it's Aussie, but he's like, Oh, thank goodness. She came back and told us what to do. I mean, it was, it was stunning. It was absolutely stunning to see the amount of people who were like, we have to ask her first.

[02:00:10] Like we need her permission. We are not going to seek forgiveness. And so overall, I mean, she is just the epitome of what you want in a social game when it comes to survivor. And there, there would have been no one. I truly think. And I know we've said, if she makes it to the end, she probably, I mean, I think most people would say she's going to win, but it's, it's not because of just her being a legend. It's the relationships that she's able to create with people who would be sitting on that jury, despite the fact that they got voted out,

[02:00:40] they would probably all still think, gosh, Siri was like my, she was like my number one out there. She was, she was looking out for me. And I think, I think that's really an incredible space to be able to create. If you are sitting in a final three that you have just all of the jury, like not upset with you, even though you are someone they fear in this game, they're still willing to put you on that pedestal and say, wow, you, you really are a great player. And I, I overall just, just amazing.

[02:01:09] Just absolutely amazing in this role. Something she does really well is establishing, a power dynamic within her relationships. Which the, I think the only time we, Siri has not done this well is on heroes versus villains, where we kind of see her, like she's with her friends, she's with other great players. And she's kind of like, well, Amanda, like, what if we kept Candace? Like, and she, you know, she's kind of like on the back foot of trying to argue with other people, but every other season that we've seen her in this one, especially, which credit to her,

[02:01:38] because it is, you know, a returning legends kind of a season is, is as soon as you have a relationship with Siri, it's not just that you have a relationship with her. It's the power dynamic is that she wears the pants in this relationship. And whatever Siri says is going to be what goes, whether you're Ozzy or you're Rizzo or you're D or like whoever you are, she's the final decision maker. Even if you're Jonathan, you feel like I need to go to read to make sure I have a mission before I do this.

[02:02:06] And so I think that that not only helps her control people a lot more, but it also helps her command a lot of respect. If she was to sit in the final three where, you know, she's not having to claim other people's moves as her moves or claim moves that we made as a group as her moves. It's kind of understood that like this power dynamic, she has the power and I follow her orders. And because of that, she's, you know, has so much more win equity in the game. But that's a hard thing to do is like establish that power

[02:02:35] dynamic right off the bat. It's just kind of like the way that she carries herself and does play the social game that allows for those relationship dynamics to, to be a thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she's clearly a master at the social game. She talked in interviews about how she does it, bringing people in, meeting them on a human level and so on. But to me, it's such a personal skill that even if she explains to you how to do it,

[02:03:01] expecting someone else to replicate it is like having Michael Jordan explain how he made his shots and presumably, therefore, you could do the same. No, there's just something about him. You can't describe it to people. You have to be that person. Listen, some are just naturals and Sari is one of them. Anyone who has spent any time around her has felt it. Even in this game, when people came in knowing and saying,

[02:03:31] we've got to go after her, they end up joining with her and working with her instead, unless your name is Jenna. And, you know, we saw how well that worked. And as Joe said, Sari is brilliant. I've never witnessed a human being manipulate a room so gracefully as her. And it obviously didn't succeed all the way, but it sure kept her around for most of the game until the reality of the final three situation and a $2 million decision hit people and kind of shook them loose.

[02:04:01] Yeah. Yeah. And that leads us to rule six, which warns against being too much of a threat. But, you know, both players who went out this week were seen as being able to win it all if they got to final three. And that meant they had to go. And even though we were just talking about Sari, we'll start with Devin's because he had built, you know, an interesting resume. It included risking it all to double the prize, the fake idol, flipping the vote against those who were trying to get him out by revealing all their information,

[02:04:30] all these things we've talked about. And the key was that those main things were done at tribal council, in front of the jury. Yes. Yes. Yes. And he talked in interviews about how juries are starving for anything interesting to happen. And he gave it to them. Other people could certainly see the reactions of the jurors and know that they would be inclined to vote for him over many of them. And as Aubrey said,

[02:05:00] Rick's antics aren't just antics. They make him a real threat to win. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There is so much to be said about putting on a display at tribal council, because unfortunately, and this is something I've convinced about throughout the years, when you are on the jury, you don't get to see what's going on back at camp. All you're learning is what you're learning from tribal council. And then you're learning from people who are coming out of the game. And sometimes they can put their own spin on things.

[02:05:29] And sometimes they can express it to you in a different way. Right? It's crazy that that would happen. And so you really are hungry for information. And so you go to tribal council and you, you learn things that you didn't know before you see things that you didn't see. You're always curious who won immunity. And so anything that you can gain when you are sitting there is going to be beneficial to the person who is providing you that information while you're there. So, yes, I think his, his read is,

[02:05:58] is completely correct. And the more you can put on display and tribal council, the more you are going to be at the forefront of those jurors minds when they're voting. Yeah. I look, I'm, I would criticize Rick for this because of what I said earlier. I think it, it kind of bleeds into number two with doing too much, arguably to become such a big threat that you go out. I don't know if I have a leg to stand on in terms of criticizing it only because I,

[02:06:25] I feel like my biggest flaw was kind of doing the opposite was I was very, very conscious of threat level in the game. I was worried because I was the biggest guy on the season because I had controlled my tribe pre-merge because I had like a rumored idol. I was, I was hyper, hyper focused on threat level. And so a lot of tribal councils, I tried to downplay myself as much as possible. Right.

[02:06:49] I tried to not give Jeff anything and make myself small as to just kind of like let the plans go as they are while secretly trying to work behind the scenes to control things. And get to the end. Now it worked in the sense that I was able to control things and get to the end, but I didn't necessarily account for the fact that as you said, jurors are putting their own spins on what actually happened in the game.

[02:07:13] So now my story as I played is not being told to the jury until I'm sitting there at the final tribal council, which is a difficult spot to all of a sudden try to change people's minds that already have it in their heads. Yeah. You should have done what Andy did and told, you know, told them exactly what your game was. I mean, like even if they have this idea that like, it's not that they didn't necessarily respect you or whatever. It's like,

[02:07:40] if they have their idea of who they're voting for going into final tribal council, two hours of explaining your game in detail, even if it's like, whoa, that was a lot more than I thought. I didn't realize all of that. That changes my perspective a little bit. It's very rare that you'll find jurors actually willing to change their mind and flip their vote. And so as much as I would love to be like, Hey, Rick, dude, you can't become too much of a threat. Don't stop doing all that stuff. I, I sometimes look back and I'm like,

[02:08:06] sometimes I wish I would have talked that talk a little bit more at tribal council and let people know like, Hey, what's going on over here. I'm, I'm doing this thing just so you guys know. And maybe you don't get to the end if you do that, but I think that it is sometimes a necessary risk that you have to take in order to have people thinking. And, and, you know, it's also about feel understanding who's on that jury, who's being sent to that jury. Do you have somebody going to that jury? That's advocating for you and telling your story,

[02:08:35] or do you have people that are making it all about them? I feel like I had people that were going and making it all about them. And because of that, my story wasn't being told fairly or correctly. And then I didn't do what I needed to, to advocate for myself in front of the jury. So all that being like, I would love to say Rick didn't do good here, but I think that it's, it's kind of a case by case basis of trying to feel out what you need. And it's undeniable that while he became a huge threat, he's also a viable win candidate.

[02:09:04] If he sits in the final three seats. Yeah. And I agree. And the other thing too, which is to play off what you said there, Sam about the, who you're putting on the jury. And this is something we mentioned previously. If you do have someone who's advocating for you, you want to keep that person advocating for you, which is why we go back to Emily. He didn't turn on Emily, even when it appeared to make sense because he knew that that loyalty mattered. And so when you look at what the jury consists of and who is sitting there,

[02:09:34] you need to be certain that that person is going to continue to advocate for you. And you don't want to turn them off by doing something other than what you would normally do for that person. And so I think that, you know, that's something else that he would have had is that people advocating for him on that jury and would have been speaking to his gameplay. Cause you have Christian there, you have Emily there, and then you also have the antics that everybody has seen. So it's like a balance that he was going to have. Should it, he found himself sitting in final three. Right. Right. And I mean,

[02:10:03] what you talked about, Sam, you know, it's a tight rope. It is a difficult tight rope to watch. You have to, or to walk, you have to be not too much of a threat to get voted out, but a big threat to win. So the people will know it. And yeah, we obviously talked about that in your season. It also goes case by case to just like the thing is so many people, it frustrates me. Think that they have to like downplay their threat level. And so they're like,

[02:10:31] I'm not going to make moves because I don't want to become too much of a threat, but I'm also like, you're not a threat. So you're like, you're not, you know, if you're one of the people that can hide in plain sight and kind of like play under the radar, then your objective should be to become a threat, to do more, to become a threat versus, like worried about your threat level. But if you are somebody who naturally is threatening to other people in the game, your goal needs to be to downplay your threat level.

[02:10:59] So like there is obviously a balance to it all of like, and that is the entire premise, I suppose of survivor is like, how do you get to the end while also making sure that you are somewhere in a middle spot where you're comfortable enough to be at a final tribal council and be able to sway enough people to your side. And if you do too much one way or the other, you're either not going to get there or you might get there and not have as many votes as you hope for. Yeah. I think it's,

[02:11:28] you know, and we've, we've talked about this before, but like in this part, this season, you had Devin's who was a threat up here and continued to be a threat because, you know, he told Dalton Ross, I think I've shown in the past that I can find idols and I can win these immunities at the end. So I don't think it was a bad choice to get rid of me. And other people talked about those exact aspects. So he was already up there. Yeah. But I don't know how he could have reduced it.

[02:11:55] And then you have Aubrey who started down here and knows, okay, we're coming to the end. I slowly need to make sure that I'm getting rid of the bigger threats, the people who are claiming credit for the actions that I took or we took together. And then I need to be able to take credit for those actions. So she's slowly rising with the hope that she will be there at the end. I mean, Adam did it on your season, obviously, Jessica,

[02:12:25] Marianne did it in her season, those sorts of things where if you're a big threat the whole time, like you said, you need to downplay. But the problem is if the last thing the jury sees is you downplaying yourself. Yeah. You know, they, you know, may have short memories. They're not going to remember something that happened like, Oh, Sam was in charge of his tribe pre-merge. And it's also like the, you know, we talk about the revisionist history of it all, but it's also like, you know,

[02:12:54] the thing with survivor players is always people don't see the show back and everybody kind of like lives in their world where they're the main character. And so like your version of events doesn't necessarily line up with their version where they're the main character of the story. Then you're selling them something that they may not buy like initially. And so it's like, Hey, I haven't seen this from you at tribal council. And you're telling me something that doesn't necessarily line up with my

[02:13:22] perspective of the game or other, somebody else's perspective because everybody's viewing themselves through the same main character lens in which, so you need to find like enough of a common thread of like where you fit into everybody's story. That is both like accepted and verified by everybody, but then also like respected enough by everybody to be the thing that, um, and some of that can get very hairy, especially when you're talking about subjective, you know, decisions, you know, like who was in charge of this,

[02:13:52] who, who had this idea first, who influenced this that way. And there are things that you can do that are more objective, things like playing an idol or winning an immunity or playing a fake idol or doing these things that like we've seen Rick Devins do throughout his seasons that are objective and nobody can take them away from him. And that does raise your threat level, but I think it also gives you undeniable equity in your own journey. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's why like Kyle,

[02:14:18] we saw handled it so well because he was able to start explaining what he had done and he had Camilla on the jury verifying what he had done. Yes. And by the way, congratulations to Kyle, a new dad. Yes. And then also Kenzie, mom of a, uh, for a second time there, it's been, uh, weeks of, survivor winner, uh, you know, parent babies. So, uh, but, uh, but yeah. And,

[02:14:48] you know, when it comes to, to Rick in his last tribal council, Sari said, Devin's is viewed as the biggest threat currently. And we know what happened next, which once he was gone, she was viewed as the biggest threat. And quite frankly, she should have been seen that way before. And Devin said that, uh, like even in his, uh, CBS warnings interview, he was like, well, I wanted to go to the end and I could sit next to anyone,

[02:15:15] but how can I be the biggest threat when Sari is sitting next to me? There's just no way. Um, and you know, Aubrey told us moving on to Sari. If Sari sits in the final three, she wins. Rizzo said to Aubrey, she a thousand percent wins. If she gets to the end, Rizzo told us, if I'm sitting at the end with Sari, she's clean sweeping the jury. Even going back a couple episodes, Emily said, when I'm looking at who I want to vote for in the winter, I would want that to be Sari. And Devin's replied,

[02:15:45] everyone knows if she gets to the final three, she wins. And that kind of talk was how Sari knew she was doomed. She told Mike Bloom that when she asked Joe, like about the approaching vote, honest Joe said, well, Sari, you know, nobody's going to sit next to you and win. Yeah. Well, and I think it's interesting that, you know, this is kind of like where her ability to play such a great social game allowed her to go as far as it did,

[02:16:15] but it's also where her inability to like win immunities and find idols works against her because there is always this idea that I can keep Sari with me as long as I need to, because she's going to benefit me. She's going to help me. We're playing the game together. So you, you're creating that bond, but you're also cognizant of the fact that I don't have to worry about her. Like I do a Rick Devins who might find an idol or who might win immunity. And then when we get to that final seven, six,

[02:16:44] five area, things can get a little bit scary because she might win. And so this is the only flaw that you can really find in her game is that she's able to last as long as she did, which is crazy because she thought she was going to go out like one or two because everyone sees her for who she is, which is an incredible survivor player, but she's not that threat at that end where she might win an immunity or might find an idol. And she's aware of that too.

[02:17:13] So it's, it's very interesting to see that, you know, how her game develops through the social game that she can play. But then the understanding that, well, we know that we can take her out later because she's not going to win an immunity later. And this is the question with Sari that I think exists is like, how much is great social manipulation and strategy? How much of it is the other players not really worried about voting out Sari at the final 11,

[02:17:43] because they're like, we can get her at six or five or whenever we can vote her out. And it doesn't really matter. And unfortunately, I mean, like, you know, she's played six times and she hasn't made a final tribal council. Like, could you put, I think you could put Sari on 20 seasons. She probably makes the final seven on like all of them. Does she ever win? Like, I don't, I don't know because of what you said, like there is just the very, especially now that she is this legend.

[02:18:12] There is this, there is this very clear, like if she gets to the end, it's almost a lifetime achievement towards. She just gets there that everybody knows that they can't go to the end with her. And so therefore they're always going to take her out and she can't win immunities or like find idols. She doesn't find idols to save herself. So this is where I want to start the debate possibly and criticize Sari. I think she mismanaged a lot of her agency throughout this game.

[02:18:40] I think the only viable path ever for Sari to win the game is to go with people delusional enough to sit next to her. Oh yeah. She wanted to, I think she, but she votes out Stephanie. He votes out coach. She votes out like, these are people that that's who she needs to go with. Go with Steph. Who's like your ride or die. Coach probably believes he can beat her. I think you need to at least temporarily, even if you won't go to the end with you,

[02:19:08] obviously work with Rick Devins to take out a Rizzo because Rizzo smart enough not to sit next to you. I don't think she should have voted out. D D is a winner who's sitting there. I'm desperate for somebody. Help me. Like somebody give me a lifeline. I'm a winner. Use that person, you know, like, and I think that she was very worried about maintaining her options and her avenues that she kept kind of like nothings in the game in terms of their threat level.

[02:19:37] But all of those nothings are also smart enough to realize that them compared to Sari is not a fair fight at the end. And they're going to take her out. So you like her best game is survivor Micronesia, where she is with other huge threats to win and Amanda and Parvati. And if she gets to that final tribal council and it is a final three, does she win? I don't know, but it's close. That's her best shot is going with people like that and then convincing them.

[02:20:03] I just don't see how it's a viable path to go to a final six with a Jonathan Rizzo, Aubrey, like Tiffany, these people, and then expect them not to turn around and vote you out. And so that's where I think she misplayed her hand is the old school alliance is more of the alliance that I could see Stephanie being silly enough to think she can beat Sari at the end and going with her. I can see coach convinced himself that this is his redemption coach 4.0 and losing to her at the end. Well,

[02:20:33] Christian wanted to go to the end with her too. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and I'm, but Christian's another one of those people. Christian's aware that his threat level is on the moon. And so like, there's a world where Christian beats Sari at the end. If he's got the right combination of jurors, it's, I think that's a fun final tribal. And that might just be the best outcome for both people. Obviously she's not the person in control of Ozzy going home, but like Ozzy going home is critical to her for that reason. Right. That he is another person who might just be silly enough to go with her and sit with her.

[02:21:03] Oh yeah. Oh yeah. He wanted to, he thought he was going to win. Somebody who needs shields. And so my comp for her in the game that she played is Kyle Frazier. Actually, you know, when we talk about somebody who had those one-on-one relationships and those options everywhere, I look at, well, like people talk, why didn't Mitch make a move? Well, a lot of that is Kyle feeling like, Hey, you're with me, Joe. You're with me. Shaheen. You're with me. Camilla's with me.

[02:21:33] And we know that his alliance is actually to Camilla, but Eva, Joe, Shaheen, Mitch, all of these people at the final six believe that they're with Kyle. And he does a good enough job of also going to the end with the people silly enough to think they can beat him so that he sits there. Nobody realizes that Kyle's the biggest threat in the game until he's there and he wins. And I feel like that is where Ceri should have gone rather than like at no point should she have ever tried to take out a threat. She needed to go Jeremy Collins mode.

[02:22:02] And everybody that people view as a threat is somebody I need to stay. And everybody that is kind of a nothing people I'm not thinking about, those should have been her targets every round. Yeah. So. I somewhat agree with you, but I'm also going to push back in some things, you know, with, with coach and that other woman, I feel like coach talks. This is going to shock everyone. Coach talks a big game. I think by the time he got to the end,

[02:22:30] he would have realized he couldn't beat her and he would have taken her out. If he had, she's a woman. And we've seen coach do this with women before in the past. True. True. He doesn't think he can lead to a woman. And then he does. Yes. The other woman. Ceri had already heard through the survivor grapevine that she was coming for Ceri. And that's hard to get out of your head. And she lied to Ceri's face. Yeah. Multiple times. Yeah. I mean, I do.

[02:22:59] I do understand that it's hard to get it out of your head. Kind of a thing. Right. Now she did want Ozzy. She talked about that. That's one reason she was so dedicated to keeping Ozzy. She knew Ozzy would take her to the end. Right. That's part of what the split vote twist killed was putting Ozzy in charge of his own fate instead of keeping her in charge of it. She wanted to keep Tiffany because she said Tiffany would take her to the end.

[02:23:25] She thought maybe Christian would take her to the end, but she wasn't sure. But of course, Christian wanted to go against Ozzy, who she knew would take her to the end. So I do think that what you're saying makes sense if you could pick and choose those people. Like if you could say, let's keep D and let's keep Christian, but not have Christian go against Ozzy. And, you know, you have to weave it all together. But each of those people had their own ideas. And so I feel like she had to keep.

[02:23:55] Focus on the one she knew for sure. And she, you know, she knew certain people would not. She knew Rizzo was loyal to a point, but yes, he would turn against her at some point. She knew Jonathan was loyal to a point, but at some point he would turn against her. There is no like a general like precedent that is set at the merge, call it right where we are.

[02:24:23] We're big game hunting, you know, it's like, you know, and big game hunting does not help you if you're Sari like there. And one of the things that I think it's my my favorite game ever is Jeremy Collins on on Cambodia, because I think what he does so masterfully is set this this precedent of like, hey, these people who nobody's worried about. Those are the people that we actually need to take out. And all of us, that's we should actually all come together and work together and go far

[02:24:51] because the only chance any of us have is doing that. You see throughout a lot of the new era. I mean, you mentioned Marianne earlier, but I mean, Erica, Marianne Gabler, it's a run of three seasons in a row, really, where we're doing this, you know, next groundhog that pops his head up gets whacked. And, you know, you need to be the last groundhog. Like you need to just be like the tallest head on the totem pole when you get to the end, even if that means five of the biggest threats in the game all go out before you

[02:25:20] and you're kind of left with meh at the end of the game. It's like it's a viable win strategy. But, you know, the real thing is those people that nobody's worried about to win are are actually the win candidates nowadays. Yeah. That is like and nobody seems to like jump on that train ever is like, hey, this person you're not worried about is the person you should be the most worried about. Yeah. I don't think it's nowadays. I think it's been going on forever.

[02:25:47] I mean, Rob and Drew talked about it in their podcast this week, you know, the lions and the hyenas situation from winners of war. It is. And they talked about this. It is so difficult to get the lions, the threats to all agree with each other, to go to the end together. It is almost impossible because it's always a game of I think this person is going to turn on me. I just don't know when. So I have to turn on them first. Right. Yeah.

[02:26:15] And you also want to win in the final three. So you're also there's that selfish, which is fine to be selfish. It's a million dollars. Right. So you want to bring somebody with you that you know that you can be as opposed to this idea that I want to beat the best. And so I only want to be sitting next to the best. And so it's it's a very difficult and I I agree wholeheartedly, Sam, that this seems like the I've always thought about that third seat. Like, who's the person who they're dragging into the end is taking that seat

[02:26:44] away from someone else because, you know, this person doesn't matter. Well, maybe you should worry about who that person is because they could sway a vote. They could take a vote. You never know what's going to happen with the jury. And so there's so many components that you have to be cognizant of that you have to think about. Yeah. And I think what's really interesting about this whole construct is was season 50 filled

[02:27:09] with enough lions to really give Sari an opportunity to make it. I don't think it was. And I don't think it was either. And I think that's that maybe that's on just casting again. Yes. Because there is a general like, hey, if Boston Rob plays again, you can't win. Tony can't win. Parvati can't win. None of these people can win unless there's enough lions on the cast to allow them to have like a place to hide or people disillusioned enough to believe that they have a chance

[02:27:39] against them. And when you cast enough, like relatively normal hyenas who have their heads screwed on straight, you know, like it just isn't it's inevitable. And so she does do a good job of making it very far here, obviously. And perhaps she is just, you know, one one thing away. Right. Like if Tiffany doesn't win that challenge and Tiffany goes home, then Sari's at five. Who knows?

[02:28:06] Maybe she gets real lucky and it's a puzzle immunity or something. Something like that. And she beats everybody else on the puzzle. Who knows? You know, it's hard to imagine. She wins her first career immunity after 40 something tries of it. But like it's possible. And maybe that is the thing that ultimately gets Sari to the end of the game. But, you know, she it's as close as you can come. Basically, it's just kind of. And it's the unfortunate part of these seasons.

[02:28:32] It's why we often see, hey, Kelly Wentworth goes on a deep run when at the time she's kind of like a wife. Huh? She's on the cast. You know, it's like Parvati on even on Micronesia is kind of a nothing when before she becomes Parvati in full form on Micronesia. Yeah. You know, you always see that these people who are sort of the understated like Tony on Winners at War is an anomaly of having one of like the big loud characters on the season

[02:29:01] actually winning the returning season. But that's a season with a lot of lions. And so it's only a lot of. And his second time out, he had done so poorly. Yeah. A lot of people remembered him for that instead of his first. Yes. Yeah. And like Tony, Tony has Boston Rob and Parvati and Sandra and and Jeremy and Tyson and Kim, all these people that he can hide behind is like, well, I'm not that person.

[02:29:27] But if it's not Tony, you see that end game is Denise and Nick and, you know, a lot of people that you wouldn't have thought would make it that far because they weren't very like high level winners that you thought of before the season. And that shows kind of the. The danger of casting a lot of hyenas. Yeah. And that's the thing, you know, they like I said, Rob and Drew talked about this. If you're a lion, your best win condition is yourself and two hyenas. If you're a hyena, your best win condition is three hyenas.

[02:29:57] Yeah. And, you know, when I say this has been going on for a long time, I mean, Adam, I don't think nothing against Adam. I think Adam played a great game. He wasn't a lion, though. He was a hyena and he knew to wait for to wait and take out the lions at the end. And that's why he let David get so far, you know, and then took him out and all those all those aspects. And.

[02:30:23] So I also know or Sari in particular in this season, because Rob has mentioned on multiple podcasts now, and I'm sure others have to that. Yes. Sari should have kept these other shields because when they were around, people were not talking about her. But this is where I disagree. I think people were not talking about her then for a reason. I think you brought up, Sam, that they weren't worried about her yet.

[02:30:52] They you know, I have said in the past, I didn't expect her to be taken out until this time. If she made it past the first and second boot. Yeah. This is exactly where I expected her to go, because like you said, they could leave her there without fear that she would go on some sort of run that would make it impossible to get rid of her. So I don't think it mattered who was in the game at any particular point. It was all about the timing.

[02:31:19] She was good to keep around as an ally until people were starting to think about final three. And that's when you take her out, no matter who was or was it, even if there were a couple of other lions in there. I don't think you can distract from Sari that long. Maybe she makes it to five instead of six. But six was pretty much where I predicted she would go. Yes. Seven, six is officially where I think you trigger into end game like somewhere in between

[02:31:47] there is where the end game really triggers. And I think it's kind of foolish before then to be thinking about final three. But I think that you're foolish if at this point in time you're not thinking about final three. And that's kind of where you need to where most people, I think, pivot their mindset from like, how do I get far to how do I win? And so it makes sense that you get to this point and all of a sudden Sari starts surfacing on everybody's radar as a threat. Yeah.

[02:32:15] And that's why we see, you know, we have multiple confessionals from Aubrey talking about, well, now is when I have to figure out my final three. Now is when you think about final three. Well, yeah, I think that Joe has been on everyone's mind for final three since like day one. But other than that, you know, it's hard to drag. It's hard to like, why would people not want to take him out, though? Like, that is my question that I, you know, I remember when when we voted the Saul vote

[02:32:43] on my season where I go and I blow up the plan and I tell Saul that he's going home and there's all this chaos. I was trying to rally people. And the reason the vote didn't come together is because people weren't happy with the alternative target that I chose, which was Sue. I wanted Sue out of the game and nobody else wanted to vote out Sue. And they remember being like, why would we, you know, why don't we do Kyle? Why don't we do a bigger, a bigger player? And I'm like, well, because everybody wants Kyle out tomorrow. And if Saul's not going to go out right now, it would be Kyle if it wasn't Saul.

[02:33:13] So it's like you're just giving them their B option B. Like, that's not what I want to do. If I want to vote out, if I want to blow up a vote, I'm not trying to give you your plan B. I'm trying to do the worst case scenario, which is take out the person you had sitting with you at the end, completely blow up your game board. And now everybody's final three becomes way more open where they're like trying to figure out what the new three looks like. That changes the hierarchy and the mechanics.

[02:33:38] But for some reason, so many people don't, they don't have that vision to see like, hey, this person that everybody wants to sit next to, I should probably vote that person out. And a general rule, I want to say, because both of these votes are unanimous. If a vote is unanimous, it's probably not good for you. Make that a rule of survivor. If everybody's okay, if everybody is okay with this plan, there is a better than 50% chance that it loses you the game.

[02:34:06] There's a reason everybody else is okay with this happening. It's because they have a vision, right? Everybody's playing in a world where they win. They win the game. And so if they feel this vote helps them advance to their win path, that's why they're doing it. And you need to ask yourself why it is that everybody else is okay with this happening, because so many people do what they think is intuitive, which is take out the biggest threat or take out the next person on the chopping block.

[02:34:34] And you don't realize what it leaves you with. And for three voting out, Devin's leaves her with a world in which she's the next person to go. And for somebody next week, voting out, sorry, here is going to leave them without a viable path to get to the final three. And you have to ask yourself why everybody else was so on board for this plan. I don't know why we don't like unanimous votes are dumb. They shouldn't exist. They like they should never happen.

[02:35:03] There should never be a unanimous vote in Survivor. There's no way that one thing is actually good for everybody else left in the game. So that's my two cents on it. It's just that they think it is because if everyone thinks they can be the one to take Joe to the end, well, then that's good. And they don't think about the fact that, well, what if someone else wants? I mean, Aubrey brought it up with talking about Rizzo. But at one point when she tried to get the target on Rizzo, she was like, well, Rizzo is just going to take up a spot at the end.

[02:35:33] Yeah. But we never hear anybody say that about Joe because everybody wants Joe at the end because they know they can beat him. Yeah. It's just yeah. I mean, obviously they happen in cases like I mean, there was multiple times on my season where like you just vote where the votes are going for the sake of voting where the votes are going if you know that like you can't do anything about it. But almost all the time, if there was a unanimous vote, I was probably trying to push against

[02:36:00] that unanimous vote because it's just like there's no way that this is good for all of you. And it's good for me when we have opposing, you know, we're in opposing alliances with opposing wills. And somehow those are aligned on the same vote. I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we can move to rule seven, which covers idols and advantages and game mechanics. And we obviously have a lot more to talk about here when it comes to Devon's compared to Sari.

[02:36:27] Starting with his fake idol, when he got up and pulled it, it was amazing. The looks on people's faces. No way they would think he previously planted it there. And I know some players in interviews claim that they knew about it. Whatever. B.S. He told Mike Bloom, when I talk about revisionist history, dude, you know that people will say things now that they didn't necessarily feel there. I mean, like everyone, I mean, everyone's like, we knew it was fake. And it's like, well, the whole next episode, you're still acting like it's real.

[02:36:57] And I noticed the same thing. People were arguing with me online. Oh, they said they knew it was fake. Yeah. B.S. They said that. And then the very next episode, they're all like, oh, we can't vote out Devon's because he has an idol. If you knew it was fake, you wouldn't be talking that way. Right, right. Exactly. And I do think that this is a very risky thing to try to pull off. But when you're Rick Devons, you know how to do it and you know how to make it appear as if it's actually a thing.

[02:37:23] Because if you if you don't play it right, it's going to scream fake. He had to have Christian in on it with him in order to make all of this happen. So the stars needed to align in order for him to really have it have the effect that he needed it to. And yeah, he was it's a very creative game move that we've not seen done. And I think now he's kind of introduced this idea into the world of Survivor where now we're

[02:37:50] going to use tribal council to hide idols and make everybody question moving forward. Is this real or not? It was a great, great introduction to the game. Yeah. So good. And this is like the kind of like refreshing new stuff that you'd love a guy like Rick Devons for that you're trying to see because of, you know what you said, Jessica, too. Like I would love, hey, production, hide an idol at tribal council next time and then put a clue, make it real.

[02:38:17] But if somebody has to go find their idol at tribal council, you know, we saw Adam Klein do it. They announced we'll never see it again. We'll never see an idol at tribal council. Then Rick does the idol at tribal council. People believe it's real. Now do a real one at tribal council. Like it's the zigzag of Survivor. And you need people like Rick who are bold enough to, to introduce new concepts and new things that, you know, we could argue night and day, the merits of like the strategy of many of these things. It's fun. It's great TV.

[02:38:47] And it's why we want to tune in and it's why he was put on season 50. So I, I, I loved it. And I thought that he does this better than there's a reason his reputation is like, he's the idol guy because he finds like three of them on his first season. He hides like three fakes that all get found and played. Like he's just the King of these, of these idols. And he weaponizes this to advance his game better than anyone on this cast. Yeah.

[02:39:13] And he planned this going in once they approved his pocket square, you know, he, uh, you know, he planned it going in and then it was just even better when Christian came to him with the, the real idol, uh, you know, instructions and everything. And so, and then he talked in his interview, I think with Dalton Ross about how he had another plan that he was going to get red paint all over himself, like Sue and act like he found an idol that way.

[02:39:41] But, but Jonathan wouldn't leave his side long enough for him to enact that plan. It might have worked. Who knows? But, uh, you know, that's just that creative thinking. And then after people were starting to actually get suspicious because he kept not playing his supposed idol, he turned it around. He fessed up, which I thought was a pretty good plan. Like, Hey, I don't have an idol. I'm on the bottom. Why go after me? Leave me alone. I'm no threat to you. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:40:09] And again, it's that knowing how to respond to the audience, knowing how to respond to the information that's happening around you. And if you want to try to remove that threat level from yourself, you have to do something like that. And again, Rick was very good at reading the room and understanding what needed to be done and when it needed to be done. Yeah. Now then of course there was the Mr. Beast coin flip, but this has been discussed a lot already for obvious reasons, but in short, I totally understand why he did it. I don't think most people would do it.

[02:40:37] I would not recommend it in general, but he said that while he, he thought he had changed the vote and saved himself that way by revealing everything that, uh, Jonathan and the other woman had done, he could not be sure. Plus he noted that even if he did change that vote, it would probably just swing back around to him the next vote. So the added immunity idol was certainly enticing to keep himself safe for longer.

[02:41:06] And as I mentioned at the time, that is one difference between this Mr. Beast coin flip and the one in beast games, because on beast games, there's no benefit to the flipper unless they end up winning. There's no guaranteed benefit to the flipper here. He was safe and had an idol. So there was that added benefit that enticed him to flip the coin. It's actually kind of three rounds of immunity.

[02:41:35] Cause the next round is that double, right? So it's like, it's the, the split tribal twist. And so, you know, that flip happens at the final 10 and, uh, Rick goes from the final 10 to the final seven with one coin flip. So it is, it is heavy stakes, but I don't think anybody would complain about having heavy incentive for a flipper in, in that context, because it is like your entire game is on, is on a coin. So, right. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:42:02] I wouldn't mind seeing that come back without the mandatory nature of it. If I agree, not been willing to do it. Forcing someone to. Right. No rock draw for that. No, no. And then the morning of his actual eventual demise, Devens, of course, was looking for an idol from the moment that there was any light at all. We don't even know if there was an idol to find, you know, there were two of them did leave the game, but Rizzo still has his.

[02:42:30] So production might've been like, nope, there's still an idol in the game. We're not putting another one back in. We have no idea. Right. Yeah. So one last thing in this rule for Devens, and it's something I mentioned earlier that he talked in interviews about his viewpoint on idols or advantages and allies, which was, you know, correctly pointing out. He doesn't need to tell them all his secrets. And this is something that we need to see from every player moving forward. We have said this before.

[02:42:58] You don't need to tell people about your idols and advantages. Right. Yep. Right. Agreed. As for Sari, at least for a change, we don't have to talk about how she got screwed by other people's advantages. She instead got saved last week by another person's advantage. And that was in large part because as we just said, Sari kept her extra vote secret. They could not plan around it.

[02:43:25] They made a plan, not knowing it was there and poof, she drops it on them. She takes out Emily. And you know, it was the perfect use of an extra vote. I have a question. We didn't actually address this. Why did she and Emily vote on the re-vote? So it's because she had two votes and Emily had one vote. So it's the same reason we've seen before when someone loses a vote and then someone still has a vote.

[02:43:52] They do it now to preserve the mystery of who does or does not have a vote or an extra vote, et cetera. Okay. So on my season, I lose my vote at the auction and then am in a tie vote with Sierra at the final 11. And rather than the typical Sam and Sierra cannot vote because they're the two that are tied, Sierra is able to vote and I am not able to vote because I lost my vote at the auction. Okay.

[02:44:20] So it is that same math that by allowing them both vote, Sari maintains a plus one vote advantage over Emily. But by having them both vote, it's not revealed specifically that Sari is playing an extra vote just in case, you know, for whatever reason in the future, there is a need to kind of hide what's actually going on. But I think that's like a new rule that hasn't been made officially like announced, but that

[02:44:47] they're trying to make that effort to avoid loopholes since they've done so much vote manipulation. Yeah. Yes. Yes. That's a great way to say it. Yeah. I suspect Jeff explained it and they just didn't bother to show it because they had a lot of other things going on that he said. Yeah. He makes sure everybody feels good about it and stuff too. I remember like on, on our season, right? Like he, I think they show a brief bit of his explanation of like, you can't vote. You can vote. He's good. Then before we go to vote, he's like, you're good with that. Right?

[02:45:14] Like we all know what's, what's going on here and we're tracking the logic and they do a good job of, of reassuring everybody. All right. Thank you. Okay. So we can move on to appendix a, which discusses players keeping their end goals in mind when voting. And we talk about voting out the weak and the strong and the weak and the strong. And we are clearly back in the area of voting out strong threats. We already spent quite a bit of time talking about that in rule six. I, we don't need to rehash it all two hours and 40 minutes into it.

[02:45:42] But, you know, we heard from a number of people, especially Aubrey about how they were thinking ahead to who could beat them in the end and making sure that person was not there to do so. I expect this trend to continue with the next two votes. I haven't obviously made it a secret that I'm sure Joe will be in the final three. Uh, we discussed about a bit about Rizzo, uh, you know, as well, this is when the strong players need to beware the most.

[02:46:12] And this is the lions. We, we, we spent a lot of time talking about this. So it, it does make perfect sense that Devins and then Sheree were cut down here. Perfect sense, but sad. Yes. And I, yeah, obviously this is, well, I don't know if it would have been any different had, had Sheree kept Devins around till six, but at least you might've bought yourself another round, which, you know, we did see at least from the hierarchy of rooting interests. It was like, Devins has to go.

[02:46:41] Then Tiffany has to go. Right. And like, then Tiffany wins. So maybe there is like, Hey, if you take out Rizzo at seven and then it's Devins has to go. Tiffany has to go. Well now all of a sudden Sari has a, a puncher's chance in a fire making contest to get to the end. I do think she might've lost a little bit of the vision of, um, end goal in mind when she went through some of these last few votes. I don't think this is an issue with Rick Devins though.

[02:47:07] I think, you know, he's looking for, for any path possible and all of them are viable for him. Yes. I do think what, one thing we haven't discussed, I don't want to go too deep into it at this point, but I believe it was Rick said something to the effect that Aubrey was the deciding factor in him going. And so I do wonder if with the numbers, even if Sari had said, no, I don't want to do that. If everyone else really wanted. Well, I think out.

[02:47:37] I think the big thing here is because, well, Tiffany wants Rizzo. Right. And so Tiffany wants Rizzo. Rizzo doesn't want Rizzo. Um, but I think maybe there's a world where, Hey, if Rick, Tiffany, Aubrey, Jonathan, maybe, maybe that's like Joe, definitely Joe. Well, I'm saying like would vote on Rizzo. Like, so Rick, Aubrey, Tiffany vote on Rizzo. And then maybe they get, maybe they get Jonathan as the last one. Um, maybe that was like a plan that was discussed.

[02:48:07] Behind the scenes. And Aubrey just didn't really, didn't want to do it. And so that kind of changed the calculus, but I don't know. I've got a hard time being like anybody was the reason somebody went home in a sick zero vote. He just said, well, he said that she was the deciding factor, you know, it might not have been. So even if Sari had said, yes, let's take out Rizzo instead, they might not have been able to swing. Yeah, they might've it's Sari, you know, I mean, but we just don't know.

[02:48:34] And like I said, it was, that was like one comment he made in an interview. So it's like really hard to judge that. So, all right, we can go to appendix B, which discusses, of course, the jury phase of the game. Both of our players this week have been making themselves look very good in the eyes of the jury, though in different ways. We discussed Rick's actions and tribal councils earlier, and he had told Dalton Ross in the midseason interview. I think people underestimate how starving the jury is for action and what a huge impact these

[02:49:04] moments can have on them. And he was he was playing it up to them. We talked about that, showing them his moves so that he would be they would be ready to vote for him if he had made it. Right. Sari, she didn't need to do that type of thing. She demonstrated to the jury why she deserved to win by, well, putting them on the jury and then putting more people on the jury who would talk about how she was controlling everything and so on. Each new person that she put there was another who was likely to vote for her.

[02:49:34] She didn't even have to pick and choose because eventually everyone figured out what she was doing. And if they talked about her easily sweeping the jury votes when they were still in the game, as many of them did, they were certainly going to keep that opinion once they were voted out. Yep. All right. So it has been a long time, but it is. Time to wrap things up for Rick and Sari. So, Sam, what are your well, first of all, Sam, did we get to all your points that you did? We certainly did.

[02:50:03] OK, so what are your final thoughts on them? I mean, it is it's devastating. Rick, Survivor's favorite newscaster, the man who has this this charming wit when he's on screen and yet a really moving emotional vulnerability, a guy who plays with joy, set out to play with that that joyful, kidful spirit as his wife encouraged him to do.

[02:50:29] And he did that from the moment he got to the beach to the moment that he had his torch snuffed. I can't imagine season 50 without Rick. I think it was a no brainer casting choice, even if it was originally from an alternates perspective that he ended up on here. But he brought something new. He brought something fun and he was a lot of fun to root for, even if at many times Rick is too much of a showman and too likable for his own good.

[02:50:56] So it ends up being the demise that you probably could have predicted that he would burn a little too bright and too fast. But I'm really happy that we got to see him burn nonetheless. Sari, it is like you said, David, I think from the moment that she passed the first and second tribal council, you had this feeling that we had a really deep Sari Fields run in us. And unlike a lot of the other old school players who maybe were shells of their former selves

[02:51:26] in this iteration of themselves, Sari seemed to be at her best. The way that she navigated the social game had very distinct and intentional ways of speaking to people one on one and had everyone believing that they were her friend. However, it is outwith outplay outlast. And as we've seen now through six iterations, including international of Sari's game, one of those areas seems to always kind of be lacking.

[02:51:53] And if she's not able to surround herself with the right people, well, father time comes for us all eventually. And it came for her at the final six. I think everybody was rooting for a Sari win to cement her legacy and cement season 50 as one of the greatest seasons that we've seen had she won it. But it does come to a rather predictable conclusion at the final six that breaks all of our hearts. I enjoyed both of them.

[02:52:19] I think they might be the two stars of the season and the two people that we look back on as the people we remember season 50 the most for. It is fascinating that Rick Devins was an alternate for the season, considering the impact that he has now had on the season. And there was no chance on God's green earth that Sari was ever an alternate. She was always top of the list for the season. So first call, I'm sure.

[02:52:46] So it's fascinating to see that they both had such an impact on the season, despite the fact that we knew Sari coming in was going to. And we assumed that Rick would. But I think we were all like, oh, he was an alternate. That's interesting. But he was also chosen as an alternate. Why? Because Jeff knew that if anyone could understand it and and and handle it, it would be Rick Devins. And that's because of the spirit that Rick Devins brings to Survivor and his understanding

[02:53:14] of the game and his willingness to kind of go along with what's happening and then turn it into a Rick Devins moment. And I think we saw so many of those moments with him. So I'm so glad he was finally put on the season so we could see him be the Rick Devins that we all know and love, but also the Rick Devins that we can respect as a Survivor player, because he has this understanding of how to play a game in this new era, especially right,

[02:53:41] where we have all of these these nuanced things, these introductions, these twists, which we can't stand half of them. But he is willing to step up and say, you want me to flip that coin? Yeah, I will. I'll take that chance. I will do that because I'm Rick Devins. And so I love that we were able to see him do this in this season. But I also love that we're able to see Ceri be Ceri in this season. It was like we got to see the best moments of her as well.

[02:54:08] We got to see the Ceri who is that mafia boss, who is in charge, who is controlling everyone's emotions around her and situating herself in a position that she thought was going to be the best for her. But like we said, were there enough lions for her to really do that? I don't think there were. I think she needed some more lions on this season. However, I wasn't making those calls. I wasn't making those choices. And so we ended up with initially an alternate and someone who was probably the first call

[02:54:37] on the season together going out at the same time or on the same episode, I should say. But both playing the games that they know how to play and the games that we have come to respect because they both know themselves enough to understand their abilities. They understand their capabilities. They understand their strengths and they know their weaknesses. And they lean into all of them when they need to. And so overall, they played the games we wanted to see. And we respect so much that they gave us that entertainment that we're able to watch.

[02:55:06] So sad to see them both go. I understand why they did because they were really giving it a great run. Love them both. And those are my thoughts on Devins and Serene. Yeah, it was a sad Wednesday night this past week. Rick Devins was the only player this season to have appeared as a guest on this podcast so far. So I, you know, but I hope and expect to have others in the future or other people who are guests return to Survivor.

[02:55:34] And of course, Jessica and I have had the privilege of meeting Serene as well as others on this season. But aside from those purely personal reasons, both were huge players from this season. Serene was controlling so much. And to echo what you both said, it is inconceivable to me that Rick was originally an alternate. And I truly can't imagine this season without him. Devins said within the game, you play to win the game. Yes, but have fun playing the game. I can certainly get behind that. He did both.

[02:56:04] However, like so many others this season, he found himself on the wrong end of an alliance with Serene that she decided to prune off. He kept on fighting, never giving up. He used different methods from strategy to risk taking to pure audacity. And it worked for a number of votes. But as we so often see, the more a player fights and succeeds, the more they become a threat to win. His actions to stop people from voting him out reinforced the reasons people wanted to vote him out. There really was no alternative.

[02:56:33] He had to fight every step of the way. But he just eventually ran out of options. In large part, that was because Serene put the kibosh on the one option that Tiffany had brought up to try and take out Rizzo instead. Because she probably controlled that vote in much the same way she had controlled so many others all season long. She did it with subtlety, back channel scheming, working out the strategy and convincing her minions to put it into play.

[02:56:59] And of course, an incredible social game that made everyone think they were her best friend and ally. This placement is, as I said, where I expected Serene to go out if she wasn't eliminated immediately. Once she got her strategic and social games going, she was in it for the long haul. And nobody was worried about her from a challenge perspective. So there was no rush to get her out prior to now. Heck, it seems like nobody is worried about anybody from a challenge perspective this season, considering Jonathan and Joe are still around.

[02:57:28] But that's because these players know who the real threats are. And they're not the muscle heads. They're the brains of the operation. I've previously talked about how it would be a risk to let Serene get to five or better, because you don't know what twists may come. And clearly the other players saw it as well. This was the perfect opportunity and was made even better by their original target, Tiffany, winning immunity.

[02:57:52] We're at a time in the game when, as a player, you know the threats have to go or else you risk them making it to the end and beating you. Serene was simply the biggest threat in the game. And Rick was not far behind. Serene was beating anyone if she made it to the end. Rick was probably beating almost anyone but Serene, though it likely would have been closer. But both of them had to go despite or in some ways because of the great games both played in very different ways.

[02:58:22] It was the only way for others to move forward. And that is why Rick and Serene lost. Sadness. All right. Well, we will go through this next part quickly here. We do have our predictions. And I know it's almost three hours, but stick around for those predictions because this is going to talk about the finale here.

[02:58:44] We do want to mention that next week the podcast will be out about a day later than usual because, you know, we have to discuss why someone won and why four other people lost. So it takes a little longer to get our notes together. I do want to join the rules, but I do want to also quickly remind everyone that the rules we just discussed are available in poster form, poster on a t-shirt form and checklist on a t-shirt form.

[02:59:09] And you can find all of that at robhaswebsite.com slash YXLostFeed. Sam, where can people find you online? On Twitter. That's probably the best spot. Twitter X, Instagram. I post a lot of sports stuff. So if you can deal with baseball and Chicago sports content and want a little bit of reality TV or other television discourse mixed in there, Sam underscore Phelan online.

[02:59:38] Sam Phelan with just my name, no underscore, is the Instagram handle. But yeah, come check me out over there. Instagram's going to be a lot of cat content and travel content. And then, you know, the Twitter is going to be a lot of sports and occasionally some TV talk. Yeah, we'll say you might have. Oh, I'm sorry. What websites do you, you know, if people want their Chicago sports content, because we have a contingent of Chicago listeners here. Where do you go to find that for you?

[03:00:08] We'll go to Roundtable Sports. It's a global sports media network here. So we do have teams of all NFL teams, all MLB, NBA, whatever you want. A lot of college on there as well. So White Sox, Cubs, Bears. I'm writing about all of them over at Roundtable Sports. So there's lots of links and all that stuff on my Twitter account, too. Or you can just Google it if you want to circumvent a little bit of social media use. So they have an app, too, right? Yep. Yep. Get the app.

[03:00:35] You'll get the notifications when I write stuff about the teams and breaking news, opinion pieces, all of that stuff going out. Well, I did want to comment on your Game of Thrones post that I might disagree with your assessment there. But that's something we can talk about. That's another three-hour podcast. That is another three-hour podcast for sure. I was like, what? But anyway, so I am also Blue Sky and Twitter at JessicaLewis89.

[03:01:04] I'm on Instagram at JessicaLewis6789. I do not post as much content as probably Sam or I know for certain David Bloomberg because David Bloomberg has become a social media guru. He has a link tree. So you can find all of his incredible content and all of the places that he posts. So, David Bloomberg, why don't you talk about your link tree? Yes, you can find that at link tree slash David Bloomberg. You can go to all my accounts from there.

[03:01:31] You can find me directly on Blue Sky as at David Bloomberg and on the video sites, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram as at David Bloomberg TV. I continue to post two or three reality TV short videos per day right now, almost all about Survivor 50. Although, of course, there was a Big Brother 28 announcement in there. And, you know, we've got other shows like The Traders New Zealand coming up, The Traders India after that. So you can always find videos about those shows.

[03:02:01] And like The Traders Canada finally came on to Peacock. You can go back and look at all the videos and podcasts I did on The Trader about The Traders Canada as well. If you're catching up, if you're in the U.S. and you're just catching up with that now. All right. Well, predictions. Next time, obviously, the finale. The players will whittle down from a final five to a final three and then face the jury.

[03:02:29] I may have dropped some hints here along the way about what I think will happen. Now, I'll just say it outright. I'm not going to keep you in suspense. I believe the final three will be Aubrey, Rizzo and Joe. And my original pregame winner pick, Aubrey, will take home the two million dollars. So let me explain. Wow. Wow.

[03:02:49] This was, I think, more of a controversial opinion before this past episode, because I feel like all of the confessionals from Aubrey talking about how she knows what she needs to do at the end of the game. And she, you know, I don't think they are. Those are all in there for her to lose. Is it possible? Yes. We have seen edits that screw us over before. Could Jonathan get there and beat her?

[03:03:17] And we'd look back and say, well, see, she knew she needed to get rid of the threats, but she let him through. Yes. I just think the edit is setting her up to win. It's been trending that way. I'll say for a little while now. Some people claim it's been as long as since she got rid of Genevieve or even before that. Or, you know, she got rid of when Genevieve was gone. I think it was just really in our faces this week.

[03:03:47] We had confessionals of her saying things like, when I'm hearing that Rizzo's annoying people, it's making me feel like someone I want to go to the end of the game with. Some of the old timers might not like giving $2 million to a kid who drives them nuts. She said in Tribal Council, I think a really important part of the game is figuring out the timing. It's almost like dismantling a bomb. You're trying to find the people you can sit with at the end, but you got to be really careful how you peel back the layers or the whole thing will explode in your face.

[03:04:15] These were just among multiple scenes of Aubrey talking about getting to the end and winning and why she didn't win her first time and what she can do to improve and what she needs to guard against and all of that. Is it possible all of this is a misdirect? Sure. These are the survivor editors and they love to torture us.

[03:04:33] But I feel like if it is, it's almost malpractice on the part of survivor production because putting it all in our faces like that and then having a different outcome in survivor 50 of all seasons. It is going to make the fans scream and riot. Yeah. Many people are already unhappy about Ceri being voted out.

[03:04:57] If you follow that up with someone willing who was not shown to play a game that appears to deserve a win, you are just asking for trouble. We have seen this in the past. People get very unhappy when you do not show some hints of how a person won. These seem like more than hints.

[03:05:21] Moving forward, under the presumption that they really haven't gone completely off the deep end in the edit, it seems clear to me that with Jonathan taking all the credit for getting Ozzy out and saying, I think he talked about the same with Ceri and he'll probably take credit for that too. Aubrey has to get rid of him before the final three to ensure she doesn't worry about fighting with him over who claims responsibility for that.

[03:05:46] Tiffany said back in her episode nine video that people weren't targeting Joe or Jonathan at that point because they were physical threats, but they weren't seen as threats to win at the end. She said, quote, being a physical player is not all that scary. However, at this point, I do think Jonathan has shown enough apparent strategy, or at least he can make a claim to it. You can't take the risk. He has to go.

[03:06:11] And the other person is, of course, Tiffany herself, who would have, at least in theory, gone if she hadn't won immunity against, well, literally everyone else but Ceri working together. Ceri working together at this time. You just did what you get. I know. Yeah, I didn't say sorry, at least. But, you know, I did let the apple slip in there, but I corrected myself.

[03:06:39] Only one of Jonathan or Tiffany can win immunity. So whoever doesn't has to go first. And then they have to hope someone else, most likely Joe, can beat the others at final four and, you know, put that person into fire making to lose. And, yeah, we officially don't know how the fans voted when it comes to fire making. But considering they have gone against what I want in every other game related vote, I'm sure they voted to keep it.

[03:07:08] Yeah, that's one thing that's the unknown, though, right, is the fire making thing. Yes. Now, one way or another, I think this is how we get to a final three of Aubrey Rizzo and Joe. We don't really need to talk about Joe. He hasn't done squat in terms of the game. He's managed to piss off some of his honor and loyalty pals by not appearing so loyal when, like, he informed Saree about things that were going on. And we heard some of that in interviews.

[03:07:36] As for Rizzo, well, he's still in play his idol. But there was never any reason for him to do so. He knew the two plans in play were to go after Saree or go after Aubrey. He seems to believe this will be some big resume move. I think he's overestimating that much like he overestimated it last season. A number of people, including us, have already said this.

[03:08:00] But by going directly from one season to another, I just don't think he recognized he wasn't getting the jury's vote last time. And I don't think he will this time either. And then we have Aubrey, who I've mentioned she's been talking about, how she lost her first season, what she needed to do to get the win this time. Unless we are being completely effed up by the edit. Again, is it possible? Yes.

[03:08:24] But it's clear to me she wins by being the most strategic player left after having taken out the big threats. She can make claims to all those strategies. Even I know some viewers are like, no, I don't believe that. Whatever. If she's the only one left, she's the only one they can go with. So those are my thoughts. And I know that went on for quite a while. So I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying, but I am curious about two things.

[03:08:52] So we have the Jonathan and Joe combo, right? They've been playing this game together since the beginning. So decisions moving forward, I think they're going to make them together. So that's two votes instead of one. So if they're looking at wanting to target people, I think they're going to have more of an ability to do so. And their votes are likely going to be together.

[03:09:12] I think as far as like the jury makeup that we're looking at, if you have a Jonathan sitting in the final three, he's got a lot of fans on that jury. And so you've got a lot of people sitting there who might just say, well, Jonathan was playing this loyalty integrity game with us better so than Joe. And so we want to credit Jonathan. So I do think that if Jonathan is sitting in that final three, he is a very, he has a really good shot because of the people. Right.

[03:09:42] So I understand everything you're saying about why Aubrey needs to target him. But I'm curious because this is what the editors do. They like to make people crazy. Maybe they're showing us all of the things that Aubrey is kicking herself for doing previously because it's going to happen again. Wouldn't that be sick? Wouldn't that be sick? It would be very sick.

[03:10:06] It would be, it would be nasty to do to Aubrey, nastier to do to, well, maybe not nastier, but nasty to do to viewers as well. I just, it's possible. You know, we have seen apparent winners edits for people like Jesse, you know, where it's like, he's definitely going to win. He's definitely going to win. Nope. There he goes. Yeah. It's possible. I can't rule it out. I am, you know, in the past, I have taken very definite stances like there's no way this person can win. I'm not doing that this time.

[03:10:36] I don't think it's possible Joe can win. I don't think Joe can win. I don't think Joe can win. I don't think Rizzo's going to win. I think if Jonathan is sitting in there, he's got a chance. I think if Aubrey is sitting there, she has a chance. However, I am very, ah, there is something in my gut that is telling me they're messing with us and it's going to be a Jonathan win and not an Aubrey win. I don't, I just, I hate that. That's what my gut is saying. Sam, I know you want to say something. I can tell like, what are your thoughts here? Because this is messing with me a lot. Well, I have, I have a lot of thoughts.

[03:11:07] I, I think it's going to be an Aubrey win. I do. I think, I think as David said, I think it's been shoved in our face. Here's quotes that we've gotten sequentially in episodes. It's time to make people realize I really do mean business. How do all these pieces fit into the board in a way where I have a spot at the end? This is a full on punching match to get to the end. It's go time. There's no turning back now. Those have all been in episode sneak peeks for the last four episodes running.

[03:11:34] We are having it shoved in our face that even though, by the way, Aubrey's not really doing anything. She's just kind of sitting there letting other people play. She's claiming to take credit for everything. Even when Rick Debbins flips the Mr. Beast coin, it is spun as Aubrey's master plan, getting Rick to do exactly what she wants him to do. I'm not sure how that makes much sense. Yeah. I disagree with the Rick thing. Other stuff we have. But I mean, she's got no better claim to the Aussie boot than Jonathan does. Jonathan probably has a better claim to it.

[03:12:04] She's got no better claim to the Cerevo than Jonathan does. Jonathan might have a better claim to that one, too. But we're not being shown Jonathan taking credit for this stuff in a way that's like, this is what's going to help me win the game. We're being shown it from Aubrey's perspective. Yeah, that's true. We haven't heard from anybody else on their ideal final three concoction. We haven't heard Jonathan say, I want to sit next to Joe and Rizzo because I can beat both of them or I'm not worried about this person or this or that. The only person who's really talked about their win equity is Aubrey.

[03:12:34] And I read that similar to David as, well, I think the edit is preparing us to they're trying to justify, you know, the the tallest blade of grass when all of the grass gets mowed being Aubrey. And they're trying to build her up as much of a threat as possible so that you do feel kind of satisfied, even if you kind of have a sure kind of winner. And so I think that's kind of what we're getting here is this idea of like we're being told

[03:13:03] deliberately why this person is winning or what they think is the reason why they're winning because the game itself doesn't necessarily speak for itself. I would normally be very bullish on Tiffany. And just because of her, I think she's played tremendous. I think she's incredible. I think she has all of the jury votes at this point. If she gets to the end as like a social favorite, she's strategically respected, physically respected. She just wasn't really in the show for the first five episodes.

[03:13:33] And so that kind of is like a disqualifier in my eyes of like, yeah, you know, although I will say one word, Erica. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but I do agree with you generally that like, I think that we've seen the feedback from 41, 42, 43. And really since then, it's kind of been an in your face winners at it ever since, you know, like every single time since then, it's a very strong winners at it. They're clearly telling the winner's story through their perspectives and trying to make you satisfied

[03:14:03] that they won. I would be surprised if on the 50th season, they brought a Tiffany or a Joe out of nowhere to win it in the finale. I think that while Jonathan has friends on the jury, it's really only coach Chrissy, Steph, maybe Ozzie. He might've made Ozzie mad by blindsiding him. I also think that he has a lot of pretty staunch enemies on the jury. Like he does. Yeah. Like if he's going against Aubrey at the final, I would assume that he doesn't have

[03:14:32] Devins, Emily, Christian. Those are all of Aubrey's friends. I would assume that somebody like D isn't voting for Jonathan. Tiffany might maybe votes for Jonathan. I don't think he has three either. Yeah. So he's going to vote for Aubrey. So I, I don't know. It's hard for me to figure out what cohort of six people vote for Jonathan at the end. If he does get there with Aubrey, is there a world where he goes with Rizzo and Joe and wins? Yes.

[03:15:00] I do think that's very possible, but I do. I read it as a, as an Aubrey win. That's kind of being shoved in our faces right now. Yeah. I think you're right. They want to justify, you know, because Aubrey has played a quiet game. Like I said earlier, she started here and has been rising up. I think that they, they want to justify. And there's no, and there's no flashy move. Like she hasn't done anything independently, right?

[03:15:25] Like her moves are unanimously voting out, you know, Ozzie unanimously voting out, Saree unanimously voting out. Like, and so we're even like the Ozzie thing, right? We're specifically told this perspective through Aubrey's eyes of like how she actually took Ozzie out by telling, telling Rizzo like that Ozzie did all this stuff to her. When we have also seen that, like Jonathan was intending to get Ozzie out regardless by the time he arrived on that beach.

[03:15:53] And yet we're told the side story about how Aubrey made it happen. I just think we're, I think that it is kind of like a. Although I will say Rizzo at least said the reason that he didn't tip off Ozzie, the reason he voted him out was because of what Aubrey told him. We have shown him saying that. So I think she does have a good claim to that. I have a higher opinion. I think of her game from, for a number of reasons. One, she's my pregame winner pick.

[03:16:22] Not going to lie. Two, she has, she has told me how, how, you know, but she enjoys the way I analyze that. Hey, I'm prone to flattery. I'm sorry. But even just aside from those things, you know, just watching the game. Yeah. There are some things that are definitely debatable. Like, did she get Sari out? I mean, like I said earlier, everybody knew they had to get Sari out.

[03:16:51] Any, any move that everybody can claim is like a movement. Nobody gets the claim in my eyes. If you're the only one there who can make that claim. Yeah. Oh, if she's, if she sits with Rizzo and Joe, I think it's like a no contest. I think it's a more fiery final tribal council with her and Jonathan. But I do, I think if it's her and Jonathan at the end, I think it just comes down to like, you know, likability. She's old school and not part of this like old school alliance that rubbed a lot of people

[03:17:18] the wrong way during the game where it's like, yeah, Chrissy and coach might vote for Jonathan and Steph. But like, when have Chrissy coach and Steph had their finger on the pulse of what everybody else wants in this game? And it's like, I think that a lot of people would vote against Jonathan and be like, yeah, sure. You're the next best thing here, which is a viable wind path, you know? And, you know, we see it a lot. I just think that it would be, it would be underwhelming. But again, this is this final five, which I think, I feel like not a lot of our big time

[03:17:49] people. I love the game Rizzo's playing. I think that he's played like a really awesome, fun game. I just think for all of the reasons that Aubrey kind of laid out with an old school jury and him being the youngest on the cast and kind of an unknown quantity and like the survivor universe, there is a level of pressure with season 50 to be like, oh, it's going to go. The win is going to go to like a legend or somebody who like really deserves it. And not that his gameplay doesn't necessarily deserve it.

[03:18:17] I just think, you know, those same people that I list coach Chrissy, Stephanie Ozzie, I think they'd have a really hard time voting for like this guy that they know absolutely nothing about at the end. So not necessarily his fault, but like the, the setup of the jury doesn't favor him. Right. Especially when we've, you know, heard them talk in interviews. All he did was lie around all day. You know, he, he didn't do anything. It has a negative connotation to a lot of the interviews so far. Yeah. Which is part of the reason you kind of have to hate exit press sometimes, but it's also,

[03:18:47] you know. Right. We can read into it too. Yeah. All right. So we've got two Aubrey's Jessica. What was your official? Well, I, I do think that the edit is telling us it's an Aubrey one for every reasons that you've both explained. I don't think that her game has been like a Rick Devins, like in your face, everybody sees what she's doing. And so they are trying to legitimize a 50 winner here by giving her credit for things that she doesn't necessarily deserve credit for. I'm just very fearful that they're messing with us.

[03:19:16] I really like, I just feel like there's this part of me that's like, oh God, why they, it's so obvious. And in the confessionals that she's getting, that she's winning and they're showing co-wrong and they're doing all. And I just, I hope to goodness that it isn't because they want to like make an example of Aubrey, like, oh, look, she did it again. And we, we rubbed her nose in it. I just feel like that would be so wrong for so many reasons, because I am nervous that a

[03:19:42] lot of the season has kind of centered around this honesty, integrity, loyalty faction that has existed. And if there's some world in which a coach can get up there and be like, see, look at what we did. Look at this. And we made this happen. That just makes me, there's just something about it that just kind of makes my gut tingle. The only thing that I think is missing there, which maybe we get it early on, on Wednesday and it kind of like adds a layer of whatever to it.

[03:20:12] But like, I think back to a heroes versus villains sort of thing where Sandra is not this intuitive winner at all by any stretch of the imagination. You're kind of like thinking it could go a number of ways, but probably not to Sandra. And yet we do get the level of like, well, Russell doesn't think I'll get the votes at the end, but I don't know about that. And it's, you know, like there is a sense of like, these people don't think that like, even with Marianne, it was constantly like, I'm not what she say. I'm not some goat to be herded or something.

[03:20:40] And she's kind of like speaking of herself of like, I'm not a goat. They think I'm a goat, but I'm not a goat. And I think that if there was a layer of, hey, it's kind of a surprise winner. It's like a Jonathan or it's one of these people that, you know, like a Rizzo or Joe, who we are not sure if they have a jury vote behind them. I feel like we would have gotten crumbs of their, of this kind of like, the jury might not dislike me. Like, like they think, you know, whatever we, and I don't feel like we have that to kind

[03:21:09] of stand on right now. And the only person that's given us that kind of content is Aubrey with the. Yeah. Jonathan did make a comment about feeling like he was worth $2 million. Yeah. But here's the other thing. He did. He did. There's a secret scene from this, this episode. It's only on Paramount Plus, as far as I've seen, not on YouTube yet, which they do weirdly, but, and I plan to make a video about this too. But in the secret scene, Jonathan talks about, it's from them getting tree mail about the second challenge.

[03:21:38] And he talks about the importance of getting to the final three and winning that $2 million. He talks about those things that we were just saying we would see as a quote on the show. Yeah. We're going to win. And I think the fact that it's a secret scene, not on the show is telling. Like, yeah. And I think, I think you look at Tiffany too. Like Tiffany's played such like, I think a really, really good game.

[03:22:06] And like the difference between Aubrey and Tiffany would be like, well, Aubrey was like clearly on the bottom first to go of her tribe. If they had ever lost immunity, Tiffany wasn't necessarily next to go, but she didn't really have any game worth noting early on in the season, just because they didn't really go to tribal. So she was just kind of like, so that, I mean, there was a justification there for her not being in the edit because, you know, what did we really need to see? But it's like, if Tiffany is our eventual winner, I do think they try to invest us in her storyline

[03:22:35] a little bit sooner than like final nine or wherever we finally started to see Tiffany. And so like, that would be one of the disqualifiers where it's like, Hey, Aubrey was clearly on the bottom of her tribe. And yet we still were seeing a lot of Aubrey content from that tribe where we've been able to track her story more consistently throughout the game. Yeah. Good point. Good point. All right. Well, as we wrap up this extra long podcast, I want to encourage people to check out the RHAP patron program at robhazalwebsite.com slash patron.

[03:23:05] You get access to all the special patron only podcasts, plus Facebook groups and discord. And of course you support long shows like this one and everything on the network by becoming a patron at robhazalwebsite.com slash patron. And also make sure you're subscribed to all of the RHAP survivor podcasts at we know survivor.com.

[03:23:52] Yes. Incredible insight. And David, thank you as well for another great week. And I can't believe that this is wrapping up next week. This is crazy. As Sam said, like the season flew by so fast. Yeah. And allow me to say before we get out of here, just in case you didn't get enough of my voice, but in the 200 minutes that we've spent on this podcast, Wednesday night, after you wrap up that live finale, I will be in the driver's seat for the survivor know-it-alls with Owen Knight.

[03:24:23] Oh, nice. Rob is out. Steven Fishback is out. So they called it. They called to the bullpen last minute. And my RHAP driving debut on the know-it-alls. So if you want more thoughts, we see if these predictions are correct. Go check that out on Wednesday night after the episode and live finale as well. That's amazing. Great. We always hear from the listeners like, yes, Sam, you know, we love Sam.

[03:24:52] So they will also be happy with this and happy with you coming back next week on the know-it-alls. Jessica, thank you as always. And, you know, we will see everyone back here again, you know, probably a day later. So with Y blank one. And, you know, until then you can find us on social media. Bye.

[03:25:47] Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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