Survivor 42: Episode 5 Recap

0:00 Welcome back to the nullified take well we've got the tnt takes for you on survivor 42 episode five i'm joined here i'm your host chris firstly and i'm joined here by my co-host jake for survivor 42 jake how are you doing i'm doing good chris i really enjoyed this episode but i'm a little bit worried for next week as we'll get into yeah definitely i mean we're one episode away now from the merge but we'll definitely talk about that when we see next on survivor at the end of this episode but i do want to get into a few things just before we start the recap in full for those that have been wondering where the top five takeaways are for this specific episode i'll work on that tomorrow i do apologize i've had a super busy week at work i do have a full-time job as well as doing this as well i don't want to make a habit of it normally i will have them on time also we had this week jake on the channel our buff giveaway which is really exciting for those that do follow australian survivor we've got both merch buffs from this season and last season that i gave away to two different viewers of the show and what i received in the mail this week is this bad boy right here so the first five merge buffs for survivor cbs they're quite rare to find i am also gonna make this available when we hit a thousand subs on the channel to one of our viewers so

1:20 Some more buff giveaways that's gonna happen here in the future and also christian first person here in the live stream welcome to the live stream great to have you all right jake let's get into the episode it was quite an interesting episode because we start off with the icca tribe coming back to camp and there is a little bit of i guess fallout from the previous episode here that happened and roxroy was not included in the vote like we said i was quite surprised that roxroy who likes to be in control he's a control freak did not get included in this vote what was your takeaway when it came to this tribe and how divided they are at this point yeah it's a bit interesting we know that drea and romeo are kind of running things and they made the decision to not put him in the loop and i think that was probably smart because i don't think he would have been okay with it i think he wanted to keep swati as we saw at tribal council he was like defending her and i just don't think he's a fan of tory very much so bit interesting this tribe is absolutely doomed going into the merge i mean there's no way like tori already doesn't want to work with them roxroy now feels like he can't trust them because he was just left

2:40 Out and dre has already kind of become a threat within themselves so i just they're doomed i think i think so as well i think like yeah but both vati and ika to me i just look at them as both just two trainwreck tribes maybe they can find themselves somewhere and like half of the tribe from vati and half of the tribe from ika can form a call but i think it's unlikely when you're looking at taku being really unified which we'll obviously get into for this episode but i found it really interesting that you know tori says there's no way i'm sticking with these guys it just shows you how i feel like they've misread the situation because yes swati was lurking in the shadows and she had her eyes on drea but i actually think she honestly wanted to work with tori she honestly wanted to work with romeo and also rocks roy so i feel like for team cohesion they made the wrong choice last week and tori is just the better snake oil sales person out there she got away with it in the end and obviously we know she's got experience being a psychiatrist being able to tell people what they want to hear she's played in a few other reality or online reality game show types of things like sequester so she's got a little bit of experience in this and i think that her experience is what sort of got her past swati in that specific spot chris junior saying the fake real merge

4:00 Is going to be very interesting next week and we'll definitely talk about that towards the end and russell muscle welcome to the live stream as well quite interesting here we do go to taku tribe after this opening segment and we see a little bit of jonathan at camp i'm getting really frustrated by the two ladies marianne and lindsey they constantly talk and they constantly fight about everything his saving grace is to get out of camp and to remove himself from that situation taking himself away for up to two to three hours at a time and russell muscle who's in the live stream kind of mentioned last episode when we recapped it that xavier said how difficult it was to go out of camp to do other things because people could strategize while you're gone how big of a risk is this for jonathan or do you like this move from him to defuse the situation by just getting out of there i mean if you really are that concerned about yourself like making a scene and you feel like you have to take yourself out of the situation then i guess then maybe it was the right call but as you said i mean going out for two to three hours at a time like that's a long time for and we saw lindsay and marianne they just don't stop talking like they're just going to keep talking talk and eventually strategy is going to pop up and i mean

5:20 I've been saying like jonathan's in a really good spot but you know the merge is coming around and that's really where they like to target the strong guys so i don't agree with the move but i get it like coming from like a purse personal side like i get like just kind of wanting some alone time personally i'm like i like to have just you know a couple hours to myself at a time to just be alone i know some people are like absolutely not like i want to be in a group setting at all times talking to someone so i get it from that point but this is survivor where you it's a social game you need to be in those conversations talking like you don't want to miss anything yeah i think for me personally i like balance in life so i like i'm definitely an extrovert as you can probably tell doing a podcast and being quite you know passionate about things when i talk about it i'm definitely an extrovert but i also have introverted tendencies sometimes where if i've had a really big week like this week for instance at work i was in and out of meetings i was constantly on the move where i was just sorting i was pretty knackered where i just needed a couple of hours to decompress not be on social media not consume any of that noise and when you're out on the island like you said you can't just go to your room there is no room there is no

6:41 Doors to close if marianne's annoying you so the best thing he can do in that situation is to take himself out of that situation like he said if he blows up and he makes a great observation obviously this escalates when he's busy chopping wood and she gets close and i don't even think she got hurt but marianne does seem to be someone that blows everything up to 120 because it's just her personality i'm sure she means well but it's her personality you know he says i have to keep my cool because if i blow up at her i'm this massive six foot five guy two hundred and something 50 pounds i don't do pounds in new zealand but he's a massive guy and if he goes off no matter what the case even if he's right he is going to be painted as the villain and i don't think he cares so much about being painted as the villain outside of the game i think he's talking about in the game he's got zero chance to win if he blows up at a little girl and how would that be perceived within the game so i understand it i think i would have wanted to take myself out of that situation as well and let's be honest they were annoying this episode i get it i do marianne i love her you know like from what we see ever on the episode you know for only maybe a five minute segment that's what we see of her you know at camp at a time and we really love it but if we're

8:01 Around that 24 7 who knows what we would think so i've seen people say like you know kind of criticizing jonathan for like you know being a bully but i don't agree with that i don't think that he look she's she can be a lot personally i like her he's said in the past he likes her it can just be too much so yeah i've said this many times right people need to put it into perspective you i don't know if you've got siblings i've got siblings i think you do have a sister right so i'm sure you love your sister but i'm sure there's certain times when your sister annoys the hell out of you it's just life yeah i have three sisters no brothers only boy growing up i was the youngest so i was picked on i get it they can they can be a lot but yeah i mean you're not going to be this likeable guy all the time the problem is when you're out in a game like survivor the cameras are rolling 24 hours so you don't know what is going to make the tv show that one moment of you snapping and people see that and they're like oh that's you that is how you are as a person all the time we're going to be moving on to the next try pretty soon christian and i'll answer that question for you because i thought that was a very interesting flashback for romeo but i do want to finish off here in this specific episode in this tribe

9:21 Here we get to see omar suddenly inserting himself my winner pick i still think he's going to win this game based on what i'm seeing at this stage edit wise but he's seen as the person to say i need the tribe to stay calm they need to be unified you know we if a tribe sees this the other tribes see this when we go into the merge they'll be able to scoop marianne up who's now got a hidden immunity idol who we know will be activated after this episode and also she's got an extra vote so she is really invaluable to this tribe if they want to be competitive going into the merge and if they want a chance at actually getting deep into the game so again you know i like what i'm seeing from jonathan because he's socially aware as to how he's being perceived which tells me he's got a great social game he definitely isn't someone i'm counting out as a potential winner but i just feel like he's too obvious at this point where omar is that person he's like the person that's getting the edit off always having to insert himself and be strategically very smart about the things that he says and it makes sense so i do think omar is still my dark horse pick at this point i don't even know if lindsay got in confessional this week i know russell muscle is in the live chat that's his winner's pick and i'd like to know russell if you're still here if you still think that lindsay has got that strong pick i know that winners don't always get a confessional every single

10:41 Episode but she was missing this episode a little bit yeah i mean after last season who the hell knows what's gonna happen i mean erica's tribe was about as invisible as you can get because but i that also makes sense because they didn't go to any tribal councils but even when they did go to the tribe and get a confession it was always sydney or nasir saying something it was never on her so i don't know analyzing the edit gives me a headache sometimes i mean but i'm loving it i just want to say such a fresh breath of air after watching australian survivor i struggled towards the end of australian survivor to get through it and it's nothing to do with the players it's all about the edit being so blatantly obvious that there is only one person that can possibly win this season i hate that like with australia with a survivor us at least there it is a guess like none of us actually know at this point there's educated guesses we can take based on little hints that are being given in the edit but i much prefer this and hearing from so many different people of what their perspective is of the game and what their strategy is i do feel like i know these people that are watching this recap that don't watch australian survivor and they may feel like the u.s survivor is not doing a great job with the edit and there is purple edits

12:02 Just believe me when i say it can get worse there are other franchises out there that are doing worse than this at the moment yeah it's pretty ridiculous like how much worse australian survivor is like it's it advice right like we need to clarify like it's still a great challenge oh yeah like you just know him the live stream as well hello how you doing mate i do want to go into the tribe here with romeo so we go over to the icca tribe oh sorry the yeah the icha tribe with romeo going and searching for an idol with drea here this episode and let's talk about a little bit about this specific comment here by christian during romeo's flashback in this episode do you think it is foreshadowing a female winner this season what are your thoughts because i found it really interesting i didn't really know if it foreshadowed a female winner but i found it funny that he was walking around saying that he is coaching drea on how to be a better survivor player and i was like how like i don't even think you're a better player than her today like i think dre is a better player than you and i know romeo is highly regarded by russell muscle and yourself but i honestly think drea is running circles around this kid and i think that she would win in most seasons like if they were to play 100 seasons she would have a better strike rate because she is bald and she goes out there and takes

13:22 The swing so i just found it funny that he's out there coaching her when he's a first-time player himself yeah it was a little weird i mean that's usually something you would have like a returning player say to a newer player like they already know the game so but it yeah it's weird coming from a two new players but i did think that was an interesting flashback that they showed and his comment could be foreshadowing maybe like a side like a duo making it to the end and maybe i don't know yeah i think that maybe a duo goes to the end and like maybe the one that you may think was better loses to the one that i don't know you know what i'm trying i think i think i think it could be yeah i know what you're saying i think it could be a little bit of foreshadowing potentially in the future that somewhere down the line romeo is going to fall on a sword for to go further yeah like after the merch because i feel like romeo and i've said this before i think he could be a great player when he's in the numbers but we all know that this tribe him and drea are close but i don't feel like roxroy and tory are that attached to the tribe now i saw enough from roxroy here this episode as well

14:42 To say i've just noticed that my social game's horrible i need to adjust what i'm doing out here like he's become more aware that he's not as tight and with those guys as he as he thought he was and i could easily see people wanting to use him as like a goats going to the end because no one's going to vote for him because he's an unlikable character he could become the philip shepherd of the season for a lack of someone better at this point to think of not that i think he is as out there as philip sheppard like let's be honest no one is out there shepherd but i mean he could be that type of archetype where people drag him towards the end because they know they'll beat him at the end you know because who's going to vote for roxroy if he's out there inserting himself on everybody and trying to dictate where the plans and the votes are going to go so i think that romeo is going into the merge without numbers and he doesn't have advantages dreya's got advantages she's got cross-tribal allegiances that she's already built from going to shipwheel island from getting the amulet i think she's got more room to maneuver and i also think she's got that hustle in her that hunger to do better when she gets there so i feel like he's gonna fall on a sword or he's gonna go before her down the line and i feel like that is what is being foreshadowed in this episode here more than anything else for me i would agree with that i think that dre has definitely got more to her when she's on the bottom which i think

16:02 Is going to happen i think that tori's definitely gone i mean she's explicitly said it in the episode rockstar is probably going to realize that he needs to branch out and do something so i think that they might look at rockstar as a threat right like who's going to look at rockstar as a threat like i mean the guy maybe can win one immunity somewhere if it's in this wheelhouse like i don't think he's a beast out there i mean people are going to be far more worried about jonathan about lindsey and drea as physical beasts on the game i think that he could go in there and people could use him as a tool because i think if he finds people saying hey we'll be loyal to you he'll stick with him i don't think he's got game saviness about him or any sort of agency to move around and become a mastermind so i wouldn't be scared of rocks roy at the merge so he could really fall down the picking order when they get there yeah and i think that also but it also could mean that he could easily be scooped up by another alliance that kind of notices like okay this guy he's just gonna tell us what he actually thinks and he's not gonna try to plot behind our backs if we can just prove our trust to him and you know say that we'll play honorably or whatever he wants to

17:22 Hear then i think that we could scoop him up and use him as a number yeah and i don't know if rockstar is religious as well but i feel like he may be he comes across as conservative in his ways and like i wouldn't be surprised if he also like i just think taku is going to be you know the hot kid at the prom everybody's going to want to dance you know like everybody's going to want to work with him because there's going to be more cohesion there when they get to the merge and i wouldn't be surprised to see him try and work his way in there as well at some point or someone approaching him potentially to come over i do want to go to the vati tribe here before we go into the immunity challenge and really fun episode here you know obviously daniel was your number one guy pick for the season r.i.p to your number one pick here this specific episode but yeah daniel's such a fun character you know he again i think as a narrator we've lost so much by losing him this specific episode he was basically the main narrator for that tribe so i kind of had hope that the edit has given him some plot armor and that he maybe just squeezes his way into the merge ahead of chanel who to me personality wise she doesn't seem to have the same you know she doesn't pop on the screen the same way daniel does for me you know i don't get that same feeling of man i really want to get behind her but i can see that she's got the makings

18:42 Of potentially being a very good player so i mean she could still go on to the merge and surprise us here but what was interesting to me was seeing daniel here going out and really just showing he is not socially aware like taking the spear going out fishing being out in the water going down to the reef when he's telling his tribe he can't contribute and challenges there was always going to be hurt feelings at some stage by his tribe for going out there and doing these things when he does not contribute at camp or at the immunity challenges yeah it's kind of funny it reminds me of in blood versus water when tyson actually popped his shoulder out at a challenge and the doctors there kind of told him the same thing as daniel like okay we popped it back in but you need to kind of look after it and you might be in some pain and so tyson played it up for the rest of the season and was like oh i need to rest my shoulder even though he was in no pain at all the tripod he was smart though but he was smart he didn't get out of him first she didn't go out and do these things he was i remember explicitly him lying in the hammock saying i need to play him that's what i'm saying exactly he should have maybe taken a play out of that book and like really played it up at camp like i

20:03 I get you know maybe it was tyson's third time on survivor so he doesn't really care about like the experience of going out and fishing and doing all this maybe that's what daniel wanted but if you're really trying to play it as optimally as you can i mean maybe take a play out of that book and i mean daniel i don't think daniel was there to win from the start it was never for him exactly you don't go into a show like survivor saying ah you know i'm gonna go out and dominate and win the season and play that way and he and he didn't do that like he went out saying listen i probably won't win these are all the reasons i'm not gonna win but i'm gonna have the best time of my life while i'm out here like you said so many people take the game too serious and they don't indulge in the moment but for me it's you only get one shot like daniel like great like i mean i'm gonna look at daniel as the character that could have been great on our screens in the future i mean i think if he made merge if he went deep in this game he reminded me when it comes to the way that he narrates he reminds me of rick devins in a lot of ways like he's just charismatic you know even until the end when he's fighting to stay in the game he's charismatic but he doesn't have the makings of a great player when it comes to social awareness sadly and how people perceive them within the tribe and once again hats off here to everybody else in the tribe for galvanizing

21:23 Together and trying to make the best out of a bad situation but i do think maybe they're doing a better job than what i think like chanel should not feel too comfortable at this point like she really is the fourth tag along in this alliance i don't think it should be clear i don't think she does feel comfortable especially after the last tribal where they put two votes on her she was the backup which she probably expected that i mean she even said at camp like hey i think i might be on the chopping block tonight so i just want to have some one-on-one conversations with everyone i think that she has a lot more self-awareness than daniel i think so yeah and so in terms of i think she's a better player than daniel she's not she's not better tv but she's a better player yeah that's what i was going to say i think she's better player and as you know daniel was my number one guy pick chanel was my number one girl pick so i was going to lose my number one either way tonight and are you happy i was gonna say are you happy about the number one pick that you still have in the game you think she's got a better shot for sure i think that if we're talking who's more likely to win i think chanel

22:44 Has more i agree he's more likely to try to get something going i mean i think daniel like you kind of said was maybe not out there to win i mean at the very least he didn't think he was going to win so there's just not enough drive and i think chanel has that drive i think daniel was exactly who we thought he was going to be based on his pre-season content that he gave us like you know a lot of players go in the pre-season content and they tell you who they're going to be how they're going to play and then we don't see that person out there but i feel like he was like exactly who he said he was going to be but any case going into just prior to the amenity mike has a bit of a chat with high i believe maybe also lydia is around there but he says that i'm not gonna play i'm not gonna activate my idol i want to keep on to this because i get my vote back the next round if there's a merge and also i get the idol and no one will know where the idol is which i thought rock solid strategy to begin with now obviously going into the immunity he wouldn't have known if they were going to win the immunity or if they were going to lose the immunity so he has to take a gamble to either say his phrase or keep it quiet prior to knowing the outcome of the immunity do you like this play by mike to just activate it in this stage and to be rather safe than sorry or do you think that

24:04 He's missed a massive opportunity here if you were to put yourself in mike's shoes and you were out there how do you play this situation this is at first i was thinking and i said why would you do that like there's no reason you just went on you just went back on exactly what you told the tribe was gonna do what you were gonna do but you think about it like you said you didn't know he didn't know if he was gonna win or lose this challenge they end up losing and he kind of explained it in his confessional he said i felt like my vote was important and it was it was very important in this tribe of five they wanted to split the votes on chanel and daniel which is exactly what they did and if he doesn't do that then they don't get to split the vote and who knows maybe whoever they so they have to pile all the votes on one person and maybe chanel and daniel for some reason team up and it gets to a tie that's gonna go bonkers again you know and who knows maybe they draw rocks and maybe mike goes home in some freak way you know it's just a lot of craziness however if you're looking at if they win that challenge if he wouldn't have said anything and they would have won that challenge it

25:24 Just would have been beautiful no one knows about it they're going to the merge in the very next episode but there was no way for him to know that even the merge was next episode who knows is the new era as they're saying to them maybe they're not merged until nine or ten who knows what they're thinking out there so really tough decision for him and at first i thought it was pretty cut and dry what he should have done but as i thought more about it like there's a lot of nuance to that decision yeah i think personally if you're out there and you're in that situation in a tribe of five you know that the tribe is very divided you don't know if daniel and chanel can patch things up like you don't have the 360 degree view that we as viewers of the show have so you don't know if behind the scenes they're saying listen mike doesn't have a vote let's stay together that way we ensure both our safety in the game and let's go to rocks this time you just don't know if they're going to do that so i feel like mike did do the right thing like at first i was like horrible decision why did you let people know you've got the idol you went against what you told you tried but i could also see that high seemed really relieved by that sorry i just thought of something yes if daniel so if mike did not activate his vote and or activate the idol and god's vote back

26:44 And daniel and chanel decided to oh wait a second never mind what i was about to say i thought that if they would have loaded up if those two would have teamed up and loaded on someone that they could have flipped it but it would have just gone to rocks but it would just because yeah they might have been able to do it on mike they could have got they could have targeted mike and they could have said to hire you're really gonna go to rocks for mike like i know you would do it for lydia but are you gonna do it for mike he's only been your ally for two days you know type of thing so that would have probably been the right play there but i feel like from mike's point of view doing what he did in this spot and activating the idol it was definitely the right decision not knowing if he was going to win the immunity or not at that point it's going to have some consequences to his game long term because obviously everybody now knows where the idol is i also want to point out drea i found it really funny another funny scene with drea i don't know how big of a fan she is but she said that in this new era of survivor us women are also we're also now finding idols this is a thing that we can do as well just like last season was the toughest season ever it's like really like i mean there's been many women in recent seasons that have found idols like i think more women find idols these days yes so you're not special drea in that case

28:05 Love you dre if you listen to this like i actually do enjoy you as a character but i had to call it out i believe i believe that since david vs goliath more women have found idols than men i believe that's that i will believe that instead yeah so because it's harder for men these days i feel like for men like people expect them to go and find idols so yeah there's like an extra you know view that people have on a guy walking off on his own to go and find an idol potentially but there's been i did a quick like search online before we came on here but there's been many there's been natalie anderson kelly keely poverty sandra you know there's even an old school people denise janet the list goes on and on yeah island of the idol islands definitely boosted the numbers i think for the women because kelly found two janet found two i think janet found i think one about no nullifier she had no the nullifier was used on her now i think she found one i think but i mean again the point is dre you're not the only one this is not a new era thing that you're suddenly getting all of this christian says here that drea seems a little bit cocky she does but i kind of like

29:25 That about her yeah i know about to say that i was just about to say i kind of like we need a little bit of we need a little bit of personality a little bit of zing behind some players you know so yeah i mean i'm going to call it i'm going to call bsl when i see it but i also like that she's bringing that little bit of a grunt to the game yeah now that we've seen the phrases play out in two seasons with the idols being used in such a way yale nay on this twist do you think like i mean going forward people are probably gonna know to listen out for phrases yes but yale nay on the concept of playing around with the idols and how it gets activated i guess should this be something that they need to look at in future seasons and continue with or would you just like to see the traditional idol so if you find one and it's immediately activated i'm totally yay for activating it in a special way i think that was the biggest kind of flaw in the game this new modern game where there's so many idols so we see people like ben and rick devins who just are on the bottom and have very little social capital and kind of don't really have to do much except find a little magic stick in the woods and just play it and give it to jeff and

30:45 Boom that's it kind of took away from social aspect and i think that this kind of you know i think more than not it was supposed to be kind of a fun little haha they have to say a funny phrase at the immunity challenge but really it's you gotta and they kind of experimented with this in winners of war where you had to give one part of the idol to someone but i believe that was only in the pre-merge i believe like denise and adam did that kim and sophie did that i kind of liked that and they you know definitely went more extreme this time but i like that there's more like social like now you know the people that have the idols know each other they know who has the idols so it's not just like you just go in the woods by yourself you find it oh i have it and then i travel counsel oh i have it you know here it is and just do that over and over and over again so i'm definitely for just kind of like activating it in a new way i'm with you i'm with you 100 i love it i think that it actually takes the power of the idols down so much because it's almost impossible to hide it at the moment so different people know about

32:05 It you have to work like you said with other tribe members as well to get it activated and also it's minimized the amount of idols that we find in the game because idols really don't get played before the merge now because in both seasons they've only been activated prior to the merge so that means like last season we only had three idols in the game we probably will only have three idols in the game this season if you compare that to all the seasons and the 30 to 40 series seasons like i mean idols were popping out of the woodwork left right and center so and it's even worse with australian survivor like the amount of idols like at some stages you get more idols in the game being played than people being voted out so yeah for me it's just not on so i'm enjoying it as well i do want to get into the immunity challenge here quite a fun immunity challenge we get a little bit of an obstacle course where they've got to lift each other up to go over this net get down on the other side one nominated person needs to untangle a key from a rope through like a rope challenge or puzzle that they have to go through it seems like everybody does a really good job here but omar finds it specifically difficult which was crazy to see because he's being pitched as this cool calm and collective person that can adapt to any situation as a you know veterinarian that works with exotic animals and all this kind of thing but when the pressure is really on him here he really comes apart

33:25 And if it wasn't for jonathan pulling it out from the back and just absolutely monstering at the end i mean what a display again taku would have been in danger here yeah i mean whenever you have jonathan on your tribe you always have a bit of leeway with the puzzle because either he sets you up super well or you can kind of slack a little bit and he'll take the reins from you and just take care of it and yeah would have been definitely like the vati loss because of now it's going to be a 444 going into the merge which will be fun i agree christian here just going back to our previous comment where we spoke about the idols is mentioning that he would prefer traditional idols 43 and 44 these funky idols seem too obvious and useless just saying you know what christian i don't like the first season i really hated the phrases i was like what is this is being done for jeff's amusement i don't necessarily think that it has to be the exact same like because i don't think you could do the same twist again yeah people now will know that there's phrases that are being set at immunity challenge but i like the fact that they're being creative with the idols and they're trying different things so i'm not against the fact that they're trying to make it harder

34:45 For people to get idols and to activate it i kind of like that idea i think there is some gold behind it but i also understand that a lot of people won't like it and that they would like the traditional i mean i'm an old school survivor fan and there's a lot of things i still struggle with new school survivor myself sometimes so i don't hate the fact that some people might not agree with both myself and jake here and how we see it but i do like the fact that it's a little bit harder for you to just get idols and that you can't overpower your way through the game with idols alone like you have to have that dynamic between social play and idols but you know either way i'm excited to see what they do for 43 and 44 because they definitely won't be able to do the same thing i think the cat's out of the bag with how they've done the last two seasons and we've got in our entertainment value out of it with mike doing a horrible like i mean horrible job at talking about soccer having no grace like i mean if people if people weren't suspicious like hell man like i would have been super suspicious because you know when you're lying people always try and over complicate or overtell you so many things in the in the story and her story was long-winded drea was an expert at it like she was so smooth you would have thought it is actually it made sense the way she said it you know definitely yeah and i really liked it like last season when ricard

36:05 Really was able to get xander into it like really smoothly was like and yeah we're all going crazy out here jeff and xander was even saying something what was it that you said again and then he was able to repeat it that was really good and then yeah andrea did it so good and then marianne has been such a trooper these past episodes just having the same with sander like they just had to repeat it over and over again and people are just like what are you saying right now and mike just kind of like in the seer last season except he did it even worse he just yeah just comes out says it what is it what is he even referring to right now and he says you may be wondering why i said that and they're like yeah we are and then he just doesn't he just it's the most long-winded story it's the most long-winded story i've ever heard and like the thing with nasir i think why he got away with it is because again his first language isn't english and also there's that cultural thing so people would probably be like ah maybe wherever he's from that makes sense i don't know what that means but we don't want to be culturally insensitive to what he's saying so i feel like he had a bit of plot armor or like traditional armor around him for being able to say that but yeah it's going to be interesting i do like the fact here that you know they end up sending some people to shipwheel island just before we get back to the pre-tribal section and roxroy and

37:25 Lindsey both i'm sorry lin lydia are both on the shipwheel island and they both are trying to like figure each other out get a little bit of information but it's kind of like they're almost exactly the same player in some ways like the way that they're playing it very cautiously and they both choose to save their vote like i mean this season's been amazing because the players have just been completely giving us different outcomes compared to the previous season and it's actually been fun to see how different it is this season you know but yeah the most awkward like you could just tell these two they're not going to jive long term because there's not even they didn't trust each other with this littlest of information they did not use this opportunity to build anything and i feel like it's probably more rockstar's fault than lydia because i feel like lydia maybe she would have given a little bit more but rockstar probably is very standoffish yeah i mean this just kind of goes to show like rock soy just has a bit of trouble with the social game i mean and it probably does relates to lydia in zero ways and like he probably has absolutely no nothing in common with her and that's definitely a flaw that he can't figure out how to maneuver that because we've seen players bond before that like jonathan nomer that you have nothing in common

38:45 That we can see but they're you know tight and they're able to kind of figure find common ground and you know omer and chanel don't really seem to have much in common either and they were able to kind of make a connection a little bit but very yeah it's just you couldn't pick two like any more different players than those two and put them on the island and i mean i knew lydia wasn't going to risk her vote because she didn't want to be the next chanel especially because they were going to tribal but roxtroy i mean i don't think it was a surprise to anyone either that he protected his vote because that's just how he plays the game christian here did say lydia's flashback episode was this episode we got to learn a little bit about her backstory someone that has always struggled like she said with self-image and it's something that's very common for a lot of girls i believe you know guys in general have sometimes more confidence and sometimes it's unwarranted but sort of talks about the fact you know that this has been a journey for her just the self-discovery and feeling comfortable with who she is so we got a little bit of backstory here i'm a little bit worried for lydia with this coming up now it could be a

40:05 Sign she's two or three episodes away from being gone because i mean she's had absolutely zero edit up until this point and for all purposes i mean if you follow her twitter account you'd probably think she's like a courtney yates type of character like really sassy and funny and we're not seeing any of that and i think there is a reason we're not really seeing that personality come up and i think that this tells us that her story is more about similar to daniel it's about a journey and you know self-fulfillment or finding herself on this island it's not really tied to the wind for me at this point it's kind of what i'm reading in it i don't know if you're seeing it differently no i can see what you mean i don't think that she has really given us much gameplay and of course there's the whole merge to go where she can kind of blossom and maybe make something happen but at the moment i think we're kind of come to think that she's with high and he's kind of taken over the strategic bulk of the duo yeah i agree i was going to say as well it's interesting she does end up saving her vote here obviously i think it was a no-brainer she had to save her vote she couldn't risk it at this point just with the way the votes were in that specific tribe similar to how it

41:26 You know we mentioned mike considering activating his idol so he could get his vote back was probably the right decision here as well but obviously that makes them very excited because it does give all the power to hi and his alliance to be able to split the vote going into the tribal council and they do a good job talking to both chanel and daniel here to make them believe that they're going to be the person that they're gonna work with moving forward into the game i guess ultimately here i'm sort of interested to know from yuri do you think that they made the right decision like if you were in their shoes and you had to choose between either daniel and chanel who do you think is the better player to keep in the game that would have been a tough one personally i probably would have gotten rid of chanel because as i kind of said earlier i just think she has a bit more social awareness and overall i think just a better player honestly and i mean i think chanel probably is going to jump ship i mean she doesn't really i don't know she doesn't really have much loyalty to hai and lydia and or even mike especially where they just split the vote on her like she was the backup you know yeah in case daniel played a shot in the dark so

42:47 She has really no allegiance to them and she's gonna i think they both wouldn't have had allegiance to their tribe and who has more like kind of more to work with and i think chanel does i don't think daniel is really going to make some noise as much as you know i was very sort of my attention went to a specific scene in this episode when i watched it for the second time around where when lydia comes back from shipwheel island she has a conversation with chanel and chanel asks her is everything okay and lydia's like yep votes solid this is how it's going to go and chanel says okay i'm comfortable with both you and mike she does not mention hi and hi is the person this whole episode that is really wary of chanel so i always look at it from a sense of who's the biggest winners and losers for each one of these votes i feel like you know i've been a very big high supporter and we do get a lot of content from high now as one of the people that are giving us a little bit of strategic this is strategically where we need to go this is strategically what we have to do i do feel like mike got his way here potentially and that there is a better bigger relationship between her and mike than what we potentially realize as an audience at this point and

44:07 I'm going to make a very bold call here i feel like mike going into this merge now we're seeing a lot about people wanting to be friends with him who's going to outlive who and we're going to be friends forever and mike is just a genuinely nice guy i'm going to make a big call i think mike is the player to watch out for in this tribe going into the merge i think socially he's gonna absolutely kill it when he gets to the merge and he's gonna find other people from other tribes that are fractured that are gonna want to work with him because he's going to come across as a nice and trustworthy and stand-up guy even though he doesn't look like the strategic mastermind we've been getting a lot of mike from the beginning from the opening episode until now there's not been a single episode but we haven't been told what mike's thinking or what he's doing out there even some of the silly moments with him losing his idol and talking about how that happened you know like why show us so much of mike so i've got a feeling mike is the dark horse going he's my he's my blue chip stock that i'll put some money on going into the merch as a potential underdog winner or underdog deep person from this tribe do you see it that way or do you have someone else in mind here that potentially we're missing out on or are you sort of on that as well with me i think i'm on that as well i might be a little biased because mike was my second guy pick

45:27 I believe coming into the draft and i really could be really couldn't be any more satisfied with that pick i mean you were a bit dumbfounded by that choice and in the moment i was like oh crap maybe i shouldn't have done that i mean did you make a mistake yeah i mean i like we said i mean we were just not high on the guys as much coming into this season so i was like i mean i guess mike is really who i've got to go with at this point and i really i really couldn't be happier i mean i think that he's killing it and i think he will continue to kill it specifically because of his social game and that's what i think most of us were a bit worried about was that he wasn't really gonna be able to relate to these people and make those his social games good yeah so social games rock solid i think he's in a in a very solid position at the moment with hai and potentially chanel and looks like lydia likes him as well even though we've seen very of her but yeah you've got you've got quite a few people still left here on this team before we start talking about how we think people are going to go into the merge how are they going to do who's our power rankings for the merge i think would be interesting to talk

46:47 About the top three players we think for this episode and then let's talk about who our top three picks are to do well in the merge but before we go into that interesting thing that i did observe though is that chanel plays the rogue vote on mike here now i know you're the numbers guy so i'll get you to let me know if you can see any reason why she would have done that and then secondly i thought it was quite interesting that she was playing it off saying it definitely wasn't her that did that vote because you could see mike was actually upset about it i got nothing you got nothing i'm like why she could have she could have she could have made it a definite daniel vogel and she could have just put one on daniel it would have been three to two daniel's gone no re-vote necessary but i found it interesting that even as daniel was leaving she was trying to like she had that look in her eyes like hey daniel look at me i'm so sorry type of thing she was really emphasizing with her and i think that relationship she actually did care for daniel on a personal level i feel like where did it go wrong for these two jake like i feel like they could have been such a strong pair it's just that crumbled in their previous episode with daniel calling chanel out and i do blame daniel more than chanel in that instance really you never publicly call an ally out very interesting

48:07 Relationship we had from these two what i've come to i actually listened to or read his interview with dalton ross and come to find out that you know after jenny in episode one talked about her journey to shipwool island and how they had to choose to protect or risk their vote and they saw that like oh more people are going to get sent here chanel and daniel had a private conversation telling each other if we go do not risk your vote like under any circumstances don't do it especially if we're going to tribal that you know that episode and chanel just completely disregarded that i think that she i don't know what she thought she was doing she like played some like 5d chess with omar like convincing him that like she needs to protect her vote but is actually gonna i don't know i'm giving myself a headache even trying to explain that i mean it's better and then so i mean of course that's on chanel because she just completely went back on her promise but then daniel just has to blow i think chanel is good about it i think chanel's good enough socially to be able to mend that bridge with omar and just say hey sorry like listen i blew

49:27 Both out games up like clearly there was a misunderstanding and i feel like they did like each other enough to work together at the merge so i mean that's another hidden relationship that shipwheel island has given us that could play out in the merge yeah i mean we saw last season there was with evie and deshawn she where she spilled the beans that xander had the idol and we kind of see that come to bite her later so this could be a good thing or a bad thing i mean we didn't see chanel giving up really any valuable information but could be could be a relationship to see and it's going to be interesting when omer comes to find out that he does not have a vote at the next tribal council he might think that he has an extra vote but chanel i don't know if she's gonna have a conversation with him saying yeah sorry buddy i risked it and clearly you risked it too because i lost mine so yeah well that could be that could be what she needs to use to get into taku's good graces or amara's good graces she could build some capital there to say listen i'm happy to vote with you or something it'll be interesting to see how that plays out i'm just wondering as we're thinking about chippewa island this last advantage because it was pretty boring the advantages this season on shipwrew island and i think it did miss with the

50:48 Extra vote every single time like i feel like an extra votes not that exciting as an advantage i'm wondering if this last advantage that nobody got if that was the knowledge's power advantage and if it was yeah thank goodness that we did not see it come into the game because i'm an absolute hater of that advantage luckily it played out in a good way with xender and everybody could outsmart forgot the girl's name last season lyanna when it came to it so because i was very pro that twist not working but i really hate that twist especially in the season where it's so easy to know who's got the idol because of the phrases you know so happy to not see that let's get into our top three players for this week let's make it brief on this one and we can go into a little bit more detail of who we think will be the top players i guess going into the merge at number three who would you have at your number three spot i think i'm gonna go withdraw yep and i think yeah we kind of went over why i think out of anyone on ika i think she definitely has the best chance to win i think tori might make it far but i just don't see it her being able to get the votes to maybe

52:08 Win and romeo as we said i think he's they're going to be on the bottom and i don't know if he can really make something happen but draya's got a lot of as she said she's rich she's survivor rich she's got three advantages extra vote yeah extra vote amulet idol so that's a lot and that's nothing to scoff at that can definitely make something happen especially if she's able to save it and kind of get safe through a few votes where the numbers have kind of dwindled down and if romeo can become her trish then maybe that whole draft being tony vloggers 2.0 comes to fruition you know yeah i've been saying this whole season my third place is gonna be omar i think omar for me still is the winner pick at this stage and i think that us seeing him trying to keep everybody happy and calm is the right read going into a merge situation where we've got 444 as a split which is very exciting to see there's no tribe going into a majority position here and he knows that marianne is a tool to be used at this stage she's got the idol she's got an extra vote you do not want to piss that off and send that into an opposite direction so that she can blow you up you know you

53:28 Don't you don't want to do that so i feel like omar for me goodreads still top free pick here this episode who's your number two my number two is actually elmer kind of for the same reasons as you said he's placed very well within this taco alliance and as we were kind of saying we think that the taku is going to be the cool kids you know the hot kids on the block coming into the and elmer's prison positioned really well within those where he's got marianne and jonathan both kind of as his close allies and overall i just think he has a really good social game and a mind for the game and he's got a potential ally in chanel perhaps so i just think he has a lot of potential coming into this now my number two pick for this week is going to be mike and like i said mike is starting to climb up for me he feels to me like socially he is doing extremely well and we know this is a social game so i think that if mike gets to the end somehow i just have a feeling he's winning it socially like people are just liking him they want to be friends with him outside of this game he's clearly a likable character now he did make a bit of a mistake in explaining why soccer is such a graceful

54:48 Game that it makes him cry which is a little bit not the greatest you can mark him down maybe one for that but i do feel like him keeping chanel in the game and also having heidi and lydia i feel like he's in a rock solid position to go into this tribe and if there is any hope for this tribe to galvanize them together i actually feel like it's mike more so than high for some other reason ohio doesn't seem to like that one comment and again i'm just this is one comment for one conversation and a 24-hour day that happened where chanel said i'm close with you and mike to lydia i think that kind of shows me that hai isn't socially hitting home with everyone the way we would think he would you know chris i think you kind of used it as a negative that it was just one comment a 24 hour day it's interesting that they have 24 hours to work with and they chose to show that one to put that one comment in the episode and you know they have to really use their time wisely in these episodes so one little moment they think hard long and hard about putting it in so could definitely mean something so yeah all right so your number one

56:08 Picnic for this week who is that jake i guess i'm kind of just shifting one up from you because my number one is mike and basically for the reasons you said i think that he just has really good social game and i might be overrating it a little bit just because it's just so much better than i expected it to be but i really think that if he's close with lydia who is just kind of similar to her and roxroy very different people you know gen z versus i believe maybe boomer baby boomer or gen x i'm not sure exactly how i think of boomer yeah so that's pretty impressive that he's able to and he's bonding with high too like yeah and as you pointed out that comment seems to maybe he's close with chanel although they did vote for each other but i just think that he's got a lot working in his favor going into the he's got an idol now that people may or may not know about based on the phrases yeah i like him coming into the merge definitely someone yeah for me and you are kind of funny we've got the same top three but we've added in different orders my number one is dreyer going into it and

57:28 I've got a christian here in the chat asking do you think drea has the sepia or natalie anderson vibe to them i think more natalie anderson vibe for me personally than recipient i think vesipia from memory was socially really good i don't think that drea is a great social player but i think she's that kind of player that if she gets to the end people are just going to look at her and she's either gonna be a russell hans type of player who don't win because she's too cutthroat and the game moves but then we're in a different era of survivor now where people respect get big game moves sometimes at the expense of social game unless you're a horrible person to others out there and you're bullying them i think that drea if she gets to the end we said it last week with russell muscle on the podcast if she gets to the end she is going to have to play out of her skin to get there because i feel like she's such a big physical threat she's clearly strategic people can see that she's constantly thinking about the game she's got all of these different advantages somewhere down the line because also having all these advantages is a double-edged sword because the more you have to play these advantages at tribal council the more you build your resume so it's also about when do you play it do you play at early merge do you play at mid merge or later in the merge like ideally you want to keep that as long as you can so you don't have to make those big moves similar to how you don't want to win challenges from the first episode

58:48 Or the first day after merch you know you want to time it out right so drea's biggest challenge in the game is going to be how does she play her advantages and when does she play it and then her other biggest stumbling block is she does not have a strong call she's going to have to go find a call because she's got romeo and that's it so i'm fearful in regards to that but i still respect the fact that you know she's survivor rich she's got all these things she's got the idol this episode romeo wants to coach her to become a better player and win the game he's not even thinking about winning it himself anymore he's now playing it for draya i mean if you've got other players they're playing for you to win you're doing something right you know at the end of the day if they're willing to sacrifice their game and coach you to become better and lift you up you know survivor that's a that's a powerful tool she's got there she needs to bottle that and sell it she'll make a lot of money you know let's get into the power rankings real quick i know we want to keep it as close as possible to our today jake has got some other commitments he's got to jump onto as well otherwise we would have dragged this out a little bit longer so maybe not we won't go into too much detail for this here but rattle off who's your top three players doesn't need to be in this particular order if you don't want to but who do you think is the top three players to look out for going into the merge i think kind of similar to our top three i think mike is someone jonathan and omar those three

1:00:08 Are those two kind of i'm thinking more as one because i think they're going to stick together either one of them definitely going to make something happen and hai i think has definitely some strategic ability to him but there may be a bit of flaws in his social game as you pointed out but overall i think he's solid it's kind of similar to my top three this week honestly i think drea i mean we went over it she has some advantages and i think she's gonna play really hard and that's definitely good so christian here says top contenders big threats to win jonathan dreyer and hai as their top second contenders group under the group just under the biggest threats to winners omar marianne mike romeo and lindsay and then third which is the last group not that high on tory and chanel at this stage for me personally i don't know like it's funny how when we came into the season we were very low on taku and now i'm like the highest on taku and i agree with russell that someone from taku is winning this season i just think it's them i find it very hard to look outside of them but i mean it's early days survivor us do have a way of tricking us

1:01:28 With the edit so definitely something different can still happen i'm not putting it out there but let's look at this objectively i think omar biggest winner pick for me at this point i still think he's got to be in the top three somewhere it's hard not to put jonathan in there even though i know i'll probably regret it if he gets voted out of the merge or the second episode because he doesn't win an immunity but i feel like he's we've just seen so much of jonathan so it's either billing him up to become the next james clement the next euros versus villains fans versus favorite returnee person that is going to be you know a legend of the game in the future he's in the new era colby donaldson you know or maybe he goes out there and smashes the record that's been there since australian outback maybe he won six amenities this season i'd love to see it i know some people would be low on that and they'd be like ah he won his way to the end it's less impressive i beg to differ if you can break a record that's been out there for that many years then that's going to be pretty impressive so maybe omar jonathan is hard to look past them in there and then my wild card pick is like drea i'd have to put drea in there i just think that she's someone that can just go in there and really smash this game right open like the hourglass maybe that is what we see next week i think christian asked something about the hourglass here i'm just going to try and see if i can find that comment all right so here we go so christian

1:02:48 Says just curious do you think we're going to see someone smash the hourglass this season and do you think the winner of the season is coming from the one who decides the hourglass like erica i'm putting it out there that lightning is not going to strike twice natalie anderson came back from edge of extinction she didn't win that after the age of extinction which i think shows that things don't happen in pairs necessarily in survivor so i don't think he ever smashes it wins it this season and i think that someone might i think someone will smash it because they're going to be in a position again where it won't make sense not to smash it i'm thinking but i think it'll be less lethal like i feel like it's not gonna like i don't know how maybe it's like peers for immunity or individual immunity and one person's i just hope that the immunity doesn't get taken away i just hope they have reworked the twist and it means something different daniel comes back into the game time is returned and he's now also part of the merge you know i'll even take that i'll even take that zach comes back zach comes back at the first boots back in the game i think we kind of forget what a crazy situation like kind of everything kind of fell together perfectly for erica because she felt like she was on the bottom of lulu and i believe that the group that had one immunity and she could have that

1:04:08 She ended up choosing to strip the immunity from had like four people from lulu on there yeah there's like deshawn danny and the seer i forget who i think it might have been no because sydney ended up going home so or no so it would have been yeah so sydney was on there because she ended up yeah so she wanted to screw them over so yeah so i mean she's like plus i mean she would have been one of like six people that is vulnerable if she didn't smash it like i mean there was no okay there was no choice that's what exactly that's something i just forgot about that yeah jeff's like so do you want to be do you want to give up 100 of the immunity next vote why would you say no yeah why would yeah plus your odds is like suddenly you're in a top six situation without having any bonds with the people that are vulnerable like it just didn't make any sense and her tribe just sent her to wherever she went the age or whatever they want to call it they just send her there so i mean she had no loyalty to them at that point like what's all sphere in love and war so but i think it plays out differently this season definitely it's gonna be yeah it's gonna be like i said all these things came

1:05:29 Together where it was someone that was on the bottom of their tribe and all of her tribe was on that tribe that won so it's like if we get like lindsay who goes to the island and then jonathan and omar are on the tribe that win she's probably going to choose to save him because those are her allies and she's close with them and jonathan is probably going to be a threat to the people at the merge and they're going to consider him to vote him out so i think that it's just a different situation this time around yeah christian here last question before we say goodbye here on the live stream christian says i can see that in this season that someone gives up immunity at the final four makes fire and loses the fire challenge it's a bold prediction it's your thoughts i think you're 100 right christian and that person would be drea she's the only one who would have the confidence to do that and then lose the fire challenge because she would go up against jonathan saying that she can do it better as a woman she can do it better as a better than a man you know and she will go out there and lose to jonathan because he's a beast but yeah i mean listen anything can happen at the end of the day i think it's a scenario we haven't seen yet but i would still respect the player if they did that like i mean natalie anderson if she lost against tony at fire and winners at war i think people would have looked at that game

1:06:49 Because a lot of people still now know that it hurts her because she feels like she played a great game most people don't think she played a great game i don't think she played a great game at winners at war she physically did well she did well in the in the edge but she didn't take on the biggest target when everybody at the edge said tony gets to the end he wins so you really have one choice you can either say okay well i guess there's money involved right because second place get a hundred grand so i can't be too tough on her it's like listen either i came here for a holiday or i came here to get 100 grand i don't know maybe i make the same decision but if you wanted to win you should have gone up against tony and if you lost against tony i would have respected you still for trying to take out the best player that season you know all right jake it's been great talking to you about survivor season 42 episode five you know next week we've got the merch episode coming up i'm really excited about that potentially we'll have a guest on if we don't have a guest on next week i'm still trying to lock that and we definitely have one confirmed for the week after that and there will be some more survivor players that will come on sadly the person we were going to have on this week couldn't make it they're at the moment busy filming as well in australia so weren't talking about any anything more than that leave it up for the reddit speculation if they come across this podcast of who could potentially be filming in australia right now what shows may be currently hitting

1:08:09 Australia very soon maybe a paramount show who knows jake it's been great talking to you we'll talk next week again and for christian here in the live stream thank you so much for being so active if you're listening to this later on if it's even in the audio format please jump on youtube consider subscribing and liking the video comment below to go into the draw when we hit 1000 subs for the five australian sorry survivor us merch buffs from season one to five it's gonna be a great giveaway that we'll do when we hit a thousand subs here on the channel as always guys enjoy your evening and catch you next time