Survivor Rewind | Survivor 51 Episode 2 Discussion

0:00With VerboCare, help is always ready before, during, and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists, so support is always available. Because a great trip starts with peace of mind. Survivor Specialist, John, is back for the Survivor Rewind. This week I am joined by my co-host of our challenge coverage here at the Specialist, Alex Trioz. Alex, how do you feel about 51? I feel so far. I'm loving it. I feel like I'm very much more on the fill side of the spectrum of how I've been taking in these first two episodes. I don't know if it's something about the editing, obviously the fact that we have two tribes and it allows it to spread the wealth a little more evenly, whereas with three tribes, you have to be like, well, we're going to just push you over to the side and we're going to really focus in on one tribe that's going to be a disaster tribe.

1:01By having two it allows it to be a little more even. I leave these episodes feeling a lot more certain about what are the dynamics here, even with the people we don't hear from. I have a general understanding of where you are in the game, which makes it fun. You also just have the lunacy of someone trying to self-food. That was just... I spent the last half an hour of this episode explaining to my girlfriend, I'm like, this guy's going to go to the booth. He is going to write his name down and they're going to have to wait to tell him, bro, you can't do that. You can't do that. I wanted to see if he just what his reaction would be. You know what? It was worth it. It was. This season is cooking up. It's heating up and it's really just gotten to a point where I feel like there's no argument to have less than 10% drives anymore. Larger tries make for much interesting dynamics because there are more people interact with each other.

2:02There are more people who come up with cookie plans. There are more people. There's more room for all of these people to kind of maneuver and stuff. I don't think we have had such dynamic first two votes in a season in the entirety of the new era. We weren't at a point where I was like, okay, we say what's going. I have genuinely gone into each of these tribal councils being like, I don't know what's going to happen here because there are too many plans on the table. And that's a good thing. I agree with that. It makes it much more entertaining. The show is much more entertaining when it is not predictable. And that's what we're seeing so far. I so far really enjoy this cast. I think there are some great characters on this cast. I think it's nice. There's a bit of a different casting direction from what we saw in the 40s. Then you can kind of already tell. We have a lot more farmers and a lot more like blue collar workers on this season. And it has been something that's been really lacking in survivor lately.

3:03And because of that, I think we're getting into some interesting gameplay. But I think more of an interesting gameplay comes from, I don't think a lot of these people are actual fans of survivor. I think they're just like, yeah, sure. They're not long time fans like we were casting in the 40s. And because of that, we now have the sense of people who are making some mistakes that are very straightforward. People should know that they can't do Rob shouldn't be standing in the voting booth, writing his own name down, only be told, hey, bro, like the one rule and survivor as you can't vote for yourself. Yeah, there's so many rules here or like decorum of survivor that like Jessica Perokin. It's like, you have Anna who goes this episode who, it's honestly, I just think I'll just straight forward them. It's just going around just saying name, just to say them. It's not really necessarily like who she wants to target.

4:03It's like what ultimately sets her home is basically a miscommunication of from Alexis. Because Alexis is overhearing her talk about her. And it's just like, there's that decorum of whenever someone walks past you, integrate them into the conversation. And just like, you're like, oh, we were just talking about food because like everyone knows who at least is a decent fan of the show. It's like, they're most likely talking strategy if you come up to them and they start talking about food all of a sudden. So it's just like, it's little things here and there. You're like, you got to be a little bit better about this. Or like Rob blowing up on people like camp and like telling everyone that everyone by his specific job and the challenge did a poor job. And it brought back a lot of like old school survivors. Like I was watching Rob this entire episode and going like, I could put you on plow. And you would make complete sense to be on that tribe. Like any of them. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And it is refreshing. That is the biggest thing that's going into this new era is it's refreshing.

5:06And again, part of that comes from the uncertainty, like the permanent uncertainty that Jeff keeps preaching. And the fact that like, I don't know what's going to happen format wise. I was pretty certain Lewis was going to come back and join this one tribe here. Was I guaranteed that? No, you'd never were. But like it made sense. That's what happens. He comes back doesn't have a buff at first. He gets one eventually. But then again, when have we ever had an episode of someone coming back from not being on a tribe and then not being like a focal point of the episode? Right? Like their integration back is so important. We see that in. We see them Fiji with Sylvia and we see both times that happens, right? Where they're set off without a tribe and are coming into a tribe afterwards. We see it in redemption island with that. White and ash, whatever you want to call them now. And again, right, like Aussie, obviously, in South Pacific, it's kind of like a obvious

6:07thing for like Rick Devons and edge of extinction coming back. Chris Underwood coming back and edge of extinction. It's just often these things are, hey, this person's back. They are kind of pivotal looks going on because either they are being targeted immediately or they're starting to integrate into the game. And we didn't see that with Lewis and it was refreshing. It was refreshing not being like, I'll say it. I put Wumas down as the person from the prop that I thought was going to get the most conventional. Because I thought he was like guaranteed a bunch of professionals about like integrating back into the tribe. That didn't happen. I'm happy about that. I'm happy that this is unpredictable to that point. Yeah. And I think they're not like, I don't think the editors are like fully hiding like what it is that they're doing. But I think they're trying to be a little bit better about as much as they say, we don't make a winner today. I think they've actually have been able to spend time be like, okay, we have two big tribes now. We can start like high stuff now. We can be a little, we can spread the wealth because we have the excuse. We have 10 people we have to talk to on this try.

7:09So you have him, you have Jenna who like, you would think after the last episode, you would be like, oh, she's going to be a lot more of a bigger story person for the season. And then she essentially becomes Gabler, like where she has one confessional at the beginning of the episode and then goes right back underneath and you don't hear from her for the rest of the episode. And I think with Lewis, what's interesting and it's like different than past seasons is like, you don't need to focus on it because you just came from a tribal council where like everyone essentially just said, let bygones be bygones, we are fine with us not voting the same and we're just going to keep moving. So like he doesn't come to this tribe where it's like split down the middle and they need to fight for his vote. He just is joining a tribe. Yeah. And I think that's the really important thing here. And it has to do with the large numbers, right? Because there doesn't, when you have 10 people, you're not incentive eyes to start, like, okay, let's build a majority of six.

8:09You know, hard to say, have six people to vote together and on the same page. It's not easy. And that was something we saw in the new era too often was that we had these six person tribes, the strategy, the guaranteed strategy and it didn't develop right away, but it became very apparent towards the end of the new era that you were just supposed to find a majority of four on your starting tribe, coast that to the merge, hope you stay together a lot tight enough or find new allies of the merge to take you to the end of the game. It was a very simple strategy and a very laid out strategy that everyone could follow at that point. And because of that, it was getting stagnant and boring. Because this is so different, this is just going back to old school survivor. And I mean, it doesn't even feel that old because it was just the thirties, but I hate to say like that was like seven years ago now. But it's time we had a season like this. So it does feel different. I am very interested to continue to see how the edit does go forward because presumably, I'm assuming and I'm maybe I'm stepping out here and maybe I'm wrong.

9:14I'm assuming a lot of the editors from the pre forties aren't still with the show. Like they might be, but I'm sure there's some turnover there. And so it'll be very interesting to see how this is edited because it is almost a completely different show than what we've seen over the last ten seasons. Yeah, like you could say like the closest we fit editing that we have that similar to the new era would be the sort of like the breaking of the fourth wall of the producer. Like you can sort of compare that to season 44, like consistently what their conversations that they would have there. And I'm just like outside of that, I feel like a lot of the like even like the camera angles that they're using are different and how they're approaching that subjects are different. Like we're not going to these players and like reintroducing each character and getting their like their background story. It's just like we hit the ground running. We get a little bit of their stuff, but like they used a lot of the pre season press to

10:19do what would have been used in the episodes in the 40s. Yeah, it's great. I'm enjoying it so far. That being said, man, some of this gameplay is leaving stuff to be desired right now. We have Robert. Yeah. I wish we could spend a good segment of this talking with the fact that Rob decided to put his own like he wanted to write his own name down, use an idol on the person he built a target up for to vote himself out of the game. I wish we had something to to compare to in survivor past so we could talk about it for a while. But like thankfully also we don't like we could go with like the people who will try to put it from the game. But this is not the same thing. Thankfully, the fact that he was intending to do this and was so out on his group that even if he did pull it off, Anna still goes home is hilarious that it just wouldn't work anyways. Like there's so many many fun things about this. But let's shift that to our YouTube Anna because I think Anna does kind of commit one of these survivor faux pas here where she in a bit of a panic in the way it's raised, right?

11:25Like they were talking about who to vote for and who to and everyone was like, okay, Eric, who do we tell Eric? She kind of throws out Kristen's name first but immediately like that tracks us just like, oh no, just use me as the decoy vote. Don't put your name into other people's mouths for them. And we see exactly why on the in this episode because Anna putting herself out as the decoy vote means that people could just talk about Anna and voting Anna out and Anna doesn't think twice about it. Well, what's worse is she does it and obviously after the fact she gets pulled in the confessional she's like, yeah, I shouldn't have done that. That was sort of stupid on my part. But that's sort of like the theme of the episode for her was like she was a speak before you think person in this game. And it's just like that always is going to come back to bite you that it's very rare for it not to and it's just like it was sort of hard to like go back and like think of like examples of this because there aren't a lot of like explicit references to people

12:32throwing their name out to be the decoy as a you're a way to say face or like to do it. Like I was first thinking of Q on like on 45 where it's like multiple times during the season. He's like whether it's like a similar reason to Rob or just like during the battle of the game. He's just like, yo, like I'm sort of cucked here. You can even put my name down. I do not care if I go home. But even that is a little bit different. So it was like, it was just scratching my head on this one. Yeah, I think Q and 46 is a lot different than Anna here and does feel a lot more in line with like what Rob's doing here. Although I think Rob's more in line with like Sean in 45 maybe is kind of how I would do that. Yeah, like taking on your ownership of the kind of you can even say to a worse extent like a Colton potentially in one world where like he is medically unable to compete. It doesn't, but to me, like it doesn't feel like Rob is just like quitting the game here

13:33at this point, right? I think like if we were doing the Rob example, we would talk probably about Sean in 45 and like maybe like fair play in my Bernesia as like some parables. But I really want to focus on this volunteering to be the decoy because I think it's actually one of the stupidest things you can do in survivor. I think it is such a bad move because the reason why people get upset about being decoy votes and survivor when like their alliances are like, okay, we'll use you as the decoy vote. It's because it's really telling us to where you sit in that position, right? If we take it comparable, I know like big brother just concluded yesterday. So like this is our last week to really be able to talk about big brother in a sense here. But pawns in big brother are dangerous. It's dangerous to be a pawn in big brother because people get comfortable saying your name over and over again. Of course, big brothers at different Damon survivor. But eventually like something could just happen and the pawn goes home instead. And that's the problem with getting your name out there in the survivor like Anna does

14:33here is because once that your name is out there and people are pretending to be going for you, they might come to the conclusion. It's just better to go for you. And the reason why people get upset is because once your name is out there, it's so much easier just to say that name again. And there's almost got to be this inevitability of being a decoy vote out there that eventually it comes to you. It also means your allies probably finds you kind of expendable because and this is kind of why it's a little different in survivor than big brother right in big brother. Upon goes up that is someone the alliance is willing to lose because it is like a dichotomy of who goes home in big brother because it eventually like just comes down between two people. The same principle does stick for survivor here though where if your name is out there, there is a chance you go home and the people are saying your name even as a decoy, they're probably okay with you going home. Yeah, it reveals the hierarchy. And like which makes it even more like insane when you do it yourself because it's one

15:39of two things. It's your you are so delusional that you believe that you are like the top spot or if not the top spot damn near it. So you're like I can do this and it's going to gain so much good will with everyone. It's going to allow everyone to trust me more because I'm putting my neck on the line for them. But they're all going to keep me safe or you just know you're on the top. So you're just to stay face it's like a Sean situation where you're just like I can be the name guys. It's cool. And like I guess like the first thing I think of when I think of that is season 43 where like you get right before the merge. We have Ryan who allegedly froze the challenge. You don't know for sure how legitimate that throw was but like they lose and he's like well thank god we lost because I can put my name out there to ease Cassidy and then we're going to for one Cassidy out this game. Yeah and like you said a lot of times when people put their name out as a decoy is because

16:43they feel very overconfident they're positioned like it and that's exactly what we see from Ryan here in 43. This is a situation right it's following up right after Lindsey goes home and he's really wants to get Cassidy home. He wanted Cassidy to go home the night before but everything turned on to Lindsey because of Lindsey's paranoia and what we see Ryan do here is very calmly tell James and Carla hey like use me as a decoy it's fine I'll just go like pow and that's kind of the other problem I find with people saying use them as a decoy is people don't know how to act when they're the decoy vote. Because Ryan just goes in sulk and he's like chopping a tree with a mishad and he's like yeah I'm just a little angry but that's not how someone who is on the out and might be going home would act that person would be panicking they would be working to get their names out you have to continue to have conversations I just feel like if you're in a position where you're a decoy you have this tendency to act unnaturally and it actually just makes

17:49things much more suspicious. Yeah like the play dead strategy really only works in a world where there aren't advantages in the game because it's like what's the best way to ease someone's mind and the old school would be like you just set isolate yourself because you're like it's a lost cause I and if someone came to you be like oh what's wrong and it's your target is like well look I'd like try to spend things around but everyone's been so clear that I'm going and like what else can I do I don't have anything to protect myself but in this game like you have your shine the dark you have the wear advantages you have like all these things that could happen and with such small tribes talk to the right person one person says wrong thing look at Lindsay this past episode like you can save yourself and it's like when you choose to do the play dead strategy it also like leaves you very little room to save face with your target because if your target comes to you and be like hey let's do something like you see Ryan here he's just like oh I don't want to do something would be you can just vote me yeah yeah that's in work well and the other situation is

18:54this person's probably going to be looking for an idol if they think they're on the bottom too right like there's just so many layers to it that don't make sense here and ultimately what happens here with Ryan volunteering to be the blindside he's allows himself to be blindside no he's not voted out here geo is instead because he goes on a journey and gets an advantage in this episode but it is that simple right like you're just leaving and that is exactly what happens to Anna in my opinion because Anna's name's out there it's not suspicious when people put Anna's name out there and it's very easy to be like yeah okay you're just giving your opposition something to say to you to play k you with that instance and when Anna's like okay my name's the decoy that's fine she can't even really pick up on the fact and granted like we don't see a lot in the edit so we're not exactly sure how she's responding to it but she can't really react to Alexis and and Leona and even Eric kind of like and Christian and Kristen all flipping this vote around so that

19:56Anna's the one going home yeah it really is as simple as that like what you there's time to do the decoy ends up working but it's like it's such a risk in this game that I don't ever see you always have to ask yourself what's the payoff yes what's the payoff of me putting my name at risk because like you said once my name is out there no matter how much people say oh it's fine it's fine you're safe sure I could be safe this round in a world where you don't flip it on me but my name is there now it's Alan the ether forever and usually those people go home pretty quickly after they allow themselves to be a decoy the problem is is once you become the decoy once you just become the de facto decoy moving forward so because it's easier just to say your name or other than getting other people's names out there is less suspicious and and again like going back on 46 that's what we see with q right q becomes the de facto decoy to the point where it's like you should

20:59never believe q's actually the vote however he still comes up as the decoy over and over and over and over again and we see that in many different seasons and I think of all like the sins to commit in survivor putting yourself out of the decoy is bad one however we don't have any real examples of someone doing that prior to Anna who actually ends up going home instead most of the time it is like a solidarity or it becomes that person's like ally or something like we see here with Ryan and Geo or in season 49 and 49 is an interesting situation because it is a weird dynamic and I'm specifically referring to when Sophie Cigrati offers herself up as the decoy vote in order to hopefully blindside Rizzo at this half tribal council I guess it's not really a split tribal council because there aren't two tribes going to tribal council but this like weird split they have in 49 where obviously like Savannah

22:00comes and joins them afterwards Sophie Cigrati offers herself as the decoy vote so that they can hopefully catch Rizzo without playing his idol and get things going however Sophie does something even worse than this and is like hey I'm going to be the decoy and then immediately tells that MJ hey so I'm going to throw a vote on Geo one jostling case so that I'm not the person going home and that completely has everything fall apart for her and makes it so that MJ ends up going in this tribal council and now granted there are some extending circumstances with Savannah joining in afterwards and everything however if you're going to volunteer yourself as much as a bad survivor strategy as I think that is a worse survivor strategy is like I'm doing this and then I'm also deviating from the plan we already established yeah deviating for the plan and also naming

23:03someone else who could have been someone that you're working with like it creates more chaos into the into a plan that you need to be very tight yeah and like if you're going to have chaos you don't need to be a decoy just have chaos and then something wonky can happen and that's the entire reason why this plan falls apart is because MJ is like well I literally just played an idol and freaked out Joanne and I need to gain that trust again with him so I can't just be like okay I'm going to let you vote Joanne here just in case the easiest thing Sophie can do in this situation is just put the vote on Joanne and not tell anyone however she's worried from a social standpoint that if she does that and she has the back pedal that people want trusted it is so much easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask permission especially if it's just like hey sorry like I had to do this just in case and when you look at where Sophie's positioning is after this tribal council too and granted we do

24:06to have like the power of hindsight here and we do know how it goes she flips to the other side anyways so like her relationship with Joanne doesn't even matter here I'd granted that is based on the results of what happens in this tribal council but it is just a funny situation here where putting your name out there is completely erased right afterwards because then you say okay but I'm also changing the plan yeah yeah it just ended a day lesson for everyone if you're on a future season don't let us talk about you being nominating yourself as a decoy please don't allow yourself to be a decoy do everything your power to not do it all right moving on to our outplay moment here Alex we got two different challenges this time and actually perfectly I like both of them neither they're had a puzzle how great is that both of them are like they were kind of simple they were do this obcikly corsi thingy and then complete this task of some sort I really like the first one

25:10and all honestly I like like the hook thing that was something that we haven't seen before that was neat I enjoyed that I think like the whale and the second challenge was good oh my god I loved the whale yeah it was a it was a bit better in my head it's way better than the gecko it's way better than the snake like there's like yes it's probably heavier because it's a whale but I was like it's a very straightforward like you're not taking it out the cage you're just unhooking it and then you have to put it over the roller and it's just that point is strategy of like what do you need to do to get it over the roller and use momentum that being said I'm pretty sure Jeff that this was 500 pounds which is probably the largest profit like the heaviest probably you ever seen on survivor oh if if he's done the truth then yes yeah I always don't believe any weight that anyone says on a reality show ever yeah because they just want you know it's hyperbole they just want you to think like oh look at these starving people carrying 500 pounds yeah no that's fair

26:13but one thing that was really interesting in these pair of challenges though was this tethering of contestants and pairs in the first one your paycheck date could soon become the most irrelevant date in your life earning is a non bank finance app five million people in growing the concept is almost an annoyingly simple you earn money you access it up to a hundred and fifty dollars per day of what you've already worked for up to a thousand dollars between paychecks tips are optional and standard transfers take one to two business days with no mandatory fees expedited transfers started 399 and cap it 599 it's not about emergencies it's just a better way to exist financially day-to-day worth checking out I am so tired of waiting for paychecks in a world where everything is instant why do I and so many others willingly wait for the money we earned we earned this money it doesn't make sense I did the work now I have to decide between paying a credit card bill or an electric bill because those bills don't line up with when I'm given the money that's rightfully mine

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28:20I don't know why one of them was blindfolded it seemed kind of unnecessary it didn't really amount too much well I guess in in theory it's like I don't think they were expecting people to just be picked up by their partners and moved like it's one of those things where it's you're just leading the blind person along like it's just like it's just supposed to add like another layer of difficulty of moving together because like obviously if you see each other the worst thing that's happening it's like okay we have to pace ourselves because we're combined by the rope but adding the blind component you have someone who's not seen so it's a communication challenge but I like to this better than other blindfold challenges we have where I'm like I feel I'm typically would be less at risk of injury in this one like obviously we do see someone get hurt because of going down the rope but like overall it's like safer because you have the other person right next to you who should be like telling you hey now you're gonna be taking a step up like or like helping them physically

29:25move up or like you have Brady uh event uh it was just in my head the entire time with Brady and Kilby I was just thinking of my greenieja like I was just thinking about that challenge with um chat gang just dragged around like a ragdoll yeah well I mean that is our first example here is cat and mouse in my greenieja because it is very similar and especially when you have people like Brady pulling Kilby through and even with what we're all was saying after the challenge about how uh who was it? Lina was paired paired with Eric? Lina was paired with Eric and yeah with the couple I wasn't blindful and Rob getting mad at Eric for not being the blindfolded one to like pull her along and stuff I think there was just like this emphasis on force for this challenge and I think that does kind of have to do with the fact that like this challenge is kind of simplistic you know honestly yes someone was blindfolded yes they were tattered but it was like go over teeter tutter one of my like least favorite obstacles in all the survivor because it always hurts someone like it always hurts someone missy pain literally brokerfoot on this and you're

30:30just like yeah let's uh keep using this that big sense um yeah you know what but instead I don't know you get through you pull them through and yeah watching Brady pull Kilby through this like net very much was reminiscent of Joel dragging Chad through Cadden Mose in Micronesia the only difference is I think like and I think Kilby has even said it afterwards like he was a willing contestant of being flung around like whereas Chad just like can you stop doing it Joel's like no yeah he can move when I move regardless that is the big difference between this is like we were never given this idea that like anyone was showing animosity from being dragged along because you know honestly like all of these guys are being dragged along it's just what was happening and there was no instance like Joel barking at Chad and being like you know you got to go faster you're sucking and for those of you who don't remember the challenge in Micronesia this is the one

31:32where right after the swap they become tattered with their partners and they're just literally trying to run away from another set of partners they look flag like a flight football to leg on their waste that you're there trying to get from the opposing team and Chad gets dragged all the entire time it's just it's one of those interesting things and I think the con again the con in concept tethering pairs together is really interesting because then you have to put some thought process into who you're pairing and who's leading who's following are you working in tandem things like that adding the blindfold does add that little bit of extra like okay who are we having because someone's like legitimately leading now it's an interesting dynamic I'm glad we did not get a Joel check situation in 51 because that it was just uncomfortable yeah it's very uncomfortable like the closest you get is really just like we probably will go on that we if we had Rob and Linnea together honestly but like even then I'm like there's so much more to this these types of challenges

32:35and just brute strength like I and when it comes to blindfold I would rather the person who has the better voice to be the one who can see to give direction because they thought it'd be like you know I'm a challenged guy it'd be like I'm partnered with CT I don't want CT to be the one who's seeing because I'm not going to be able to understand a word that he is saying you know it's like you need that song who can clearly tell you what is happening and you can understand it because once you lose your your sense of sight like you're really relying on your ears to tell you what's happening yeah I agree with that and thankfully on like my Grenadier this challenge doesn't have a bunch of people getting injured afterwards so that's a plus just one the fact that people were blindfolded despite the fact that they had the danger I mean yeah just one thing Kristen but that was more of an equipment thing rather than that hey we're running in and getting our leg punctured and stuff thing yes yes so the fact that we didn't have a slew of injuries is nice again

33:43that teeter taught her needs to go it is too dangerous for this game especially if you put a blindfold on someone it's just silly for production to think that now we haven't been in an opera situation here because that challenge I want to talk about is actually one that we kind of reference last week because it's a challenge from San Juan Delcer where they're paired up and running under this net to get a ball and then throwing it in the stuff and that challenge I find fascinating because you really need to be able to work your parent partner this one's easy because you're going in a singular direction right like you're being led through an obstacle course that's easy with that challenge in San Juan Delcer the ball is just under the net and you have to get there and you navigate the obstacles in the way but I think because both people are not blindfold both people have their sight and there's just like an open space there's no path you're following it's a lot harder to cooperate in that situation than it would be in something like we saw this week in 51

34:46yeah because like in that instance it's um with 51 that you can literally have like a leader and a follower when you both can see it even if you have like an idea in your head of like oh this person is gonna take a lead I'm just supporting once you both see something instinctively you're going into the direction that you think is correct not necessarily what you agree upon yeah exactly and I think I again I really like the concept of tethering because I think there is a strategic aspect to it like do you put someone like going back to my knees a jewel and check together because you know Joel can pick up the slack for chat and like literally dry camera long I would say that is probably a strategy you could have and I think we see it here with like Brady and Kildi right yeah but or do you build these even pair so that they can cooperate together and they can have a similar athletic ability because I think in the San Juan Delcer challenge it does but who view to have people

35:47of similar abilities doing this because you have to crawl under this now and you kind of like spider crawl the entire time because you have to crawl out from the net once you get the ball and then take a shot and then if the ball doesn't go in you get the scrambled to get the ball you really need people of similar athletic abilities in order to participate in that challenge yeah I would say yet to like it's twofold it's um what is your athleticism levels because I would say more times than not you want it to be comparable yeah I think the more important thing is like it'll act like you're chemistry yeah like I think all of these no matter how in shape or allyshape that you are communication and the ability to actually actively listen to each other is the most important key to success in any type of tether challenge yeah I agree um um it's it's just I appreciate challenges that promote communication because I think communication

36:49really does demonstrate the social game of survivor I agree ability to communicate and I think it's really understated in a lot of these challenges I think it's the same as like most blindfold challenges I think it's the same with most challenges where like you have a caller directing people this is one of those things that I like it when survivor does this I like that this is a different take on a blindfold challenge I think it's a little weird that it was a half and half blindfold challenge but I'm okay with it at the same time again I didn't think it was the most exciting challenge but it was still fun and it delivered a different dynamic than what we normally see and it allowed players to really demonstrate their strengths in challenges in a way that we don't normally see unfold fully agree fully agree so let's move on to our last moment and there is one one big moment from 51 we have pop mentioned yet and it got a big segment of this uh this is um this is pretty cutting off his thumb yes this was I think this was we've seen a lot of injuries

38:00in survivor past we've seen a lot of self-indulation in survivor past through through machetes and in fact that's what we're gonna be talking about we're gonna be talking about machete injuries however you know people who have just hurt themselves using the machete but although was Brody using or Brady was he using the it's so confusing that Brady calls people Brody's I don't like that cyborg um was Brady using the hatchet though could you have that hatchet there or was he saying I thought he was I thought he was using the hatchet but regardless yeah using a blade using a blade and hurting yourself was the thing that happened in survivor this we spent so much more time on this than I thought we would and we saw so well the fact that we have a shot of Brady's thumb tip and it's a good chunk of his thumb sitting in a shell that is actually never she don't survive her before no I I was actually shocked that they showed because

39:02it usually like if it was back in the day even if it was just a tip of the thumb like that gets blurred that gets blurred out they don't show it uh don't like talk off-screen about it but I was I was just a little I'm not surprised I'll be fully honest even if they didn't show us the next time on survivor and showed him like running around with a bleeding hand I'm like but how he moves he was on who if there was someone I had to put money on if we had a forward to prop that who potentially chops off a part their finger in this he's it I put my money on him because like he's he's also a like I'm going to act before I think type of thing and he admits it he admits it in the episode he's like I was just trying to do this thing and I really should just thought about it before I actually did it so I knew something like this would happen and just it's interesting when you see it happen and it's more interesting that you don't see it more often on this show like we have a few instances but like I would expect more people cut themselves or

40:07like potentially cut off like fingers like there's this um I don't think it's ever shown on the show but there's like a lot of stuff out there where in Fiji you know shout out the Fiji we did it last week on the patreon uh go subscribe and listen to it because it was a really fun episode but uh mookie apparently like heard himself really bad with the machete where he almost cut like straight to the bone of one of his fingers and just like it's crazy that it's just something that you could be so focused but in this game survivor where you are underfed and you aren't thinking straight the tiniest slip can like send you out of this game Alex I was camping this weekend and I was using my knife to like undo something and it slipped at a compliment with my finger like that's easy that's me not what are you doing Brody? honestly I did have a lot of sleep deprivation it was very cold this weekend and it was very

41:07hard to sleep because of it so I was suffering from sleep deprivation but nowhere near as bad as a Brody I at least had like nutrition not malnutrition so or Brady oh man this name he's gonna be the one he'll be the one this season that I keep getting the name wrong one uh but it's all good we're all brody here this is such an interesting moment and I think like obviously in a hour long episode over a 90 minute episode I think this is a shorter segment but I also think it shows how the evolution of reality TV's gone since then because I think like we don't see mookie hurting himself why is that it's not pertinent to anything in the season it's not that big of a deal yeah maybe this segment just ends up being a filler segment in this I quite frankly would have preferred to have seen Kristen talking to the medical experts rather than Brady here because that seems more relevant as like this could take you out of the game however in survivor I think like we kind of started the show off with like

42:10scooping falling in the fire right like the big medical emergency right we're kind of backed off of the medical stuff for a while not showing a lot of it right like this reason why you never know about like Austin's three staffing infections and stuff like that in Pearl Islands then uh there's actually a string of machete related incidents that happen around Fiji and we see we see a couple of them like we don't see mookie and maybe that's because there were machete incidents in the two prior seasons but in Panama Nick is cutting a rope to help build the shelter and he somehow hits Bruce in the face busting up his lip and chipping his tooth I still don't know how that happens like I still don't understand where Bruce is where you can be doing that and then you just like chuck it at his face essentially I just remember seeing

43:10that when I went to go watch all these old seasons of survivor and just be like oh my god like this dude got hit and he's done he's done he's going home like he he just got wiser in the face no it's okay his metapole emerges he didn't happen for a couple more episodes after that yeah different type you bring up a very good point though like what kind of negligence is happening and I think this is again why we didn't see the mookie incident on Fiji because there is that question I'm like how much negligence is happening on here and I think what we see with Brady I totally understand accidentally cutting off it who okay I want to be real I worked in a kitchen for a long time you know my people who I saw cut off a tip with their finger it's oh a lot more than two and I might be one of them it was just a little tough and actually that was at home you really need to stop chopping your thumb man I know like you really need to stop this sometimes you just but like sometimes you get a little ask it might did you just don't notice how you're holding things you're kind of an auto pilot without your chopping I'm assuming that's what's happening with Nick and like his recoil must

44:16be crazy to hit Bruce in the face with that thing yeah it's just knife safety is a big thing for me like yeah like I worked I worked in a kitchen where like I lacerated my hand because someone put all the like knives unknowingly to me who was the cleaner into the sink with all the the soap so I went to go grab thinking I'm grabbing container I come back out with a slice hand yeah that's what I'm just like oh perfect well here's the end of my night everyone and it took a while for me to get it to close because it's just how deep it went into my hand but it's like it's just little things like freak accidents happen in the real world it's going to happen in survivor and it's just how can you deal with it I don't think I will want to prove that I was okay by doing push ups with a lacerated hand but it's if you didn't I said it in like a

45:18different chat I was like if you didn't know that Brady was an aspiring pro wrestler you now know because that is what they would do they'd be like see guys I'm good to go I can just go and do push ups right now if I don't have a broken hand look what I can do right now I'm lifting like it's just it's what it is and you know what Brady has that spirit and I do commend him that like he is so focused he is actually focused on the game like as much as people want to use his edit as like he is the goofball he is the dodo like no he is thinking about the game he is concerned not about himself in the real world he's like I don't want to be taken out of this game like I think I can do really well in this that was the big thing is we definitely saw his care for the game and how much he the game meant to him after he entered himself and like his fear of being ejected from the game because of this I think the moment that everyone really thought about when they watched this though goes back to the end of Cook Islands when Barby cuts off her

46:21thinker now I'm like the tip of her finger with the machete yeah again this is a thing to have it's honestly I kind of surprised it hasn't happened more in 51 seasons like but it's like what you said I wonder how many times it has happened and they just decided to not show it because it was I or not to a relevant character or like not relevant to the story or they had an aversion of showing that type of stuff anymore like I feel sub had to have happened like we can't say we've gone through all these years and we've only had the injuries that we have seen on the show yeah no exactly and you know what I think 51 had a fun episode this week however how are you including this yellow tribe in on everything if you don't have this moment and like the big give you a moment where we did get this character moment from Brady we got some we got some of Pat in there as well so it did give an opportunity to give some people some confectionals there that were just like curse reconfechos like kind of like showed a little more

47:23relationship be on 51 otherwise I don't think we have a lot of content for that tribe in this episode so I understand why we spent so much time on it I think it's very much the same with like parradi and cook islands because that was at the end of the game that parradi does that so like you're already kind of struggling for content we only have like I think it was with six people that I think it was the episode she goes it was like very close to that if it wasn't six it was damn near yeah it was either the challenge I just remember it was before the challenge and their concern was being able to stitch it all up like the doctor comes on to the site they stitch it up so that she's ready to go and able to compete for the immunity challenge yeah exactly but again that's not the case that's why I wasn't concerned I wasn't concerned when I saw that parradi had cut a finger off I was like oh we have instances of this before like they don't take you out of the game for this but I saw how much of his finger was cut off and I was like maybe just maybe we might have to worry about that but well my concern was more so just based off the

48:26president that they gave in the 40s where it was like there was things that I felt like people were getting pulled from the game from where I was like I don't know like I'm feeling the grand scheme this is something that they would be able to recover on the island and be able to do it and I was like oh well you you chopped off a good chunk of your finger and they're like well we can't really sew it on I'm good I thought they were about to say like we have to take you out in order to like put it all back together you're out the game like there was there was a possibility there one of the big things is like surprisingly your fingers kind of grow back after a while depending on like how much of it you got off and like he was still like he didn't get like a full knuckle off right like I think it was like the whole knuckle off that's where it's like you gotta do something about this but because it was just still the tip and I was like half of his bum still like it was like half of his bum male still but because of that like I did something that'll eventually grow back because I'm not thinking of you yeah and like you wanted and throw

49:28bandage on it it was like them trying to like tease us with the Kristen like injury where she's like like having a panic attack on like oh I think I broken bones here and like at first I was thinking of like well she won't get to get the messy treatment where they give her a boot and then let her compete the rest of the season because of how long how short there is left in the season was that point so right so I was like oh no is this gonna be something but like then the because injury moments in survivor you can sort of tell when it's gonna be you get taken out of the game or it's fine based off like how are they treating it and like with both the ones here it was ear comedic with Brady or it was like almost shown in a more positive light in Kristen where like Kristen's was more about like look at how I know all these resources on the island and able to like help like remedy myself like naturally for some of these issues to update saying like instead and you don't get anyone else with confessors going like oh no like they're gonna get taken out of the

50:31game I'm so nervous for them blah blah blah blah so it was interesting how this episode took it and gave me some hope down like maybe they aren't gonna be as extreme as they were in the fouries of like when they decide to pull someone from the game or not yeah yeah I don't know um there'll be interesting to see I don't think we have to worry about Kristen's injury moving forward I don't think we have to worry about braze injury moving forward Kristen's injury was addressed in like Jeff's field notes that they're posted on Instagram this season uh that like there was a ultra or there was also a secret scene that showed they did like an ultrasound of it to see if anything was broken and nothing was broken so she's okay uh it'll be interesting to see if Brady being partially thumbless comes back I doubt it well I don't think it's that big of a deal but it's kind of nice getting this like rounded episode of survivor uh we get a little bit of an injury scare we get some good challenges and then a lot of bad gameplay and I've said it before I'll say it again I love the season where everyone's kind of bad at gameplay and there are

51:33enough people bad at gameplay like this was fun this was going to be so much fun I'm really excited for next week it's just so exciting because like yes is there bad gameplay for sure but I think they're also doing a good job of breadcrumbing the good players in the good gameplay and like not like just shoving it in our face like here's all the people that are playing well like in this episode they got to highlight more so like jelly and um like how she's using the idol and like who is she choosing to tell and also being of the four delights and the week before like I think they did a good job with showing killby with the negotiation and like why winning or losing that wasn't really necessary it was just about how do I show this to my tribe to show that I have value and it's like so you have like nuggets of like good gameplay being shown but then you also get to have the good full course meal a bad gameplay and oh that's my bread and butter exactly I've enjoying this season I'm looking forward to continuing to talk about it thank you so much Alex for joining this

52:35week always a pleasure to talk to you this is why I do it every week when we're talking about a challenge uh don't worry everyone McKenna will be back next week I'm told uh the plan is for McKenna to be back next week that should be the case uh thanks for tuning in today it was really fun talking about this episode of 51 in the past uh what do we got going on that's a great question Phil and will broke down the episode on Wednesday Phil and Blake broke down the episode yesterday on digging deeper uh Alex and I talked the challenge cutthroat episode 10 that was an interesting episode honestly really good podcast about it so uh picture you give that listen to if you're in the challenge fear there despite the fact that the episode might have felt a little underwhelming I think uh the conversation Alex and I had was pretty good about that uh Phil will be joined by Rizzo on Sunday for the you power all right r i z g o d ris god baby that is right uh it's about time he's uh he's on here now that he's not on the current season we can finally get him onto the channel

53:36that'll be a lot of fun because we know how much Rizzo loves the specialist uh and then tag with has i know this i did this the other day too tag with is going to be joined by Sophie Beleri on Monday for the match up Phil will have his um prop bet uh predictions episode on Tuesday and then we do it all again so make sure you like the video subscribe to the channel become a patron patreon dot com backslash the specialist uh we have so much contact going on there the boys have moved on or just about to finish up with Ghost Island and move on to David versus Elias so it'll be a very interesting shift in their opinions on the season I am sure well worth it um there's so many other things happening there including Alex and I talking about survivor 43 episode five which is this episode we mentioned earlier about Ryan volunteering to be the decoy vote honestly it's a pretty solid episode season 43

54:43underrated underrated I think it's safe to say it's still an underrated season uh and it is one of those ones that like upon visiting again you're like oh yeah I remember I really like the season when I was there uh so make sure you check that out and we will see you again next week goodbye everybody before I switch to wealthfront my APY was probably 0.1 one size switch stitching with the wealthfront cash account earn up to 4.45 percent APY on your cash I can trust wall front is taking care of me make your money earn more get started at wealthfront.com lines were paid $1,000 for their testimonials for eating a conflict of interest how come so 3.55 base APY as that's September 18th 2026 is represented variable and earned on funds swept program banks 0.65 percent new client boost for three months on up to $150,000 direct deposit $1,000 a month and fund an investing account for a 0.25 percent increase cash account offered by wealthfront brokerage LLC member philma sIPC not a bank day or night verbo care is here 24-7 to help make every part of your stay seamless if anything comes

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