Taako From Teevhii shares the best bonus scenes from the previous episode of Survivor: Hypno vs. Horsea vs. Haunter.

This Week In Secret Scenes

“You Just Turn Into A Madman”

This scene has bits and pieces that made the final cut, but I like it for two reasons. One, it foreshadows the upcoming split of the Seven (though not in the way that Dr. Mike thought it would). Two, it tells us that Dr. Mike’s performance at Tribal made him seem more crazy and unpredictable than Joe; does that let us claim that Dr. Mike’s doing a better job of impersonating Tony than Joe is?

“I Think They’re Making A Strategic Mistake”

With a double episode, there was a cornucopia of content this week. But there’s not much going on in this particular scene. I’m kinda compelled to include this clip because it’s a Secret Scene (which is essentially the last thing cut from the final edit). I guess Devon, Ashley, and Lauren are fooling Dr. Mike and Joe. Maybe there’s something to the fact that Dr. Mike has the best logic of the five. I dunno. You can probably skip this one and not miss much.

This Week In Confessionals

“So It’s, Uh, Definitely Gonna Get Easier For Me, Y’know. I Mean, You Got Ben Out There, Still Good Challenger, You Got Ash, She’s Another Good Challenger, Y’know, Chrissy, And Depending On What The Challenge Is With The Other People, Y’know, You Can’t Leave Out Lauren. So It’s Definitely, Y’know, Even Across the Board, But Definitely Puts The Odds Back In My Favor Of Winning Immunity.”

Good night, sweet prince.

“This Is What I Do As An Actuary”

I think many of us felt a sense of satisfied schadenfreude when we watching Chrissy and Ryan get blindsided. But the level of actuarial irony that is revealed in this clip elevates that emotion to one of ecstatic glee.

So, may I present to you a finest selection of quotes for you to savor:

“There can be an advantage or disadvantage that comes out at tribal.”

“There can be … some reward challenge that happens where new relationships are formed.”

“It’s foreign to me to try to determine the next best course of action without first identifying all of the possible things that could happen.”

“Out here, people only seem to want to think of two things: they’re going to stay, or they’re gonna go.”

With this clip in mind, strap in for a rant that hopefully does Andy proud.

Chrissy clearly identified all of the possible outcomes, in so much as she named them for us here. BUT SHE DIDN’T ACTUALLY ACCOUNT FOR THEM.

Let’s start with the idea of advantages. There was a super immunity idol at the start of the game, and Chrissy has doubtlessly heard about the vote negation. By the time they’ve left for Fiji, the cast would’ve seen enough of Game Changers to know that there’s always going to be an advantage in play. And if there is an advantage in play but you do not have the advantage, then you must assume that someone else has the advantage. Someone who has not told you that they have it presumably because they might be saving it to use against you. Does that sound paranoid? Maybe a little, but if you’re not a little paranoid, you’re not playing Survivor. So if you really want to insure yourself (Get it? Actuary joke? nvm) against the possibility of advantages, act like it can and will be used against you. And it’s not like the concept of an extra vote is foreign to Survivor fans; it’s been around long enough. The form it took this season was new, but Chrissy definitely knows about extra votes, vampire votes, and all other types of voting shenanigans. The probability of this happening is high enough that whatever expected value Chrissy is calculating is definitely affected. She has to be factoring that into her calculus. And yet, she mentions this in a very offhand manner because targeting Joe and Mike are her top two priorities, not some advantage she hasn’t seen yet. That is because (read this next part in your most sarcastic voice) the Seven could not possibly turn on each other before F7.

But now we get to the idea that people might bond and form new alliances at rewards. WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. Now, to be fair, sometimes the very unlikely projection becomes the outcome that comes to pass. But if the probability it seen as too low, even reputable statisticians disregard its possibility *cough*fivethirtyeight*cough*. And maybe in the risk assessment that Chrissy is doing, the probability of this is too low for her to change her plans. EXCEPT THAT SUB-ALLIANCES WERE TOTALLY GOING TO HAPPEN. The jury does not vote among seven finalists. Some of the Roundtable were going to have to be cut. And so maybe you would personally like to wait until F7 before turning on the rest of your alliance, but you can’t assume that everyone else plans to do the same. The people who think they might get cut at 7 are going to try to cut you at 8 (or in this case, 9). Everybody wants to get to gettin’ before they get got. So when a player picks who she takes with her on a reward and isn’t stuck with them by a random draw, you have to assume that her choices are strategic and that she’s trying to build a coalition. WHICH LAUREN WAS.

This leads to the cherry on this sundae: “Out here, people only seem to want to think of two things: they’re going to stay, or they’re gonna go.” Now logically, these are actually the only two outcomes for each player in the game, but point taken: Chrissy thinks that no one is looking ahead to what comes next. Except that she and Ryan whiffed both on what was happening in the future and in the moment. Just *kisses fingers like a cartoon Italian chef* ironic perfection.

“Peanut Butter Was The Way To Go”

Yeah, Devon, you might be safe, BUT YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LET OTHER PEOPLE KNOW THAT. This decision might be fine if it happened three days later, but the Alliance of Four had not eliminated JP yet. There was still a chance (a small but existent chance) that Ryan, Chrissy, JP, Mike, and Joe would turn against the other four. Especially after the four went on a reward together. Devon considers things as they are (e.g. He is safe, so he doesn’t need to compete), not as they appear (e.g. He doesn’t need to compete, so he must be safe), which is arguably the worse behavior in Survivor. His ability to develop a solid plan has shown that Devon is definitely not a Jason Mendoza, but behavior like this might put his ceiling at a Cosmo Kramer.

“It Was So Hard To Say No”

So it sounds like we could’ve gotten all four alliance members sitting out, demonstrating to everyone else how comfortable they were. And none of them seem to recognize why that might’ve been a problem. Ashley does have a point that it’s reassuring to see that her alliance appears solid. But still…

“We Left Game Talk Out”

So we’ve heard directly from Ben how exhausting his charade is. But I think Joe’s confessional shows the true extent of that. He has to dupe not only Chrissy and Ryan, but Mike and Joe too. This means that he has to act desperate for information at the reward and behave like a person who has to be scrambling all the time. Which is essentially the same as actually scrambling all the time. He can only let his guard down when he’s with Devon, Ashley, or Lauren, but even then, spending too much time with them might tip off his marks.

This Week In Ponderosa

“He Seemed Super Stoked”

JP says that he did no prep before coming out to Fiji. That’s probably in the context of exercise and diet, but I think we can extrapolate. It’s hard to believe that Keith Nale could ever be usurped as the most unaware firefighter to play Survivor, but here we are. I understand why JP wasn’t shown more on the show (notice how we hear more from Desi and Cole than from JP himself). But I would have enjoyed the comedy of a heavier JP edit. Despite Cole’s claim having priority, I think JP deserves the “Mr. Peanutbutter” moniker. Truly, JP doesn’t seem to notice or care that he’s been eliminated from the game.

“All I Needed Was One More Day”

Perhaps the most interesting bit from Joe came at the beginning of this video. Joe claimed that he would have told Ryan who to play the idol for and blindsided Devon “with three votes.” From there, he would find idols and pendulum to break up the remaining factions. What this tells us is that Joe did not plan to vote with Ryan, Chrissy, and Ben. It’s his own kind of “double agent” strategy that would have Ryan’s idol do all the work and allow him to stay in an alliance with Lauren, Ashley, and Dr. Mike. He’d trim down his alliance without falling from power. But Lauren’s double vote allowed them to vote split 3-3-3, so Joe decided against this plan. The thing is though, Joe could have easily sidestepped this by just voting with Ryan and Chrissy and (assumedly) Ben. The vote would go 4-3-2, and Devon would go home. Of course, Joe still would’ve actually been eliminated, but that can’t distract from the fact that flipping might have been the better move for Joe. Not only in that it ensures the outcome that he wants, but it creates a more divided tribe where alliances are not so set. It’s possible that this move would just paint a larger target on Joe’s back, but that never stopped Joe before.

Because look, Joe the Survivor Player is grating. But Joe the Person is less annoying. I’m glad that Joe’s sister was there because family moments are always nice (though they can get overdone in the main edit’s family visit). We saw a more human and personal side of Joe, which was a welcome change.

It should also be noted that Joe thinks that he was eliminated early so that Ben could see his family at the upcoming family visit. I wonder who’s going to break it to him. Usually, there’s a process where the last person voted out comes to Ponderosa to fill the old jurors in on what they had missed. More than normal deception usually does, the act by Ben is throwing this process off. It’ll be interesting to see how this further affects the jury’s perceptions of the game.

This Week In Gifable Moments

When the Infinity War trailer drops.

When Republican Senators are asked a direct question about the tax bill.

When people ask what kind of light you are.