Survivor 51 episode 6 was ‘soul-crushing’

As if watching three day-one Survivor allies turned friends having to turn on each other in the game wasn’t “soul-crushing enough,” Survivor 51 episode 6 got even more bleak when multimillionaire host Jeff Probst lectured the about-to-be loser on the worthlessness of Survivor’s prize:

• Ori, emotional: “Made real relationships. But this was a chance to retire my mother. This was a chance to change my family’s life, and I failed, period.”
• Jeff Probst, oblivious: “I always find it interesting when people label getting voted out as failure. That’s not how Survivor works. You’ve already lost the minute you show up on Survivor—almost everybody loses. It’s how you play the game that is the measure of success.”

“You’ve already lost”? This is the guy who wants people to play hard, et cetera et cetera? And the success is not illustrated in the $1 million prize? Or $2 million? Or possibly $5 million the show might be giving out soon?

Is that money meaningless? Maybe to someone who’s making at least $8 million a year. (A decade ago, in 2016, Variety reported that Jeff Probst was making $4 million per season. Since 2016, there have been 20 seasons, so that’s $80 million, assuming his salary hasn’t increased.)

Sure, I understand what Probst is saying here. Who hasn’t seen that Successories poster? Certainly other things that matter in life than the outcome of one game. And Ori himself said his “experience out here was amazing.” Probst didn’t need to say that. Maybe he could have just heard and acknowledged Ori’s pain and disappointment?

After all, pain and disappointment were the themes of this episode. Our showrunner’s obsession with tiny tribes—here’s one of Probst’s lectures about it—led to a tribe of three.

The one bit of good luck—for the TV show, not the players—was that this wasn’t as dreadfully boring as it could have been, just devastating for them.

“There’s nobody in this game I care about more than the two of them,” Devin said. “We share the same vision of seeing people like us, people of color, make it to the end together, having not cannibalized each other.” Having to go to Tribal Council, he said, was “soul-crushing.”

The three were a day-one alliance that now had no choice but to turn on each other. And they were fun to spend time with at their camp, whether Devin was teaching Ori how to walk a runway or Devin and Jelly were convincing Ori to be shirtless more often.

Devin said, “Mr. Muscles, Ori over there—if I had a body like that, good luck putting clothes on me.” And Jelly added, “he never frees a nipple” and told Ori that “everybody else” is doing it. So cue the appearance of “Chocolate Fantasy,” aka shirtless Ori.

When Ori went off to play Jeff Probst’s Reindeer Games™, Jelly and Devin just hung out and laughed a lot. My favorite moment was when Jelly said that other players just tear coconuts open with their hands, and Devin’s reaction was: “they scary.” But then he did it!

Before they went to Tribal Council, we learned there could be many outcomes thanks to the twists in the game. Devin has an extra vote, Jelly an immunity idol, and all three had their shots in the dark.

Jelly declared she’d play her idol—and she wouldn’t vote against Devin. So basically, she was voting for Ori.

“I wasn’t willing to be the eighth” woman eliminated in a row, she said. Speaking of, the woman she voted out, Alexis, said in a video, “I’m getting told by randoms on the internet that this was racist. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but this is not racist.” Alexis briefly discusses Survivor’s history, and then adds that Jelly/Devin/Ori’s vote “is not racism. This is Survivor. This is building alliances.”

Now they had to decide who would join Alexis as the last pre-juror. The first proposal was to all play their shots in the dark. What would have happened if all three picked a safe scroll? (Each player has a 20 percent chance; it doesn’t change with other shots played.)

What if Ori played his shot in the dark and was immune? At that point, he has no vote, and Devin and Jelly can’t vote for each other. Can everyone just go back to camp?

On the other tribes, there was mostly setup for next week’s merge.

After Kilby’s power play, which led to three Savu saving themselves instead of staying SAVU STRONG, Lewis said “Kilby and I are absolutely in trouble” and he’d need “another miracle” to survive.

While Eric was vewy vewy sad, he also pointed out that the two are now “weaponless,” so I expected Jeff Probst to send in a boat of children to chase him and rip him apart.

Instead, Cristian made sure the boat couldn’t take Eric or Kilby. Smart!

Lewis gets his miracle with the merge. So does Mike, who’s so despised by his tribe they’d dump him before Kristin. I don’t quite know why they are so down on him; the editing hasn’t really given us a good sense of that. “I’ll throw my hat in, too,” Mike said, when they were deciding who to send to the summit, and everyone ignored him.

We did get another example of Kristin’s incredible social game. Mike suggested he and Kristin vote together, and said in exchange, he’d vote however she wanted at the next Tribal Council. “I hear your offer. I am not opposed to it,” she said. “Does it feel okay?I know you’re a little bit trying to make sure everything’s okay, and I’m the same.”

That’s brilliant: Kristin didn’t agree to anything but checked in with Mike and empathized, creating connection.

In another fun camp time scene, Carter made a sack swing for the boys. I’d make a joke but that’s what it’s called. And when he, Brady, and Mike swung on the vine, sitting on a bag full of coconuts, it literally looked like they were sitting on a massively swollen scrotum.

For the summit, which was not a summit at all, Sharonda, Ori, and Kristin met on Exile Island is On The Other Side of Me Island. Two of them had to return to their camps as “heroes” with food, and the other exiled but in possession of a new idol.

A few things:

1. Those plates of sunburned corn on the cob and McRibs? I thought they were mere samples, considering how much the summit text suggested they’d become their tribes’ saviors. But they were the actual reward! Ori and Sharonda had to carry those very plates on a saltwater-splattering boat ride back to their beaches!
   • “That smells like my dad’s ribs,” Kristin said. I don’t know what my dad’s ribs smelled like.
2. The new “tethered idol” was even more pathetic looking than the corn. This show has brilliant craftspeople, and they came up with something that looks like I got at K-Mart in 1985 by putting a quarter into a machine and twisting a knob?
   • I’d guess Survivor spent more money on the sound effects of them eating the ribs (which: gross, stop doing that, reality shows!) than the actual food.
3. The idol can 1) only be played on the other two people and 2) not for its owner. Kristin thought that was “pretty primo for me” since she wants to stay aligned with Sharonda and Ori, but it seemed like a pretty shitty deal. One player stays on Exile with an idol they can’t use on themselves, and the others get reward? So I wonder if Ori and Sharonda expected that it would have more power, which Kristin discovered: if Ori and Sharonda are voted out, now it’s just Kristin’s idol.
4. Kristin’s enthusiasm for Exile came from her preparation, which paid off as she started a fire in less time than it took someone to make that pathetic idol. Also, showing us Kristin’s 25 years of audition videos plus her survival skills sure seemed like a possible winner’s edit moment.

I’m hopeful Survivor 51 can find its way out of this new era nonsense with three tribes and the earn-the-merge thing, which I’m hoping we won’t see next week. The preview just shows Probst saying they’re merged—oh, and that the prize doesn’t matter, so it’s been reduced to a hug from him and a nickname from Brady (spoiler: it’s brody).

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