Australian Survivor BvW: Episode 9 Top 5 talking points

0:00 Welcome back to the nullified tech well i've got the tnt takes for you on australian survivor blood versus water episode nine and what an episode we got there was quite a lot of strategizing and i think quite a lot of things happened today that sort of showed us where different people's allegiances currently sits within this game which is really good to see a few other people also getting more screen time and explaining the strategy to us as an audience i just finished this so my thoughts are still quite raw and if you want to see an extended version of what i thought of this week please look out for the podcast at the end of the week and like always please remember to like and also subscribe i hope today is the day that i earn your subscription if you haven't done so yet and also leave a comment and thank you so much for everybody that's been commenting and taking part in this conversation i really do appreciate it okay so the first really big talking point for me for this episode is going to be sam i believe that this episode unlike with mark who i've been very high on throughout this whole season i think he had a really big cooldown episode sam is continuing to build more and more of a presence within the season where i can see a way for her to get to the end and really articulate

1:21 The strategies she's been using this season and i think that she is potentially a really big threat to go all the way and win this season she definitely had her most shaky point in the game in the previous episode when the swap tribe happened and she was in a tribe with sophie who was a nemesis she got rid of her and early on in this episode we now see her moving past this thing that was on her back that she had to get rid of which was sophie and we see her talking to khan and her khan seems to be getting a great relationship between them where she wants to work with him and let's not forget khan is mark's work husband and that was a joke that they made earlier in the season i think it's for a reason khan was a very big player in the beginning i had him as one of my top five players in the first week he had a really big edit but then kind of went missing in week two a little bit which is not unheard of i remember haley being a very big edit in her first week and then kind of disappearing a little bit in week two and then coming back strong in week three i don't think khan's come back as strongly as she did but i wouldn't completely write him off as someone that can still go very deep in the season even though people know he's got an idol i like seeing the fact that she is strategizing also

2:41 In this episode with chrissy obviously chrissy is a favorite of mine so whenever i see her on the screen i'm always happy but sam and chrissy talks about the way forward who will they vote for and chrissy is seen saying she's willing to compromise and get rid of someone on her side but it won't be kj first it has to be michelle a number that sam brought into this tribe clearly trying to think about the numbers and trying to keep the numbers strong on her side and we don't know if she's really willing to get rid of kj but it at least seems like she is open to that idea in this conversation for me it's quite interesting because when you look at sam's train of thought this episode she's saying i don't really have that close of a relationship with kj i was probably the biggest motivating factor behind the sophie vote to get rid of sophie i don't know where i stand with her i think that sam is really probably trying to push and try and see if she can get kj out of the game and i wouldn't be surprised if she does nudge people in that direction maybe in the future but while they have this conversation she does mention that you know maybe we should make khan afraid and get him to play as idol because she is worried about khan she gets along with him really well but a player of his caliber a strategic person who wants to play a big game with an idol

4:02 In their pocket that's going to be a very big threat for someone like sam down the line even if she wants to work with him so she's trying to think of a way to get rid of that idol and i think if khan plays as idol he might actually become more valuable to somebody like sophie who wouldn't mind playing with him without that extra power of having an idol the second talking point that i really wanted to get into here today is croc he's continuing to underperform and challenges and it's something that i've noted right from the start of this season you know he comes into the season as a former athlete you know once an athlete always an athlete he still looks in great shape but it's interesting to see him go up against mark consistently losing i mean he even lost to jordan who's definitely no slouch in the challenges and i really enjoyed this reward challenge where they had this poll that they had to pull back and forth with another tribe member that they had to knock off the podium basically or the thing that they were standing on but you know it was an interesting twister i don't think i've seen this in any survivor season before i really am enjoying the australian survivor challenges because they continue to innovate and do clever and different things each season and this is one that i really enjoyed seeing but yeah like i said krog's not performing i mean if you're a big physical guy like

5:22 Krog in a tribe and you know are there casted as the athlete i think your tribe is expecting you to pull some wins out you know and he's not delivering on that and it has to have an effect on his psyche and how he's feeling going into these challenges currently when he goes up against someone like a mark or maybe even in the future of jordan where the confidence is not going to be that high you know the closest thing that i can think of is probably for people because i never watch croc as a player in australia i don't have that you know sort of thing where i look up to him as an athlete because i'm not a big rugby league fan it's rugby union where i'm from in south africa which is two very different sports i know it sounds the same to americans but you know i think that people might look at him somewhere similar to how people look like you know james looked at colby and euros was villains where he said that you know you were supposed to be my superman and now you're a superman in a fat suit or something like that but he just can't deliver i think croc's a nice guy and i think his social game potentially is something that can still carry him quite far in the game and where he does add value in that tribe i think is by trying to keep morale high for someone like a chrissy when she gets down in this episode thinking about home thinking about her husband and her kids and just struggling because she couldn't get the fish and chips reward here and really wanting to get that and the whole blue tribe

6:42 Is in a little bit of a funk after that where they're like oh you know we can't win we can't win this next challenge because we don't get food and if we don't get sustenance then we're not going to be able to perform which 19 days into a game like this it probably would be pretty tight you know and that's probably going to be my biggest fear to be honest if i was ever to play survivor like i mean i get angry like you wouldn't believe like i remember in one of my companies that i worked the previous company i worked for i was one of the sales managers on the floor on a contact center and i used to have one of my fellow team leaders come up to me all the time and she would tell me it's time to go take your lunch chris you're getting a little bit cranky you're hangry because she could pick up when my mood changed on the floor and she would say go have some food and go sort yourself out and that's probably me like i don't function i don't think straight if i don't have food and i can appreciate people struggling with the fact that they have now lost a few challenges and they're just not able to have that reward number three for me is gonna be josh and joss had a really big episode where we haven't seen much of him until now we know that he's a pilot obviously he's similar to george last year with the whole thing about the municipality or the government and having to deal with those vultures he's going to try and relate

8:02 To his you know cap being a captain and part of a team and how he gets people motivated together and needing a first officer which jordan is now going to become his first officer he kind of gives us a little bit of an insight that he hasn't really been playing the game very aggressively at this point and that he's kind of let people make moves and he's gone along with it as long as it suited him but with jordan coming over to the tribe he realizes that having two physically dominant male alpha male type of guys together in a tribe that our family that this is now putting a massive target on his back and jordan's back so he realizes that he can't play that passive game and jordan does not have the relationships within that tribe to be able to influence anything so he steps up which was quite interesting because as josh rises and becomes a little bit more of a narrator to this episode geordi actually disappears into the background which is making me wonder if he's actually going to make merge and then maybe like we said be that early merge boot or something like that because you know he's not consistently getting that edit i would have been worried if he continued to go down that trajectory and getting a big edit like you know that would have been dangerous for him potentially to go i think but you know josh coming up and really making some big moves here in this episode to make sure that jordan stays safe even

9:23 After jordan and this is actually i'll talk about that in the next point jordan costing has drive the immunity is really getting someone like nina to really think about her own position in the game as well and it was quite interesting because for the longest period of time i thought that nina's right hand person and the person that she worked the closest with the season was mark and clearly that's not the case she is saying that the person who thinks the most like her and the person that she wants to work with strategically is going to be josh she wants to be his right hand person but jordan has now come on into this tribe and have taken her position because that's blood that's not water it's always going to be thicker than water so he's going to stick with his cousin and this gives nina a lot of thinking in this episode as well in regards to where she going to move so and through all of this as well amy comes out of the woodwork as well which we'll definitely get into as well because of her relationship that she had with jordan and not being in a good position in this new tribe so i feel like we really get to see a lot more of the strategic sense of where people are sitting at the moment and who wants to work with who and it does look like josh is in a pretty good position if he's got nina who wants to work with him shay that wants to work with him he's got jordan it looks like marcus with that group as well he's got jordy like i mean he looks very

10:43 Solid and i don't think he's gonna go anywhere anytime soon i think that jordan at this point is at a bigger risk if they want to make the move because they could still make that move next week the other one here is jordan costing his tribe the immunity so this immunity challenge an old favorite i don't know if we've ever seen it in the scenes where the tribe kind of relay do this challenge but it's got the trip obstacle we've got to put your feet through the holes as you walk from one end to the other and then if you just make a small miscalculation you knock everything over this so much more pressure and i love it when you do the relay type of challenge because if you're the one costing your tribe because you just lost focus that's way worse than you're doing it on your own and messing it up and costing yourself immunity so i really like it and i think that if you make a mistake in this type of challenge there's no way you're going to catch up you know you're going to be that far behind and jordan he loses his focus knocks it once nearly knocks the whole tower that they're building over but then somehow manages to still get there to the end place his last piece on top of the tower that they're bullying and everything comes tumbling down and i think it was like the second or third last one that he had to place when that happened so a really bad place for jordan to be in and then go back to the tribe and already a lot of people is focusing on him this episode

12:03 So jordan sort of mentions to us like he was in a good position with his previous tribe he always felt like he was in the majority i think that challenge-wise physically he did extremely well so he probably had some protection from people not wanting to remove a physically strong young guy out of the tribe but in this tribe i mean there's a lot of them you know you can copy and paste like it's they're all there all the alpha guys are in this tribe so losing him potentially wouldn't be as big of a thing compared to the previous tribe that he was in so with this going back he also lets us know like he's got absolutely no social capital nobody that he can works with he's got to rely on his cousin's relationships and they are not loyal to him they're loyal to his cousins so it puts him in a very difficult position in this specific game now amy let's get into everything for the last couple of minutes here before we finish off amy absolutely overplayed her hand in this episode and i kind of saw this coming a little bit earlier on when someone like jordan went to amy and gave her inside information in regards to playing her idol and she immediately threw him under the bus to me it was just it clearly showed jordan was trusting her more than what he should she's definitely going to throw him under the bus in a hot second which is crazy

13:23 Because she's extremely loyal to juicy dave throughout all of this and her previous tribe and she was extremely loyal to jay so i don't understand a hundred percent what the dynamic was between these two but clearly jordan thought that was a closer connection than what it was but amy did not need to make this move right now like she could have just chilled out relax for at least one more vote i think she may have been in danger by the next vote and she like she said in the tribal council it's better to be a player that is you know playing and not reacting to the situation and i get that but she misread so many different things here like i think you know with jordan and jay together jay and power jordan having some sort of a relationship with her he may have been able to influence jay with his numbers to keep her safe and i think that would have been the better move to make and i think nina understands that also when she looks at this options that are being given to her she understands that listen i'm not the right hand person of i'm sorry of josh right now but what i can do is stay with the numbers for now i need to stick with the numbers even if i'm his second or she's probably thinking she's a second i don't know if she actually is but amy should have definitely not made this move like she could have at least had michelle go that was an easy vote they

14:43 Wanted to get rid of someone that isn't necessarily the physically the best person to have in the tribe and for josh it made 100 sense like i know some people are going to say why did he go for her she had no like stream from the game blah but if she made the merge she's the kind of player that goes all the way and wins it because no one will want to take her out they're going to take out all the alpha guys you got to keep the strong guys together if you're a strong guy that's the game you've got to play and go into the merge with other big physical threats so i think it was the right call there but amy here going up to someone like shay i mean she doesn't even know shay and she's like hey shay i've been with you for like two days or something i feel like i can trust you i've seen you walk around with josh all the time but you know we're gonna we're gonna blindside jordan because we got to break that up you know i don't know if it's a case of her just thinking she is a better player than what she is and she's overestimating her ability to make these very quick social connections and bonds with people where they will just follow her but i felt like she should have read that a little bit differently and should have known that shea shay wasn't gonna go that way and it's not even like amy had that much to offer like did she have a really good relationship with ben or something like that she tried to use as part of the conversation i don't know we may have missed some things

16:03 Here with the edit that i'm not aware of but i feel felt like she completely misread that i did find it interesting her talking to mark here this episode and mark being open to potentially turning against jordan i think that he just tried to keep her calm and he's playing in whatever position he can but i don't think he actually was ever going to go that way which probably mean nina and then we're never going to go that way as well and was never on from the start to be honest i kind of knew that amy was going to be out as soon as amy went to josh and they turned the plan on her what did you guys think of this week what was the biggest moments for you this episode and is there anything that you feel like i missed i think that you know by the end of this week when we do our podcast we'll dive into a little bit more information a little bit more deeply into what's happened and we should be able to also do our top five by the end of the week of who i think is the top five players that are playing the best game right now i think it has changed for me quite a lot compared to where i was last week we might have a bit of a shake up in the top five i haven't really sat down and dissected the games enough throughout the week to really think about who is number one two three four and five but that should be an exciting one i know some people left comments on the video saying that hey can you please as you talk about these people have their faces up on the screen so it looks a little bit more interactive and i do want to play around with those things

17:24 I'm still learning how to do the video editing side of things you could probably pick up i'm even doing all of this just in one take like i'm not cutting it or anything like that as i'm talking so it's kind of like i'm doing it live but yeah i'll play around with it i'll hopefully have some pictures up or something as i'm talking about my top five so visually it looks a little bit better than what i've done so far but as always i really appreciate the support i appreciate the fact that you guys watched this for 17 minutes if you got to this point and you still haven't done so please hit subscribe if you feel like i earned that subscription and also please hit a like button on it and feel free to share this with other fans as well thanks catch you guys next time goodbye