Survivor 47 recap: 1 player absolutely loses it after being voted out

Destruction, terror, and mayhem. Those are not just lyrics in an LL Cool J song. Strong lyrics though, to be sure. Not the best hip-hop lyrics ever, mind you. That honor rests with Public Enemy, who were kind enough to give us the following all-time gem: “I got a letter from the government the other day. I opened and read it. It said they were suckers.”

Indeed. But back to Ladies Love Cool James. He wasn’t talking about Survivor when he wrote about destruction, terror, and mayhem. Rather, he was boasting about his prodigious skills behind a microphone — as prodigious as Sam Phelan’s, some might even dare to say. Not all, but some. However, there is nothing I love on Survivor more than destruction, terror, and mayhem — especially when it is all over the face of a single contestant as they watch their reality TV life flash before their very eyes.

The best, most recent example of this is, of course, Kellie Nalbandian’s epic “What the hell, guys” from Survivor 45, a moment I mainlined directly into my veins and continue to dose up on at least one a week when I’m feeling down. Kellie’s devastation was so raw, so real, and such incredible television that I wasted a month of my life doing an entire oral history of every last second of the event in question.

Aysha was giving good DTM vibes earlier this season, pointing to Kishan and Teeny while letting them know “That really hurts, I’m not gonna lie,” and then hitting them with the most perfectly insincere “Good luck” I have ever seen. Bravo, Aysha! Well played!

But that was merely the appetizer. Because Anika Dhar, COME ON DOWWWWWWWWN! You’re the next contestant on Your Life Just Got Ruined on National Television! Upon seeing her name come up three times on parchment, Anika immediately busted out her best Kellie Nalbandian impression, paying homage to queen Kellie’s “What the hell, guys?” with her own “You’re kidding me, you guys.” (Question: How did the word “guys” somehow become even more popular on this show after Jeff Probst stopped saying it?)

And like Kellie and Aysha before her, Anika was not done, asking her one true ally, Rachel, if she knew about the plan (she did not), and then inquiring as to who owned the move. This was tremendous in that it led to some wonderfully awkward claimsmanship, as Sam immediately shot his hand up to take the credit, leaving Andy to clumsily tack on, “It was the three of us.” And then, my favorite part of all… the silence. The sweet, sweet silence. So awkward. So painful. Anika just kind of standing there… looking at them looking at her looking at them. And not moving — leaving everyone to wonder if she ever planned on leaving, and leaving Anika to play an absurd game of Survivor chicken with Probst to see how long she could keep herself in the game by not allowing her torch to be snuffed.

The silence was followed by tears. So many tears. Tears walking out of Tribal Council. Tears while delivering her post-snuffing interview and repeating the word “devastated” 617 times. Tears on the boat to Ponderosa, presumably. And then tears from Asyha when she realized it was not Teeny arriving and she could not hit her with a million I-told-you-sos about Rome.

And we haven’t even mentioned when Sam and Andy waved goodbye to Anika after her torch snuffing and she responded with a simple “Nah.” YES! A MILLION TIMES YES! Good for you, Anika. That’s exactly what I want to see when someone gets voted out. I want them pissed. I want them angry. I want then hurt and confused. I want them to show me that they cared so much about this game and their exit that they are ready to tear down the Tribal Council set like Adam Klein looking for an immunity idol hidden in plain sight.

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Something happened about a decade ago on Survivor where everyone started taking their blindsides waaaaaaaaay too well. They would say some variation of “Wow. Nice one. You all got me! Good move, y’all.” Then they’d bro-hug it out with everyone and go get their torch snuffed before turning back to their former tribe mates and doing, like, a painful pray hands and bow gesture, or a parting “Good luck, everyone!” And the worst part of it all is… THEY’D ACTUALLY MEAN IT!

Yuck. Get that good-natured garbage out of my face. Maybe I am just a Sith Lord at heart, but give me that Dark Side passion over boring good sportsmanship any day of the week. You could tell Anika was on the verge of morphing into Manny Jacinto in that bloodbath episode of The Acolyte — just snapping necks and stabbing young alien Jedi in the chest — and I was here for every single second of it.

Another week, another heartbreak. Okay, let’s get into what else went down on episode 5 of Survivor 47 before Miss Peppers gets impatient and starts pecking at my feet again.

Mix & match

The players showed up at this week’s reward challenge seeing only two tribe colors, leading them to naturally assume a tribe consolidation was about to happen. But no! Probst was up to some good ol’ fashioned Survivor trickery! That notorious trickster! They say that Trix are for kids, but Trix are also for Probst! The same Probst who has also memorized every single word to Run DMC’s “It’s Tricky.” (So has Sam. Ask him to perform it for you.)

Because this was no tribe swap/consolidation. Instead, they were just going to randomly divide all the players into two teams for a single reward challenge, with the winners attending something called “The Survivor Social Hour” — featuring hot dogs, generic sodas, and cornhole… by far the dirtiest sounding lawn game ever invented.

Sadly, they would not choose the teams by a schoolyard pick’ em. I have no idea why not. So much potential there to have hurt feelings by people that were not picked early. And it’s not like the show didn’t have time. That’s what the 90-minute episodes are for! Imagine how pissed Rome would have been if not selected first. Or how Andy or Sue might have reacted if picked late. I feel like we left story on the table with that one.

Obviously, the entire purpose of the challenge was to get more tribe cross-pollination at a place where good things happen, and I’m a little torn on that. On one hand, it seems a bit more natural than a forced Journey where we have entire segments just so folks can share a bit of small talk and lose a vote or two. On the other hand, the only problem is that for the viewer, the stakes for this challenge were sooooooo low. We didn’t, as viewers, really care who won or lost, so it was simply not as dramatic to watch. Which is too bad because this was a cool competition, but you just weren’t really invested in the outcome. Still probably prefer it to a Journey, though.

Good things happening

Producers definitely got what they were looking for with the cross-tribe reward trip to the Sanctuary. Caroline showed more emotion than we’ve seen all season from her in the excitement over hanging out with Rachel and Teeny. I feel like that connection will play dramatic dividends down the line — one way or the other. (Otherwise, why show it?)  But the biggest headline was Tiyana applying for a bus driver’s license, passing both the written and vehicle exams, renting out a Fijian bus, painting a giant Survivor Sanctuary logo on the side, getting behind the wheel, driving it over Gabe, backing it up over him in reverse, then driving over him again while also grabbing the eggs she stole from the Gata tribe in the middle of the night and tossing them out the bus window at Gabe’s prone body.

Tiyana told everyone how Gabe was a true threat, looking for and playing idols. The problem is, she told everyone this right in front of 45-year-old Sue — who knows that a plane is more powerful than a bus any day of the week. Which is why the flight school owner metaphorically chased Tiyana down with her crop duster North by Northwest style when she got back to Tuku camp — relaying everything back to Gabe. Caroline tried her best to get everyone back on the same page, but the damage was done.

Grovel, grovel

Look, I love reality competition TV. Always have, always will. But I also dig a good comedy. First eight seasons of The Simpsons. Seinfeld. Derry Girls. Colin From Accounts. I could go on. (I could also go on about how there needs to be an immediate ban on all mockumentary shows, especially the ones where every other scene ends with a character giving side-eye to the camera. Lazy.) All that said, I’m not sure I’ve seen anything funnier on my TV screen all year than Teeny trying to convince Rome that she was happy Kishan was voted out because she now was finally free of the shackles of her alliance with him and that she felt “liberated.”

So good. Look, The Bear may not be a comedy in any world other than the Emmys, but Survivor definitely is. However, even though Teeny’s words were about as believable as Adam Brody’s character being an actual Rabbi on Nobody Wants This, she was doing exactly what she should be doing — groveling and acting cool with the move to oust her island BFF. And by acting as a stable player, Teeny was also contrasting herself against a less stable and steady force in Rome — and doing that in the eyes of suddenly the most important person in the tribe, Genevieve.

That contrast came into play after the reward challenge with Rome suffering what he called his worst Survivor day mentally and physically. (Also, I would add, strategically.) Rome told Sol everything — from the fact that Teeny had a shared amulet to the fact that Genevieve did not want to work with him long-term. He then told Genevieve that Sol was pitching getting rid of Teeny (which was not true.) The problem is, people on Survivor talk, which is exactly what Sol and Genevieve later did. Whoops! I don’t know if “Rome went nuts!” as Genevieve and Sol later told Teeny, but it certainly wasn’t smooth gameplay. And where anyone truly stands now on this tribe, I have no idea.

The art of the deal

We’ve made a big deal about how Probst started to get his edge back during season 45. He even said it himself. The dude started stabbing bags of rice, talking back to players, challenging people more at Tribal Council on what they said, and telling teams they had no shot to win the challenge… before it even began!

Which is why I couldn’t help but be a bit bummed by the chicken negotiation that took place before this week’s immunity challenge. As far as I can figure, the Gata chickens were not laying eggs, Sierra would not let anyone eat them (trying to win now-non-existent Sia money?), and even when they let the birds out of the cage, they wouldn’t make like Hannah Rose and leave. So Gata brought the chickens to the challenge and asked to make a trade with the Hostmaster General.

After some perfunctory back and forth, Probst agreed to give the tribe 18 eggs for their chickens back. Seems fair enough, but to poorly paraphrase Heath Ledger’s Joker… why so generous? First off, the tribe came to the table from nothing even close to resembling a place of negotiating power, with essentially nothing to offer because they didn’t even want the chickens at that point. And as Probst himself said, the chickens were there in the first place to present a dilemma. But now the host was essentially giving them a get-out-of-jail-free card with 18 eggs.

I mean, again, fair enough. But not doing a lot to burnish the reputation of Spicy Jeff. Why not have some fun with the negotiation? A few humble suggestions:

• Offer to give them a dozen eggs, but if Gata accepts, Lavo and Tuku both get 18 eggs, strengthening the competition in the process.
• Call their bluff and say that not only will there be no deal, but if they want to leave the chickens they hate taking care of, they have to forfeit their fishing gear as well.
• Offer to give them 100 eggs, but only if they carry the chickens with them throughout the challenge, along with the heavy net full of coconuts and sandbags.
• Give them the eggs only if Andy agrees to walk around like a chicken for five minutes and pretend to lay an egg on Sue Smey.

I don’t know. I’m just spitballing here, but seems like a missed opportunity. As for the challenge, I like the way teams had to keep adding coconuts and sandbags to their net as they traversed the course. And I was kind of shocked that walking puzzle vaccine Anika was elected as Gata’s member to sit out the challenge, a move that may have doomed the team, seeing as how they lost by less than five seconds.

I mean, honestly, it probably would not have mattered had Andy chosen to saw the rope with the correct side of the saw. It sounds like I am being critical of the decision to put Andy in that hero spot on that stage of the challenge, but nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone else for Gata does that and we are not treated to our first scene in Survivor history of a player attempting to have sex with both an elongated saw and a rope. The ultimate threesome! Am I right? (Gives new meaning the phrase “use protection.”)

In between Andy’s saw sex and Sol falling on his ass while running backwards to get on the mat, this became an immediate contender for favorite challenge ever, but let’s be 100 percent truthful — nothing is ever going to top a competition that includes play-by-play narration of Probst yelling “Jonathan, getting frustrated… by me!”

In the end, Tuku dominated, and Lavo just nipped Gata, sending the yellow tribe to Tribal Council.

Got ya, Gata!

Rule of thumb: The person that seems the most confident heading into Tribal Council is the one who goes home. The problem this week is that Andy and Anika both seemed so damn confident. Take Andy, for example. The dude was straight-up psyched to head to Tribal, bragging to us how “This is the real start of my game. I’m looking forward to tonight.”

Oh, he’s a goner, I said to myself. The dude is as done as those chickens once they make it back to the Survivor crew catering hall. But right when Andy’s deal appeared sealed, Anika officially entered the chat with “Even though I have no vote, I am not worried, because I know where my alliances lie. So I’m sure Andy is going home tonight.” Ohhhhhhhh, that’s good too. Can they both be voted out? Secret double elimination???

As all this was going on, Andy was also pulling off some sort of secret agent mission that I honestly don’t really understand. The guy worked super hard to get the women to think he was a free-agent who was ready to work with them, and I guess he did a decent enough job of it? I just am not sure how necessary it was. Clearly, Anika and Rachel were (too) confident that they had Sierra and Sam’s vote on lockdown, so it didn’t really matter what Andy was doing.

The more interesting wrinkle was the fact that Sam never told Andy that he had the Beware Advantage idol that Andy had opted not to take. This omission was especially notable because it wasn’t just someone finding an idol and not telling anybody. This was the Beware Advantage that Andy told Sam he had found and that someone else then grabbed, and then Sam lied straight to his face in playing dumb about it, even though it was already in his possession.

Since the idol was only good for that night’s Tribal Council, Sam was worried how Andy would react learning that he had been lied to if Sam played it. Maybe, Sam wondered, it would just be easier to cut Andy loose and not have to deal with any potential fallout. But there was another option Sam did not appear to consider.

While Sam ultimately did not use the idol at all and voted out Anika, I think the smartest play would have been to play the idol… on Andy. That would show the target of Rachel’s vote just how much Sam truly valued him as an alliance-partner in that, yes, he had the idol, but he did not even use the safety on himself, and instead used it on Andy once he caught wind of a plan to put votes on him. It also would have given him an (albeit early) big Tribal Council moment to put on his résumé. Missed opportunity!

But the good far outweighs the bad when it comes to Sam’s gameplay so far. The dude somehow locked down Sierra and got her to favor him over the other women, and turned the tribe’s biggest liability in Andy into his biggest asset — similar to what Kaleb did with Emily early on in Survivor 45. Those are super strong social moves from a guy who, on many tribes, would be target number 1. Well played by the nerdy brain in the frat bro body.

Okay, it’s almost time to blow this popsicle joint, but just a reminder that Probst is also weighing in on the episode, so you can check that out. We also have an exclusive deleted scene featuring the reveal of the “Aqua-Mamba” so keep your eyes peeled for that as well as my exit interview with Anika. Will she start crying again? We can only be so lucky. Follow me on Twitter/X @daltonross for all the updates, and I’ll be back next week with another scoop of the crispy!