Heading into the ninth episode of Survivor 50, Chrissy Hofbeck and Coach Wade had just been eliminated together in the high stakes Double Duo twist. Though the pair of Aubry Bracco and Rick Devens were also on the chopping block for the double elimination, Devens managed to keep them safe by leveraging the fake idol he and Christian Hubicki hid at Tribal Council to scare away any possible votes coming their direction.
This week, the big move by Devens becomes a cause for concern as some players elevate his name on their list of targets and his allies are forced to develop new strategies to stay afloat. In addition, Jimmy Fallon puts Jeff Probst in the position to compete at a challenge while also introducing a new advantage that has a big impact on one player’s game. Read on for our recap of Survivor Season 50, Episode 9, titled “I Deserve All of This” which aired Wednesday, April 22 on CBS, to find out how Day 18 plays out and who becomes the next member of the jury.
The 11 players still in the game at the start of the episode were: Aubry Bracco, Christian Hubicki, Cirie Fields, Emily Flippen, Joe Hunter, Jonathan Young, Ozzy Lusth, Rick Devens, Rizo “Rizgod” Velovic, Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick, and Tiffany Ervin. And on the jury is: Dee Valladares, Chrissy Hofbeck, and Benjamin “Coach” Wade.
“I’m gonna baby face them to death and then I’m gonna slit all their throats.” — Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick
While Devens was proud of himself for “causing chaos” at Tribal Council with the fake idol move, and though he knew it put him in a “good and bad” position within the tribe, both his allies and those working against him were not as pleased. Once Devens told Emily that the idol is fake, she confessed to being “angry” at the move because it put a bigger than necessary target on their alliance. The competing alliance of Joe, Stephenie, and Jonathan were equally pissed off, focused on the fact that they lost two allies and facing the prospect that Devens had an idol. For the “Cirie and the Rizard of Oz” alliance of Cirie, Ozzy, and Rizo, the night couldn’t have gone better since now it put all the attention on what’s left of the “Old School” alliance vs. Devens and his alliance.
Noticing that the move from Devens had shifted the temperature around camp, Aubry approached Jonathan with a perspective that she wanted to distance herself from Devens and would be willing to work with Jonathan going forward. Knowing he needed to pad his own numbers, Jonathan was happy to agree to work with her. Instead of ditching Devens as an ally, Christian and Emily looked for ways to shift the target away from him. Christian went to Stephenie and Jonathan with a story that they’re not the next targets, but Jonathan felt he knew better than to trust Christian. Like Christian did with Ozzy, he offered to give Jonathan his Shot in the Dark as a sign of trust, only for Jonathan to be less a man of his word than Ozzy was in that scenario and immediately plan with Joe to take the Shot in the Dark and vote Christian out anyway. The second plan that Christian devised to shift the target to someone else was to throw out Ozzy’s name (referring to him as “He Who Must Not Be Named”) since he was playing in the middle and has an idol; the only problem with the plan was that he threw Ozzy’s name out to Cirie, Ozzy’s closest ally.
“Girl, have several seats; the rice is covered.” — Cirie Fields
At the Immunity Challenge, Jeff put the elimination twists aside and asked the players to compete as individuals again in a pregame body weight endurance challenge. But while he wasn’t putting their fate in the game on the line, Jeff introduced a new spin on an existing challenge twist, an idea originally suggested by Jimmy Fallon. For the first time, Jeff himself competed in the challenge alongside the players in a “side bet” that required four players to bet that they could outlast Jeff to earn a bag of rice; if even one of the betters failed to outlast Jeff, the rice would not be earned. Jonathan, Joe, Ozzy, and Tiffany all stepped up to the bet, but many more could and should have. Through all the taunting of him they did, Jeff only lasted seven and a half minutes and on top of the four betters, Christian, Stephenie and Aubry also outlasted him. So, the tribe earned the bag of rice and by the end of the challenge, Joe outlasted everyone to earn individual immunity.
In addition to his own safety, as winner of the challenge Joe had to select one person to send on a journey. Instead of making the decision himself, he had everyone compete in a rock, paper, scissors tournament to decide the winner, resulting in Christian being sent on the opportunity to earn an advantage. On his journey, Christian was tasked with competing a puzzle within a certain amount of time with the promise that the result would have an impact on the next vote one way or another. If he succeeded, he’d earn the new “Jimmy Fallon One in the Urn” advantage that allowed him to then and there cast an extra vote against one player to be already in the urn at the start of the Tribal Council. As it turns out, Christian failed to complete the challenge and so instead of that extra vote, he returned to camp with a letter to read to the tribe that said, “Because you failed on your journey you will make history at tonight’s Tribal Council by being the first player to cast a vote against themselves.”
“I’ve seen all these happy people enjoying their rice and, for me, it’s just fueling my rage.” — Christian Hubicki
Back at camp, the “implied threat” of Devens’ idol meant two things: for Devens it meant that he’d have to leverage his “play” of the fake idol in a way that works to his benefit and for those working against Devens believing his idol to be real, it meant that they’d need to put votes on someone else. While Christian was away at his journey, Jonathan worked a campaign around camp in order to put votes on him only for that approach to be strengthened by the fact that Christian was forced to add a vote to himself. The disadvantage presented an easy opportunity for the tribe to dump votes on Christian and so he new his best goal to prevent that was to follow through on his promise to give Jonathan his Shot in the Dark as a sign of trust. Emily’s own approach to save Christian was to try to shift the target to Ozzy, but that prompted Tiffany and Cirie to think it might be best to get rid of Emily instead.
At Tribal Council, Christian referenced being “rage-fueled” and “living a farce” due to the Jimmy Fallon self-vote disadvantage, but his energy and delivery left Jeff “genuinely a little confused” at how he truly felt about the “real stakes” of the game. Even Christian’s ally Emily admitted that her “sympathy is limited” because he put himself in the position by risking the journey in the first place. At the voting booth, Christian asked for an apology from Jimmy Fallon before casting a vote against himself that was one of the six that sent him to the jury in 6-3-2 split vote with Devens (3) and Ozzy (2).
Next time on Survivor…
Devens and Emily prepare to “blow up this whole tribe” as the “Mr. Beast Super Beware” advantage comes into play.
