BRADY CAN’T SEEM TO CATCH A BREAK ON SURVIVOR 51 — AND THIS WEEK, ONE CASTAWAY’S BEHAVIOUR IS TESTING HIS PATIENCE IN A WAY THAT COULD PUT MORE THAN JUST THEIR FRIENDSHIP AT RISK With alliances constantly shifting and trust already in short supply, even the smallest disagreements can become dangerous. Brady finds himself increasingly frustrated with someone he must continue living and competing alongside. The real concern isn’t simply who’s annoying him. It’s whether his growing irritation could influence the decisions that determine who stays and who goes at the next Tribal Council. 👇 SEE WHICH CASTAWAY IS GETTING UNDER BRADY’S SKIN AND WHAT TRIGGERED HIS FRUSTRATION BELOW.

Knowledge is power. We know this is true on Survivor. We know it because they literally once named an entire advantage after it. But what is especially delicious is when you provide different players with different levels of knowledge, and Survivor did something absolutely delicious on this week’s episode of Survivor 51.

I speak, of course, of the Survivor summit! So official sounding! As if all the leaders of state and nation will convene and discuss weighty issues of merit and substance. A Survivor summit is kind of like a Survivor journey, only now, because it is the Open Era and everything is different, we have to give it a different name. So Survivor summit it is!

Kristin, Sharonda, and Ori all ended up attending this proverbial meeting of the minds, and before them sat two plates of BBQ ribs and corn, as well as a message. The message informed them that two players would take food back to camp, and the third would instead spend the night alone on Exile Island. However, that person would receive a Tethered Idol that could be played on one of the other two players to give them safety at a Tribal Council.

It seemed like all the upside went to the people who took the food and then could have an idol played on them. Meanwhile, the person who stayed would be stuck by themselves on Exile with no food and no future safety with an idol. Not only that, they would not be able to ride on the sack swing!!!

Okay, slight tangent time. When I first heard the phrase “sack swing,” I was extremely uncomfortable. When I then saw that the sack swing actually involved sitting on a sack of balls, I was even more uncomfortable. I am one hundo Team Maggie on this one. That’s a hard pass on the sack swing. See, I don’t even like using the words hard and sack swing in the same sentence. This entire topic is so problematic. I need to get off this subject before I… DAMMIT! Now I just wrote the words get off way too close to sack swing. UGH! Okay, back to the Survivor summit.

Sharonda told us Kristin was a provider and would eventually volunteer to stay, and that is exactly what happened. In that moment, I thought to myself how unlucky the show got in that the three people attending the summit were all original Savu allies and, therefore, there was really no dispute or discussion over the decision as to who would stay. It was all too agreeable and easy. But there was another layer that had yet to be revealed.

Once Kristen got to her Exile base camp, another note informed her that if both Sharonda and Ori were out of the game, then her idol would have no restrictions — meaning she could use it on herself. Nowwwwwww things were getting interesting.

The aspect I love about this extra layer is it creates three different tiers of knowledge in the game. You have 11 people who have no idea who actually got what at the summit. Then you have Sharonda and Ori, who think they know what Kristin has, but are, in reality, only aware of certain parameters. And finally, you have Kristin, who has all the information. That’s a nifty game mechanic — especially the middle step of folks mistakenly believing they are in the know when they aren’t.

It also makes the fact that the three people who attended the summit were all allies much more intriguing. If Kristin has that power with, say, Devin and Kilby, she’s automatically targeting them to get that idol. But with Sharonda and Ori — well, I suppose only Sharonda now — being tied to the idol, that makes Kristin’s calculations much more complicated. Does she prioritize numbers and keeping allies in the game, or does she gun for the idol?

Forcing people into difficult decisions is always intriguing, and doing it while placing invisible roadblocks on the information highway is a masterstroke. Okay, let’s get into what else went down on episode 6 of Survivor 51.

How close is too close?

You’ll always hear people say that first and foremost, Survivor is a social game. And that’s certainly true. But it’s not as simple as that. You want and need to get close to people to forge those connections to get you further in the game. But if you get too close and then burn those people, they’ll often resent you more than if you were just a mere casual tribemate, as opposed to someone they considered a deep and dear friend. How many times have we seen jurors turn on finalists who were former alliance partners after feeling personally wronged in the game?

I bring this up not to give Charlie Davis another case of Maria Shrime Gonzalez-induced PTSD, but rather to illustrate the divergent reactions on the Dina Tribe to Kilby forcing the tie on last week’s episode. On one hand, you had Eric, who thought he had found his long lost pop culture-obsessed brother from another mother in Kilby.

“This felt like the biggest betrayal I had ever felt,” Eric told us. “I opened my heart and soul to this guy.” Eric was pissed, was calling Kilby a rat, and said he needed to go next.

And then there was Cristian, who did not get nearly as close to Kilby so was therefore less hurt by the alleged betrayal. Not only did Cristian not appear to be particularly upset by the move (because he did not feel personally wronged), but he actually spoke of wanting to work with Kilby and Lewis.

“I am so excited to let me chaotic side out,” Cristian announced. Of course, we can file that statement under CT for convenient timing, seeing as how Cristian had no intention of letting his chaotic side out just one day prior when he refused to go to rocks, but we’ll let that one go, because his approach here was the correct one in leaving every strategic door ajar.

Simply Savu

There is just something about an island runway. It doesn’t always make the show, but I swear it seems like every season at least one tribe does a catwalk runway show, and this time it was Savu’s turn, as Devin gave Ori pointers on perfecting his shirtless strut.

Unfortunately, Ori was not around later to give Devin pointers on ripping open a coconut. But all the pre-challenge Savu footage was of the big love-in variety, so let’s just fast forward and move over for a sack-swing-free account of what was happening over on Toka. (We’ll get back to Savu later.)

Toka trauma

Poor Mike! The dude appears decent enough. I mean, outside of working for the evil empire that is the New York Yankees, that is. But everyone seems so down on the guy. The tribe got rid of Patt instead of him because they viewed her as a much better player, which on one hand was great news for Mike, but on the other hand… you know… harsh.

Thien An keeps calling him a bottom feeder, and now Brady is broadcasting on every known and available radio frequency that Mike is not one of his Brodies. Brady acted super annoyed at Mike in this episode, and I am not saying that Mike is not annoying, but I am also not seeing how he is. And I feel like the edit would show us that if they had the footage to visually support what Brady was saying.

Sensing he was on the bottom, the Yankees executive tried to engineer a trade proposal with a rival from the other team. He told Kristin that if she helped him get to the merge, that he would give her a blank check vote at their next Tribal Council. Kristin acted about as interested in that trade as she was in those BBQ ribs and corn.

But just when it looked like Mike was firmly on the bottom, along came a wacky fishing idea involving a hammock. Look, I’m not exactly sure what sort of gargantuan fish Maggie was hoping to catch with the hammock, and I can’t really imagine who would want to even use the hammock after that exercise, but at least she’s trying and coming up with ideas. Not good ideas, granted. But ideas, nonetheless!

And guess who’s upset about it? You Brodies already know the answer: Brady! And he’s not just upset.

“I’m fired up, I’m pissed off, I’m annoyed, I’m bothered,” Brady told us after Maggie turned their hammock into a saltwater special and then tried to get Thien An killed retrieving food out of a tree. “The self-awareness scale is zero.”

I feel lots of competing impulses when it comes to Brady. On one hand, he seems to get really annoyed with a lot people really quickly (Aaliyah, Mike, Maggie, even poor Eric on the sit-out bench during a challenge). On the other, I love a reality TV contestant with no filter. He’s a producer’s dream. You don’t need to coax anything out of this guy. He was probably bitching about Maggie and Mike before the tape was even rolling on his confessional interview. I don’t know how thrilled I’d be about it if I were either of his targets, but at least as viewers we know where he stands. Or, when he is on the sack swing… sits.

Photo finish

It was nice to see the whole knock-pieces-down-and-then-assemble-your puzzle thing back in an immunity challenge. Feels like it’s been a while with that one. Two things I want to note about this contest.

First off, I love the way Cristian took off his buff to look at the Survivor 51 logo that needed to be put together on the puzzle. I don’t know if that qualifies as letting his chaotic side out, but it was smart!

The other notable thing was how damn close the final result was between Toka and Dina, who appeared to finish at the exact same time. Since there was no reward attached to the challenge and only the last place team would be going to Tribal, it didn’t matter at all, but it would have been pretty fascinating had there been some actual stakes for first place.

My guess is they would have had to literally go to the footage they just filmed and play back a wide shot that showed the exact moment both tribes finished. I kind of love that Probst was all “Ah, f— it. I have no idea. I’m gonna give it Toka.” Good enough!

Poor Savu, who started the puzzle first, looked more lost than Devin searching for Jenna’s wedding shot list. And it meant they had another date with Jeff Probst at Tribal Council.

Ori’s last stand

Right after Savu lost the challenge, my first instinct was that Devin was a goner. The edit had been teasing Jelly turning on her day 1 partner for weeks. We saw Jelly telling Patt about her idol instead of Devin. We heard reservations about Devin’s style of gameplay. We witnessed glimpses of her at least appearing to contemplate keeping Alexis over Devin. Could all that have been the editorial breadcrumbs leading up to this huge moment?

In a word… no. That became clear once the trio returned back to camp. Jelly informed the others she had an idol and that she could not write Devin’s name down. To his credit, Ori continued to push her to reconsider. And to his further credit, once Jelly shot that attempt down, he then went to Devin to try to get him to turn on her in the hopes that she would not play her idol.

I guess that conversation did something because Devin told us it flipped a switch, although I’m not exactly sure what switch was flipped considering Devin still voted Ori’s ass out a few hours later.

I actually had a bit of a wild ride watching this Tribal Council. Everything seemed to be a mere formality, with Jelly and Devin openly telegraphing their votes and Ori announcing he was playing his Shot in the Dark. Once Jeff had Jelly and Devin essentially give their eulogies for Ori before the voting even began, I was like, “Oh, yeah. He’s a goner.”

But then it just kept going! And then, on top of all of that, Ori started delivering his own eulogy, talking about wanting to allow his mother to retire and how “I failed.” The longer it went, the more I started to have second thoughts. The edit was laying Ori’s exit on thicker than the season 41 contestants who were forced to keep talking about how much harder the 26-day New Era was. Which had me momentarily believing this was all one huge editorial pump fake.

Was this whole charade a giant ruse? Did Devin actually turn on Jelly? Is Ori’s Shot in the Dark going to hit? Is Maggie gonna randomly saunter into Tribal Council with her stinky hammock and two more extra votes? Anything seemed possible!  But, no. It was what we all thought it was. Oh well. And to think we were just one day away from having not a single man voted out of the game before the merge. We almost made history, y’all!

Ever the competitor, Ori looked truly dejected walking off the Tribal Council set, but hey, at least he can now head to Ponderosa and enjoy roughly the same gender ratio I had throughout my four years at Sarah Lawrence College. ENJOY!

And I hope all of you out there make sure to enjoy my exit interview with the ousted player when that goes live Thursday morning. But before any more Survivor 51 players cast any more votes, make sure to cast your own vote either before or on election day. Hey, check me out making like a 1990s MTV Rock the Vote advertisement. Eat your heart out, Carson Daly! Anyway, go exercise your constitutional right, and I’ll be back next week with another scoop of the crispy.