‘Survivor 51’ Recap: Paired Elimination Returns!

Well that’s a brutal way to get eliminated Survivorwith just one vote cast against you. In fact, it was worse than that this week Survivor 51. Due to Survivorof the twin elimination twist, it was actually started with only half a vote cast against you. Half a vote! Awesome.

But as affectionate as I was for Kristin and Kilby, and as sad as I am to see them go, I will say the same thing as last season: the duo elimination is a great twist. This takes a simple vote and makes things complicated. This adds more pressure points to the decision-making process and more angles to consider. And you know who agrees with me? Kilby!

The designer of the game that will fall victim to the twist later in the evening said it himself during the episode, pointing out all the interesting considerations that come into play when you have to vote against two people tied together… especially if you want one of them to stay.

Although many fans do it naturally, you can’t judge the merit of a twist based on whether your personal favorites stay or disappear. Especially when players had all the freedom to act that one could ask for, in that not only could they choose their own partners, but they had seen the exact same scenario play out. Survivor 50. They didn’t necessarily know it would play out exactly the same way (PERMANENT UNCERTAINTY!), but it was a pretty good bet. This is why Lewis made fun of Jelly and Devin for choosing to team up together. He called it “the stupidest move in the game.” He couldn’t have been more wrong.

That’s because Jelly and Devin knew something that Lewis didn’t: They had an immunity idol to play with, and this was the perfect time to use it. By teaming up and using it during the double elimination, Jelly’s idol doubled its power and saved not only one of them, but both two. That’s why partnering up was a brilliant decision.

This is another beauty of paired elimination: it opens up more strategic avenues both in terms of choosing who you’ll be paired with, and then later choosing who to vote with. Big fan!

With that said, let’s return to our original topic sentence. This is a brutal way to do it. After eight “doesn’t count” votes were cast against Jelly and Devin, and Cristian’s Shot in the Dark came back SAFE (thus rendering Jelly’s vote against him and Carter moot), this meant that the one vote cast by Devin over Kristin and Kilby was enough to send the duo to the jury. Sad.

But not completely unexpected. After all, I made Kristin my pick for Episode 1 to win it all, thus retroactively placing her unable to emerge victorious. But even beyond my personal bragging rights, I was just a fan of Kristin because I appreciated how hard she worked to be on the show for so long, and I appreciated her emotionally measured (at least when I’m not talking to Mike!) but strategically sound acting.

I assumed Jeff Probst was talking about Kristin when he said he could see a Season 51 player as a future. Survivor host, because I could definitely see it myself. (Her ouster also means that the attached idol is now emptied even though Sharonda is probably holding it, since Kristin had to be the one playing her. Oh well.)

And Kilby? Kilby was clearly living the dream, which is why he looked so completely broken upon his release. It shouldn’t be. Kilby went there, was constantly in the strategic mix, with Maggie made the play of the season with the forced draw, and can hold his head and fabulous hair high for never having been hyped or bamboozled by his peers and found himself on the wrong side of a single vote. Well… half a vote.

Ok, let’s talk about what else happened in episode 8 of Survivor 51.

The Tovuto punching bag

If there has been one consistent theme in this season of SurvivorThis is an unqualified slander of Mike. Everyone may like Raymond, but not a single person seems to like Mike. In fact, it got hilarious at this point. The guy is a walking, talking Joe Btfsplk! Okay…this reference probably would have worked better if more than 0.0000000001% of you knew who Joe Bftsplk was, and now it’s going to get super-duper awkward for a second while I have to painfully explain the joke that I simply should never have made in the first place.

Anyway, Joe Btfsplk was a character that appeared in the Little Abner comic who had such perpetual misfortune that wherever the poor guy walked, a storm cloud hovered over him. So, much like Pig Pen has this cloud of dust following him everywhere (and NoI’m not going to explain who Pig Pen is!), but instead it was still raining on the guy. Anyway, that’s who Mike is. It’s a fucking Joe Btfsplk!

So while the rest of the tribe wasn’t trying to escape the inevitable awkwardness of Eric’s attempt to hold an “open forum” to discuss the previous Tribal Council vote, they were busy picking on Mike…again. Kilby ripped into Mike for having no backbone, Thien An talked about how she was sick of him, while Eric delivered the harshest assessment imaginable as he stood there appalled that Mike couldn’t even name his favorite musical! (Operation Mincemeat for me, BTW.)

The best – or worst, if your name is Mike – was a scene the next morning where Mike and Maggie performed their own Elizabeth Holmes-esque version of “Who’s on First?” » As Mike said that he leaked Kristin’s vote to Kristin because he was brought in at the last minute, and Maggie countered that the fact that he was brought in at the last minute shows that no one believed he could actually keep the information secret… which he then proved.

“I’m having a hard time getting rid of this stench,” Mike explained, although it should be noted that everyone has enough the immovable ones stink after playing a few days of Survivor.

Proving that the tribe’s annoyance with Mike knows no bounds or boundaries, Carter told us that he too is done working with this guy and would rather start a whole new alliance with an absolutely terrible name. Which brings us to Salt of the Earth (or, apparently, Salt for short). This new alliance consisted of Carter, Lewis, Cristian, Kilby, Thien An, and Maggie – a random assortment of people if I ever saw one. But how would the new alliance partners decide to divide themselves to meet the coming challenge?

Duo Lingo

My first thought after Tree Mail showed up telling the players to team up for the next challenge was to wonder if the cast knew about the pairwise elimination twist of Survivor 50. It’s because Survivor 51 Filming began on April 18, and Coach and Chrissy’s elimination aired on April 15. The contestants were reportedly in Fiji at the time, meaning they didn’t see the show before heading off on their own adventure.

However, producers often showed players episodes that aired during Ponderosa’s pre-game period to keep them as up to date as possible. Additionally, in the past, they have informed players of twists and turns that aired in the previous season that they would not have seen. A good example of this is the introduction of the final four bonfires, which were added in season 35 but had not aired during the filming of season 36.

Because they didn’t want players to appear completely unaware of a new format change that all viewers at that time would be aware of, they told everyone Ghost Island talk about it before filming. (There are many other examples of this, such as with Idol Nullifier. The only big outlier would be Survivor 42in which the producers intentionally didn’t tell the players anything about Season 41, because they wanted all these twists and turns to be completely unforeseen for the contestants.)

Anyway, the Survivor 51 The cast clearly watched Coach and Chrissy’s pairwise elimination episode because they referenced it here in their confessionals.

But maybe they were wrong or something, because half the contestants seemed to be under the false impression that they had to team up with someone who had the same first initial as them. Maggie and Mike! Cristian and Carter! Kristin and Kilby! Actually, I’m going to do something now, right? Survivor 51 The contestant would even dream of doing it, and that gives Mike some well-deserved props. Mike recognized that Maggie was a popular player that the others wouldn’t want to eliminate, so he immediately asked to team up with her. Clever! But how would this duo fare in the fight for immunity?

Balance your balls

The pairs challenge (for immunity and spaghetti, as evidenced by Jeff Probst’s half-hearted Italian impersonation) would take place in stages, with teams being eliminated along the way. It was basically a lot of balancing with carnival-style shuffleboard action and a very painful seesaw.

There was also a difference: the pair that lasted the longest in the first stage would gain an advantage in the second. This is interesting in that teams should judge after surviving the first two cuts whether they should continue to play for the advantage, or drop out voluntarily to pace themselves and conserve their strength and endurance for the next two stages. (Lewis and Sharonda seemed to choose door number two on that one.) The other notable thing about the first phase was hearing Probst exclaim, “Both balls are now moving!”

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