Coup de Chaos

After Coach stole the show last week, Dee’s torch snuffing left me at a loss for likable players in Survivor 50.

Many of my personal favourites – from Genevieve to Kamilla to Savannah to Kyle, had gone.

There will always be Cirie to root for. But beyond that, I was finding it hard to know who to cheer on.

Then Rick Devens comes along and immediately brings the entertainment back.

Like many who suffered through Edge of Extinction, I experienced some Rick fatigue in his original season. He was the star of the show throughout the post-merge, with the show focusing all of their attention on him as he found advantages and idols to make his way to the final four.

Rick was a fine player in his original season. But without idols and advantages (and the Edge to begin with!), he goes home in Survivor 38 far sooner.

Coming into the season, many wondered what a season would be like for Rick without idols and advantages.

Rick must have been wondering this too. So after his best alliance mate in Christian found the idol, he decided he’d had enough. He made his own fake idol.

The moment of planting it at tribal council was, as Rizo would say – “cinema”. Christian played his role beautifully, tripping like a clown to distract everyone’s attention as Rick planted the seeding idol to grow underneath a rock.

While brilliant and fun, I wondered what the actual utility of this idol would be. Any idol, especially a known idol, naturally raises one’s threat level. With that perception already in place for Rick, it only makes it worse.

My assumption was that Rick would then pull this idol out of nowhere, and raise his threat level in the process.

But I think Rick did so many things well with this fake idol grab in Episode 8 of Survivor 50.

First of all, he exposed the people working with Coach & Chrissy.

Yes, we already knew where they stood.

But having to show that publicly would have been detrimental. Especially to those that had to lie to Rick and Aubry ahead of tribal. Once you’re caught lying to someone in Survivor, you often feel like you owe them one. These players – the Stephanie’s and Jonathan’s of the world – don’t want to owe anyone anything. And realistically, they won’t. But now they know they don’t have much of a leg to stand on.

Secondly, he came up with a great lie – saying it can’t be played until the next tribal council. Whether this raises his threat level next episode or not, it’s a great reason for Rick to not play the “fake idol” immediately and burn its utility.

Best of all, he might have scared enough people into just voting for Chrissy and Coach. It’s possible that Stephanie and Joe would have always voted for Chrissy and Coach so that they could be with the numbers; but it’s also possible that it was entirely down to Rick’s fake idol find that they switched their votes.

From a TV perspective, this has even more room for error if Coach & Chrissy successfully get saved from Coach’s ‘Shot in the Dark.’ Luckily for us, it doesn’t land, and they go home.

But that would have been quite the plot twist had Coach’s ‘Shot in the Dark’ successfully landed.

Heading into next episode, we’re now in a precarious position. Everyone recognizes Cirie as an impeccable gameplayer, capable of swinging votes in her favour. But everyone wants to work with her, recognizing that she likely won’t win her way to the end.

So we get to have Cirie in control of the season once more, while watching some of the other likable players navigate the waves around her. With Rick’s fake idol looming large, it immediately raises intrigue for how next week might go. If he can use it in Rizo fashion – as a threat to avoid being the target of the vote, then the power of this fake idol rises dramatically. Now not only is it a fun move, but a great strategic move too.

It all just depends on how he plays it (or how he doesn’t play it) next week. Now that Coach and Chrissy are gone, this game is wide open.