Written by Mike Mueller
EMOTIONAL LEG WORK
After a very emotional tribal council last week, the tribe deals with the fallout of Liana going home. Deshawn and Danny do not understand the strategy behind keeping Ricard, the biggest threat remaining in the game. Xander tries to explain to Danny that, selfishly, he felt like he would be the next one to go if Ricard went home that night. He vows that the next tribal will be Ricard’s last.
The following morning, after everybody has cooled down a little bit, Heather and Deshawn have a conversation about the roller coaster of emotions that came out at the last tribal. Heather appreciates Deshawn’s honesty, and it has opened her eyes. She is grateful to have been on this season in particular, with a cast more diverse than almost any in Survivor history. She says, quite simply, “I want this season to make a difference”. While this is a touching moment on its own, it also is important from a gameplay perspective. Heather is putting in leg work to make emotional connections with people. It’s the only card she has to play, but she’s playing it as well as she can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQRhjESE2uc
THE CHICKEN ALLIANCE
At the reward challenge, Jeff informs the tribe they will split into two teams of three, and the winning team will receive their choice of a chicken and vegetable dinner, or cookies, cake, and candy if they’d prefer an indulgent sugar rush. Deshawn essentially says to Jeff, “that sounds ok, but I was expecting something better like a letter from home.” Deshawn continues to play with absolutely no filter, for better or worse.
The challenge is simple, the teams must swim out one by one, go over a rope net obstacle, retrieve a buoy, and swim to the platform. Once there, one team member must shoot the buoys into a basket while the other two tread water and retrieve any missed shots. It is Ricard, Danny, and Heather vs. Deshawn, Erika, and Xander. Tribes are dead even through the swimming portion of the challenge, so it will all come down to the baskets. Danny and Deshawn are the designated shooters. Deshawn makes a quick basket as Danny misses pretty horribly. Danny quickly realizes this isn’t working and switches out with Ricard. Ricard is able to make a basket, but Deshawn keeps his hot hand and finishes it off.
Deshawn, Xander, and Erika make the wise choice of chicken and veggies, and, over their dinner, they decide they would make a great final three, as each one of them has played a completely different game and the jury would be able to vote on whatever game they think was played the best. Later on, at the watering hole, Erika reinforces her belief in this final three, saying that she would be afraid of going to the finals with Heather, as they’ve played similar games and she thinks Heather might “steal” some of her votes.
With most of the people out of camp, Danny decides this would be the perfect time to go look for an idol. He knows if Ricard wins the immunity challenge, he is in serious trouble. He looks around for quite a while, as Heather and Ricard clearly notice his absence. He does not find the idol despite looking in the right area, but comes back to camp and subtly sells it like he may have the idol. If Ricard wins and the group is paranoid enough, they might decide that Deshawn is the safer bet to take out.
WORST CASE SCENARIO
At the immunity challenge, Jeff tells the contestants they must spin to unspool a coil of rope, then go over a series of obstacles, collecting a puzzle piece along the way. They will use those pieces to solve a word puzzle. Ricard makes quick work of the obstacle portion of the challenge, giving him an extra minute or two to work on his puzzle. Ricard proves that he truly is the largest threat in the game, as the solution to the puzzle comes to him in a flash and he quickly puts the pieces together to spell out the winning phrase: “Don’t make this next vote your last.” Ricard wins his third individual immunity. Everybody’s worst-case scenario comes true, and now Danny and Deshawn’s fears have been realized.
Before tribal, the power 4 alliance debate the merits of Deshawn and Danny and who would be best suited to take out Ricard at the next challenge. Erika is pushing hard for Deshawn to stay because he wants to go to the end with her, so she’d like to keep him around as a backup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVp9lI1JeVw
TRUTH KAMIKAZE
At tribal, Danny reiterates how dumb it was for the tribe not to vote out Ricard when they had the chance. Erika explains that her trust in Ricard was the reason why she chose to keep him around instead of Liana, who has voted for Erika in the past. Heather thinks that Danny’s view of things is very subjective. She insists she is playing this like a chess game, thinking about where she is, where she’s going, and how best to get there. It is sort of a generic answer, but at least Heather is not allowing herself to be portrayed as “I’m just going with the group.”
Jeff asks Danny: if tonight is his last night, how did his game finish? Danny says he left his soul out here on the island and gave it everything he had at every turn, and if not winning immunity today was what did him in, he can accept that.
When Deshawn gets asked the same question, he has a much different answer. He is proud of the game he has played, but if he is the one to go tonight, he wants to throw out some more information “just to spice up the game”. He lets the group know that Erika does not want to take Heather to the end (per their conversation at the watering hole). This naturally makes everybody uncomfortable. Deshawn did a similar thing to Evvie at tribal council right after the merge. It made sense that time because Evvie was a huge threat and it took negative attention away from his current allies. However, this “truth bomb” didn’t really seem to do anything other than make Deshawn look like he can’t be trusted with keeping a secret. To her credit, Erika handles the situation pretty well and no more drama is had before the vote.
When the votes come down, the tribe’s fear of Danny’s idol does come into play, however, not exactly as he had hoped. The core alliance splits their votes between Danny and Deshawn, just in case Danny plays an idol. During this first vote, Xander votes for Deshawn and says “your ‘truth bomb’ was a little bit more of a ‘truth kamikaze,’ my friend.” Since Danny has no idol to play, they vote again and this time all the votes fall on Danny, who falls just short of making it to the final episode.
The final five are set and we are ready for next week’s season finale of Survivor 41!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NqQf2ywbwc
OVERALL THOUGHTS on Survivor 41 Episode 12:
- ELIMINATE THREATS WHEN YOU HAVE THE CHANCE! While Xander, Heather, Erika, and Ricard had an alliance out of necessity, the first three could have gotten rid of Ricard and still had a 3 vs. 3 scenario as far as alliances go. They took the safe pick to keep their numbers, which made some sense at the time, but now Ricard is one challenge away from at least keeping fate in his own hands and making it to the final three. If Ricard is sitting there at the end, he has this game locked, even against Xander.
- In a season full of big episodes and surprising results, this was a straightforward “old school” episode of Survivor if there ever was one. That’s not a bad thing, the early seasons of Survivor are still the highest-rated, but it is surprising for it to be happening this late in the season. Usually, this is the time when chaos is at every turn, and the “easy” votes are long gone.
- Ok, hear me out on this … there’s a chance Heather can win this game. It would only work in a scenario where the final three are her, Erika, and Deshawn. Heather would likely have to win a challenge at some point in the final episode, but if she can do that, her and Erika’s games are remarkably similar, and all this bonding and connecting she’s doing with every single person will make them more likely to vote for Heather over Erika.
- Deshawn has not had a particularly strong game in terms of challenges. He’s made plenty of big moves, but he is clearly someone who plays on emotion, and that is something that a jaded jury could easily choose to hold against him. His “truth kamikaze” alienated him from several jury members. Evvie and Tiff were visibly sad that Danny went over Deshawn, and it is unlikely that he’s going to get either of their votes in any final three scenario.
Survivor 41 Episode 12 is now streaming on Paramount Plus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNdtqXaoqJY
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