I shouldn’t attempt something this involved at work, but whattayagonnado?
Okay, the way Survivor works is that there is an immunity challenge every episode. The winner of the immunity challenge gets the immunity necklace, which protects him from getting any votes at Tribal Council (which is when the tribe votes someone out).
This week, the last remaining man in the tribe, a 22-year-old with tons of naivete and enthusiasm and not apparently all that much common sense and cynical distrust, won immunity. The women were somewhat annoyed, because he was supposed to be the next one voted out, for an all-woman Final Four (which has never happened in 16 seasons of this show).
The holder of the immunity necklace can choose at Tribal Council before the voting to give the necklace (and thus immunity) to another person, leaving themselves open to being voted out. This has only happened once before in 16 seasons of this show, and that was by Rob Cesternino (who holds a virtual grandmaster status for game theory) in the Amazon season.
Anyway, one of the women, Cirie (who is some kind of master puppeteer in this game) had a plan…convince Erik, because he’d been caught out trying to play all the remaining players with promises about Final Three, to give up immunity to “prove his trustworthiness”. As another player, Natalie, said, “I feel stupid just listening to this”.
And yet…it worked. Natalie talked to him, Cirie talked to him, Amanda talked to him. They played it all the way through Tribal Council, just perfectly. And he caved and gave his immunity necklace to Natalie. And everyone except Erik knew exactly what was going to happen next when the remainder of the tribe voted…
Erik was voted out.
It was an absolutely delightful and exsquisite piece of double-play, trickery and acting, and I am so glad that I had the chance to see it first run!