‘Survivor 49’ Has A Player Stupidity Problem

Every season, Survivor contestants say the same thing: that playing the game is very different than watching it at home. Maybe they say it to the camera during a confessional, or maybe they say it to Jeff Probst at tribal, but the point is always the same. It’s easy to know what the right thing to do is while watching the edit from the comfort of your couch, but playing on an island while exhausted and malnourished and caught in a web of lies is much harder. I get it.

Still, though. Still. This week’s episode drove home the fact that not only do the viewers at home know where the dangers lie, but so do the players. Rizo, with his hidden immunity idol everyone knows about, and Savannah, with her back-to-back immunity challenge wins and that extra vote in her back pocket, are the biggest threats - and they need to be dealt with. They need to be split up. And yet, by the end of the episode, Alex was the one who was sent packing, in a vote that united both the Rizo/Savannah and the Sage/Jawan contingents. So what happened?

On the surface, Rizo happened. He successfully shifted the target off his back and onto Alex by showing Jawan that Alex has been playing both sides. And he’s not wrong! Alex has been sitting pretty in his position in the middle of the pack and keeping his options open. That naturally raises questions of trust and loyalty (“if you’re loyal to all, you’re loyal to none”), but the thing is that it shouldn’t be an issue when there are still nine people in the tribe! Later on, sure. When the game is down to six or five people, he’d need to pick a side. But right now, it’s better to have a number that might vote with you instead of keeping someone you know won’t. Alex was still a potential number more than he was a potential threat.

With Savannah protected by her immunity, the original goal this week was to target Rizo - either they’d flush out his idol, or he’d choose not to play it and go home. That was also the goal last week, before MC was voted out instead. Rizo thinks he manipulated that vote as well, although the edit certainly made it look like MC punched her own ticket when she gave Jawan the heads up that Yellow Sophie was throwing a vote on him as a backup. Either way, that’s two tribal councils in a row where Rizo has not played his idol and still remained safe.

There’s an easy narrative here that Rizo and Savannah are just strong players, and to an extent, that’s correct. Despite being at the bottom of the tribe, they have accumulated advantages and swayed events in their favor. In fact, they’re at the bottom precisely because they’re strong - and obvious. There is not a subtle bone in either of their bodies. They’re both playing the game hard, and everyone knows it. That’s why it’s so hard to believe that Rizo’s manipulation this week even worked. Was he right about Alex playing the middle? Sure! But he was clearly trying to drum up a common enemy so that he could avoid having to play his idol, and it worked. Not because he’s so clever but because the other players are gullible, easily distracted, and kinda… dumb.

Is that harsh? Maybe. But I think it’s fair. The reality is, the longer the other players let Rizo and Savannah remain in the game together, the sooner they will go from the bottom of the tribe to equal footing. That’s just the way the numbers work. This week, they were the bottom two out of nine. Next week, they’ll be the bottom two out of eight. They already have a secret third member of their alliance in Soph, and with Savannah’s extra vote, they’d have a tie for the majority at tribal when there are seven players left. That’s two episodes from now. Splitting up this duo should be priority number one, and it is - until the tribe falls for another distraction.

Worse yet, the longer the tribe waits to finally target Rizo, the more likely he’ll be to actually play his idol. There’s only so long he can hold onto it, and with fewer players to use as shields, eventually he’ll know to pull the trigger. For the past two episodes, the plan was to make Rizo comfortable enough that he wouldn’t play his idol and then vote him out - and the plan worked! Only they forgot to actually vote for him. This week especially, it wouldn’t have been hard to stick to their original target, Rizo, while splitting the vote by throwing Alex into the mix. Best case scenario, Rizo would have gone home, but worst case he would have played his idol and the vote would have rebounded on Alex. It would have been the same outcome as what happened, only Rizo would have finally lost his advantage. I can’t believe that’s a move that’s only clear from the comfort of my couch.

Given the rumor that Rizo and Savannah are the Season 49 players who will be returning for Season 50, it seems clear that the pair will make it far this season. They deserve to, not so much because of the strength of their gameplay but because nobody else is mounting a real opposition. They’re the best simply because everyone else is so much worse. It was satisfying when Kyle and Kamilla ran circles around the other players with their secret alliance in 48. That was an underdog victory built on genuinely smart social gameplay that nobody saw coming. If Rizo and Savannah make it to the final three, it will also be an underdog upset of a sort, but nobody can claim they didn’t see it coming. They just did nothing to stop it.

But hey, if you can’t make the show interesting with compelling gameplay, stupidity works just as well!