What, For The Love Of God, Happened In Last Night’s Bonkers Survivor Tribal? A Breakdown

I know that, in some ways, we’ve been a bit spoiled as far as quality Australian Survivor competitors go in recent seasons. All-Stars didn’t even remotely fail to live up to its name, and the two Champions v Contenders seasons that preceded it produced a hessian sack full of clear-cut Hall of Famers. But good god, good god, where the hell did they find these absolute nuff nuffs that are currently flitting about Brains v Brawn? Where did they get these people? Because apparently none of them have seen, or indeed have even heard of, Survivor before.

Let’s talk about the Tribal Council in last night’s episode. A shitshow of the highest order.

Spoilers obviously incoming, but for those of you who missed it, here’s the backstory:

  • A Tribe Swap – which seemingly no one was prepared for despite it happening almost mandatorily on Survivor – intermingled the Brains and the Brawn tribes for the first time this season.
  • The “new” Brains tribe gained Big DEmmettGeraldKez, and Cara (originally a Brain, briefly a Brawn, now back to square one again), while keeping King GeorgeLauraGeorgia, and Rachel from the OG tribe.
  • Cara, having spent approximately 10 seconds with the original Brawn tribe, rolled in as if she had personally birthed them all.
  • George, sensing the opportunity, linked back up with old ally Cara, forming a majority alliance of six with the Brawn contingent.
  • OG Brains Laura, George, and Rachel were left on the bottom as the minority three, however Laura held an Immunity Idol.

And this brings us to Tribal.

George, sensing that an Idol could be imminent, runs the bog standard Split Vote play that’s been done about a thousand times previously in various Survivor forms.

It’s a simple concept: Take their group of six, put three votes on one person, and three on another, to avoid an Idol taking out their majority advantage. Play for the tie, the Idol gets burned in the first round of voting, you consolidate on the remaining target in vote round two.

It’s easy. It’s dead simple. It was, apparently, too much for these buffoons to wrap their heads around.

George explaining this – and I cannot stress this enough – bread and butter play may as well have been trying to teach Latin to a fish.

The plan was simple: Three on Georgia, three on Laura. But at some point, probably after run through number 13, Emmett – in all his air-headed wisdom – decides that was the time to throw a spanner in the works by insisting that he wanted Rachel gone instead.

And from there? It all goes bung.

Despite riding high with a six-to-three advantage going into Tribal, wires crossed along the way lead the majority alliance to putting three votes on Rachel, two on Georgia, and one on Laura. The minority alliance, on the other hand, throws all three of their votes on Big D, and Laura plays her Idol for Rachel.

Watching this excruciating cockup unfold live was bad enough, but it gets so much worse when you hone in on people’s faces.

There’s Big D, who somehow thinks that there’s a “Plan B” option available after the votes have been cast.

And who then goes full Maths Lady face when he suddenly realises his ass is imminently grass.

There’s Cara, the quote-unquote “empath,” who apparently couldn’t feel just how badly she’d fucked it by voting Laura and not Georgia until it was far too late.

And who then, to her credit, laughed it all off while Big D got his torch snuffed because honestly what else can you do.

And then there’s George, who was strutted into Tribal absolutely cock of the walk after laying out what he thought was a foolproof plan…

…only to discover that it wasn’t quite proof of all fools…

…so he just stared at the fire doing Murder Face until the red behind his eyes began to fade.

Finally, there’s Rachel. Summing all this up in as succinct a manner as anyone possibly could.

FUCKED IF I KNOW RACHEL BUT IT WASN’T GOOD.

Now, to take a breath for a minute. Was it that bad a result overall? An Idol got flushed, and Captain No Lockdowns isn’t on the show anymore. *Could* be worse.

But if this rank Amateur Hour shit keeps going for much longer, I’m gonna need to take a dang lap.

Good god.

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