Survivor: Edge of Extinction Episode 8 Recap
Y’all Making Me Crazy
Normally, when contestants go to tribal council on Survivor, it’s more for the audience than anything else. I’ve written about it before, tribal council is essentially a theatrical performance for the castaways, all of whom are trying to give Jeff Probst enough to get him off their backs while not saying too much as to spoil the real plan to those not in the know. Only in rare instances will tribal council might yield real conversation or unexpected decisions.
In this week’s episode, we got some real conversations. Tribal council was no longer a play to the castaway and instead became an improv show. It became one of the biggest cluster-you-know-what in the show’s history and I was living for it. I never watch the episodes live, because I usually put my daughter to bed and read her stories as the show is about to air, so when I was fast-forwarding through the commercials and noticed we were headed to tribal council with roughly 25 minutes left in the episode, I knew we were in for something else. Without fact checking, that has to be the most time devoted to a single tribal council the franchise has ever devoted.
When the dust had settled, Kama had once again cannibalized itself. We are really starting to see a Foa Foa situation going on with Lesu, even despite themselves. The important discussion is trying to piece together how everything went from David or Wentworth to Julia over the course of a single tribal council.
It’s important to note that the burden of this vote out lies completely in the Kama majority’s hands. Specifically, it goes to Gavin, Julia, Victoria and Aurora. Those are the four people who blindsided their fellow Kamas Julie and Ron at the last vote by sending home Eric. They became a power group that the other tiny factions left wanted to attract to their side.
To understand how this vote was supposed to go down is to try and understand how everything stood after Eric was voted out. Ron and Julie were left in the dark and became a separate twosome outside of the Kama nucleus. That much was obvious. Despite voting against Devens and with the other Lesu 3, David found himself still aligned with Devens and proclaiming his loyalty to him. Wardog, Wentworth and Lauren formed a trio that had voted with David but explicitly did not consider him a part of their group. Wardog did not mention him in his confessional of how to move forward in the game nor did they bring him in when they started strategizing after the Eric tribal council.
So, you had two separate groups of 2 and a trio. It became clear to these different sides that whoever would be able to bring in that Kama group of 4 would form the new majority on the island. Those 4 had an embarrassment in riches and the choice to choose their own path. The problem is they never made a choice.
When tribal council is performed as theater, everyone has their script. A few might have a script with incorrect dialogue but going in, every player left in the game has their own vision of how that tribal council will end. Everything they say is a means to get to that outcome without revealing the script to the people who have a different version of the same story. The problem with the Kama’s 4 game plan in this episode is that they opted to withhold the script from everyone who wasn’t part of their inner workings and what happens you go off script? You have to improv.
By their own admission, the Kama 4 did not have those final conversations with the different alliances before tribal council. Instead, they intentionally let the clock run out and leave everyone outside of their core uncertain about the validity of their plans with the Kama 4. That left 7 people feeling very uncertain about their future in the game and their stability with the plurality group.
Now you have a bunch of people feeling uneasy about their position. And tribal begins. That’s where the Kama 4 completely shoot themselves in the foot. Aurora starts discussing that Lesu is dysfunctional and might have a chance to compete if they just worked together. Why she thought that was a good thought to bring up before a vote is beyond any of us but she did. Devens immediately pounces on that idea and openly brings it up to everybody left outside the vote, essentially, “hey, it seems like we don’t know what is going on but there’s most us in that boat. Let’s vote together and then we’ll definitely know what’s going on and live to see another day”.
In most cases, that might have been a fun shot in the dark, but plans would have held together. In this situation, Julie’s emotions had been absolutely trampled from the previous blindside. She was left in the dark for the upcoming vote too. She felt hurt and betrayed on top of being uncertain if her closest allies were lying to her again. In that moment, Devens’ words became something of a comfort for Julie and her flip just switched. She completely abandoned any façade of being Kama strong and declared her allegiance to this new voting bloc. Whether Ron wanted to go along with this plan didn’t matter anymore. The only person he had any tangible loyalty with was Julie and she was going along with Devens’ plan so Ron had no choice to go too.
From there, you have to give credit to Wardog for being the voice to bring these misfits together. It seemed on the episode, and was later confirmed by Julia, that he was the one who eventually brought the target onto Julia. Well, Julie was hellbent on voting out Julia and Wardog was the one to eventually convince everyone else to go along with it. There’s something to be said about his ability to roll with the waves and so easily agree to vote with Devens, who just last episode told him in no uncertain terms to “fuck off”.
Of course, Wardog’s convincing was helped along by Julia imploding her own game as tribal started taking a turn. She lashed out at Devens for proposing this plan to “put him in his place”. She told Wardog to shut up (when for once he didn’t even deserve it). She told Julie she was “throwing away Kama control” when days before, she had blindsided her and voted out one of her alliance members. She was openly telling Aurora “not to reveal the plan” and Wentworth that “we’re good”, visible for everyone else to see. Going into tribal council, she had next to 0% odds of being voted out and her performance under pressure eventually made her the preferable consensus target.
Then there’s Julie who also put on a horrific show at tribal council. She let it all out at this tribal council and drew a line in the sand. She was going with one side and everybody knew it. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of the historic “Jenny tribal council” from Survivor: Kaoh Rong. The outcome was different but the emotions felt similar. In both situations, we had a player who was emotionally distraught spiralling out of control. Thankfully for Julie, her distress became a tool for others to use. Jenny’s breakdown just made her look guilty and got her voted out.
I understand how it happens for Julie to completely break down or for Julia to get snippy. It’s a pressure cooker and sometimes, starving and tired, you just can’t handle it. Julia could sense that tribal council was starting to turn towards something that was not in her best interests and that can be frustrating. She didn’t have the advantage of having been at tribal council as often as other players have and in that moment, her inexperience showed. I’m not even talking about David or Wentworth. You could see the difference in comfort amidst the chaos comparing Devens or Wardog to Julia and Julie. All that losing in the pre-merge finally paid off for Lesu.
Credit can be given to Victoria and Gavin for knowing a sinking ship when they see one. They left Julia high and dry on that vote to salvage their own games from the wreckage. Aurora’s undying loyalty is something you want in a friend but it’s going to kill her in this game. She stayed loyal to Joe and Aubry to her detriment and this week, she was the sole person not to vote for Julia, even if last week she was going to vote with the numbers.
Speaking historically, this felt like a combination of two iconic tribal councils. Seeing this flip happen right at tribal council was very much a callback to Hayden’s impressive performance at the Blood vs Water final 6. That’s the one where he flipped Ciera over to his side and forced a rock draw against Tyson’s alliance. His move was helped along by Monica and Gervase’s terrible tribal council performance much in the same way that Julia’s downfall was caused by Devens and Wardog but with a lot of help from Julie and Julia (and not the movie about French cuisine).
Then you have the aspect of it where a group of people on different sides joined together to vote out the swing group. That felt a lot like Rob Cesternino getting everyone together to vote out Christy Smith in the Amazon. Christy had been a little too happy to tell everyone she was the swing vote and Rob was able to convince everyone else just to vote her out and figure out their situation after she was gone. In this case, the swing vote was a group of people but instead of lobbying to them, the opposition rallied together and voted one of them out.
There were a lot of funny moments during all this insanity at tribal council. There was Wentworth and David openly chatting about the original plan. Seeing Wentworth tell David “it was you” felt so unbelievable that it made me laugh. Especially the casual way in which David took the news. You have Ron saying “you wanna vote for Victoria” to a bunch of people, among whom included Victoria. There was the moment where Wardog gave props to Devens for opening this can of warm simply by muttering “Rick Devens” in an excited manner. You had Probst eventually stopping all lines of questioning and opting to just sit there like a substitute teacher who’s lost control of his class. And of course, Aubry sitting there in the jury acting out the Vince McMahon GIF.
If every tribal council were like this, I would be over it very quickly. It’s a lot to take in. Every now and then, it feels like a breath of fresh air. Especially because this tribal council was not inspired by strategy. It was more driven by emotions. Julie’s inability to cope with the Eric blindside and her questionable future became the tool that allowed Devens’ proposal to take form. We weren’t sitting there talking about splitting votes and playing idols, that took a backseat the instinctual emotions of survival. Julia didn’t fight back with logic, she used barbs and expressed anger because that is how she felt in reaction to what was happening. Unlike say, the Malcolm tribal in Game Changers, this one felt organic and earned in its messiness. And I loved every second of it.
I admire Kelley and Lauren’s nerves of steel for holding on to those idols. Every episode that passes without having to play them, it gains them that much more power in the game. They are going to be a very hard duo to topple over because the rest of the players are soon going to run out of room to take a shot at them. We haven’t even seen much speculation from others that Wentworth might have an idol, I don’t think anyone has posited that Lauren could have one. It’s been refreshing this season that we have seen very little idol or vote splitting discussions but I’m not naïve and we will be getting some soon, probably even next week.
Who knows where we go from here. The obvious bonds are Wardog/Wentworth/Lauren and David and Devens. Ron and Julie are likely still a tight pair but Julie’s tribal performance may dissuade Ron from wanting her too close to him. Gavin and Victoria must be together now because they have flipped together twice and forged their bond in fire as some might say. Aurora is once again off by herself. Looking strictly a original tribal lines, you have a 5–5 split. It’s very unlikely that any of these people are going to go to rocks for each other. My gut tells me that Gavin or Ron are in trouble next week but given the nature of this cast, who the hell knows. I’m just very excited to be so uncertain at this point in the game as this season has continued David vs Goliath’s trend of having an unpredictable edit late into the season.
