RHAP: We Know Survivor - Why _____ Won Survivor 50

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

Why ____ Won Survivor 50 Aubry, Jonathan, and Tiffany came into Survivor 50 with plans to significantly change their games. Joe, not so much. And Rizo had just finished playing his last game! Whose modifications worked best? How did each of the Final 5 with their threat levels in a game full of all-stars? And where did some of them go wrong in their assumptions or actions? David Bloomberg and Jessica Lewis are back one more time this season to sort it all out for each of the finalists . At RHAP, we know Survivor, and we know Why Aubry Won and Jonathan, Joe, Rizo, and Tiffany Lost. Survivor 50 wraps up with a marathon Why Blank Lost finale as hosts David Bloomberg and Jessica Lewis break down exactly how the season’s endgame shook out and why Aubry finally claimed the win. Why Blank Lost is back to tackle every key move, alliance shift, and jury vote that defined this milestone all-star season, with Jessica and David leaving no strategy or blunder unexamined. The discussion opens with Jessica poking fun at her “winner’s curse” and a tongue-in-cheek song, setting the stage for a deep dive into the five finalists’ games and what truly separates strong Survivor gameplay from simple longevity. The hosts critique the live reunion, sharing their disappointment at Survivor 50’s missed chance to spotlight legends like Jenna and allow early boots or returning winners to speak. David and Jessica also unpack Jeff Probst’s highly publicized fire-making blunder and question the wisdom of fan-voted twists and recycled challenges including Aubry’s ahead-of-the-curve prep by purchasing a Simmotion replica to practice at home. Game highlights include: – Aubry’s masterful “middle game” strategy, how she pushed and framed moves (especially Ozzy’s blindside), and ensured the jury saw her agency when it mattered. – Jonathan’s continued growth paired with social blind spots and his struggle to connect beyond his alliance, as revealed through both gameplay and post-show interviews. – Rizo’s smart alliance with Cirie, pivoting plans after direct feedback from Emily and Devens, and his calculated endgame choices. – The impact of challenge preparation outside the game and debate over whether repeated puzzles erode Survivor’s unpredictability. – Tiffany’s near-miss at final immunity, her social butterfly status, and why these became liabilities once threat levels peaked. David and Jessica leave listeners questioning how much pre-existing Survivor legacy or a subtle strategic edit truly factor into a win. Did Aubry’s story sway the jury—or was it all about gameplay in the moment? Don’t miss this in-depth breakdown as Jessica and David reveal exactly why Aubry won and what every finalist must learn about timing, jury perception, and managing threat level when playing Survivor for $2 million. 0:00 Survivor 50 Finale Begins 4:24 Cirie, Ozzy, and Jury Reunion Snub 12:17 Jeff Probst Spoils Firemaking Result 23:07 Aubry’s Strategic Game Evolution 29:01 Aubry vs. Jonathan for Ozzy Vote 38:13 Aubry Masters Playing the Middle 51:29 Jonathan’s Improved Game Assessed 59:42 Joe’s Survivor Approach Critiqued 1:06:33 Rizo’s Adaptive Survivor Strategy 1:13:08 Tiffany’s Social Game Threat 2:07:27 Tiffany and Aubry as Endgame Targets 2:34:19 Winner Aubry Crowned, Final Reflections To order Rob’s book, The Tribe and I Have Spoken, visit www.robhasabook.com LISTEN: Subscribe to the Survivor podcast feed WATCH: Watch and subscribe to the podcast on YouTube SUPPORT: Become a RHAP Patron for bonus content, access to Facebook and Discord groups plus more great perks!

If you lost Survivor and you're feeling down, David and Jessica will turn it around. They'll break down the rules and they'll show you how you're playing yourself and got voted out. This is why Blank Lost. This is Y Blank Lost. Oh, baby, this is why Blank Lost. Welcome back to the final Survivor podcast of the Y Blank Lost 10th anniversary year. and 25th anniversary of Y Blank lost as a concept. Except this week, it's Y Blank One.

I'm David Bloomberg and I picked off. Hick Aubrey has my winner prediction in the pregame. Yes, that is how good I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Joining me, of course, in full support of me, is my sister, Jessica Lewis, who has the opposite effect with her winner picks because she curses them to their doom. I do curse them to their doom. And I am supportive of you for being right.

Unfortunately, I have to acknowledge that you were. But yes, sorry, Chrissy. I tried. But it's just, it's never going to work out for me and winner picks, unless you're JT. That's the only time ever, it's ever worked out. So, anyhow, sorry about that. But David, yes, I think it's interesting. You're kind of dressed like a Luigi Mario type character today.

So it's very cute. The W stands for win. You're dressed like a winner. And you've got, you know, you're supporting me there with the David, your right sweatshirt. And then also you even, it was nice of you. You even recorded a song for me. You're right.

David, you're right. David, you're right. David, you're right. David, you're right. All right. The only thing that you need to do next time you want to play that is then include your rapping after it. And then I don't know what you're talking about. That never happened. You must be living in a different universe. It's recorded somewhere. I just don't have it on. I don't have a button I can push to play it. Yeah. I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, goodness. Of course, Aubrey is only one of five players. We'll be discussing today. Though, of course, she will be the main focus by virtue of the fact that she won. Now, we will still go through the podcast in our usual way for all of them by looking at how each played in comparison to my rules for winning. I originally wrote way back after season one and have been updating ever since using all the non-spoiler information available to us.

Not that anything is really a spoiler at this point. For what we saw, TV, interviews, social media, and secret scenes. And the newest published versions of the rules can be found at Rob his website. website.com slash yx loss feed where you can click on the link bubble for the survivor rules. The one thing I want to remind everyone about before we get started is that because we have to talk about five players, we unfortunately cannot give all of them the time they deserve or else we'd be here for like seven or eight hours, which is a bit too long even for the length of our podcasts the rest of this season, which have admittedly been rather long. This one will be too,

which, you know, I suspect people already know because by the time they click on this, they know how long it is. We don't get this point. It's a guessing game. On the plus side, the reason that people didn't get a whole podcast devoted to them prior to now,

or rather, yeah, it is that they didn't lose earlier. Right. But before we address how the final five did in terms of the rules, we always have some other things to discuss. With this being the finale, where we talk about literally everyone who remained,

almost everything of importance will end up in our rules discussion somewhere. But I do want to share thoughts about the live finale and supposed reunion. And you can put reunion in big air quotes there. Yes. Because the, it was so great that we got a live reunion

where we could relive past moments with the cast and hear from people who left way too, soon. You know, all the reasons that the fans actually voted for a live finale and reunion. Yes. And then we did not hear from anyone

really. No. No, we did not. This was exactly like all the other votes. Jeff put it in the hands of the fans and then interpreted the results however the hell he wanted. And

this was not what most fans thought they were voting for. Why even bring back the pre-jurers who are, by the way, Jeff, they're not suddenly called non-jurers. I don't know where that term came from, but all of a sudden he's calling them non-jurors. The only reason they were there

was as a lead-in to a beer commercial. Yeah. Well, when I do, oh, go ahead, I'm sorry. I was just to say, even most of the jury barely got a passing glance from the camera. Yeah. Plus, there were so many previous winners and other people who are important in the Survivor Universe in the audience. We got none of that.

Yeah, it is really disappointing when you have an opportunity to one bring all of these people together, which, as you indicated, the fans are very excited about, they're interested in. And though there were moments shared with particular players, there weren't moments shared with the players that we haven't heard from recently, or those players who are sitting in the audience who were winners and are all gathered together. I do feel like there is something missing. I know when we had our live finale, it felt more inclusive. Jeff really tried to go to multiple people and ask them things.

Not everyone was spoken to, which also is disappointing. However, there was more of a discussion being. had amongst players and questions being posed to various people who were sitting there who had been waiting for their opportunity to explain something they did in their game. Like, I got to talk about the rocks. So it is a moment that you look forward to as a player. And I think we all looked forward to it as fans. And then to see it kind of fall flat and not recognize someone like Jenna.

My God, how do you not speak to Jenna? who is someone from the original, like, start of all of this. And here she is season 50 and she isn't even acknowledged. And so I do think that it's, it was lackluster in that regard for sure. Yeah. I mean, I suspect, I feel the same way. They should have gone to Jenna. Now, I can tell you what Jenna would have said.

He would have gone to Jenna and Jenna would have said, well, I tried to get Surrey out in episode one. And look, all of you finally figured it out at the end of the game. And that's fine. if that's what she wants to say. I mean, it's, because the thing that I do think people

tend to forget is that while Jenna is someone who is seen as kind of a character at this point, right? Because she's, she's been part of our existence for so many years that you lose sight of the fact that she's also still just a person who is playing a game trying to win a million dollars, which turns into two.

And so those moments are very human and very real. And so to give them an opportunity going to need to speak, I think is important. And it needs to be done. And so I just think that it's sad that we didn't get those moments with those players. But you know, Jeff made specific room

for some moments because doing the finale, the way he did, open the door to the screw up of epic proportions we saw as he spoiled the outcome of Final Four FireBink. Now, this was not all Jeff's fault.

There should have been stage managers and directors overseeing all of this. Flags being waved in the air. Right, right. Because Jeff said afterwards, I think it was on the CBS mornings, he said, yeah, I was backstage, you know, he doesn't need to watch. He has other people telling him when to do this all. Right, right.

But Jeff is the showrunner, which means he's ultimately responsible. And it was Jeff's idea to do the finale this way. Yes. And I will say I would like to, there's been a lot of banter. back and forth, obviously, about Jeff screw up. And when it was happening, my jaw was really on the floor because I was watching it going, wait, is this, is this really happening right now? It was very hard to fathom that that was going on.

But it brought me back to a moment that I actually had with Jeff when I was in L.A. and I was at the finals for casting. And one of the conversations I had with him, which has really, it's stuck with me because of the way he responded to it. I was talking to him when we had our, it was basically one-on-one. Lynn Spielman was in the room, maybe one other person, but that was it. It was like maybe four of us in a room. And I had brought up this idea of Jeff and how I was so, I was just so surprised that he never screwed up.

Like he didn't blow up anyone's game. He didn't say the wrong thing. Like people lie about their professions like I was going to do. And he never messed that up. Like there was never a moment. That earlier the season. Yeah. And so like then to see this happening, I was like, oh my God.

It brought me back because when I said it to him, he was like, oh, I never really thought about that. Butterfly effect, Jessica, you pursed him. God, look what I did. You brought it up earlier this season and poof. I keep, I'm sorry, world. I just came wrecking things for everyone. But it was a moment. I do appreciate the fact that he just kind of let it roll and kind of made fun of himself for it and moved on.

And so that was fine. But it was one of those times where it's like, well, he's been doing this for 50 seasons. I guess we have to show him some grace, right? Again, he caused it. He allowed it to happen by setting up the finale this way. Yeah. And, you know, I plan to talk about this later, but if you look at the fan question for firemaking,

it is the most slanted question. Oh, for sure. For sure. And I'm glad that you brought that up because I do find it amusing that he spoiled firemaking, which so many of us despise. So then to be like, and now it's even that much less intriguing and interesting because we already know the outcome before we even saw it was really. quite fascinating.

So maybe we should just do away with fire making. Yeah. The question was like so many dramatic moments have come from or something like that. Well, you killed that, didn't you? Yeah. Yes, very much so. Very much. Well, I will say thank you, Jeff, for doing that because it allowed me to get up and go make a sandwich.

Because I was like, I don't, now I know what's going to happen. And I hadn't eaten dinner yet. So I was like, I'm going to go make something to eat and I'll come back when, because I, I, and I already know who won in fire. That was a good little break for me. Anyway, it's all about Jessica, isn't it? Yeah. I saw other people say the same thing.

Like, oh, good. I didn't have to watch that. I could catch up on other things, you know. Right. Like, I could go do what I needed to do. I had kind of a busy night. So I got to go eat and, you know, then came back and watch the rest of it. So it was great.

Yeah. Now, moving on, we, of course, have our regular segment for the season. Because heaven forbid, they managed to not give us content. even when we need to talk about five different players. And worse than that, we have to do a special combination. So it's the CBS Mornings Crew and Jeff Probst are wrong about blank. For the finale, it was just Gail King screwing up for CBS warnings.

Plus, Jeff joined in to say some dumb things as well. Not nearly as clueless as Gail, mind you, but he of all people should know better. should. Now, you might wonder what Gail King could screw up since the season is over and she can't ask her infamous question about who each player thinks will win. This time, she admitted again that she just started watching Survivor this season. And yet, that didn't stop her from trying to do game and strategy analysis. It was mostly just babbling, which was also something I noticed all season and includes the way she often asks a question. and then just as the person is starting to answer it, she interrupts the person she's interviewing,

which is really poor technique. But first thing Gail said was trying to give advice to Tiffany by saying it's very important to make friends along the way. As if this is sage advice from on high, and Tiffany hadn't done it, and that was the reason she was voted out. Because she didn't have enough friends. no no that is not it Tiffany pointed out she had too many friends in the jury and I don't think it's

much of a spoiler for the rest of the podcast to say that's true though of course there's a lot more to it not making friends was definitely not her problem although Gail seemed confused when Tiffany pointed this out to be honest that may be her permanent state I do find it fascinating the way that she does pose questions because she is someone who like poses a question and provides an answer within the question because she keeps talking instead of just saying, so what about this? Right. And then she adds to it. I don't understand. It's very strange.

Yeah. Very strange. Now, Gail also told Tiffany it was wrong for her to tell off the other players at her last. Council because she couldn't know she was going, except as Tiffany pointed out, they literally told her. Not to mention, they're all ganged up to try to beat her at the previous immunity challenge. Yeah. Gail, if you claim to be watching a show, you have to pay a teeny bit of attention. Just a little. Now, as for Jeff, he was talking at one point about the way people change their games and he came to Joe.

Now, I was surprised he actually admitted Joe played almost the same way both times. But then he tried to spin it into a positive by saying, doing that and getting to the end both times is its own accomplishment. No, Jeff, being a goat dragged along because everyone wants to go against you knowing you'll get no votes.

That's not an accomplishment in the game. It's so harsh. It's oh I haven't even started. I know and listen everyone. We're going to try to find a balance here. Are we? Are we though? And a balance of objectivity.

Let's just say that. And that is there are two components to what we do, right? It is we talk about the gameplay of the player. It's not necessarily about the person themselves. Like Joe was a fantastic human. being and there are so many aspects of Joe. Yes. Well, I understand.

You've been blocked. I don't think I've been blocked. Many, many, many, many have been blocked. Some of his own past, three past survivors have been. I should have went and checked. I think Joe is a great person. I really do.

But there are there are parts of who Joe is that just don't mesh with plain survivor. And so those are the things that we will be discussing. It's nothing against Joe is a huge. human being. He is lovely. He is fantastic. There are so many attributes he has. However, this is about winning Survivor. So yes. And then for Jeff, the worst part was him fawning over Jonathan. He specifically like went out of his way three times to redirect what was being talked about and praise Jonathan. For how great he was. But why did we'll skip over Jonathan at the

beginning though. Did you notice that? She like asked Aubrey a question and then she skipped to Joe. And I feel like, but I feel like maybe Jeff was trying to redirect because like you missed Jonathan. Like maybe he was like, hey, Gail, here's my little nudge. You went from Aubrey, Joe, and then she went to Rizzo and she, she was going down the line. But like she, because Jeff even said, I want to go back to Jonathan. And then Gail still like went then to Tiffany. It was just like. It was almost like Gail didn't want to talk to Jonathan. That was the impression I got. That's funny. I doubt that. I suspect it's more just Gail being Gail. I did not notice that. But even with that,

even if you only count that as normally, he still specifically redirected the conversation two more times about how great he was, how getting three votes to win was a real achievement. And I'm like, not from those three jurors, it wasn't. And I'm not saying Jonathan necessarily did poor.

We'll, of course, talk about his game shortly, but just the way Jeff was laying it on so thick for the second place winner, not the actual winner. It just made my stomach curl a little bit. And I can understand that. I also do feel like the way that Jonathan has presented himself both in that moment and all of his exit press, you can't help but feel like your heart is crushed a little bit for him because he is so crushed. And it's interesting that this is how we've kind of come to this moment, right? Because in seasons past, when they were not doing a live finale, people would find out like that night that they hadn't won. And so then they have a year to process before they're doing exit press, right? Jonathan has spent this past year thinking, maybe I did win.

I could have won. And we're back to that, like, original exit press that we would see when there was live finale's where you, you have someone who's like living that moment the next day like, oh my God, I just lost. And now I have to talk about it with everyone in their brother. And I don't want to. We saw the same thing happen with Chrissy when she was like, no, I don't want to really talk to anybody the night of the live finale because she didn't want to be part of that. And now we see it with Jonathan. And now we're hearing it in his exit press.

And we're seeing it when he's in the CBS morning show. So it's like they're literally living. their most horrific moment in front of the world because they just came to learn, you actually lost. And that's got to suck just a little bit. It does. It does.

I feel like he should have known, especially since there was one high point for related to CBS warnings. They posted a series of clips on social media of players being told to vote out Gail, hold up a parchment with Gail's name on it, vote her out and do a confessional about it. Most of them were fairly mundane and impointly.

but Dee was amazing. She said, Gail, you asked me to predict the winner when I already knew. So it was like some sort of trap. And I was like, thank you, D. He's amazing. And I also did like,

Cerey saying she was voting out Gail because Gail had said Jenna was robbed way back in episode one, which, of course, I had pointed out here. No, she wasn't. I mean, but going back to the D thing, if D knew, who the winner was, Jonathan should have known.

I mean, he already knew, he already acknowledged that Ozzy had told him like at a premier party. Everyone else was sharing their votes, apparently, except for Devin's, Christian, Emily, and Emily. Right. Did Jonathan think he got all three of their votes? Well, that's what he said. I mean, because I do think it's like revisionist history we see a lot of people doing.

And in his brain, he's probably thinking to himself all of the reasons why they could have voted for him, right? And so you're kind of like working through the calculations and the parameters of it and like, is there a chance? And so I do think that that year must be really trying because you're spending so much time in your own head, imagining maybe, maybe they did. Maybe they did because they all worked together and maybe they had the same kind of group thing going into it. I so yes that's I could see him trying to convince himself of that and not wanting to recognize that no that's not what happened but I would I could see why he would be struggling with that because you want to convince yourself you won because if you think that you played a great game which he clearly thinks that he did then you want to try to legitimize why you lost and you have to blame it

on somebody not yourself yeah he definitely did that as we'll talk about and that's another thing You mentioned, and we'll definitely get into that, you mentioned, you know, your heart breaks for him a little bit. Yes, but. Yes, but the way he reacted in many of his interviews took away from that because of the way he threw blame everywhere except onto himself. Oh, and I understand that too. Yeah. We'll talk about that more later. But, yeah, I want to feel sympathy, but he makes it very, very difficult.

And so, and it's interesting what you said. Yeah, he wanted to give reasons why he won the whole year, whereas Aubrey told us afterwards, she learned, you know, don't, don't do that because you will just, even though the, you know, final tribal council was very clearly slanted in her direction, I think. and she believed she had the votes to win. She wouldn't allow herself to fully embrace that until Jeff literally held it up because she didn't want to go through what she went through before. Right.

And she was probably doing what Jonathan did previously, where it's like you're working through the numbers and you're convincing yourself, I could have pulled it out. And then you don't. So yes, I think she was much more in tune with that idea. But she's also been through it before, Jonathan is not. And so it's one of those components as well. Like he lost in firemaking, so he's on the jury. So he doesn't know what it feels like. I mean, I don't know what it feels like. I'd

love to know what it feels like to sit in the final three. I would not love to know what it feels like to lose. However, it's something that you don't know until you experience it. And so I think Aubrey had kind of a leg up just in the in the dealing with it mentally as opposed to Jonathan who has never had to do that part before. Right. Right. Okay. Well, there were obviously some, other things going on. And I already have or will be posting about those on TikTok and YouTube where I am at David Bloomberg TV. Before we get to how Aubrey and the other four did, we do want to mention that the rules we're about to discuss come in a shorter and much more colorful version as a poster. Go to rob his website.com slash yx lost feed. Scroll down to the poster and click on it.

And then you can keep scrolling and get the poster on a T-shirt. And then after you order that, you can also order the checklist on a T-shirt, which is available there. So, again, go to Rob has a website.com slash YX lost feed to get all of your needs to carry you through the summer. They should start making these available as well. Well, you need to, we'll have to talk to Rob about getting. that into the into the merch shop there. That's right.

I'm sure he'll be... Yeah, I'm sure he'll be thrilled. He'll be very thrilled. He'll be like, no, we're not. But come on, this is so fun. You can't help but love it. I agree.

At the very least, we can put it on a bug. You know, come on. I know, they used to do mugs. Yeah. My mom has one of the mugs. The problem with our design for mugs, is it's a bit too intricate for the... Yeah, it's very wordy.

My mom has one. I did acquire one for my mother. She has it in her china cabinet, which is so cute. Thanks, mom. Where it belongs with all the other priceless China, see?

That's right. Exactly. Well, Aubrey, Jonathan, and Tiffany came into Survivor 50 with plans to significantly change their games. Joe, not so much. And Rizzo had just finished playing his last game.

Whose modifications worked so much better. How did each of them deal with their threat levels in a game full of all stars? And where did some of them go wrong in their assumptions or actions? At RHAP, we know Survivor, and we know why Aubrey won

and Jonathan, Joe, Rizzo, and Tiffany lost. Now, the first and most important rule is, of course, to scheme and plot. And this is probably the area where the viewers who are unhappy about Aubrey's win, the relatively few of them, are saying she didn't do enough. I know I certainly heard that in comments leading up to the finale and after it,

because they may be smaller, but they're vocal. And the thing is, it's simply not true. If you didn't see the strategizing that Aubrey was doing, I encourage you to go back and rewatch after listening to this podcast. All of it, the whole season? Well, especially this one right now, where we're focusing on. Aubrey a lot. Because Aubrey did strategize and she explained it on the show, especially in tribal council. I mean, that was why I was so certain going into the finale. I've gone over this

over the past couple of podcasts that the scenes they were showing us of Aubrey explaining her game. That's why it was so obvious. Aubrey was going to win just by watching the show. Yeah. But I do, I am curious. And, and, perhaps you can speak to this, that is it necessary for the editors or the producers to put that component into the show to add that in to legitimize her as a winner? Or are they doing it because it should be present

because she is doing those things and it's just harder to show it through the edit? Do you see what I'm saying? I think it's because I think they have always had trouble editing games that are not, I mean, like a series of big moves. Yes. Which he did not do.

You know, it's easy to edit a winning game if Devin's wins. It's easy to edit a winning game if Surrey wins. Even though she doesn't make big moves, she controlled everything. It is easy to show that. A game like Aubrey's is more difficult to show. And I think that's why they add. added it in. Plus, I think Sam Phelan talked about last week that they learned their lesson

from the early seasons where they didn't. They left it more of a mystery. And you people like Erica and Gable are winning and everyone's like, uh, what? Yeah. So I think it's a combination that you need to put it in there to explain it. Otherwise, everybody's like what's going on. And it helps to, you know, show this is what the winner did. now because you know a lot of scheming and plotting that Aubrey did was not I'm going to stand up and do this myself right rather it was her working with others to accomplish her goals and succeeding and we saw this especially in the second half of the season obviously such as she talked to Jonathan about working together secretly in episode 10.

And then later she circled back to talking to him about how well they did working together to get Ozzy out. And, you know, that has been an ongoing and very heated debate among viewers on social media. Who was responsible for taking out Ozzy? Part of the problem is some people, they want to assign a move to just one person. Yes. Who incidentally, of course, just happens to be their favorite. but most moves are not made by a sole individual unless you're like it can't be right I mean unless

you're like even even three coming back in exile and changing everything but but I do think that there's something to add to that is even if you are serri and even if you are the person who's changing everybody's minds she still can't do it by herself because if everybody looked at her and said too bad so sad we already made up our minds and this is what we're doing so she has a lot of influence for sure, but you need a group of people to make it happen. And so I do think that there is something to be said about that group mentality where two people can both be on the same page, but everybody can push a little bit differently. Everybody can influence the vote a little bit differently. Some have more influence than others. And I think that in that particular moment,

they were each coming at it from a different way. Like Jonathan was like, I want Ozzy out because Ozzy is a direct threat to me for like the physical challenges and I and I know I can't beat him. And Aubrey felt the same way. However, her influence was different. She was utilizing information that she had and then sharing it with people, planting those seeds, going, listen, you're not in his end game plan. So you need to consider this and making people think about it. So it appears as if it's in their best interest as well when an actuality, it's also in hers.

And so there are two very different ways to come at this as a plan. player and I think hers is much more nuanced, but much more strategic because it's not in your face like, this is what we have to do. And that's it. It's more of like, well, let's think about this and let's work through what the end result would be if you don't vote Ozzy out. And you make people feel more like it's their idea when it's in actuality, not just their idea. That's what I was going to say. It goes back to, again, something Sam said last week. You know, you present it as a we. Yes. And now, so yeah, we saw she drove the decision.

But we saw, we saw Joe being essentially forced to admit that at tribal council. You know, that yes, he went along with it because of Aubrey, not because of Jonathan. Right. And but that's the way Aubrey mostly worked. She pushed her ideas while using other people. The Ozzy decision was a perfect example. I expected that to come up at final tribal council. And it did.

And like I said, she won that debate because Jonathan insisted Joe was going with him no matter what. And Joe had to acknowledge. They basically pushed on him. He didn't want to say anything. You could tell. Right, right. Until they like redirected the question to him for the third or fourth time. And he finally had to say yes.

That it was Aubrey who got him to flip. And then in case there was still. any doubt, Rizzo told Mike Bloom after the game. Aubrey knew about the extra vote. Aubrey knew that Ozzie and I and Surrey were close. Aubrey then goes, tells Joe, who I am very closely aligned with. And Joe comes back to me and he's like, Rizzo, you're in a trio with Surrey and Ozzy? And I'm like, absolutely not. I'm in a trio with you and Jonathan, Joe. So I have to pivot. If I tell Ozzy to play his idol, Aubrey will now go into the jury, not preaching about me for telling Ozzy that he should have played his idol,

but preaching to the jury that I was Ozzy's sheep because I was able to do what he wanted. And if she does go home, Ozzie's right. And that's all of my equity bond. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So she basically put him in a corner.

You know, I don't know that that was her goal, but by giving him all this information and then giving it to Joe as well, Rizzo didn't have much of a choice in terms of his game. That was game set match to Aubrey. She was the one who got them to flip against Jonathan, or Ozzy, not Jonathan.

And we really didn't even need to go to the interview for that last week, because we saw a scene of Rizzo telling Surrey about it, how Aubrey relayed all that information that Ozzie had told her, explaining that was the reason he turned on Ozzie. this completely backed up Aubrey's role. It certainly wasn't Jonathan or Rizzo acting on their own the way Jonathan acted when he strutted around camp later. Well, and I think too,

Ceres' response to Rizzo is it's supportive of what Rizzo ultimately ended up doing too because she saw it and went, gosh, what is he doing? You know, then he's got to go. And maybe she's just saying that because she's doing the Ceri thing. but I do think that there was a world in which she saw that for the negative effect that's going to have on her game and on Rizzo's game and the plan that they had moving forward. And so I think that that just shows that Rizzo is playing at a different level than someone like

Ozzy in that moment. And it's more in tune of like the Aubrey where you're working through all of the after effects. Like, okay, what if I do this, then what is it? And I will love, I love that Rizzo said this too. Rizzo's like fourth place and twelfth place are no different. You know, you play to win. And so he's looking at that as how do I win as opposed to how do I just make it to the next round, which I can appreciate very much.

Yeah. I thought originally that Sheree might do what you said, just say it to Rizzo for saying it to Rizzo. But she had a confessional where she talked about Ozzy's brain cells, which she later. Yes, he did. And she dropped an F bomb. You know she's, she was pretty upset.

Yeah. She was pissed. Yeah. Now, some people have said all Aubrey did was save herself. And of course, she was going to pass along that information. But they're missing the point that she had to know this was important information and exactly how to frame it to make the others most likely to flip. Yeah.

And the best part was Rizzo then telling Ozzie the reason as he walked out of tribal council. And like I said, Rizzo all. also telling Sarie. Like, he totally and accidentally gave Aubrey credit in that moment. Yeah. And of course, that was just one instance of her gameplay that I was happy to see disgust in Final Tribal Council. It was noted in interviews that there were several instances of this type of tug of war

over credit and they only showed the highlights because, of course, final tribal counsel is much, much long. And this was, of course, not the only time. She worked with people to accomplish her goals. We saw her work closely with Devons and his allies until she wanted to go in a different direction. As Devin's told Mike Bloom, Aubrey and I had really gotten a deeper relationship when we were tied together. But clearly, I was more into that relationship than Aubrey was. And then he laughed.

He continued, we see that she was loyal to me then, but not really loyal to me after that. And I think that's better in gameplay. Aubrey would later say at Final Tribal Council that she was welcomed post-merged by Chris Emily and Devin's. And then people told her those four were the snakes in the grass. So she knew she had to separate herself and readapt to another group. And earlier this season, Aubrey told us she's not afraid to make a big move and jump ship from her allies. That was clearly foreshadowing because that's exactly what she did.

As Ozzy said in final tribal council, I think your ability to play the middle is exemplary. Now, the best part of that interaction was Jonathan saying, I don't understand that. Can you please explain that to me? And, you know, Ceri led out an involuntary kind of, like she couldn't believe that he said that. That made me laugh.

Because she, of course, realized how bad it was for him to say that. Final Tribal Counsel. He didn't seem to know what playing the middle was, but Aubrey sure did. And then Ozzie explained that her ability to adapt to either side was obvious. But Jonathan and Joe kept saying, get out the middle, yet here you are on either side of the middle, which was a great, great line by I am.

I was very proud of him in that moment. I'm like, look to you, Ozzy. That was great. Yeah, that was a great off the top of his headline. Yeah, like it was fantastic. But I also, I do want to say that this is something that is, and I know you've highlighted a lot of it, but it's not easy to play in the middle.

And I feel like people who on this particular, season were trying to get those people voted out are highlighting the fact that the people who are the most dangerous. So the fact that you are giving Aubrey Guff for playing the middle, it's like, I'm sorry, weren't you targeting all the people in the middle, like all along because they needed to go because they were the most dangerous because they were playing the middle? So there's a lot to be said about like that idea of playing the middle and it being a very scary prospect for the other players because it does elevate you. It puts you in a better position.

And you usually have much more information than the other people around you because you're getting it from both sides. So I just, I thought that was kind of fascinating that they had been acknowledging those middle players for so long as being problematic and dangerous, but then didn't want to give her like props when we're like, yeah, you've been playing the middle. They're like, yeah, it's terrible. No, it's actually not. No.

Yeah. Later, Jeff said, you really sat in the pocket this season. We all sought. And even Joe said at one point, Aubrey is a strategic player, deceptive and really good at working the room. With Joe saying it and not appearing to be mad about it, that says a lot. Now, one issue about being in the middle

and declaring herself, quote, open for business, was, as Mike Bloom pointed out in an interview question, some people might see that as passive gameplay. But Aubrey said she knew people could have that perception. And she knew she was playing a subtle game, but it was what she needed to do with this group of people who had big personalities. She said it's not the type of game she would naturally play, which meant taking her foot off the gas more when she realized she didn't have the social capital to make things work like at the start of the merge. And it's interesting because

one of the primary reasons Aubrey lost in Co-wrong was that jurors did not see the moves she was making. I said back in the Why Michelle One podcast 10 years ago, that in Final Tribal Council, to quote myself, Aubrey apparently spoke at length about what she did and how she played. But much of the jury simply didn't believe her because they didn't see it. As Jason said to me, she was really good at hiding what she was doing,

but to the point it hurt her because we could not see it get done. She played by far the best game and should be the winner when it comes to the final three, but she did not let the jury know what she did. Jason also said in at least one other interview that he had no idea how well she played the game. The jurors didn't realize it until they saw the show. The only people who saw it were those in her alliance. This has become a classic example

within the special corollary to Rule 1, which talks about people keeping their scheming too well hidden. So it was a risk for Aubrey to try to keep her movement. moves hidden like that here as well. But this time, she was able to ensure people of various alliances knew what she was doing. As Ozzy said, they all saw her in the middle. They just didn't do anything about it. And I think this is where something Aubrey told Rob comes into play.

She said that as a marketer herself, she listened to some marketing related podcasts because she knew the only audience that mattered was the other players. She wasn't worried about making the best TV or about the production side. And she's spot on there. It's something we often talk about. She needed to ensure the players saw what she did by the end of the game, and she did. Yes. And I think to her credit as well was recognizing those individuals who were playing the game with her

that were ahead of her, if you will, as far as their gameplay and potential winners and when they needed to be removed in order for her to continue to move up, I think it's also something that speaks volumes of understanding your place in the tribe. Well, people are recognizing what you're doing. They might not be recognizing it as

it's better gameplay than that person over there until that person over there is gone. So, So, yeah, you know, we've talked about a lot about Aubrey's end game already. But I suppose we should go back in time to the Genevieve situation. Because some anti-Aubrey viewers are still saying she played poorly then. It was just lucky to make it. But, of course, the whole time, the only pieces of information we've had to be operating on

were what we saw on TV and what Genevieve said. Aubrey finally had the opportunity to give her side. And as she tells it, she approached Genevieve and tried to keep her door open. But Genevieve was after her and lying to her, some of which we saw, like Genevieve following Aubrey into the jungle and claiming she was worried she might be sick. Now, we laughed at the absurdity of saying that at the time. But if you're Aubrey, that is no laughing matter. The two of them basically circled each other like dangerous predators.

and each had different perspectives afterwards with it ending on the note of Aubrey saying she still told Genevieve she was hoping to work with her and Genevieve saying, I'm not speaking to you. Yeah, which is really like a lot to think about that you would completely like shut someone out so quickly like that. Yeah. And again, you know, the problem is Genevieve had her point of view. Aubrey had her point of view.

Right, right. You know, Aubrey said that yes, she did. had mentioned that Genevieve was dangerous, but it was in a more general conversation. Like people were just openly sharing, or a few people were just openly sharing thoughts. Like, oh, I think this about this person. I think that about that person. She says Genevieve's dangerous and all of a sudden it gets shared with Genevieve. Right.

But we saw something similar happen to with like Colby and Surrey, right? Where Colby told Savannah something about Surrey, which is taken out of context. Like when you're saying it, you expect the person hearing it to have the same type of mindset that you're having in that moment. But this is survivor. You can manipulate information. And so you go back and go, guess what so-and-so said about you? And it comes across as a very threatening comment as opposed to like, oh, well, isn't that, I'm

flattered that that's how they would feel. No, they're like, oh, good. They're going to target me. They got to go. So you need to choose your words wisely. And I do think that although Aubrey's intention there was to not necessarily go after Genevieve, the utilization of the phrasing that she had was a problem. Yeah.

And you say that's something in Survivor. That could be something just in your office, too. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Someone would come to me and say, I can't believe the way so-and-so is acting. And even if I just said, uh-huh, they would run back to so-and-so and said, David said.

Yeah. He agreed with me. You're like, wait, what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Now, there is one other piece of Aubrey's strategizing that I want to discuss,

and it happened before the game. So we're just going like backwards in time. I jump each way here. And not pre-game alliances because, like, you know, like, say the second person made with all the people who voted for him, rather just using her head. Aubrey saw that Samotion was one of the options in the fan vote. So she bought a replica on Etsy and practiced. This is brilliant. I hate it.

Well, I love it for her gameplay. I know you hate it for her ability to do that. But, yes. But now, I personally did not vote for Sumotion. I will in the future now, because obviously it's the best thing ever. But do something new. So sick of this. Well, it was never going to be anything new.

It was always going to be a classic. I just wanted to be a classic. I understand. But I knew based on the fan votes and how people talk about Sumotion and talk about how great it is. I knew that would be the outcome. And I bet Aubrey was in touch enough to know as well. We, of course, have heard of Carson 3D printing puzzles or other players even building challenges to practice like a snake ball challenge and stuff in the hopes that it'll come into play. This was truly a game saving strategic move on Aubrey's part.

And I give her props for doing that 100%. and I've complained about this before, so I apologize for doing it again, but I just have to mention it quickly. I do think that there's something to be said about the unknown, and I think that Survivor has lost that component of its game where you should be introducing challenges that people don't expect, and they don't know what to expect.

Maybe it's either that. Either you need to do something that has never been done before so people can't go on Etsy and buy it, people can't 3D print it. or you have to go back to just the, those like, um, challenges just go on forever where you have to like,

like it go, go back to Borneo. You're standing on, on a, on a post and you have to have your hand on a post and yes. You know, I mean like, and that's just will.

That's, that's what that is. It's just your will to win and how badly you want it comes through in those types of challenges. So endurance challenges. So, so to me, like that's what it needs to go back to.

Like I can fully like give her props for finding. And the fact that somebody built one of those and has it on Etsy, my gosh, they're going to sell a whole lot more now. So they're going to be. But I do think Somotion is awesome. I do think it's a great challenge. But I do think that when you become too predictable, you take away some of the interest in the show itself because then it, as I've said before,

it's more game showy and I don't like that component of it. I mean, in a way, Sumotion is an endurance challenge. Someone commented that she was doing it for 15 minutes, you know, before. Oh, and that is true. And it's mentally challenged. So there's so many things about it that I appreciate and I love. If you want to do some motion, well, then make it, like, do the same thing. Just build it differently.

You know, like switch it up. Like, you can still do some motion. It doesn't need to be the same exact piece that's been utilized before. I mean, there are things that can be done. there's an art department. They have lots of money. They can do that. I will say,

and I hate to even sound like I'm defending here, this was Survivor 50. They weren't going to do something new. They wanted to do a classic. And, you know, they put it out there as one of the questions. It never would have occurred to me to go out there and do this. And again, that's why huge props to her for realizing you could even do this.

Yeah, the fact that she like was like, like, I wonder if I could buy one of these on Etsy. Oh my God. I mean, that's, yeah. And same thing with Carson. Like the fact that they're taking those additional steps, I can, I can, wow, that was incredible that they did those things. She's like practicing fire.

Like these are things that you can do. But I also just, there's something about it that just rubs me the wrong way, where I, I feel like there is, there's this want for new and unknown. And when you don't have that anymore, it can, it can be frustrating. But I'll stop on my soapbox now. All right. Well, we can move to Jonathan then. He talked in pretty much all of his interviews, plus in the game itself,

about how he changed his game. He even told Mike Bloom, most people, they say it and they don't do it, which is 100% true, as we saw again this season with other players. He continued, but I did change my game completely. And maybe I should have made it more known at the end, how I changed my game, but I don't know. Now, I thought if there was one thing he did make well known, it was that he changed his game. He said that repeatedly.

And he's right. He did. He was much more strategically minded this season than in his first. He made alliances outside of what we might have expected coming into the game. He did make moves like blindsiding Camilla and taking out D. And yes, pushing for a move against Ozzy, even though his effort wasn't what actually put it over the top. And he said a lot of the right things, like knowing he had to be fluid and he couldn't rely on the old, quote, honor and integrity stuff because people who do that make it to final three, they get maybe one vote. So you have to do more. You got to make some sort of moves to win this game. I am certainly willing to credit him for improved. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think that he did improve his game. I think that we saw a different side of Jonathan. There was there was much more.

discussion being had with Jonathan by various players. And I can appreciate the fact that he was working through possible vote strategies with individuals when he was presented with a new idea and points that they were making. And so all of that I do see as a new type of Jonathan approach. And then in addition to the other things that he was able to do when you do have a strong alliance and you do have a core group of people that you're working with, you're a new initial idea of the game, honor and integrity can work because you can have that core group of people with those values, but you are able to go beyond that because you are willing to strategize with other people and try to open yourself up and align yourself with other people in different

ways. So yes, I can definitely appreciate the change that he recognized needed to be made and made those changes. Yes. But here's the thing. Just because you played a better game than you did before doesn't mean you played the best game of this season. And I think a good example is when he talked in the final tribal council about how he used heart-to-heart personal stuff to blindside people after not doing that on 42. Okay, good from a strategic standpoint, but we'll have other things to say about that in Rule 5.

And just because you learned to play Survivor and do certain things like making allies, outside your own group and things like that. Okay, you should have known that coming in. You're not rewarded for leveling up if you started at a lower level to begin with. It's something he should have known before his first time out. And many players do.

Even putting aside other aspects of the game, he started below average in terms of things like strategy in his first season. Bringing his skill level up doesn't automatically put him the top of the class. Like if you're taking a class and you get the first semester you get a C and the second semester you get a B plus, well, the A students still did better than you. And I can see that. I can definitely see that. But I do think that we've given credit to Aubrey for leveling up a little bit. Like she corrected components of her game that she had done

incorrectly before. And so I do think that he corrected some things that he was not doing correct before. And so there is this idea that he did improve. But as you said, that doesn't make him the best player the season as he kind of thought that it was. But I think that there's kind of this weird idea that Jonathan is focusing on where it seems like people are giving Aubrey credit for the four times that she has played and what we have seen improve of her game. And she even talked about this in Final Tribal, where this was her legacy,

her story, right? Where she started like this and this is how she's going to end. And so I think Jonathan is struggling with this idea of, but look, I did the same thing. Like, I got better too. And I got better too. And I think I'm more well-rounded than her game was this season. So why are we giving her credit for becoming a better player and not giving me credit for becoming a better player. And I feel like that's really a big part of what he's struggling with because I think he asked, like everyone who interviewed him, what do I need to do better next time? What do I need to improve on? Yes. So it's it's like this weird like, but you're doing that for her and not me kind of mentality. Yeah, but again, like you said, she she improved, he improved, but they started here.

And for those of you just listening, I have one hand higher than the other. They started like this and they both moved up. Yes. But they both moved up, you know. And that's the thing. You know, the, the A student moved to an A plus. The C or B minus student moved to a B or a B plus. And so we even saw that and some other things.

Like he talked about how he strategized outside where he normally people thought he would have. Yeah. But some of the. those were failures. Like go back to the double duo tribal council. He was certain that Christian was voting with him. He was absolutely certain of it. We saw him grilling him.

And no, Christian was never with you on that. Yeah. That is a strategic miss completely. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And maybe it's like things kind of merging because he and Christian were together during that challenge.

And so he might have thought, well, look, we've come together. So now we can vote together. I don't know. Yeah. Now, with all of that said, as I mentioned, I do think Jonathan played a strategically sound, mostly game. If he had managed to get Aubrey out and faced Rizzo and Joe at the end, that might have carried the day.

And if it did, I would have been perfectly okay with that outcome. But he did not out scheme Aubrey. And as I mentioned earlier regarding his questioning what Ozzie was saying at final tribal council, he didn't and still doesn't understand that. He knew his way of playing, but he didn't really get that there are others. Yes. That is very fair. All right.

Moving to Joe, what can we say about Joe's scheming and plotting? I'm tempted to just say nothing and move along. But we can't do that because there were so many negative things to say. And we have to cover those two. We said it in the preseason. Joe didn't learn anything from his first time on Survivor because he didn't try. Sure, in final tribal counsel and interviews, he claimed to have changed his game. But as I mentioned earlier, even Jeff Probst noted on CBS warnings that he played the same way.

And of course, a key example of everything that he did wrong goes back to the blowup between him and Devin's and episode two. Now, we've already covered it in terms of both in that episode and then. talking about what Rick didn't handle well last week, but now it's Joe's turn. And most of that was from a strategic standpoint because what happened there led to a ton of confessionals and discussions among his tribe mates about him. I'm going to condense it a lot, condense it down, but it's still a lot. Like I, you know, from my pages of notes, I deleted bunches of quotes. But he was driving people crazy.

Devin's, Christian, Surrey, you name it. They talked about having to play with him basically as an obstacle. As Devin said, Joe is so frustrating. Joe wants to play his way and we all have to play around him. And it sucks, man. It's boring and it's restricting and all of us are coming out here to play on leash. Christian said, you can't just play with him. You have to play around him.

We're not going to get him to violate this code. He has his set boundaries. And so on. Even Savannah noted in her interview with Mike Bloom, you have seven people total on the beach, and six people were really concerned about their ability to work with Joe in the future. And these six people were fairly reasonable people. We've been in tough moments before. For this amount of people to be concerned about the possibility of working with someone closely

or at all in the future, I think that speaks volumes. And Joe was just so caught up in playing Survivor, his way that he truly couldn't see it's not the way 99% of people play. I think eventually he did. I think eventually he realized his way was not the way. But he still really learned nothing from his season. Multiple people talked about how much they like Joe as a person, but hated him as a game player.

Yeah, and this is what goes back to what I was saying earlier, is that there are aspects of his, like, just person, his personality, who he is as a human that just don't mesh with the game of Survivor. And this is, it brings me back to something that was told to me before I played, and I'd mentioned this on this podcast. Like, keep Jessica in a box was what I was told, because there are certain parts that just don't work in the game.

And Joe needs to be cognizant of that as well, where there are certain components of Joe that are fantastic for Survivor. Being loyal is it, it can be a great attribute, but it can also be to your detriment if you're not willing to find those moments where you need to shift. And if your biggest game move is, well, damn it, once we made the merge, I had to lie. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, this is, oh, wow, stunning that, like, suddenly this is your move is that you've told Tiffany a lie and you want credit for lying when everyone's like, this is Survivor. That's what you do.

And so I do think that if lying in your headspace is like a really big decision and a really big move, then you're not going to be seen as a strategic player when you play Survivor. Because that's just a, that's a very small component of very big plans that are created on Survivor. And so I do, I do think that that's just something that Joe will struggle with because of who he is as a person. And it just doesn't mesh with the game. Yeah, it's funny that, you know, his wife came out for the family visit and told him basically, you know, take off the restraints and play. And he was like, oh, I'm glad she told me that. She should have told you that before you left for the game.

Yeah. Well, because it would have been fascinating, right? If everybody had come into season 15, seeing what they had seen with Joe previously. And if he had completely done like, you know, I guess a 180, you know, where it's like he is, he is now, I'm going to. lie, cheat, and steal. And no one's going to see it coming because I'm Joe. That would have been fascinating. Yeah, we said that.

We said that in the preseason. If he was going to do that, great. We would have applauded that. Yes, yes. But no. And even before he lied at the merge, like you said, you know, going back to episode three, he was thrilled to be swapped because he got to be with Coach and Colby for core values.

Yes. Yes. You know, but then. as you said at some point he realized he had to sometimes lie and vote people off that he had said he wouldn't and you know that probably coincided with when he was pulled more tightly into seri's orbit because he kept acting like he didn't want to vote people out and then eventually he would do it anyway and other people like serri and rizzo kept ensuring joe was looped in on whatever they were doing with him reciprocating by telling seri information like when jonathan and the other woman

wanted to target ozzi so i will say somewhere along the lines he slightly modified his stance on actually playing the game yes but he also still got pissed off at things like devons talking about lying and playing a hard game and he was still difficult as ozie told rob i don't know what kind of game Joe was playing, but he was a really hard person to play with. Every single vote that was going to be a little bit strategic, we'd have to draw a formula like this and this and this, Joe. As Sam pointed out in the finale recap podcast, even if Joe did change his game, how did it help? It didn't. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's interesting that Ozzy is the one talking about drawing a strategic map for Joe.

That kind of just emphasizes the point of Yes, very much so. Very much so. Now, I want to address what Emily said in Final Tribal Council about everyone running plans through Joe, making it sound, she was giving him a lot of the benefit of the doubt, as if he had some strategic role there.

That's not why they were running plans by him. They kept talking to him because they didn't want him to get pissy about being left out, which was something we have talked. about over the course of the last few podcasts, people mentioning that he felt everyone needed to tell him everything or else he'd get mad. Joe even told Rob he was trying to play Survivor by going along with votes he didn't particularly want. That's not exerting power. That's not driving a vote. That's not even going to him for permission. They were letting him know so they could make him do

what they wanted him to do. They had their extra vote ready and his name was Joe. Yeah, and he even acknowledged that in the final tribal that he was, he did not lead the charge on any of the votes of the decisions being made that he didn't have that agency. And I think that speaks volumes of your gameplay because you really are kind of going along with what you're being told. But also you are a part of a group, which is great. But you're never, you're never actually making that decision. You're never actually the one that is like, what about this idea? Let's talk through what this looks like. And he acknowledged that himself.

Yeah. Yeah. He didn't lie to people or vote people out because he thought on his own, ooh, this is a good move. I need to do this. It's because he was told we are doing this because it is a good move for our alliance. He's like, yes. I don't want to.

I don't want to. I don't want. Okay. I will. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. All right.

Leaving the final three and going to Rizzo, I think he played very well, especially considering his. circumstances. As he told Dalton Ross, I was a dead man walking coming into the game. My first impression with everybody was, we got to get this guy out. We had coach writing letters to Colby and Ponderosa to take me out. And my arc was, this kid's annoying, but I really like this kid. Then I aligned with Surrey and Ozzy, two icons of the game. And I pretty much knew everything that was happening. And in many ways, I played similarly, but in many ways I was different. In 50, I played the middle. I flip-flop back and forth. I think I did it.

really great job. 49, I was really much in the year either with me or you're against. And I think that is a pretty good brief summary of his game. It is amusing that he described himself as being in the middle because that's one thing we were saying when other people were claiming Christian Devons and Emily were in the middle. We're like, no, Suriazzi and Rizzo are the ones in the middle. Yes. And I think that to his credit as well, he didn't shy away from the idea of aligning himself with a serri, which I think we really should also recognize as being fascinating because here we have someone who is a very, he's a student of the game, right? He can tell you from start to finish who played when and who won and everything in between. And so the fact that

he's looking at someone who is seen as one of the greatest players of Survivor, and she's willing to kind of take him under her wing. And he's like, oh, yes. please and then I will I will utilize you as long as I have to because he he recognized what Ceri was capable of and also when she would be expendable. And so I think that that also shows just how strategic he was because he was planning that far in ahead, you know, in advance kind of thing where like I can see where the game will go to and I can see my place in this spot. So I really do appreciate that he was able to do that on 50 better than he was on 49 because he really was kind of locked into a core group in 49.

But yes, I think it's a hard spot to walk into when everyone sees you as Riz God. And that's all they really know about you when they start this season. Yeah, I don't feel like we saw as much strategy as he was actually doing. Yes, I agree. We certainly saw some, of course, but certain things aren't as tangible. For example, D told Mike Bloom, he's so self-aware. How is it that I trust Rizzo? And I just met him so much more than Charlie, who I've known for a while.

And she told Rob, he's a phenomenal player. Meanwhile, Rizzo hid his tight alliance with Surinazi, which allowed him some freedom without worrying he'd be targeted for it. And he was not just a passive member of the alliance like Joe. He played an active role in decisions. For example, when there was a discussion between voting out Christian or Emily, he pushed hard to stick with Christian and not suddenly switch because of what Emily said to Surrey about Ozzy. And he was strategically minded overall, like in the Mr. Beast Tribal Council, when the person who ended up being voted out said she never took the lead in any strategy discussions. And he replied exactly what I was thinking.

Don't come out here and say, oh, I never say names. That means you aren't playing the game. man up, you said it, that's it, live with what you said. I appreciate Rick saying he wants me out. That's a compliment. If you want a plan to happen, you make it happen. I think backing out of it just isn't going to be what you want. Yeah.

And I loved that he was able to kind of put it all out there and recognize what needed to be done in order to win this game. And he also knew who he needed to sit next to in order to have even a shot at doing so. Yeah. Now, of course, one of those biggest decisions when you talk about who he needed to be sitting next to was whether or not to let Ozzy go a couple weeks ago. We discussed that already when talking about Aubrey. So I'll just say that I think his reasons were correct.

And he couldn't just keep Ozzy around after all that happened. Yeah. No, I think that everything that we've already touched upon is set in this spot here. Now, one thing we did not know about Rizzo was that Emily and Devin's told him something very important earlier in the game. He told Mike Bloom, it's pretty early on in the merge and Emily tells me, Rizzo, honestly, I don't know what you're doing in this game. And that really raised alarm bells because it's like, holy crap, I'm playing really well because I know everything that's going on. But these people don't know how well I'm doing. And had they watched 49, they can see that I can dictate a vote behind the scenes, but they didn't.

So I was thinking to myself, okay, if Emily doesn't see it and she's a strategic queen, she loves the strategy of the game, I need to get to the end with people that Emily won't vote for. And I don't think she was going to vote for Joe and Jonathan. Rick's the same way. Honestly, I think even if I make it to the end with Joe and Jonathan, Rick probably doesn't vote for me because Rick doesn't believe what I was selling. Rick's like, honestly, I just don't see it, man. And I said, you don't see my game? He's like, no.

And I was like, thank you for being honest. At least now I know who I have to sit at the end with. And these conversations, which were essentially about that special corollary to rule one that I had mentioned earlier with Aubrey, helped shape Rizzo's plan going forward. He took in this information and he was like, okay, this is what I need to do. Us watching it, we didn't know exactly why he decided to go with Jonathan and Joe. I mean, let me, we knew why everyone wanted to go with Joe. That was not a surprise.

But now we have this understanding that it was an intentional move to try to get himself into the best possible circumstance for the end. Yeah. And I think it's interesting that that was the decision that he made here as opposed to, well, now I need to do something flashy and I need to make a big move. So that way I have this resume builder, if you will, and I have something to point to. Instead, he was like, it might be too late for that. So if it's too late for that, I have to shift and I need to change my. end game plan and then hopefully in the final three explained to everyone what I was doing. And so I think it's interesting that that was the way in which he responded to that information as opposed to I need to pull a Rick Devons move here.

Right. All right. Finally we get to Tiffany. And we unfortunately did not get to see a ton of Tiffany's strategic game. Obviously, she was tight with Cerey, but we didn't see it happen. It just was. And apparently it was similar even in Fiji, as Emily told Mike Bloom, you wake up one day and suddenly Tiffany and Surrey are like attached to the hip. That wasn't really explained or shown as deeply as I think maybe it was felt on the island.

And Tiffany explained it just kind of happened. They bonded instantly. So of course, Tiffany was involved in the decisions Surrey was guiding. And we saw some of those discussions. Again, she was not a passive Joe there. She was active in those conversations. She also helped push Jonathan to take out Ozzie in the split tribal council to help further her own agenda. So, you know, even though Jonathan was claiming that as his move, not only did you have Aubrey who actually pushed it the most, you even had Tiffany pushing it as well.

Yeah, and I think it's interesting because I was curious how Tiffany was going to respond in that moment, knowing her relationship with Surrey. And she probably knew that Surrey was close with Ozzy. And so now Tiffany is in this circumstance where she could say, no, we're not going to vote out Ozzie because I'm going to help Surrey or I'm going to help myself in this moment and recognize that Ozzie's got to go. So I think that that shows the level of strategy that was also working through her game because it was more of a selfish decision in that moment as opposed to putting her relationship with Surrey above the decision as to what's going to be best to further her own. game. Right. Now, you mentioned the word selfish. And the one main strategic flaw Tiffany had was that she was not selfish when it came to the very end game because she was willing to go to the end with Serie. She was, yeah. Look, I understand the non-game reasons for it. And certainly, I don't think too many people watching would have complained if it happened. Right. But we have to

look at it the same way here as any other decision. And it would have been an extremely poor one in the context of the game. Yeah, and it would have been fascinating because I do think that to see if it was a Tiffany, Ozzie, Surrey combo, what the response from the viewers would be because there is, there does seem to be like a very heavy, uh, Surrey is not a well-rounded player kind of idea. And someone might say someone like Tiffany is more well-rounded, but still, I mean, you cannot get past who Surrey is and how she runs these, the game. Every time she plays them, she's very much in charge of what's going on.

Is she winning challenges? No. But is she manipulating the people in the way that she needs to manipulate them and making things happen? Yes. And I think overall, that's much more significant than a challenge win. And I think people would struggle with that greatly. Yeah, I think when you say there's a, I can't remember what word you use, but there's people saying that, I think that's one of those very vocal minority situation.

Oh, and I'm sure it is. because there is this, because it's something you hear. I think there's more of the, the chorus is chanting for Surrey. And then there's this little tiny contingent over here that's like, no, no, no, no. And we want Joe, because he's honest and he does well in challenges. Right. So, yeah, so I do think that that it would have been just an interesting thing to hear the response to that.

But I do think that would have been a huge detriment to both Ozzy and Tiffany's. game. Yeah. Well, the second rule says not to scheme and plot too much and to keep your scheming secret. After all that time we spent on rule one, this is going to go very quickly. Because I just didn't see very much from any of these five that they did particularly wrong here. Aubrey had a few issues very early in the game when it was claimed that she'd thrown Genevieve's name around as being dangerous. But we mentioned this already. That was, in a specific context of different people talking about other players. It wasn't like she just came out of nowhere and said,

let me tell you about Genevieve. Now, should she have realized that this could happen? Yeah. You know, she should know this sort of thing can get blown up. You just don't expect it, especially right at the start of the game. And, you know, Genevieve's allies just, you know, told her what may have ended up being tall tales compared to what actually happened.

And that meant when she found out she had to go into damage control mode. But she was almost immediately on the bottom of the tribe along with Angelina. And to make matters worse, Angelina was going around telling people Aubrey was her number one. And Aubrey had to try to undo that damage

because she didn't want to be seen as anybody's number one. Right, right. She knows what happens with duos in this game. And even Q told Gordon Holmes how she came to him and tried to dispel that idea. Now, again, I'm not sure it worked, but luckily for her, it wasn't put to the test because while Angelina was probably the person who would have been voted out if that tribe lost immunity wasn't a guarantee. Yes, for sure. All very valid points. Agreed. Now, one other topic to bring up for Aubrey is in relation to the way she was kind of hovering right around the problem of the special corollary to Rule 1 that we already discussed.

people not realizing she was making the moves that she did. In Final Tribal Council, Rizzo asked her if she understood why people thought she didn't have agency. And she said that she did, but she didn't want to overcorrect that because she didn't want them to think she was plotting out each move she was making. She let it be her cover as she moved from group to group. And this is like a balancing act to try to avoid being seen as scheming too much, while also wanting to. to ensure you get credit for the work you do. It is a difficult thing to accomplish. But Aubrey nailed it this season.

Yes, completely agreed. All right. Well, as for the other four, I am finding it hard to think of any situations where they, you know, particularly over-skinned. Certainly not the case for Joe. And Rizzo kept his strategizing pretty much on the down low for most of the game, as did Tiffany.

Jonathan may have been a bit too. much when he was taking credit for things around camp and then describing it at final tribal council. But those are items we'll hit in Rule 5 and Appendix B. Can you think of anything that I'm missing for them for this rule? No, I think that that's a very fair assessment. They all seem to be weirdly aware of what they needed to do in a more public sense as opposed to a more private sense. And so, yeah, I don't think anyone really struggled too badly with this rule here. Okay. All right. Well, the third rule tells players to be flexible. And I know we spoke a lot in rule one about Aubrey playing the middle and having an open door policy and moving back and forth.

So a lot of that obviously applies here. Now, aside from or adding on to that, what did you think of Aubrey in terms of being flexible? I think Aubrey, in addition to what we've already talked about, was incredibly flexible in recognizing when she needed to make decisions for other moves that she might not have considered initially. She was responding to what was happening around her all of the time. And I think that that was such an interesting thing to watch because it's very similar to what we saw Devin's do in that tribal council where he kind of like dropped a bomb and threw people under the bus. And then when other people started jumping in, he just sat back, right? And that's kind of what we saw Aubrey doing, where it was like she was seeing things that were happening, responded, and then just said,

okay, now I just need to be, like she actually said in her final travel, she had to play dead. After she did this thing, then she had to play dead. And so I think those types of ideas were so great for Aubrey's game because she was recognizing I can do this much to make this decision, but then I also need to remember to pull back a little bit and kind of weave through the game in a way that was really impressive because it wasn't so much in your face, but it was responsive to what was happening around her. But it was also responsive in a way that was the best for her own game. So it was a really incredible balancing act, as you indicated, that we got to see her do, not only with her willingness to play with other people, but the decisions that she was making with those other people as well. Yeah. I like the way Surrey described part of Aubrey's flexibility in Final Tribal Council saying she played a game of hopscotch. She hopped the line is just the way she should have. And Surrey also said the way Aubrey moved throughout the game not committing to any singular alliance is the new school era way of playing. I like the way she combined those, the new school era. You have to be fluid and flexible. The old school era way is what she said she used to do. your alliance of three or four people, stay there no matter what, stay loyal to them.

But what she actually did was play a new era game by being fluid and flexible and moving when she needed to. Yeah. I do have to say, as much as we all love, Ceri, I do think she was oversimplifying things a bit by, you know, because, of course, being flexible in this way has been in my rule, rule since literally the very beginning. Being fluid and flexible, not a new concept. And sticking to a solid alliance is not.

only an old school concept. She could have just asked Dee, who was sitting, you know, right there on the jury with her about it. How did you win your game, Dee? Oh. Yes. I see what she's saying, and it definitely applied to the way Aubrey played. Yeah.

Now, of course, we talked about one of the alliances that she jumped into and out of with Christian Devons and Emily. And Devons told Mike Bloom, Aubrey was kind of the swing. And Aubrey and I had really got. gotten a deeper relationship when we were tied together. Oh, I talked about this quote already. So, you know, she, he already mentioned that she was more into it than him. And that runs parallel to when Aubrey would later say in an interview, you have to know when to put your foot on the gas, when to slow down, which goes to what you were saying. And there were a lot of times when I was

like, this is happening over there. Let the attention go here. like Jeff was talking about so you can remain in the pocket and wait to strike until it's your moment. And we saw her do that specifically with Devons when she knew he was doomed and was out, obviously idle hunting. She told us it was great for her because she could sit back and let him draw all the attention. One of those times she took her foot off the gas. Yeah, absolutely. And then she made sure to set herself up for those alliance jumps.

She explained in final tribal council, I would selectively share information that I thought would build trust with the other side so that they would have enough trust in me that they would welcome me in, that I had currency in the game that would be useful to them. It took a few tries of explanations for certain jury members to get it, but those jurors weren't voting for her anyway, and it almost felt to me like they were purposely misunderstanding. Yeah, and I think that this is a very, again, difficult thing to do when it comes to the sharing of information and how you share it and when you share it because you don't want to

be like an emily i'm not trying to speak ill of emily but emily would it was kind of like a knee-jerk reaction when emily would she would she would spill the information because she was like appalled at that moment over there and now i'm going to go tell on these people and then realize later oh i shouldn't have done that right whereas where Aubrey was very calculated and how she was going to share the information when she was going to share it and with who and i think that that is another aspect to her game that made her very successful. Yeah. And, you know, all of this is also very interesting when we consider that Aubrey talked about

learning from Michelle's game. Because looking back, to quote myself again, I said in the Why Michelle One podcast, we saw Michelle move from one alliance to the other or stay in the middle. The winds of the game were blowing in different directions at different times. On many of those occasions, it looked like the wind would snap Michelle right out of the game. But instead, she bent with those wins and then came back standing up straight and tall. Michelle said she stayed in the middle and knew when to bounce. In the meantime, she wasn't being blamed for anything and wasn't on the chopping block.

Does that sound a little familiar? That 10-year-old thing that I said? That's kind of crazy how it all comes back around, right? It's almost like, David, you're right. Yes, it is. Yes, I agree. I agree. Look at that.

Right, David, you're right. So, all right. So moving on to Jonathan, how do you think he did in terms of flexibility? Oof. Well, it's a good start. Yeah. I do think that Jonathan wants. wanted to be flexible.

And I think Jonathan thought that he was being flexible. But the way in which he was actually playing the game wasn't in that he was very tied to his core group, which I've already talked about that that can be a benefit for sure. If you're able to find the balance of being tied with the core group and then working outside of that group, which I think Jonathan was trying to do. but he also was a little short-sighted with some of the decisions that he was making and some of the targets that he really wanted to focus on where there's been some discussion about perhaps he should have taken Aubrey out sooner as opposed to focusing like on a Surrey because Surrey isn't going to win a challenge whereas Aubrey might have a better chance and so there there were I think places

where he kind of locked himself into what he wanted the result to be as opposed to that long-term thinking that I think Aubrey was doing where it was like, I have to think about who I'm going to take out when because of the domino effect, right? Like then who are they going to be looking at after this happens? And, you know, his idea of wanting to take Ozzy out as badly as he did wasn't necessarily something that was going to be beneficial for him in that moment. But overall, he thought, well, Ozzy's got to go. Well, if Ozzy's got to go, you have to figure out the best time for Ozzy to go.

if you think it's going to improve your game. So I do think that there was components of his wanting to be flexible and he was trying to be, but he was also very locked into a particular idea of what he wanted his game to look like and to and to feel like and who he wanted to play that game with. And because of that, I think it constrained him just a little bit as far as the flexibility is concerned. Yeah. I will defend Jonathan a little bit on the Surrey aspect of things. And we'll talk about that later in like Appendix B because there were a lot of threats to take out. Oh, yes. And I think part of it was, you know, I think he saw probably Aubrey and Surrey as both equally likely to win a challenge and and Surrey as much more likely to win the game. Yeah, and that's fair. And that's fair. I'm not saying that that's the only, like, but it's just this idea of, of how he was kind of getting to the end goal and the things that he wanted that sometimes didn't seem as flexible as it needed to be because it wasn't reacting to what was happening around him as opposed to what he just thought was best for his game. And it might not have been best at that particular time. Yeah, I don't really think he fully understood flexibility. We know he needed an explanation.

of what playing in the middle meant. And Sam also mentioned in the finale recap that in Final Tribal Council, when he was asked for examples of adaptability, he talked about changing this time from last time. They were really asking, like, what did you do this season? How did you adapt to what was happening this season?

Right. And I do think we talked a bit about some flexibility earlier, like understanding he couldn't just play the honor and integrity way. And he said at Final Tribal Council that he played with different people differently, like coach was a straight shooter, but Ozzy was more emotional. But it wasn't what I would call a huge amount of flexibility. He said back in episode one, I'm going to be way more flexible because I know I have to be more strategic.

But again, that's flexibility compared to his last time playing. Right. As for this time, as Dee said to Mike Bloom, when you're playing, with Jonathan, you know who he's going for, you know who he's with, and he's going to stick by those people. Yes, absolutely. But then as we move on to Joe, even Jonathan criticized Joe's game to us, talking about how if you play a straight and narrow game, you'll get left in the dirt. And Joe, of course, showed about as much flexibility as he did in his first out. I think Ceres said it best when she was talking to Rob, quote, Joe is a strong personality. Joe is a strong personality. Joe is

a man's man. Those types of alpha males, it's hard to tell them what to do or have them go against what they think is right. Joe, to his credit, stands on his principles. But to me and Survivor, sometimes you have to be a little more flexible. And I think Joe's inflexibility, sometimes it took a lot of prodding to get him to go with the flow if he didn't 100% agree with it. If you believe something, stand on that. Will it work on Survivor? I don't know. I think she was being nice at that point. but, you know, because we do know. And the answer is, no, it won't work on survival. Right.

Right. Yeah. I mean, all of those things we've already talked about with Joe, he's kind of locked into who he is and how he looks at life. And that's how he plays Survivor. Yes. Now, Rizzo was in an interesting position in that, as Kelly Wentworth and Rob pointed out in a podcast a couple weeks ago,

he had to very much change the way he played the game in just a matter of essentially a few days. But like we said for Jonathan, And that's, it's really flexible flexibility within the game that matters because nobody else knew what his last game was like. Yeah. With that said, he mentioned that he was playing in the middle, not letting people know who his true allies were. And we saw that he was willing to change direction when it became necessary. Yeah.

I mean, he clearly did that towards the end. I think some of, to his, like, it was almost like a benefit that people didn't know much about what his game. was like because it did allow him to be a little more like flexible, I guess, and in the decisions he was going to make with where he was going to end up because you don't have those preconceived ideas of who you are or friendships that you might have. I mean, he's kind of like, nobody knows anything about him except he calls himself Rizgod. And so I think that enabled him to kind of keep his options open when the game started and really continue to do that as the game progressed because he, he wasn't unknown.

And that can be very skill. for players to sign up with, but then also it can be beneficial to the person that they don't know anything about because then it does give him that ability to adapt and change. And he could have changed completely from his last time, which we didn't necessarily see a whole lot of change from his last game. But it wasn't as necessary because they didn't know anything about him from his previous season. Right. All right. Well, what did you think of Tiffany in terms of this rule. Well, I think Tiffany is interesting because she's, I think she's very much like, I'm going to be

completely honest with how I feel about whatever I'm feeling. And so she was willing to talk through options with players and point out to players why this is a bad idea, why we shouldn't do this, why we should focus on this person. And so it was like the honest information that she was providing really showed how flexibility. she was because she was willing to change things up and do things differently. And I know we talked already about her willingness to take out Ozzy, even though Surrey was like her number one. She was still willing to take Ozzy out because it was beneficial for her. So I think she was always considering all of the options and she was considering them both for like her own benefit.

Like this is better for me. But I want other people to think about it too in the way that I'm thinking about it, but I'm going to, as we discussed, turn it into a wee idea. And so I think her flexibility really was in response to what was happening around her. And I think she was keeping options open for herself. But she found herself in a really tough spot too, right? Because she is kind of locked in with particular people. People know that she's close with Surrey. And she isn't willing to take herself away from Surrey. And so that is where her flexibility really kind of stunted because you've tied yourself to someone who is deemed one of the best survivor players ever and you are willing to like go to the end and you're even willing to lose to Surrey because that's how locked in you are with her.

So that is where her flexibility kind of stopped. It's like it made it as far as far as Surrey. And I was like, okay. Yeah, I agree. I think she was very flexible up to that point. She came into the swap and then the merge and she had to keep changing things up. As just one example, she wanted to work with both Aubrey and Genevieve, but quickly saw that was going to be impossible. So she made her choice of Aubrey as her tightest ally. But once the merge hit, she, like you said, clearly moved to be with Surrey while also keeping that Aubrey door open.

Of course, one area where she was not willing was what you just mentioned about Surrey. so we could go into the fourth rule, which tells players not to let their emotions control them. It's clear that Aubrey did well here, as it was pretty much necessary to play the type of game she did. If you're going to jump from alliance to alliance, you have to be willing to cut people you were just working with, even if you liked them.

So she could be palling around with Devons one minute and targeting him the next. And the same was true pretty much down the line. Even with Surrey, both of them had strong feelings of friendship, for the other, but they also knew they needed to vote the other one out. Yeah, I think that she certainly was able to balance having so many relationships because she's been around Survivor for so long.

She's known a lot of people. She's interacted with a lot of people outside of the game and also played the game with people who were playing the game with her now. And so I do think that her ability to be mindful of that and utilize it if she needed to, but at the same time, no, when like, nope, this is not the correct decision for me in this time, because that's not what I'm basing my game on. I think was really, it was the same type of balance that we saw with her, you know, the strategic in the middle gameplay.

It was very similar here as well. Yeah. Now, one thing that someone may question was what appeared to be emotion that was evolved in bringing Joe to the end because that was a very, well, emotional scene when she told, But I have no doubt. She knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn't bringing him along because of how much she liked him. She wanted Rizzo out.

She knew Jonathan could probably make a fire quickly. And she almost certainly knew Joe would get zero votes. All of those were very good strategic reasons for making that decision. However, she may have played it off to Joe. Yes, I completely agree. Now, Jonathan also did a good job in this area. As far as I recall, he voted strategically. strategically according to what he thought was best, not by who his friends were.

And when he was blindsided by having Charlie voted out, he reacted as a survivor player should, calmly and talking about working together with Dee going forward, which allowed him to plot his revenge against D and Cabela without anyone seeing it coming. Yes. Agreed. Same thing. And Joe did not so well in this area. It was incredibly. ironic to see him complaining about Tiffany getting upset after the Surrey vote because he was quite possibly the most emotional person in the game. He moaned and groaned so much. He complained that he couldn't enjoy Survivor because of Devons. He whined that what Rick did was extremely poor taste and inappropriate and disgusting, all of those direct quotes. It got so bad that

sorry told us she was tired of babysitting him. And Tiffany said, talking him out of his emotional turmoil is just part of the package. Heck, Joe even later admitted it as he told Mike Bloom, I regret ever saying a bad word about Rick Devons in the game because it was an emotional reaction. Now, he then claimed the reason why I wanted Rick out is he's one of the best to play the game. It wasn't personal. Rick, Rick flipped the coin for $2 million. Rick hit a fake either. Idle. There's no better than that in the game. And that's out of respect. It wasn't like, I want you out because I hate you.

Yeah, he said that. But really, because it sure didn't look that way with all those comments about Rick that I just mentioned. Calling him, quote, disgusting, that has nothing to do with his gameplay. I'm sorry. Yeah, and I think that this is, I don't want to say that there's like maybe a bit of jealousy that could be happening here because you can't help but notice Rick Devons, right? And you can't help but want to celebrate Rick Devin's in those moments. Like everyone was celebrating Rick Devin's when the $2 million flip happened, except Joe.

Joe was not celebrating Rick Devons. And so I'm curious. That one picture is great. I wish I had it to pop up here. It's phenomenal. Everybody jumping up and Joe sitting there like this grumpy. Yes. It's just phenomenal.

And so I do feel like there's something that's just like when you watch. an individual who is having fun and doing well and getting noticed. If you're not one of those people, they can tend to rub you the wrong way, I guess. And it just seemed like everything that was centered around Devons just made Joe that much more angry for reasons that I don't understand. Just because like if someone just won you potentially another million dollars, I think I'd be pretty happy. Yeah.

That's just me. That's just me. And there was even more of it than we saw. We heard in an interview that when someone told him about their advantage, but hadn't said anything sooner, he acted like a child and sulked and wouldn't look at them. Joe said at the beginning of episode 11, look, I know it's a game.

But did he? Did he really? Because I didn't see any signs of that in his emotional behavior. Plus, if it had been up to Joe, he'd have voted emotionally multiple times, but others stopped him. That was kind of the thing they had to sit down,

and talk to him about giving him that heads up we talked about so that they could get him to understand why he had to vote with them. It was so bad he wouldn't even write coach's name down when voting for him and Chrissy. Production had to pull him back and force him to do it. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. That is correct. So, well, I don't have much to say about Rizzo here other than he did a great job.

He's a gamer, through and through. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, he knows he's there to take you out and you're there to take him out. A perfect example was when Devin's mentioned at the Mr. Bees tribal council that he tried to shift the target to Rizzo. And Rizzo was like, hey, no problem. I appreciate it. Right. Thanks.

Thanks for letting me know where your head is at. Yeah. And I do think that, you know, the fact that we even saw him like switch up his game, like we already said, to realize that these are the people I need to sit next to if I want a chance to win. I mean, he's constantly just making his decisions based on, I would. want to win as opposed to, well, I like this person better. So I want to stay with this person until the end. Yeah, that's not the decision he was doing. Yeah.

Tiffany probably had the most improvement from her last season in this area. In the pregame, she told Mike Bloom, one thing that I am trying to work on is giving away how I feel with my facial expressions because I feel I don't have a very good poker face. And we're going to work on that this time. A lot of times when people get frazzled, they make mistakes. And I did that. I got frazzled. And instead of sitting down and focusing on what my next steps would be, I just let my

emotions guide me. And then I ended up just cussing cue out. And then I got mad and I was running around like a crazy person. So we're not going to do that this time. And she followed it up by playing exactly the way she said she was one of those people who did make the change that she needed to. She said in her episode nine video that one thing she changed this time was picking her battles better and knowing what to say and what not to say. Time after time, we saw it in action,

especially in some examples in episode seven and eight when Jonathan blindsided Camilla and then took out D while Tiffany herself also caught four votes. She told us in confessional how mad she was, but knew she could not let that show publicly because it would be a reason to target her. Yeah, and she really did this, I think, quite a few times where they were, you know, kind of expecting her to be like frustrated or angry or hurt about a vote that had happened. And then she wasn't. But we did see the confessionals where she was like expressing her anger and and annoyance with what was happening. But I think she really found a great response.

The only time we really were upset recently was after they came back from tribal council. And she was upset because of how the vote had had gone. Aubrey had wanted to vote her out. And there was that moment between she and Aubrey where she was like, well, you, you were targeting me. So I wrote your name down. Like you're really going to give me crap for doing it because you were going to do the same thing.

And that's really the only. But again, that seems to be understandable because like literally targeting each other. So, okay, that's fine. And, you know, we talked about it earlier that. It didn't matter. Everyone was coming for her. She knew it. She knew.

She was the target. And yeah, that was, you know, So, okay, by that point, fine, let it all out. Right, right. Now, of course, I do need to bring up one thing once again that the main emotional flaw Tiffany had was that she was willing to go to the end with Ceri. Yes. But that didn't end up coming into play anyway.

Yeah, but agreed. Yeah. Now, the fifth rule reminds players they need to pretend to be nice and play the social game. And Aubrey said that public opinion was that she didn't win co-wrote. wrong because she had a bad social game. And that has worn on her for a decade. I wish whoever was involved in that public opinion would have listened to the Why Michelle One podcast because while I did note at the time, she didn't have as powerful

a social game as Michelle's, it was still pretty damn good. Still, with that in her mind, she altered the way she played this time, finding a safe distance to have relationships with people. And by that, I mean, she told Mike Bloom, if you get too close to. close to people and you get to the end, they're too hurt to vote for you. So for that reason, she told Rob, she got close, but not too close to people, always watching and moving in the game. But she had to build relationships multiple times, most importantly at the merge when she had very little social capital. And she did. Like with her

strategic game, she stayed in the middle. She was friendly with people and nobody wanted her out because they didn't like her, but also nobody was pissed at her for voting them out. Yeah, and this again, it's like the term that we keep talking about with Aubrey is like finding that balance. And I think it's such a great thing for her to recognize that sometimes a final vote can come down to who did you hurt. And that and Khoran was, that was kind of a bitter jury. We, we saw some, some very unhappy people with, with people. people who are in the final three. And so I do think that she certainly learned from that and

recognize that those decisions can be emotional by a jury member. And so you need to be cognizant of that when you are playing the game with them and find that balance where they will respect you in the end for the decision that you made as opposed to being hurt by the decision that you made. Yeah. All right. I think we can move on to Jonathan. And one thing I haven't really talked about much is that, I mean, you brought it up, actually. He has said in different interviews about how confused he was. He told Mike Bloom, I truly believed I played the best game. He wondered to Dalton Ross, I don't know what I could have done different.

I keep trying. I keep going back to what did I learn from this. And he asked Rob what he could have done better. Rob gave him an answer, one that was very similar to one that I was thinking, winning over the hearts and minds of the jurors. Yes. How could you make the people on the jury feel? like you're doing it for them, not for yourself.

And give them goodwill for you. Be more like Survivor 42, Jonathan, making people feel comfortable and helping them rather than being the big guy they're up against. Yeah. Jonathan replied, well, that's why he wears baggy clothing. He doesn't think of himself as the big guy, as if baggy pants are going to hide the fact that he literally towers over everyone. And no shirt.

Right. And we saw him doing things with. no shirt, like using his pecks to make the Phoenix immunity necklace bounce around. Is that showing, you know, oh, I don't have muscles, but look what I can do. At least the, I think most of the peck dancing happened in confessionals maybe, but he might have no, he did do it to everyone. He did. Yes.

I think one of the first times he did it to everyone, yes. Yeah. So, yeah, there's that. Yeah. And another thing I would suggest is some humility because walking around preening about how great a job you did and voting someone out is not a good look, especially when others feel they deserved at least some of the credit, if not most of the credit. And then there's the way he put. Yes, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, but then that person can use that to their advantage, right?

Because, you know, let him, let him do the showbook. Yeah. That's what he needs to change, you know? Yes, for sure. He saw a whole scene of like Devin's. I don't know whether Devin's was saying it or whether Devin's was egging him on where he said,

great job there. Jonathan's walking around, putting his robe on, you know, like, oh, yes, I did do such a great job type of thing. Right, right.

I think Devin's was egging him on. Yeah. I hope he was. You know, plus the way he put some of the jurors out of the game, like instigating a fight with D and then voting her out.

Not good, especially when you then tell her that in Final Tribal Council, jumping around and screaming when you win a challenge, and another player knows that means you're going home is not a good look. And I totally get that you want to celebrate. But there's a celebration. And then there's what Jonathan did. I mean, when he screamed, it could be heard two islands over on Fiji. You know, he's pounding things and jumping around.

and it was over the top. And it's funny because when Tiffany won against everyone at the previous immunity challenge, and people were upset with her, she went around and apologized because she thought they were upset because she had celebrated. Yeah.

It wasn't that. It was because she had won. But I'm sure it never occurred to Jonathan to apologize for his celebrations. And these are just a few of the things he could work on. Is it enough? I don't know because I think he has to truly understand why. And that's, it's something he has to put in place every day.

Well, and here's, here's the interesting part about Jonathan in that, excuse me, you did have people who felt a connection with him and really felt emotionally tied to him so much so they were, they were fighting for him during. that final tribal. Fighting for him, bonding over him, however you want to call it, yes. However you want to call it. But I do think,

you know, Chrissy did mention this. And I think it's something that's worth noting. When you have someone who is willing to like go to bat for you and take the fall for you, like that does speak volumes

as to the connection you've made with that person. But I don't think Jonathan was able to put that into play with enough people where it was like, oh, I have my core group and I know that we've got each other's back, but you have to kind of spread the wealth. You need to make those connections with people outside of that alliance. You need to make people feel as if they matter to you just as much as those other people, because then you're making the other people feel isolated and you're making the other people feel like they're not part of the cool kids group, right? Like you're not sitting

with us at this table and you have to go sit over there as opposed to we can all sit together and then the four of us can go over here later and we can we can have a little game talk and and get closer but you're not making others feel like they're not as significant and important to you in both a games like space but also just an emotional space and that is a hard thing to do but he's clearly capable of doing it because he did do it with his core group of people yeah And I have to push back on what Chrissy said. I was planning on doing it in Appendix B, but since you brought it up,

okay, can we credit him with that for her, you know, for someone falling on the sword for them? I guess, but I more blame the person who fell on their stored because that's stupid. You don't fall on your sword

for somebody else in Survivor. I'm sorry. And I'm not saying that that was the best reaction for that person, right? Like they shouldn't have fallen on the sword. They should have been like, because we were all wondering, like, why is Jonathan getting away unscathed here? Because it's a game for a million dollars.

You need to speak up. And that was a moment that should have been reflective of what actually happened because everybody was throwing everything up at the wall at that point, right? So it's like, okay, why are you not? And so I'm not saying that that was a good game move for that person. However, it does show that he had created or formed a type of relationship that that person thought was so significant that they were willing to like ruin their own game for it. That's pretty incredible.

But at the same time, you got to spread the wealth. And so that's something about Jonathan. You know that Jonathan needed to create bonds and relationships with more than just that contingent that he had surrounded himself with. Yes, exactly. And then there were some other aspects of the social game he couldn't improve. Like handling, talking about other people. he said at one point that Christian, quote, was making me sick because Christian was playing the game.

He acted like he and those he was working with could play the game, but he got upset when other people did. Oh, yeah, I'm listening to you. I didn't know if there was more. And again, this goes back to like the Joe comment saying someone's disgusting. You know, there's like there's ways to react to people who you're playing this game with. And those words can negatively affect your game. And also if you are, if you're saying those things, is that how you're making that person feel when you're interacting with that person?

And I have a sneaking suspicion. The answer is yes. Yeah. And then Jonathan also said, I got exactly the people out who I wanted to. I made more connections in this game tenfold than in season 42. I played a social strategic game that no one saw coming. And I have to wonder, but did you? At least for the social part, that is, and the connections, because those people didn't seem as connected to him as he thought.

Jonathan couldn't understand why D didn't vote for him, even though they spent a lot of time in the same tribe. But just being on the same tribe isn't automatically going to get you her vote, especially when you purposely started a fight with her, like I mentioned. He also told Mike Bloom, he was, quote, disappointed in Devin. because he, quote, played a lot with him. No, you didn't. You didn't play with Devons. You played against Devons. And he even continued to Mike.

Next to. Yeah, yeah. He said, Mike, we had a rivalry. And I thought he respected that more. So I was disappointed. And then he mentioned him following Devin's around to look for the idol and added, we played closely, but just not together, I'd get. So I expected more.

So maybe that's on me. I shouldn't expect more. It's like, yeah, that is on you. I don't know why on earth. He would expect Devons to vote for him for those reasons. I really don't. Another good example is when he talked in Final Tribal Council about how he used heart-to-heart personal stuff

to blindside people after not doing that on 42. And I mentioned earlier, that could be good from a strategic standpoint, depending on how you do it. but not when you're trying to win people over socially. And this is why I truly question what he believes connections are. Well, yeah, and this goes back to what Aubrey was talking about, where if you hurt people's feelings when they're then sitting on the jury,

are they going to give you their vote? And so I think that this is something he's not recognizing either. Like Dee, when you were talking about him playing with her. Yeah, you literally started a fight with her. in front of other people, no less. It wasn't like you and she just had a moment where you disagreed. It was very public. It was very much on display.

And so I do think that there is a disconnect there with him understanding. If someone feels hurt by you because of something that happened in the game, and then there you are sitting in the final three. And they're like, well, he played a really good game. But so did Aubrey. And Aubrey also didn't hurt my feelings. And Aubrey didn't make me feel a particular way that was uncomfortable. comfortable. So I'm picking

Aubrey over him at that point because of the emotional response that they have to the social game that he was playing. Yeah, and I think the key to what you said there is so did Aubrey. If Jonathan had played this awesome strategic game

and Aubrey had been terrible, okay, then maybe people would have voted, put aside the social aspects and voted maybe. Some would have. Some wouldn't. We've seen people go both directions. But when you have, first of all, you're already playing a second level rather than a top level strategic game.

And you have done all of this socially. You're not going to win people over that way. Yeah. And besides blaming D and Devons for not voting for him, he also blamed Ceri for rallying the votes for Aubrey instead of him. But he needs to look at the only people who voted for him. his Zoom alliance, which included a couple of them falling over themselves to compliment him ridiculously. Like, you know, like you already mentioned, you know, Chrissy giving him credit for, you know, for that. And okay, I'll give him a little credit when I really still think it was

her stupidity. But, you know, the three people who voted for him, they were his connections that he talked about. And it appears those were made before the game even began. He gained no other votes at the end. You can't blame Surrey for that. Yeah. And I do think that this is an interesting, and maybe we'll talk about this later,

and we probably will, as far as the jury components are concerned, so do you want me to just hold off and talk about it again? I don't remember what will, you know, who knows? So if it's related to social, go for it. I do think that it's that it's interesting that he has this idea that people who are on the jury shouldn't be allowed to talk to each other during that that timeframe. Because I've had some commentary about how I think that they should do things differently for the jury, which is like allow them to see like live feeds of what's going on in the island, of the challenges. They have the capabilities.

There's cameras everywhere, right? So that I think would be great for a jury. But to expect that jurors are not going to communicate and talk about what their experiences were with each other and not try to actually fight for people, I think is another aspect of Survivor that players are not thinking about. That happens. And that's what we actually do as a society because that's what you do with a trial jury, right? Like you hear all of the proof and all of the evidence and then you sit. in the room and you talk about it and you work through it together. I feel like that's something that makes sense, but there are additional things that could be done, but that would be inclusive

of letting them talk to each other. Yes. Yes. And one of the things that we will talk about later is something he said to Tiffany that was not aired that Tiffany revealed on the red carpet that was very bad for him to say just before voting her out. We'll get to that a little bit. Now, moving to Joe, I realized I had literally no notes for him for this role. Like, was he liked? Sure. Did he pretend to be nice? No, he either was nice to you if your name wasn't Rick Devons or he wasn't.

And I do guess from what we've heard, he at least hid his behavior from Rick himself. So I guess he was nice to Rick's face, just not at all behind his back. So yay for him there, I suppose. But at no point do I recall Joe playing a social game because that would require. the playing the game part. Yeah, and I think it's interesting that the commentary was made by Surrey about the like the Joeation and having to watch Joe. I think that really goes to his inability to really understand that he has to control

that part of his own game because other people had to control it for him. And so he didn't recognize that I need to be going to people and I need to be building those relationships and talking to people as opposed to people. feeling like they have to do that for me. Like I, whose turn is it to watch Joe today? Yeah. Which does sound insulting to Joe.

Oh, at the same time. Yeah. You know, Joe's got to step up and be like, no, I'm going to control my own relationships and what people think of me

as opposed to letting them control it for me. Yeah. All right. Quickly going to Rizzo, he has certainly proven himself to be the kind of guy who can win people over. We mentioned that earlier, like, you know, people such as Coach and Colby came into the game wanting him gone right away,

but he won them over and, you know, others as well. However, there was one area that he didn't do so well. As he told Dalton Ross, I think my biggest flaw is not realizing how much work ethic meant to the old schoolers because back in the day, they had so many down days where they weren't doing challenges. They just built rapport on picking up firewood. Bingo. we heard several members of the Zoom Alliance talk about that very thing.

For example, Chrissy told Mike Bloom, Rizzo did literally nothing around camp. He didn't care. He was like, that's not part of the game. So I'm not going to bother doing it. And yeah, that was an accurate representation of his thought process. He also told Dalton, on 49, I slept in a boat. I couldn't care less what the shelter looked like. I'm there to gain relationships.

So I didn't really care about that. I was being lazy intentionally. It's like, why am I going to waste my energy? Because I'm at a disadvantage and all these people have preexisting relationships. Am I going to focus on building a shelter in the first day? Or am I going to hit the ground running trying to build these relationships? So that's what I was trying to do. And ultimately, it pays dividends because I make it all the way to the end.

But at the same time, it rubs a lot of the jurors the wrong way because they felt that this young kid, he should be working hard and he's not working hard, screw this guy. So I think if I ever go back and I play with people from the old school mentality, that's something I will be mindful of. But if I play with a crop of new era, I'm not going to do Jack Didley squat. And you know what?

I got to say, Rizzo, this is not the approach you should take because I love the blunt honesty there. Oh, I love the blunt honesty, but there's a middle ground here because you can do the things that you want to do as Rizzo and build those relationships, but you can do that while looking for firewood. You can do that while preparing a shelter. Like those are moments that are bonding moments between people. And you have, those are opportunities to be talking and forming alliances because you are like, oh my God, we're the only two here working on the shelter and I really seem to be connected with you. Let's work together.

Like so there is something to be said about utilizing those spaces to formulate bonds that then turn into an alliance. So don't do dittily squat. Do it with the people that you are interested in connecting with and then see if that connection is created because otherwise you could just be annoying people in the way that it came across as annoying because you think that it's not significant for your game

when an actuality it can be and you can see the ramifications from it. So I think there's a balance here. There's a middle ground for sure. I think based on what he said, he would agree with that going forward. you do have to modify your social behavior according to those you're playing with. Sure. But on the other hand, like he said, he made other relationships that got him a lot further in the game

than most people in the alliance who was complaining about that. Right. Sure. Oh, and I don't disagree with his sentiments there, but I do think that, you know, moving forward players who are newbies, you know, coming into this, don't discount doing things around camp because, or, you know, collecting wood because those are moments that you can create bonds with people. Not to mention when you're collecting firewood, you can actually be looking for idols. Oh, my God.

There's so many things. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to go look for coconuts. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you're doing.

Tiffany, on the other hand, had no problems at all with her social game. We already talked some about how she pretended to be nice or at least held in her anger a few times. But while we'll talk about her threat level and the next rule, there is a reason it was as high as it was. And her relationships were a big part of it. Because unlike Jonathan's, these were actual connections. She told Dalton Ross, I was having conversations with everybody. I was connected to everybody on the beach, even Jonathan. And that was confusing to a lot of people too.

And while Jonathan did backstab me and blindsided me with the Camilla vote, me and Jonathan had a lot of friction, but I never closed that door. Me and Jonathan were constantly having conversations. That's why I was able to work with him on the Ozzy vote. I was being a social butterfly. That's why at the end, Jonathan called me the sweetheart of the season. Everybody loved me. Yeah, and I think that this is what is such a great idea for someone who's playing this game

to recognize that you can do all of those things. You can still have relationships with people that you've not necessarily worked against or that you've worked against previously because those votes require more than one person. This is what we were talking about before. You can't do it alone. You need people to work with you. And if you can still maintain a relationship with someone, even if you're not necessarily their number one or their number two, it's going to benefit you moving forward again

because you need those numbers to make the votes happen. And yes, she definitely was able to form relationships with everybody and utilize those people for potential votes that are going to benefit her and have those honest conversations with them at the same time. Every time you saw her sitting down and talking to Jonathan or you saw her talking to Ceree, there was an aspect to her game where she wasn't keeping secrets from them.

She was being very, very candid. And like, this is what I think, and this is why it's beneficial for you and this is why we should do this thing. And I think, again, she, I would compare her to Aubrey in this regard where that balance, she found that balance between forming a relationship, but using it strategically in order to further her own game. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we'll get to some more quotes and points about how much people like Tiffany and the next rule, but suffice it to say her social game was definitely one of the best parts of her play on Survivor. Yeah. So we can move to that next rule now, but we'll still start with Aubrey. It warns against being too much of a threat. Aubrey said, from day one, I've tried to lower my target.

And I have had a resurgence at the end of this game. That was actually very intentional. This time, I have worked as hard as I can to put threats ahead of me and make sure that I peaked in this game at just the right moment. And I think that I've done that. This is such a key element of survivor, especially these days. But even going back in time, we talked about it with Sam last week. As you get closer to the end, people want to take out the players they don't think they can beat.

The tallest poppy gets cut down, the biggest lion. It happens almost every season. And yet somehow, some viewers are still surprised by this. They're like, how did these people get to the end? And not these strong ones. Every season it happens, people. Yes, every season. It's one reason that even going back to the pre-season,

season. I was debating between picking Aubrey and Tiffany for my pregame winner pick. And it came down to like a last second decision just before we recorded that podcast because I figured those two would not be seen as big threats. Right. And I of course didn't even know that Aubrey was going to go out of her way to ensure that was the case. Yeah. I mean, this is this is a very impressive component of her game knowing that you got to keep people stacked in front of you. So that way people don't look at you until all of a sudden you're like, oh, wait, we're down to five now. Now, who do we look at?

You know, where do we go from here? So, yes, a very, very impressive way in which she approached the game in this regard to manage her own threat level. And also, she was always kind of on the fringes of like, well, we need to get Aubrey out, right? There was, there was always that kind of discussion about Aubrey. You need to get Aubrey out, but. Right. There was always a shift that could be made.

And you always saw that shift happening where there was another option. There was something else. And so it was like she was always kind of present in that we need to take her out. However, we can move over here for now and we'll do that later. Yeah. And that's something we've talked about before, which is as you're going through the game, if there is someone who is talked about as a threat and they make it to the end, it's really hard to argue against them winning.

Right. If you're saying Aubrey is someone we need to take out before final tribal council, even if you don't make a big effort to take them out at that moment, and then Aubrey makes it to final tribal council, how can you say, oh, yeah, I didn't really mean that. Right. Yeah. You know, last week we talked about how Devons and Surrey were huge threats who had to be taken out. And I mentioned at the time that while they were already near the top of the chart,

Aubrey hadn't been seen as that type of threat, but was steadily rising towards the end of the game. Ozzie pointed out in Final Tribal Council that same thing you said. Her name was constantly being thrown around, but in a Survivor Magic trick, she was able to shift the target time and time and time again. And part of that was something that she did that I mentioned earlier. Aubrey described it.

You have to figure out when to put your foot on the gas and when to take your foot off the pedal. And I think some of this again goes back to looking at how Michelle played the game. Because back again, 10 years ago when I talked about why Michelle won, I said, for a large part of the game, many of the players thought Michelle was just floating along, not doing much. While that isn't necessarily thought of as a good strategy, it can certainly work out when done right as we've seen throughout the years.

Several of the jurors talked about how Michelle was thought of as almost a non-player early in the game. but by being in that position, whether on purpose or by accident, she made herself into a non-threat. And that image stuck for a long time, which allowed her to progress in the game. I think that same thing was true of Aubrey early in the game. The difference was she intentionally started rising later in the game, as we just discussed.

And, you know, once you get to final five, Aubrey realized that they were talking about her as a threat. and we saw Jonathan and Rizzo discussed voting her out if Tiffany won immunity because of course both Rizzo and Jonathan would want to go against Joe at the end just like everyone else did

and each also probably well I think definitely thought that going against the other one was their best bet and they were right Jonathan said Aubrey is the underdog story of the century she brought she fought with everybody going back and forth to make it to the final three

These are huge plot points to talk about at the end of the game. Now, he said that, and it's weird how he did, but then acted like those weren't deserving reasons after he lost. Kind of strange there. Revisionous history, right? Yeah, a little bit. There was, of course, another way Aubrey was a threat, and it is related to her underdog story, but it pertains to her whole 10-year story.

and you brought this up a little bit earlier. I think they worried about that a bit at the end as well. And certainly Jonathan complained about it in interviews afterwards. And look, I know Rizzo did mention that aspect of things. To my knowledge, nobody else has. It's not to say it didn't play on their minds. I have no way of knowing that. I am not a mind.

Right. Right. But we have already gone through a heck of a lot of reasons that she deserved to win this season. even if someone believed Aubrey might get the win because of her whole story, well, then that makes her a threat. Why didn't you get her out earlier then? Well, and I think that this is an interesting nugget for the fact that like no one wanted Surrey to get to the end because Surrey, well, she played a phenomenal game in 50.

They were thinking about all of the phenomenal games that she's played previously and and the legacy that she has. And so everyone was like, well, if Cary gets to the end, she's going to win, well, that wouldn't have just been based upon Ceri's 50 game. It would have been based upon what everyone knows of Ceri. And so I do think that discounting someone's history when it comes to the game itself can't be done. You can't not think about it. And I do think that it does put other players at a bit of a disadvantage because,

I mean, Jonathan said, I have won previous season. don't have as many as she does. Rizzo had a season nobody saw. And so this is what makes seasons like this a little more interesting because people's history matters and what people know about them matter. And it can work for them. It can work against them because you've seen their gameplay. You see how they've played the game previously.

You see what they have done to shift and move and change. You can look at Tony. Tony who played a game that people were shocked. he ended up winning the first time. The second time went out very quickly because he kind of, it was a quick like, I'm going to throw everything out immediately and get voted out quick because I didn't learn how I need to play this game.

He shifted for the third time and ended up winning. And so all of those things become known of previous players. And do they have an effect on the vote at the end? They might, but it might have a negative effect at the end as well. So you just don't know which way. people are going to view your history in the game, your story as part of the survivor legacy that you've created. So yeah, I mean, it's, it is an interesting component, but whether or not it really had that much of an effect, like you said, who knows? Right. And if you, Jonathan, thought that it was

going to have that much of an effect, get rid of it. Get rid of earlier. Make sure you do. Yeah. Now, Jonathan, moving to him, of course, looked like more of a threat. physically. And even though I mentioned earlier that he said he was trying to hide it. But the other players didn't really care. Tiffany said in her episode nine video that nobody was targeting Joe or Jonathan at that point because while they were physical threats, they were not seen as threats to win at the end. Quote, being a physical player is not all that scary. And that's a major part of the reason those two made it so far. Even though they might look threatening, people just were not worried about Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, even the like immunity runs, people are not.

It doesn't seem to be a focus like it used to be. It's certainly not something that seems to be as, as much of a concern now, especially now that you have fired too. I'm sorry. That's kind of thrown a wrench in the works as well. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, we saw why, you know, I mean, and then especially with Joe. He was. of course, never a threat to win. I did think Jonathan was more of a threat than Rizzo because, you know, he had been walking around, taking all the credit for getting Ozzy out, talking about what a great job he did. And, you know, while that did not create a lot of love for him at times, it was in a game sense. If people didn't strike back at it, it could be seen as a positive for him.

But Aubrey had more facts on the ground. she clearly knew she could take that Ozzy credit as well as talking about her other moods. And then Aubrey also reconsidered her evaluation of Rizzo as a threat. Just a couple episodes ago, she wanted to take him to final three. But then as it got closer, I think she looked at the situation again and said Rizzo has become an underdog sitting in the final four again after just playing. and he's good in tribal counsel, and his game is most similar to mine, and I just want my story in tribal counsel.

Also, she told Dalton Russ, he's an amazing speaker, he's an amazing story. I always looked at Rizzo. I'm like, there's something you're not telling us about this guy. He has more going on. It turns out when I watched what he did, he's a very adept player. I just did not want him

and that underdog energy next to me. The first time I played, I had someone who emerged at the right moment next to me and it didn't work out for me. And I thought my game was most similar to Rizzo. I was afraid if he was with me, some of the votes would overlap. My worst nightmare was like a Jonathan and Rizzo situation. I thought then Joe would vote for Jonathan and Rizzo could maybe get someone like D and I didn't want to take my chances.

Yeah. And I think this is an interesting thought process as well because you do, we've heard, this idea before, like either you need to take three people to the end that are all so similar, that then people are going to need to decide what the differences are between those three, or you need to bring two people with you that are completely different than your game. Because if you only bring one person who is so similar to you, well, then you're dealing with the situation of which one of these two do they pick. And if you're too close, maybe they just pick the third. So it is a very interesting numbers situation and math really becomes significant here.

So the fact that she was recognizing that he could take votes away from her, which could then add votes on to Jonathan. Yeah. Let's go back to a final two. Okay. Let's just do that. So much better. Now, I still suspect that Aubrey would have won in a situation with Jonathan and Rizzo, but it would have been closer. certainly at least Jonathan or Joe, whoever, you know, was there, would have gotten the vote of whichever of them was in the jury, plus the Zoom Alliance. And like Aubrey said, some people could have split the votes on Rizzo. I don't think there was enough. But if you don't have to take that chance, don't take that chance. Get rid of that person.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then there was Tiffany, who was unanimously agreed to be the biggest threat in the final five. Jonathan said, if I sit with Tiffany, I'll lose because she has a lot of friends on the other side. Rizzo told Tiffany she is the biggest threat to him because she has an underdog story and told us the jury is eating her game up. Joe said, Aubrey has a good story, but Tiffany is a fierce competitor who could win her way into the final three. And Aubrey told Dalton Ross, I really think Tiffany could have pulled out the win. Tiffany is outplay, outwit, outplay and outlast.

she's all three of them. She is such a magnetic personality. She's a special person and I really thought that she could, she would have the momentum going into the end. I think she could have beaten me for sure. And you want to see, Surrey really fighting for someone to win? There it is right there.

Right. Right. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And so for the guys, the question was at that point, because they had let it get to that point, which of them was the bigger threat to take out first,

Aubrey or Tiffin? They obviously decided Tiffany. I do still think, based on the information they had, they made the right decision. Aubrey had been working with the guys. And more importantly, she hadn't won a challenge in years, literally. Right, right. Yeah. They had no way to know she had been practicing some motion.

The odds were pretty good that whatever came up, one of them could beat her. That's why the topic of challenges kept coming up. because they were comparing Tiffany and Aubrey. And one is clearly going to have a higher chance in general of winning immunity. But even though that dominated a lot of the discussions and arguments we saw, it wasn't the main reason that Tiffany was a threat. It goes back to the quotes I said a moment ago. They knew they could not beat her at the end.

At tribal council, she wanted it to make sense, that she was more of a threat than Joe. but the final vote had the answer. Joe was never getting any votes. But she would have gotten the majority. That is why she was the bigger threat. Like Jeff said to Tiffany on the live show, I think we all know who you are,

and that's why they got rid of you. And Aubrey knew it as well, telling Mike Bloom, that's why it was really difficult for me to make a pitch. I do know I have friends on the jury. And not only do I have a jury full of people that like me, I have my closest ally in the game, who was also one of the most influential players to ever play this game, writing for me on the jury. I think I said Aubrey told Mike Bloom.

This must have been Tiffany, I'm quoting here. She said, nobody wanted to sit next to me in the final three with Ceres sitting there on the jury. And they were like, absolutely not. She has to go. Yeah. Yeah, because there would have been a whole lot of Jonathan complaints about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, for sure. This is where I want to mention one thing that I hadn't before that we didn't see. One reason Tiffany was focusing on the challenges and Joe in particular in that tribal council. It was something that Jonathan apparently said to her. When Tiffany was interviewed immediately after the finale by Ashley Smith of Tyson's podcast,

she said that she asked Jonathan what made her more of a threat than Joe. And Jonathan said something to the effect. You can find the actual quote out there. But something to the effect, it's because, because she's a woman and that's different because the challenge record for women is lower than for men. Wait, time out. This is Jonathan saying this.

Yeah, Jonathan said this to Tiffany. No, to Tiffany. Oh, and then because he was not interviewed. I got you. He was not interviewed on the red carpet. I see. I have understanding it now. Yes.

So Tiffany relayed that because that obviously wasn't in the show. And that's one reason we saw Tiffany was so pissed off at her last tribal. council and specifically emphasizing the why me and not Joe thing. And it's, I think she was trying to get Jonathan to say the same thing in tribal council in front of the jury, you know, but at least, you know, didn't say it then, but I'm sure Tiffany related to the jury. And, you know, that's just not smart to say. I don't care if the record is lower for women or not. You don't say, well, it's different for women than for men. Yeah. No. No. Don't do that.

Period. Don't do that. Yeah. So he wondered, you know, gee, why didn't the jury like me? I don't know. That might have had something to do with it. Mm-hmm. For sure. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, how could Tiffany have addressed being seen as this big threat other than, you know, not being a woman? Well, she told Dalton Ross, I do not believe I could have or would have done anything differently this season other than maybe get that last puzzle piece in a little bit quicker. All right. I would say that's not quite true. She could have not won as many challenges earlier.

And I know that's a risk and not something that someone wants to do. But she won three challenges. She came within half a puzzle piece of winning another. She possibly would have won another if she had lifted her foot at the time. the right time. If she plays again, she's going to need to find a way to address this because she clearly will not have the grace of being seen as not a big threat early. She needs to do something like the Tyson strategy of, oh, I hurt my shoulder, I can't win challenges not. Yeah, but it is interesting because it's not, it's not even just the challenge wins. And this is

what you were, I think, really speaking to earlier when there can be multiple people who are winning challenges like Joe, but you can be winning challenges and have a great social game and have a strategic game. And so it's like all of these components are coming together. And so, yes, the challenges become another part of the discussion that need be had around Tiffany because she also brings all of these other things to her game that make her a huge threat to win. And so yeah, could she have done something different? It's not just the challenges. It's everything else she's doing too.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, I, yeah, I focused on the challenges there because that's what she was talking about. Right, right. But yes, you know, I was going to say if, but I think when she plays again, she does need to address all of this somehow just to reduce her threat level or she will find herself in a similar position again. Yeah, for sure.

All right. Well, rule seven covers idols and advantages. game mechanics. Aubrey, of course, had the Billy Elish boomerang idol given to her by Christian, but everyone thought it was Devin's. What are your thoughts on how she handled that? Well, I do like that she decided she needed to just get rid of it, even if it wasn't necessarily, she wasn't the target of that vote, because everyone was discussing this idol. And I think when people are looking for a reason to vote someone out, if you have a reason, then they can latch on to it. Now, someone might say, well, Rizzo had one and nobody cared.

Well, Rizzo was in a different camp, right? Rizzo wasn't where Aubrey was. And so this is where the game becomes so individualized. Whereas Aubrey has an idol and it becomes a topic of discussion. Whereas Rizzo has an idol and it has a different connotation to it, a different, there's not as much of a concern. And so she's responding to what she's hearing, and this is what we've talked about with Aubrey a lot already,

is that her responses are based upon what's happening around her. And while having an idol is a great thing to have, it can also be a really big detriment. And it can be a problem for your game. And so, yeah, she burned it. She didn't need to, but she needed to at the same time. So I think she made the best decision based upon what it felt like having that idol because everybody knew and everyone was talking about it.

And so it was like one less thing to concern herself with. I'm just going to get rid of it. So then they can't focus on that. anymore. Yeah. Yeah, I said earlier in the season that, you know, I think she did the right thing to say, I'm playing the idol and then not doing it when Genevieve played her shot in the dark, except she didn't expect the reaction she got. And it was not great to tell Devin's and Christian that she forgot to play. Yeah, that. I forgot about that. That was not great gameplay right there, Robbery. Sorry. She quickly realized that. I just don't think she quite expected the backlash

from pretty much everyone. But she said, at final tribal council, that thing was like a stink on me. I knew I had to give up that idol if I was going to make true relationships with other people. And it worked without that idol or threat level sank back down again. Yeah. And then Jonathan didn't have any idols, but he did gain power from the power broker twist.

We didn't like it, but he made the most of it. And he said, I have an opportunity here to make moves that I haven't had. And kind of like, yeah, exactly. Gave him too much power. ironically and too much rice well yes and too much rice but he he he complained about still not having enough rice the very next day and then Aubrey took away the power from him from the from the Aussie vote yeah mm-hmm so funny yes now Joe also didn't have any idols or advantages but he felt like he should know about all of them and this is something we talked about a little

earlier here and earlier in the season. Because as Evans told Mike Bloom, I feel like as an ally, if I'm taking care of you, if I'm protecting you, and if I'm never coming after you, if I'm looking out for your interest. But I don't think that means

I need to tell you all my secrets. But I think Joe, it's like he really feel, he really wants you to tell him all the secrets and be filled in. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I agree with the Rick Devin's approach here.

Yes, absolutely. And then there was Rizzo's idol, which he held all season long again. Rizzo told Rob that while he did hold on to it, it was because he was so well situated that he knew where all the votes were going and never needed to use it, which is similar to something I said last week that there was no reason for him to play it then because he knew the two plans in play were going after Sari or Aubrey, not him. However, Tiffany, Jonathan, and Aubrey, and probably others all talked about how Rizzo wanted his big resume item to be that he held out.

to his idol all the way till the end of the game again. In the moment, it seemed like all someone would have to do is, if he made it to final three, point out that he didn't need to play it because nobody cared. But it now sounds like his argument would have been what I just mentioned. It wasn't that nobody cared. It's because I was so well situated and I always knew what was going on. Right.

And it would have been interesting to see how that played out in a final tribal council situation. Yeah, I do think that he would have put a really great spin on it, because he did that already and what we heard from season 49, I know he didn't get to do it in a final three but that was the construct that came out of that season. Again, people didn't get to see it.

They didn't know that that's what he had been doing, but I think it would have been an interesting spin to see him do that this time. Yes. And of course, Rizzo also had to deal with a particular game mechanic, Final Four firemaking. He was upset that fans voted for it.

Yeah, okay. so are we. But based on all the other decisions, he should have realized it just like we did. It's like, look, we've seen the way the fans are voting. And again, this question was so slanted. So look, I know Rizzo didn't have much time between seasons to practice firemaking. But he did have 25 days while he was there. He just chose not to. Yes. And I think it's interesting that, I mean, he had, what, nine days in between, maybe built some fires in that nine day time frame and eat a little more food. So you've got more meat on your bones when you go out there. But I do think that the fact that he never made fire in the entire time that he was playing the game was a very bad, very bad

decision for sure. Okay. I can't think of anything for Tiffany in this rule. Can you? Any idols or advantages or game mechanics? I don't think so because she never had anything. I mean, she knew where things were to a certain extent because she was with Surrey, who knew everything. So I think overall, now I don't think there's much here. Okay. The week could go to Appendix A, which discusses players keeping their end goals in mind when voting.

And we talk about voting out the week, then the strong, then the weak than the weak than the the strong. And at the end game, the idea is, of course, to take out the last remaining stronger players. So you face weaker opposition in final tribal council. And that is exactly what happened. We've spent a lot of time discussing how they took out Tiffany first because she was the biggest threat. And then they wanted to get rid of Aubrey as the next biggest threat to their games. But she foiled them by winning immunity.

So Aubrey instead took out Rizzo, whom she saw as the biggest threat to her. I would say everyone did the right thing in regard to this appendix. Yes, and this is why, you know, best laid plans. Sometimes when you wait too long to do certain things, you might not end up actually having the result that you want. And I think Rob actually referenced this with Aubrey where her win was very much like the Jenna win when, you know, everyone wanted her to get voted out. And all of a sudden, look who wins, you know, that final immunity challenge. And it was Jenna. And that's exactly what we saw happen here.

They were like, oh, damn it. She wasn't supposed to win, and she did. Yeah. All right. Well, Appendix B discusses the jury phase of the game and, of course, final tribal council. I want to make sure I'm dressed appropriately for this segment for video. He's not taking off his shirt. He's just putting on a new one.

Yeah. He's layering. Yes, I am layering here. So it says, you know, Rizzo said earlier in the season. And I said at the time, I will buy a shirt. With this quote, if anyone makes it. And Eric Reichenbach clearly thought the same thing, so I had to get one from him. It's still available on his website, daboo doodles.com, by the way.

But it says, of course, we slay dragons at tribal, not at camp. I don't know that you can fully see that. It's kind of a long shirt here. So the thing is, if you slay dragons at tribal, you definitely do so at final tribal. and boy, wearing two shirts is warm. We heard a lot from Aubrey in the lead-up to the finale about her thinking, which was one way it became clear in the edit that she was going to win. She kept having confessional saying things like,

tonight's vote for me is all about the end game. It's all about who I see in my final three. And then we'd hear her talk about Devons or Rizzo or whoever. Indeed, she told Rob that she learned from Sarah Lassie. Sina and Sophie to be very methodical about who she wanted to sit next to in the end. And it wasn't just who she was going to sit next to, but the order to get there. As she said in tribal council last week, I think a really important part of the game is figuring out the timing. It's almost like dismantling a bomb.

You're trying to find the people you can sit with at the end. But you've got to be really careful about how you peel back the layers or the whole thing will explode in your face. she got those layers perfect, taking out threat after threat in just the right order, using or working with Jonathan, Joe, and Rizzo to vote out people, all of them agreed would be problems at the end. That, of course, included Tiffany, as Aubrey kept mentioning her name to them,

telling Jonathan that Tiffany would win, adding to us that she needed to convince them and Joe that Tiffany was, quote, the golden girl underdog to the jury. So she knew when to slay those dragons. Yes, she knew when to slay those dragons at tribal. Once they were in final tribal council, Aubrey did an excellent job of making her points,

standing by what she did and explaining why and ensuring she got the credit she deserved. As Tiffany told Mike Bloom, Aubrey knocked it out of the park. She said, yeah, I didn't keep any secrets. I told all y'all business if I felt it was advantage to me. And I'm like, you know what? I respect it. Aubrey owned it. She stood on business, and I have no choice but to respect it with my vote. Aubrey also told Rob on the red carpet

that after all her studying, she knew she had to tell her story without invalidating the jurors' stories, which is important because, yeah, we often say it. Everyone is the hero of their own story. You can knock someone down and expect them to vote for you like Jonathan did with Dee. Right. Yeah. So, yeah. So Aubrey made sure to tell her story and show how she was the hero of it. And I mentioned in Rule 6, it's not clear to me how much of her overall story impacted everyone's votes. We discussed that. We know Rizzo talked about voting for Aubrey's overall story. Again, I don't think that's why most of the jury gave her the win. But even if it is, part of winning over the jury is no. knowing what they want to hear and how to get them there. Again, I still don't think that's the reason. I will need evidence to change my mind. Like if some of the other jurors come out and say, yeah, that's why we did it.

Fine. But I know some people, many of whom coincidentally didn't like Aubrey to begin with, have said and we'll continue to say, oh, she just got the votes because of that. But as I said earlier, we've gone through a lot of reasons. she was easily the best out of this final three with or without that story. And I think it's interesting when you look at the jury and the way that they were posing the questions and the things that they were really focusing on. They were focusing on the present, the now, what she was doing in the game.

And I think that those were the aspects that seemed to be respected the most. It wasn't like, oh, but, you know, no one was like, Aubrey, how did you, how did you change from the last time you played, the questions were like about 50 and what she was doing in 50. And the focus seemed to be on the game mechanics that were happening in 50 as opposed to necessarily the story. She did offer that as her story. And she did talk about how she learned from those previous times and what she then did in this game. So I, yeah, well, Rizzo did reference that that was part of why he voted for her. Sure. But again, you can't forget about those things. but it has to be a combination then, right?

Where it's like, okay, that was then, but now this is what I did here. And that's what I want credit for. And I think that's really what she highlighted in referencing the past, but then this is what I learned from it. And so this is what I put into action in order to get people to vote for her.

Yes. Now, as for Jonathan's story, we saw that he stuck to it too much at times. Like, he continued to insist he was the key driver of the Ozzy vote, even after Joe had verified that he wasn't. And he talked about the Camilla and D votes, noting that he instigated the D blowup,

which he probably should have realized would not exactly endear him to her. But I think to this day, he still doesn't realize that. Indeed, if Jonathan really wants to know what he did wrong, he should talk to Rizzo, who told Mike Bloom, obviously he kind of mismanaged the jury

in the earlier half of the merge. And I knew that. Also, So Sam Phelan pointed out on the finale recap podcast that Jonathan didn't understand what jurors wanted to hear at times. As I mentioned in Rule 3, when they asked for examples of adaptability, he talked about changing this time from last. But like you were just talking about, again, they wanted to know in this season. Yes, yes. And when Christian asked for narratives, he didn't really give one.

And then, again, he literally had to ask for an explanation of what Ozzy meant by Aubrey playing the middle. Yeah. And I do think that there is something to be said about owning your game, but then also like giving other people flowers when you're sitting there. Like talking about what like he could have taken the Aussie vote and really flip that around and gained Ozzy's like admiration by acknowledging I knew I couldn't beat you. That's what he told Ozzy when he voted him out. Right. Like when he was like saying goodbye, he's like I couldn't beat you. And. And so, like, why not make Ozzy feel really great in that moment and tell Ozzy, like, the reason I was focusing on you, Ozzy was because I couldn't sit next to you in the end. Like, you're an incredible player. Like, build that person up, make them feel great about who they are as a player because then Ozzy might sit there and go, oh, well, look at that. He's giving me credit for the game I played. That's what they want to hear as a juror. So I don't think that he spent any time recognizing the other players.

not that Aubrey necessarily was doing that, but Aubrey wasn't dismissing other people's games or making them feel less than. And Jonathan was highlighting those moments like the D component where he acknowledged what he had done with D. And so you can leave a bad taste in people's mouth when you do stuff like that instead of building them up and then expecting them to vote for you because you built them up.

Yeah. Now I will say, of course, tribal council highly edited, you know, down. Yes. So is it possible he said something like that and they just didn't show it because it ended up not mattering? Yeah, it's possible. But certainly nothing we saw or had any indication about that he did that. Right. And of course, we've talked about this before, but we know Jonathan is blaming other people for his loss.

I referenced it earlier, but he complained to Mike Bloom. Miss Surrey basically rallied the troops when she got back to Ponderosa. And that's part of the reason I think I lost. do you think she just has the influence in the game like she did where she's got four people asking her, hey, how do we vote? You don't think they're doing that at Ponderosa? And is it by happenstance that the people that surrounded her and asked her, well, how do we vote are the same people that didn't vote for me in the finale? First of all, this is really insulting to everyone who didn't vote for him. It makes it sound like they had not only no agency in their own game, but even in their own jury votes. Okay. Working with

Surrey in the game is a lot different than assuming everyone will mindlessly listen to her in Ponderosa. I mean, he ran every idea through her in the game. He wouldn't do the Ozzy thing without talking to her. All of that. But he's going to criticize other people for doing the same thing. So is he saying that if he made it to jury instead, he would have just voted however she said?

Is he, you know, is, is he giving away his own agent? see in the jury? You can't have it both ways. Yeah. And have it both ways. Yeah. And then Jonathan also complained about other things, some of which we've talked about earlier. He told Dalton Ross, Ozzie not voting for me, I would have thought that he would give me the credit because he's the challenge beast. I outsmarted Ozzy in a lot of ways. And I didn't really get credit where credit was due. Now, we talked previously about him saying similar things about Devin's and Dee. Like, he wanted to determine how they should vote and why it was for him.

One thing Jonathan talked about in his pregame interviews was that he learned from Boston Rob to see the game through the eyes of others. And I do think during the season, he did a better job of that. But he's clearly not doing so well when analyzing the juries. He thinks various people should have voted for him, but his reasons are not good. And they only see it through his own perspective, not their perspective. Yes. 100%. Yeah.

Now, overall, Jonathan told Dalton, Russ. I believe deep in my heart that I played the better game. I know I did. But because Aubrey's played five times, four times, that weighed on a lot of the jury votes. And is that fair? That's up to the fans and up to Survivor to decide. But if that's a jury, then I'm confused, you know. He did this a lot. He would toss out something he was complaining about and then pretend he wasn't actually complaining, but just raising a point that other people could debate. Like, please, don't insult our intelligence. It's obvious what you're doing. Just say it. If you're not, you're not fooling anyone. And like I said earlier, if you were just that worried about Aubrey

winning because of her overall story arc, you should have gotten rid of her. Plus, Jonathan also told Dalton, I knew that if I kept Aubrey and Tiffany around, that it would be hard for me. I knew that the shot for me to win was clear. I had to get Joe and Ozzy. I knew that if I took Tiffany or Aubrey to the end, I would lose the game. I called it. Like at the beginning of the finale, I said, if they make it, they win. And it's not necessarily that I played a worse game, but I know the jury. So I knew how it was going to go. Okay, so let's track this. He knew it would be the outcome. He still went with his plan. It seems to me we've found the problem here. We've identified it. Now, sure, getting rid of one of them earlier would have shifted the game board

and left someone else in, but that's exactly what Aubrey meant about diffusing the bomb in the right order. You have to figure out who you want there at the end and who you don't. And also, you can't say, I knew it would end this way and then complain about it ending.

Well, it was all sereseful. Yes. And D's and Ozzie's, I mean, Evans. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Yeah. Another strange thing Jonathan told

Alton was, I was going to build a ranch for women and children down in Honduras. That's what I was going to do with the money. But this season, they didn't even ask what you were going to do with the money. It's so different. If you're supposed to be able to play the game equipped to each person that you kicked out, that's impossible because that's 11 different games if there's 11 people on the jury. It's impossible to play 11 different games. Okay, first, let's address them not asking what you're going to do with the money.

good. They never should ask that question. It's a dumb question. It goes outside the scope of the game. I hate it. Yes. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. Jonathan acted like, oh, he even said it's so different. Like, it should be mandatory. No, if you go back and count the seasons, the number of times they ask that question is much lower, thankfully, than the number of times they don't ask that question. Yeah. Secondly, he's complaining about having to cater to the jury. That's kind of the whole of a jury. And you don't have to cater to all 11, just a majority. But the only ones he managed to get were the ones that were with him since before the game began. Yes. Yeah. So really not too much catering happy name there. No. And again, you can't complain. No, the jury didn't go with me

when you then later say, well, it's impossible to cater to them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it is It's just, and I think some of it, I've already mentioned this, it's got to be really kind of a crushing moment to then realize you've lost $2 million. Right. And you were kind of hoping that you were going to pull it out. And now you're having to replay your whole game in your head and you're having to answer all of these questions of people who are interviewing you. So I can see why it would be a difficult thing for him to maneuver through. But at the same time, if he's recognizing who he's going to lose against before he gets there, and then that's what happens, you could be like, oh, I saw that coming.

I knew that was going to happen because you didn't do anything to stop that from happening. And then when you actually were speaking to the jury in the way that you were, you weren't trying to stop that from happening. Like he could have said, listen, I've been worried about Aubrey for a really long time. but this is why my game is better than hers and try use that to his advantage then be like I know what you're probably all thinking about Aubrey well gee she's been here four times and this is her story and so maybe try to minimize that component in regards to Aubrey if you knew that that was going to be a potential issue which he didn't do yeah that's exactly

it if you're worried they're going to vote for her because of her overall story say something in final tribal council to knock it down. Say, look, do I think Aubrey has a great four-season arc? Yes, but it's not about the arc. It's about this season. Yes, exactly. That's what you got to do. You have to keep coming back to that.

Now, Aubrey was doing that. She talked about the other seasons, but brought it back to 50. So he needed to do the same thing. And we've already talked about his adaptability and how he focused solely on the adaptability. from last season to this season. So he's utilizing that same story as Aubrey trying to explain his game, but he's not bringing it back to this season.

And so it's like he's kind of he's admonishing Aubrey for doing this thing, but then he's doing the same thing, but he's doing it in a different way where she's kind of coming full circle with it and he's not. So I can understand his frustration, but at the same time, it's like, You got to pick a side. You got to pick one.

And if this is what you're going to do, you need to make sure that you are responding appropriately to the concerns that you have in front of that jury. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you want to say, focus on this season, well, first of all, you have to come up with better arguments for this season. But, you know, I mean, that's the other thing. He complained that they looked in his mind. They looked at everything.

But as we've talked about, she still beat you this season. She was better this season than you. Whether or not it was because she's played four times, it doesn't matter. She played better than you this season. Yeah. So, all right, moving on to third place, Joe, he told Mike Bloom, the second I sat on that stool, I could tell right away. I knew.

I could count. I could tell you right now, like, you're not voting for me. It didn't matter what I said. And yeah, he was right. You know, that's why everyone wanted to take him to the end. He still tried a bit, though it wasn't exactly a great performance. For example, he said, I was going to play like 48. Be as honest as I can and take a team to the end.

But I realized the game I played in 48, I could not do here amongst these sharks. So I allowed myself the freedom to play the game the way it needed to be played. I had to lie. I had to betray some people. And that's why I'm sitting at final three. Now, there's a lot of things to say in that statement. But to narrow it down, first note that not the reason you're sitting at final three. and also, no, you didn't really change your game.

And, you know, when he claimed he adapted and lied because he needed to, well, that's when Surrey hit him with the Jotation, which you had mentioned earlier, that every player had to babysit him through a vote. And she even told him how they laughed about it and talked about whose turn it was to watch him because it was so difficult to get him firm on any vote. Joe claimed he was hiding the fact that he was lying. and cheating. And Chrissy said, she appreciated that he just didn't go to consensus but thought about it. Okay. But the thing is that after, quote, thinking about it, he still went with the consensus anyway.

We talked about this earlier. Oh, I have to think about it. Oh, I have to think about it. Okay, I'll go your way. Every single time. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really have much to add. Joe, you're, I mean, you're a great person. You really are. But what I thought was interesting, though, is when the thing that he said about the stools too, when he walked in, you actually used the word hate. Or like, that person hates me, hates me, hates. And I was like, that's, that's kind of aggressive to, to feel like people hate you

as opposed to they're just not going to vote for you. I'm very like, I'm kind of dumbfounded, like, why you would think someone hates you who's sitting across from you in that jury. I think he has a very difficult time separating the emotion from the game. It has to be because that's very personal to feel that about so many individuals. And I also think that he said that in interviews after going through a lot on social media. And yeah, are there some people on social media who have thrown a lot of personal hate at him? Yes, there are.

but he wasn't able to separate that from objective analysis of his game on social media either. That is why he has blocked so many people on social media. Even some people who literally never said anything bad about him at all. If he heard his name mentioned, blocked. Interesting. I'm going to go back and check. I mean, that doesn't come back to why he lost. It's just, you know.

But yes, I do think that he has trouble separating all of that. And, you know, Joe just isn't good in final tribal counsel. Even when Christian gave him the opportunity to tell his story, he talked about getting to final three both times and how he was always willing to be vulnerable. That's not really much of a story, you know. And a big part of it is he still doesn't understand Survivor. Even when Dalton asked him why he thought the jury wasn't buying what he was selling, he said, I have very strong feelings about that.

But you know, the athlete and me, the person that I am says it's my fault. So at the end of the day, it must have been something that I didn't do or that I didn't say or didn't do in the game that didn't spark their results. And sure, indeed, it was. But now I'm kind of interested to hear what those very strong feelings are. It may have been what he eventually said about the hate. you know and you know whatever he said I sorry I'm doubt I doubt they would be particularly insightful as far as the game itself goes now even though Rizzo did not make it to final three I do want to talk about him because he was preparing for

the end game and it informed the decisions he made we talked in rule one about Rizzo having heard from Emily and Devons that they didn't see him as really playing the game which made him decide to go to the end with Jonathan and Joe I can't say for sure if he would have won. I think it would have been close between him and Jonathan, and it might have even depended on final tribal council performance, which I think would have favored Rizzo. But that was certainly his best chance.

Yeah, I don't disagree. I mean, I think he realized who he needed to sit next to. And we've talked about this already, that he aligned himself with the correct people, but knew when to cut them. Right. And, you know, Rizzo himself recognizes that it would have been, close. And also that, as he told Mike Bloom, not all the jurors see the game like how I see the game.

So I think objectively, I made all the right moves, both seasons in a row. And I truly feel that you can say I'm delusional. 49 had I won fire, I feel like I had a really good shot at winning. I really do feel that way. 50, I felt like if I made it to the end with Joe and Jonathan, I had a really good shot at winning. And I know I was super aware that people didn't respect me. They called me lazy. That's why I I knew I had to go to the end with Joe and Jonathan because we all had flaws. People didn't like Joe's honor and integrity. People didn't like Jonathan for whatever reason. And people thought I was a lazy bump.

I was like, great, they got to vote for one of us. Of course, the main problem for him was the same problem for Jonathan. They didn't expect Aubrey to win immunity at the end. Right, right. I love that he says people didn't like Jonathan for whatever reason. I mean, he talked about it for other points. you know, I think he just didn't want to go into it at that moment. Right, right.

He talked about the early jury and stuff like that. So, all right. Well, we certainly showed how Aubrey slayed a dragon in final tribal council. Mm-hmm. And it is about time to wrap things up for Aubrey and the rest of the finalists. So while you talk about your final thoughts on them, I will get prepared here by changing shirts again. I first just want to say congratulations to everyone who came out and participated in season 50 of Survivor. It's hard to believe that I'm sitting here talking about season 50.

It's just, it's amazing. And it was such an honor to get to relive so many incredible histories that so many of you have and to be a part of your continued journey and survivors. So thank you to everyone who came out and put themselves in front of these cameras yet again to be torn apart on social media, to be spoken about by people like David Bloomberg and myself. And we really do appreciate the fact that you all gave it your best and really put your heart into it. So thank you for that.

To the final five and especially to Aubrey. I have to say congratulations. I'll start there. Aubrey, you are just a force. I am so impressed with your tenacity, your willingness to put yourself back into this game that you removed yourself from the last time you played. You really stepped away from Survivor, but now you're back in it.

And you are feeling that same feeling that so many of us have had where you become addicted once you insert yourself again. You've had an opportunity to do this four times. And the fact that you pulled it out this time, I think, is incredible. So congratulations to you. And I'm going to limit my comments very much because I'm sure that David Bloomberg has a significant amount of things to say about everyone. But to Jonathan, Joe, Rizzo, and Tiffany, I think you are all incredible in your own right. There are certain components about all of you that make you

a really great person. There are components about each of you that make you a great survivor player. There are also components of all of you, including Aubrey, that might not work so well for the game. And you just have to find those parts of yourself that are going to get you to the end and help you win. You all have made it to the end. twice now, like a final five. I mean, like, well, except Tiffany, you weren't this first time in final five, but you've all managed to get

to so many places in this game that other people like myself wish we could have. So congratulations for doing so. Congratulations for making it as far as you did and for the game that you played. And thank you for putting yourself out there for all of us. So David Bloomberg, why don't you take it away and

do your final thoughts about all five of these incredible individuals? Well, Aubrey came into the season having made some concrete changes to the way she intended to play. And she stuck by them. She studied the game. She learned from past winners. She even studied the players she'd be up against. And she said, I don't think that anyone deserves anything in Survivor.

I believe that you earn it. And you have a little bit of luck. All that homework paid off to the tune of $2 million. Did she have some luck? Of course. Every survivor winner needs at least something. whether it's a rock draw splitting the tribe or a random swap or being picked to go on a journey or even just what starting tribe you're on.

But that's where the earning it part comes in. She even talked about that in episode six, saying something similar and adding that you need to be receptive to people and not close any doors, things that she based her strategy on. And you take whatever luck you're given, good or bad, and you make the most of it. Plus, there were certain things that definitely were not luck, even though they might have initially appeared to be, like her winning the Final Four challenge, which we know happened because she specifically practiced, as we have discussed. And heck, Aubrey wouldn't have even been on Survivor 50 if it hadn't been for an

interesting series of events. She did a Talking with T-Bird podcast here on RHEP that started her thinking about returning again. She was cut from 50 and then added back when someone else dropped out or was dropped. It's all part of the ebb and flow of events going on around the game. Jonathan obviously would have preferred that she didn't get that callback. Because maybe then he would have won. Of course, there's no way to know.

I know we've been critical of certain aspects of his game, deservedly so, and listening to him blaming so many other people in his interviews while simultaneously trying to pretend he wasn't blaming them, that was painful. But putting that aside, he also did homework and changed his game. He improved his strategy, just not enough. He improved some of his flexibility, just not enough. As I said earlier, just saying you did better doesn't automatically mean you were the best, especially when we add in the areas where he still needs improvement,

most especially the social game and understanding what actual connections are about. He still might have been able to win if he had planned out the eliminations with a bit more foresight. Then there's third place Joe. His strategic game was pretty much that he not only was in one alliance this time, he was in two. And he agreed to go along with votes he didn't like. So, of course, if it had been up to him, he would have voted emotionally multiple times. but others stopped him. And then he pissed off like his whole starting tribe,

which you obviously shouldn't do. But they decided to keep him as a vote anyway. Almost everything that happened to move him forward was in spite of his game, not because of it. This is why I say someone's eventual placement doesn't necessarily represent how good they are. I see people saying like, he got third place twice.

He must be a good player. No, no. It does not mean that. specifically to him, he made third place twice because he was doing things wrong and people knew he would be easy to beat. So of course he took them along. They took him along. Sorry. He's good at challenges. He's good at getting along with those who share exactly the same viewpoints as he does. But like I said, we should not judge according to how far someone gets for exactly this reason. People were using him as their extra vote all season long. To be perfectly blunt, he was more of an accessory

than a player. Rizzo came in fourth place, losing in firemaking in literal back-to-back seasons. And he played each one differently. This time, he had to quickly overcome what people thought of him based on a two-second preview from 49. And he did it. Sure, the people who believe working at camp is the most important aspect of Survivor were never happy with him. But the fact is, he's right and they're wrong. If you're there to play Survivor, play Survivor. Don't play camp. The one downside, of course, is the aspect of the game that you really do have to adjust

to those around you, even if you disagree with them. Another way is to find better people to be around, like Surinasi. Rizzo adapted throughout the game, such as when he heard from Emily and Devons how others saw him. He knew what his potential winning conditions were, and he almost, got them. If only Aubrey hadn't been practicing some motion. Tiffany also did a great job in showing everyone exactly why she was chosen to be on 50, even though she was the player, more viewers scratched their heads about when the cast announcement came out. Say what you want. Casting clearly saw her potential and she lived up to it. Looking back to the pregame,

it's interesting because Savannah had an incredibly accurate read of Tiffany. she told Mike Bloom back then. I think Tiff is going to be very under the radar, especially at the beginning. And I think that's going to give her a huge advantage out there. I don't think people are going to realize how big of a threat Tiff actually is. Because honestly, I feel like she will have an amazing social game. I feel like she'll be able to hold her own in some of the challenges. And I feel like before any of us realize, she'll end up being at the final three or something.

If I did not know for sure that that was all from the pregame, I would have thought Savannah was telling us after the fact and pretending. But no, this was, Mike recorded it before the game began. Tiffany did all those things, but she came half a puzzle piece away from potentially making final three, which would have given her the win. Unfortunately, that's what can happen once you do rise up and become a threat, which is why the timing and the situation with others,

with around you is so important. Back when the intro credits first aired, I noticed and pointed out online that it was kind of a funny choice to show Aubrey jumping off the platform into the water and getting her key because she was the only one who actually missed on her first try. So that scene actually showed her second. I was like, huh, that's odd that they would show that.

Someone, and I'm sorry I don't remember who, pointed out at the time, well, maybe it's because they wanted to show that although she missed, she got right back up and accomplished that. And I was like, yeah, I hope so, but I don't believe it was that deep. Now I do. I absolutely think that scene was put in the intro credits for that purpose, those sneaky, sneaky editors. In the end, I think Aubrey summed up everything well when she was answering Christian's credit about or question about her story. She changed who she was. She changed how she played. She did everything to get to the end. Indeed, she did all of those things. And that is why Aubrey won and Jonathan, Joe, Rizzo, and Tiffany lost.

Well, there we are. That's that? Yes. Well, that's almost that because before we head off for Survivor Summer Vacation, I want to remind everyone that the rules we just discussed are available in poster form and, of course, poster on a T-shirt form, and in checklist form. All of those are Rob has a website.com slash YX Lost Feed. And of course, those were drawn by Eric Reichenbach, the same person who made the T-shirt that I was wearing about slaying dragons in tribal. Yes. And then, Jessica, how can people reach us in the long summer offseason if they just want to talk to us? If you just want to talk to us, you can look for me at Jessica Lewis 89 on Blue Sky and Twitter.

I am at Jessica Lewis 6-789 on Instagram. My social media is not what it used to be. I am a little bit busy in other aspects of my existence. However, the gentleman who sits next to me, David Bloomberg, is one social media guru. who continues to put content on multiple platforms. So many platforms, he has a link tree that allows you to find all of his incredible content. So David Bloomberg, why don't you tell them about your link tree? Yes, you can find all of my various accounts at link tree slash David Bloomberg.

Or you can find me directly on Blue Sky as at David Bloomberg and on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram is at David Bloomberg TV. I have still been posting two or three reality TV short videos per day. obviously we're finishing off Survivor 50 at this point, but the Traders, New Zealand starts in a week, basically. And then, of course, on July 9th, Big Brother is returning. The Traders India will be in there somewhere, so I'm sure I will have content about all of that. And besides doing videos on those, I will be podcasting about the two international traders seasons on the Trader. and of course, Big Brother's version of YBlank Lost right here on RHAP. So be sure to follow me everywhere so we don't lose touch during the off season.

Yes. And as we wrap things up, I want to encourage people once again to check out the RHAP patron program at Rob Hesaw website.com slash patron. Get access to all the special podcasts and that will continue into Big Brother, plus Facebook groups and Discord and supporting shows like ours and everything on the network. at Rob has a website.com slash patron. And make sure you're subscribed to all of the RHAP Survivor podcasts by going to we knowsurvivor.com or now that we're transitioning to Big Brother, we know realitytvee.com.

You can see all the various RHAP podcasts there and just find a ton of great content. Yes. And thank you to everyone at RHAP for all of that amazing content that you do create in addition to Survivor and everything else that, that exists there. It's amazing how many things are continued to be added. And it's just amazing. So thank you to RCHP. Thank you to Scott,

say, Pierre, for the editing that you do not only for this podcast, but all of that amazing content that you did hear us discuss. Thank you to Will from America for the theme song that you did create for the audio version of the Y Blank Lost podcast. And David, I don't have to do predictions. This is amazing. I feel so good right now.

No. Give me some time. I need to cleanse my soul. I need to like breathe for a minute and not have to concern myself with whose life I'm about to destroy with my next prediction. So yeah, no, we don't we don't need to go down that path just yet. So but thank you, David, for giving me some reprieve in that. Yes, yes.

Let me add my thanks. A couple of people behind the scenes that, you know, sometimes we mentioned. sometimes we just include them as a group. You know, Doug does the graphics and Jess does the production along with Scott. And there are other people there too. And there's just a lot of moving parts. And of course, thank you to Rob for having this network and having us on. Yes, thank you, Rob.

Most importantly, Jessica, thank you for all the hard work you put in and the great insights you share with us all here all season long. I hope you have a great summer. I know you will be watching Big Brother intently. Hoping they have a challenge where they have to sit on bananas that are going forward. Oh, my favorite. A special thanks to all the listeners and viewers and everyone who shares nice comments and thoughts with us. We obviously wouldn't be here without you and we appreciate you all.

Yes. And I add a sentiment. Thank you to everyone who. who listens to all of this and who is commenting politely about us as well. And David, listen, you're just amazing and I think this is great. And I know that my mom enjoys listening to us. So I appreciate your willingness to continue to do this. You put so much work into this.

And it's really impressive and incredible. So thank you for allowing me along this journey with you. All right. Well, with that, like I said, you can find us at a whole bunch of other places between now and the next Survivor season. but if you don't watch any of those shows, we'll be right back here come probably September. So we will see you then. Bye.

Bye.