Written by Mike Mueller
ADVANTAGES AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE
We start on Yase. To put it mildly…this is not a good morning for Liana. She wakes up with “voters regret” over not taking out Xander last night when they had the chance (she’s right to feel this way. Taking out Xander was by far the better play). Then, she starts a fire and doesn’t realize that another Beware Advantage has been placed directly on the stone circle surrounding the fire.
Ironically, Tiff (the person who forced the group to take out Voce instead of Xander) is the one to find the advantage. She will board a boat tonight and go to another island where she must make a decision. If she does not get on the boat, she will lose her vote at the next tribal council. Compared to the last Beware Advantage, this one appears to have much lower stakes. Only time will tell for certain.
Over on Ua, Brad’s “country work ethic” pays off. He finds the “Beware Advantage” at his camp while the rest of his tribe is down on the beach having some laughs. His Beware Advantage reads very similar to Tiff’s, so it appears that these two will be heading to the same spot. This breathes new life into Brad, who is clearly on the outs with his tribe. This could be just the shake-up that his game needs.
At Luvu, the morning of Day 6 belongs to Sydney. It starts with some drama as Naseer tells Sydney that he wants to get rid of Danny. Sydney lets it go at the moment, but the following morning she immediately tells the rest of the group what Naseer said. For a group that hasn’t gone to tribal council yet, Naseer is playing this game very hard and it has landed him at the bottom of the tribe’s current pecking order.
The morning then gets better as Sydney finds the Beware Advantage hidden in plain sight on her beach. Sydney doesn’t seem to share the same joy as Brad and Tiffany do in finding the Beware Advantage, but she refuses to lose her vote, so she will be joining the other two on this unknown journey.
Back at Ua, JD is searching hard for the idol and can not seem to find it. He is convinced someone has already found it, and he’s right. A half-hour before they have the discussion of the difficulty of finding the idol, Brad and Genie find their portions of the three-way shared immunity idol. However, as we learned in the previous episode, this advantage is actually a disadvantage until all three portions of the idol are found. Brad cannot vote at his next tribal council unless someone from Luvu also finds their portion of the advantage.
Brad foolishly tells Shan about both of his secret advantages, and while she is excited in the moment, she quickly realizes that Brad may just have too much power for this game, and she might have to get rid of him instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGUltJ3DdDw
WE’RE GOING ON A JOURNEY
As night falls, Sydney, Tiffany, and Brad get on their boats and head to a secret island. They are informed they must choose between a tarp for the tribe or a “steal a vote” advantage for themselves. Like the journeys that previous contestants went on this season, this is a prisoner’s dilemma of sorts. If all players choose a tarp, each tribe receives the tarp. If all players choose “steal a vote,” nobody gets anything and they actually lose their vote at tribal. If there is a split vote, the people who choose tarp receive nothing, while the players who choose “steal a vote” will win that power.
They are allowed to discuss as a group, but must make their decisions in private. Tiffany is pushing very hard for one person to pick the tarp so the others get the advantage. However, she is not willing to be the person to make that choice. This sends immediate red flags up for Sydney. When decision time comes, Brad chooses to risk his vote like he said he would do, Sydney chooses the tarp, like she said she would do, and Tiffany inexplicably chooses to go for the tarp despite being the person to lay out the plan to begin with. Tiffany continues to hold onto her crown as the worst player of the season thus far.
Ultimately, because Tiffany and Sydney chose tarp while Brad chose “steal a vote,” he gets to steal a vote (if he has the ability to vote) while Tiffany and Sydney get nothing. Hey, at least they don’t lose their vote, so there’s some silver lining there. Brad has gone from being in a dire position to possibly having a lot of power on a five-person tribe, if he plays his cards right.
NO IDOL, NO VOTE
As they come into the Immunity Challenge, Jeff talks to the contestants. While this appears to just be a “check-in” for the players that are still out of the loop, we know it’s really giving potential idol finders an opportunity to say their secret phrase. Brad says his portion of the secret phrase and Xander does a pretty smooth job repeating his line, but Luvu stays silent, which means if Yase or Ua lose this challenge, someone is going to be without a vote. This season is all about big risks and big rewards.
The challenge itself is pretty basic. Players must cross a rope bridge, dig up sandbags, and land the bags on a hanging target. While the concept is simple, the execution proves to be anything but. While this seemed like it might be another challenge that Tiffany would struggle with, she did an excellent job crossing the rope bridge and not costing her team much time. On top of that, she was actually the first person to land a sandbag on a target out of any of the three tribes.
JD, meanwhile, is doing his best Chris Paul impression, trying to land the sandbags with a layup. The strategy is wildly unsuccessful and Ua falls behind early once Deshawn hits a target for Luvu. Xander quickly hits two more bags for Yase, and Deshawn keeps the hot touch, making two more bags himself. It is now 3-3-0 and Ua is looking destined for tribal council.
Brad continues to be a stand-out player this episode as he quickly gets 3 bags on the targets for Ua, bringing them back in the game. However, shortly after that, Deshawn finishes up the targets and Luvu wins their third straight challenge.
Ua cannot seem to find their touch no matter who is throwing the bags. They remain stuck at three out of five targets, and Xander hits the last bag for Yase, ending the losing streak. Perhaps keeping Xander around was the right decision after all…
Ua will now head to tribal council and Brad, despite having a portion of the three-way idol (and the power to steal a vote), will be in serious jeopardy as he cannot vote in this tribal council.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Leh_ayC3Br8
THE GAME IS IN SHAN’S HANDS
As Ua heads back to camp and tries to figure out what to do at the tribal council, Shan finds JD’s extra vote advantage because it is literally sticking out of his pants. JD is sloppy and doesn’t have any tact or subtlety in this game. Fortunately for him, what he does have is a little bit of power. JD decides to give Shan his extra vote to hold onto as a sign of trust. Given that his extra vote would be meaningless if the group unanimously voted for him, this is actually a brilliant move.
Ricard, who was not given any such symbol of trust, doesn’t trust either Brad or JD now, and he is quite insistent that one of them should go. Tonight, the decision all comes down to Shan. She must choose who to live with and who to let go of, which is a situation she is familiar with. During a spotlight on Shan, we find out that she had to make a similar decision when she was five and had to choose to live with either her mom or her dad. She chose her mom and watched it break her dad’s heart, which is a memory that still haunts her today. Once again, Survivor does a great job of making us connect with each person.
At tribal, the conversation all centers around trust. Everybody agrees that it is hard to rebuild trust once it’s gone. JD gives his very best speech to try to save himself and says voting him out is scratching a mosquito bite; it feels good at the moment, but in the end, you’re much worse off.
With all the knowledge Shan has of idols and advantages, and with Brad unable to vote or use any of his powers, Shan and Ricard make the long-term smart play and vote out Brad, sparing JD. With 14 people remaining and the game moving at a breakneck speed, plan on another big twist, or potentially a tribe swap, happening on the next episode of Survivor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrPJ28jX-Fo
Overall Thoughts on Survivor 41 Episode 3:
– So far Liana’s game has been one of the missed opportunities. She’s a resilient person, but if she doesn’t win this game, she’ll look back at the night of day 5 and the morning of day 6 and be kicking herself for what could have been.
– The 26-day sprint of this game is showing. Producers don’t have time for people to go out and find these advantages on their own, so they are literally laying them at the contestants’ feet. As a fan watching at home, this feels like it cheapens the experience of finding an advantage, though the contestants sure don’t seem to be complaining. Speaking of advantages…
– Don’t tell people about your advantages! This is a game of information, and giving that information away freely to other people is downright stupid. For Xander and Brad, losing your vote at tribal does make things a little more difficult. Pulling off a move like a split vote becomes almost impossible. Even knowing that, it is rarely, if ever, a good idea to let people know you have more power in this game. The case in point was this episode, as the target on Brad was just too much for Shan to ignore. If he had kept those advantages to himself, and JD made the mistake of letting his advantage be known, JD would most likely have left in this episode, and Brad would be in a huge position of power.
– Evvie continues to be The Pop Break’s official pick for the winner of this season. Despite Liana and Tiffany making strategic mistakes, these three girls are going to remain rock solid. While they will certainly be split up at a certain point, if they can stay out of the crossfire and reconnect at a merge, this is a 3-person voting block that will be difficult to break.
