Day 28: Most Emotional Moment

Survivor 39-Day Challenge

For this category, I’d pick a moment that definitely made me feel so many emotions, so much that I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what I exactly felt. I cried, I was mad, I was upset, I was hurt, I almost hurled, I was disgusted even; all at the same time. Probably just retitle this category to Ugliest Moments then?

There are two, and they were pretty recent. But I have to choose one, and it’s Jeff outing Zeke in Game Changers (2017).

Just rewatching the whole thing made me upset.

It was at tribal council right before the merge. Jeff was playing for a third time and would do anything to hit the merge for the first time in his Survivor career. But he was in a tough position because he’s down in numbers aka he was swap-screwed (or was about to be).

The build-up to his actions at tribal council was pure excitement on television. He wasn’t going down without swinging, he said. He’s about to drop a huge bomb at tribal that no one would see coming, he said. No one seeing it coming is an understatement.

At tribal council, Jeff continued to build up on this “huge bomb” and said “there’s deception here on levels that these guys don’t even understand.” And then he turned to Zeke and asked “why haven’t you told everyone you’re transgender?” I was like what the f — ?!

Did he just associate transgenders with deception? And not just deception, but deception on levels people don’t understand. Really? Not cool, dude. This very association is what’s wrong with the world, and why so many people keeps on being uneducated and unaware about the social issues facing the LGBTQ community. It’s even more upsetting to know that Jeff is part of that community, yet ironically, he’s the one to bring up such offensive notion to another member of his own community. It’s everything that is wrong with the world; human species tearing down its own.

Fortunately, everyone at that tribal council, including Jeff Probst, was quick to defend Zeke and shut Jeff down. Zeke’s sexuality is not deception in any way, shape, or form, and they let Jeff know it very much so. Tai was so upset he was shouting at Jeff, Andrea was crying, Ozzy was pissed off, Sarah’s iritated. Everyone understood that Zeke’s sexuality has nothing to do with the game of Survivor, and its deceptive nature.

It’s just truly upsetting, and even the apologies that followed were. They’re completely ingenuine, lumped in together with his higher-than-thou demeanor through the whole thing.

In the end, in an unconventional vote, Jeff didn’t get to cast a vote and was voted out unanimously. Without the controversial moment, he still most definitely gets voted out unanimously, but you know, with his some sort of dignity intact.

Jeff is probably an amazing person for most people who knows him very well, but I only have the information from the show. It’s edited, his defense. Given, but why did the other people react that way? How exactly was that edited, them being upset about him outing another person? I don’t know.

Runner-up: Dan Scandal Culminating to Kellee’s Vote Out, Survivor: Island of the Idols (2019)