Reality TV Thoughts

Who knew that Q was right to not trust Emily Flippen in the preseason? Maybe people need to take Q’s strategy more seriously and realize that no one who eats pork, drinks coke, and is left handed should ever be trusted. He is 100% vindicated.

The Survivor 50 tribe swap brought forth many new dynamics and changes. Charlie’s trauma from losing Survivor 46 by 1 vote has led to him targeting Rizo on his swapped tribe. The three David vs Goliath players are all miraculously on the same tribe and seemingly working together. Emily Flippen causes chaos the entire episode and aligns herself with her biggest adversary from old Cila. And of course, as is the case with every tribe swap, someone gets swap screwed. And unfortunately, it seems Q, one of the most entertaining players in Survivor history, did not have the odds in his favor.

Last-minute Pre Swap Chaos

The morning of the swap, the Cila tribe receives inklings of a potential swap. Christian, knowing that he sent the Billie Eilish boomerang idol to Aubry, needs to tell his closest allies about this so they can work with her in case they end up on the same tribe as her. He and Rick Devens devise a plan in which they tell their allies that Devens had found the Billie Eilish Boomerang idol the night before. The fact Christian was so easily able to convince Devens to agree to this is impressive. This plan basically turns Devens into a shield for Christian, and Devens had no problem with it! That’s besides the point, though. While the two are able to tell Cirie about the idol pretty quickly, Joe and Ozzy prevent them from being able to tell Emily before the swap. This will come back to bite them, particularly Christian, later.

The Swap

Everyone arrives at the tribe mats, and we see a bit of Rizo’s reaction to his close ally Savannah being gone, no confessional though, sadly. Jeff Probst decides that the best way to introduce the swap to the castaways is… through a rap song! It’s a moment reminiscent of the fried chicken and waffles song on 48, in all the wrong ways. It’s not the most heinous thing ever though, so let’s just move on. Just before everyone grabs a new buff, Christian whispers into Emily’s ear that Aubry has an idol. Emily is not happy to have received this information so late, setting off a chain reaction on the new Vatu tribe. Charlie has been disappointed by every ‘decision’ the fans have made so far, even though he admits he voted for a swap. Kamilla is disgruntled about the swap. I mean, who would wanna give up having Jonathan on their tribe? Luckily for her though, she gets to stay on the same tribe as him and her other Kalo tribemates, Charlie and Dee. After everyone swaps, they get to go to their new camps and bond with their new teammates! They’ll all get along just fine…

The New Kalo Tribe: Honesty & Integrity 2.0!

This is exactly what everyone wants to see. The three men on the tribe all teaming up immediately. Certainly not a pregame alliance or anything… Coach, Colby, and Joe. Not at all a surprising trio, but one most would not want to work out. All you can do is hope that Coach ends up blowing it up somehow. Coach’s other moment is more heartwarming though. Coach reveals to us that Chrissy was on the bottom of the old Kalo tribe and would have been voted out first for “talking too much.” He really likes her though and now that they’re on the swapped tribe together, wants to give her advice. It harkens back to Tyson comforting a crying Coach in Heroes vs Villains, one of the most underrated moments of that season. And Chrissy has a really emotional reaction to it and gets to tell us about her story with her medical scare. I’m really hoping we get to see more of Chrissy as the season goes on, and hopefully she does get to make more friends here than she did on HHH.

The Aubry and Genevieve feud continues, this time with a new player thrown into the mix! Genevieve is going around telling everyone she’s willing to work with them and throwing out Aubry as a target. She really meant it when she said that she’s focusing on the social game this time! It backfires though, as when she approaches Tiffany and throws out Aubry’s name, we learn that Tiffany loves Aubry! Kind of came out of nowhere, I would have expected for Tiffany and Genevieve to work together. Tiffany tells Aubry everything that Genevieve said about her, confirming her suspicions. Aubry is ready to go scorched earth against her old tribemates, especially Genevieve! How will this rivalry come to a head? Potential idol play? Brutal blindside? The only thing that’s guaranteed is that one of these ladies will fall.

The New Cila Tribe: Charlie’s Trauma

Rizo has turned over a new leaf in the game! He’s working on the social game and is trying to build bonds with his new tribemates. Everything is going well, or so he thinks…

Cirie is not very enthused about her new tribe. She does not want to introduce all of these people to her camp. She is especially not fond of ‘Rizgod.’ Rizo is totally unaware of this though, as he tells Cirie that the two of them took a photo together years ago. Cirie laughs and pretends she’s having a great time, putting her social skills to work.

It only gets worse though, as Rizo seems to have accidentally reawakened Charlie’s Survivor 46 trauma. While everyone is relaxing by the fire, Rizo out of the blue asks Charlie about his relationship with Maria. Charlie tells everyone that the two of them haven’t spoken since three days before the Survivor 46 finale and we see a flashback of Jeff asking him about Maria not voting for him to win. What an awesome moment. Only Rizo, the biggest superfan here, could so bluntly ask a question like that. He needs to stay for as long as possible to ask Aubry about Edge of Extinction next. Rizo truly does wanna work with Charlie though, so he tells Charlie all about the Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol on the hammock, and how Genevieve gave it to Aubry. But Charlie does not want anything to do with Rizgod, as it’s revealed that the previous night, Rizo told everyone his closest ally on 49 was Blue Sophi but that he voted for Savannah to win over her. Charlie is not pleased by this at all and has decided that Rizo cannot sit on the jury at all if he didn’t vote for his closest ally to win. Such a beautiful entanglement of lies and trauma. Especially knowing that Rizo, Savannah, and Blue Sophi were equally close to each other on 49 and Rizo was just lying to keep up the charade he and Savannah weren’t friends. It’s the kind of storyline that could only happen on 50.

The New Vatu Tribe: It’s Flippen Chaos

One of my biggest fears heading into Survivor 50 was that Emily Flippen would be purpled, seeing that she’s one of the less popular people on 50 and a woman (who have historically been underedited). Luckily, that’s not the case for Emily though. It’s really hard to purple someone when they’re the main source of the chaos on their team anyways…

The main talking point on new Vatu is that all three David vs Goliath players are together. Everyone assumes that they’d work together, and that would constitute a near majority for them. Q is determined to not let that happen. If the three of them think they’re all surviving tribal, they can cancel Christmas. Q talks with Emily and tries forming an alliance with her. Emily is open to the idea and wants to bring in Ozzy. Q is still working closely with Stephenie, so that should be 4. Still mad at Christian for telling her about the boomerang idol so late, she tells this new alliance about Aubry having an idol. Q sees this as proving that Emily Flippen wants to work with him. So he, Stephenie, and Emily are now locked in and the two of them talk a lot about Angelina being on the bottom of the old Vatu tribe and how she did nothing around camp. Emily is now put off by them though, feeling like they completely steamroll conversations. She decides to expose the two of them to Angelina, who gets very emotional but thanks Emily. After causing all of this chaos, Emily feels bad about telling everyone about Aubry’s idol and admits to Christian that she screwed up. Christian is the most mad he’s ever been on Survivor, but is forced to forgive her. This is all before the challenge even begins. Awesome, this is why I love Emily Flippen.

After new Vatu loses the blindfolded immunity challenge, which Christian blames himself for as the leader, someone must be voted out. Mike White has a plan. He decides to tell Stephenie to her face and with other people around, that he will be writing her name down tonight. He’s not actually going to do that though. Instead, he wants Q out because he sees him as the biggest threat to his game. He and Angelina are locked in, and Christian is seemingly on board with sticking with his previous castmates. That leaves Emily and Ozzy in the middle. The two of them are suddenly in lockstep, and have conversations by the water trying to get on the same page. Emily Flippen is erratic, going from targeting Ozzy to working tightly with him, which is why she’s so great. In the midst of this, Q has cooked up a new scheme. He does not want Stephenie receiving any votes. Despite not having a vote himself, he’s going to tell Mike to write his name down instead of Stephenie. A classic Q scheme that unfortunately backfires this time around. At tribal council, Q and Stephenie are both blindsided when Q is voted out in a 5-1 vote. A disappointing, but not entirely surprising result.

Q Burdette: Christmas is Cancelled

Q, one of the most anticipated players for Survivor 50, his time unfortunately cut way too short. It’s not particularly shocking. Before the season, I had predicted him to be an early boot and even thought there was a high chance he would be the first boot. Doesn’t make this loss sting any less though. Especially since he seemed to be in a strong spot on the original Vatu tribe. This was such an unlucky draw for him, he didn’t necessarily play himself out of the game like most expected. The one good thing about this swap for him was seeing him say Emily’s full name every time he talked about her. We never got to see the Q wagon that he talked about preseason play out and that’s an absolute tragedy. Q deserves a third shot and I believe he will get one. But for now, Christmas is cancelled.

Conclusion: Devastatingly Great Swap

Even despite the swap leading to one of the most entertaining players in Q getting swap screwed, this swap and episode was still a major hit. We got to see reawakened traumas, Flippen chaos, and an amazing challenge. Seriously, the challenges are not what I come back every week for, but something about this one just hit for me. Maybe it’s just that I’m a huge Kamilla fan and seeing her completely dominate this challenge was awesome to watch, but something just stood out this time. As a whole, the swap did not kill any momentum at all, and hopefully this game will only get crazier.