Survivor 42: Episode 6 Recap

0:00 Welcome back to the nullify take where we've got the tnt takes for you on survivor 42 episode 6 i believe the merge episode i'm your host chris and with me today is my co-host jake for survivor us and one of my fellow podcasters who've spoken to us many times about australian survivor and the amazing race michelle welcome to the podcast for the first time here this year to talk about survivor us how have you been doing good i thought i did one other but i am so confused because end of last term was just chaos yeah i mean great to come in for a double episode yes so exciting and jake how excited were you and welcome to the podcast that this was a double episode and we didn't end up with a non-alumni elimination like we did last year yeah last year was not on top of that you know pretty awful twist that we'll get into again this time it just was lame to just be left on a cliffhanger that we kind of already knew what was gonna happen but this week it definitely made it better that we actually got to see what came to be from it yeah it flowed pretty well i agree 100 christian welcome to the live stream here

1:20 Before we get into this episode i wanted to go back and have a look at our rankings that we had for the players prior to the merge just have a look and see where everybody is sitting coming into this merge and then we'll get into the episode itself for those that unaware myself and jake have been ranking players each episode and with the help of our guests we've been giving people a score that we've either ranked them as first second or third and they would get three points two points or one points depending on where they're sitting and these are the rankings for us going into the merge let me just magnify that for you guys slightly there jonathan is out in front leading prior to the merge i think he was largely helped by jake by putting him in first quite a few times but omar who's my winner pick for the season who i'm still very high on and we'll talk about that still doing really well in the top three they're high in the top three and then drea those are the four top players coming into the merge and obviously this does not take into account anything that happened here in this episode now michelle this is the first time that you're seeing this point system that we've got in place and how we're ranking players here i had to let it go for australian survivor because it was too one-sided with mark just running away with that yeah right from the start

2:40 But what do you think about the rankings coming into the merch here are we missing someone on this list here if you look at the top four on there that you think oh maybe that person's being shaded a little bit coming into the merge i think marianne look she's all over the shop but she does have some good strategy there and she does think quite a bit about strategy i think you've got her too low but she's probably going to crash and burn anyway i'm surprised you got omar so high up very high and we'll talk about that because i thought i thought he had a very impressive episode here as well and jake knows that i have had the omar watch going on since the beginning of the season my spidey senses have been tingling because he just seems to be the glue that's keeping taku together and he's getting confessionals at certain key times where i'm like why are we hearing your thoughts here like you know it's just kind of like they're inserting it in there and i do think that we're going to see some great things of him going forward i also just want to say hello to our nunes who is saying hi chris michelle and jake welcome to the live stream christian is saying i'm so glad jonathan didn't get voted out thank you omar for busting your balls to save members of taku let's be honest

4:01 Omar is the real mvp of this last episode because i think it would have been so boring if we lost jonathan here in the first episode at the merchant i think jake coming into this episode that's what both you and myself we were fearing this russell muscle who was on the podcast he sort of put it out there into the ether that maybe the merge episode and the hourglass is going to be the thing that seems jonathan home how close was it how did you feel about this episode and jonathan's chances of actually staying in the game i mean it's pretty miraculous that it didn't happen honestly i mean omar had to do quite a bit of work and i'm not going to act like it was all over i mean jonathan clearly went out and made that alliance happen with i believe was mike dreya mike treya you sigh hi that's yeah hi mike all those guys and lindsay and then he was able to i mean he started targeting his own alliance marianne and omer kind of had to be like okay look calm down i've got this but that alliance ended up coming together and finding the common target which hai ended up

5:22 Kind of turning on his own very interesting and we'll talk about all of the moves but let's get into the start of this episode let's get into it's a double episode we've got quite a lot to talk about here michelle we start off on the blue tribe the icca tribe they've just voted out swati and they go back to camp and they are talking about staying together but tori's got different plans she knows that she was nearly out of this game she's following roxroy around trying to get information from him he's trying to get rid of her what do you think of this ekka tribe here before they go into the merch in this early stages with rockstar not wanting to tell anything to tory but tori being very interesting throughout this episode i think we learned a bit more about that relationship between tori and the rest of her tribe members here early on and i think once again this kind of proves to me why getting rid of swati may not have been the best move for them to keep cohesion look tori is just erratic she's ah look she's got some good strategies there but she can't her social game is so bad that she's not going to make it through i mean unless some miracle happens she's just two gung-ho two bullet gate

6:43 She's she drives me crazy like how fast was she talking at one point last night i'm like oh my god slow down i could just understand you and the poor people there she's getting more and more hyped and i'm thinking god if i was there i'd need you out because you're just like this loose cannon and yeah and the whole tribe was just a mess yeah i think tori and we're going to talk a lot about her moving forward as well here jake but as we move through this episode we find out that guess what guys season 41 and 42 were filmed back to back i better cover my own ass and let you guys know that twist that you hated last season is coming back this season the hourglass twist but wait we've thrown a couple of different things in here he kind of sounded like a tv commercial guy but wait there's more we'll also give them a little bit of information here to make them choose maybe differently in regards to who's actually going to be going to exile and we find out that the hourglass is coming back what did you think of the variation to the twist here and letting the winning tribe know that this could be a game-changing reward that you're going to be giving up but also putting a little bit of that i guess applebee's restaurant incentive in there for people not to want to go and take this reward especially in the season where

8:03 They've been starved to death i think that it was actually it was better but i mean the twist overall i just don't think it works i think they're just forcing it just i just think that it's kind of a twist just to be a twist if i'm being honest i think that it is a bit interesting to think like okay yeah we took away a lot of their food and now we're going to give them this massive reward but also at the same time say you can either take the reward or give massive power to roxroy of all people and that just that did end up getting some pretty funny scenes on the exile island but okay jake if you're in the tribe i know i would go for trying to get myself sent i would want to go and don't worry about the food i want to get sent what would you jake or chris what would you do if you were in that flag so hard to say because we're not out there we don't know how bad the hunger is actually hitting you and i feel like you know especially for jonathan i just want to say i just want to say especially for jonathan i mean the guy said what he eats 18 or 21 eggs every morning like i mean the amount of calories that guy's used to consuming

9:24 And being out there i understand he was the biggest threat coming into the merge and for us as armchair critics we'll sit back here and say oh you know he definitely made the wrong decision he should have taken himself there but i bet you he was hurting on a level that none of us can understand out there i have i've never brought this up in any of the podcasts i bring up the most random crap jake but i've once done this it's basically like a starvation diet because you don't eat anything you just have liquid and i've done it for seven days and the three four day mark you're in serious trouble you want to eat so bad but by day seven you're like food yeah i'd like to have some but i'm okay if i don't have any so i know from day seven onwards yeah you'd be starving but i think i'd be able to go so you just built different you just think that you could you could take it yeah okay we need to we need to be able to project we need to get michelle out there on the island go get her to go starve on the island so we can we can hold her accountable if she's exactly the choice because so many people have been great players think about think about kim spradlin and winners at war when she stepped off in a challenge where she needed the immunity and people were criticizing her for it she's a great player she's been out there and have done it before but it shows that i think hunger does

10:44 Get to you out there but i think the more interesting question for me here is i mean obviously you know they bring applebee's on they went absolutely crazy about applebee's myself and michelle are not from there is applebee's really that popular okay here's the thing am i a bit of a snob for saying this i just don't get it i don't get oh good okay yeah like i just i if i'm being honest like it's i would never go there i just i don't i think i've been there like once or twice in my life with like with like my family on some random weekday night but that wouldn't get me going at all like food would get me going if they were just like yeah burgers i'd be like okay yeah burgers but not specifically applebee's burgers it's like not giving me any satisfaction jake so you're clearly not with karishma then and saying that applebee's is your favorite restaurant out there applebee's to me kind of looks like a denny's to be honest like would you say it's similar to a denny's it's a slightly more sophisticated yeah it's for the more sophisticated folk who aren't willing to go to denny's yeah we can relate to denny's we've got denny's in australia and new zealand i know that much at least we know what denny's is and

12:04 It kind of looks like being there but i know what it is yeah i'll pretend like i've never been there as well just to fit in with this crew here today but i may have been there once or twice before also wanted to look into one of the comments that i made here in the live stream that says that kerry robinson says kerry welcome to the stream live stream saying going would be good but it does take you away for two days at a critical time when the tribes are merging together you miss out on building bonds cross alliance so you really have to have someone at the camp that is going to do a lot of work for you and obviously and roxroy's advantage here was that bond that he formed with drea and with romeo actually looks to be a lot stronger than what we probably thought it was prior to going into this merge and he kind of i think benefited from both drea and also romeo doing a lot of work to try and build this new alliance for him when he got back to camp so it could have been a hell of a lot worse for roy is what i'm trying to say but luckily he had people there that sort of worked for him a little bit to get those bonds i do want to talk and we'll definitely get into the immunity challenges as well but because we're on the exile island and the twist itself now let's continue to talk about this for me the hourglass always remains a non-option like i mean

13:24 You get an option to either be one of six people that are gonna get voted home or you can get yourself immunity and survive another vote and not be one of six people that's gonna go home who in their right mind will ever choose anything differently so that's why this twist for me is a zero out of ten it fails every time michelle because there is no choice to be made in the first place exactly you're going to smash it every time the only the only thing i was i was gutted about here is that they didn't give him the hourglass to smash in front of torrey's face at the immunity that would have just been dramatically so great when she was going off at home if they were like here's another hourglass let's just get you to smash it in front of her face to see how she would react to it like tori do you want to get voted out what's wrong with you why are you talking like that in front of everybody seriously woman now she's she's just letting everything loose about her old tribe and then drea is backing that up immediately by saying tori can't shut her mouth about anything and people are saying yes you're absolutely right she can't and she's got to be counting her blessings as she won that immunity because i think she would have been toast yeah i agree

14:44 I think that you know luckily for her she could back up her talk in the immunity and actually pull it out which is impressive still for her to win against obviously very capable people out there but let's track back to the immunity that well the non-immunity that happened beforehand let's call it a reward challenge in this case christian here says that jonathan is a team player on any team and challenge that he plays in and he was really impressive in this challenge carrying people again through that lifting them up he's always impressive are you kidding me yeah god he's like aquaman slash any superhero there has ever been well everybody is talking about jonathan and i love jonathan as well in fact you know i have many a conversations with i know michelle you've got your fan page and we've got another fan page survival worldwide which philip is the admin and creator of that page me and him talk a lot about this and he's like you love jonathan too much and i was like you clearly haven't listened to our podcast because i love him but jake is his number one fan like i am number two when it comes to jonathan but i wanted to mention a little bit of shade throwing your way here jake but i wanted to mention let's give some credit to mike for this challenge because i thought you know he wasn't a losing tribe but the way that he galvanized the team and kept them together and really pushed people through that challenge and staying calm when drea was

16:04 Absolutely flailing out and coming up with a different strategy so that romeo can go back down and get dry up there i thought mike led his team very admirably as well and let's give a little bit of credit to mike as well which i'm sure we'll talk about mike very soon because he had a very impressive merch episode as well definitely i think he did really well with basically it was like flopping around like a fish on that like big boulder thing just like use my body as a ladder like yeah that must have been painful like i saw draya was like walking on his back i know she wasn't being gentle at all no she wasn't but i think we really got to see how bad the players have it out there with someone like drea who to me looks like she's physically it's either her or lindsay who are the physically most capable females out there but someone like her struggling like she did there for one moment there i thought she was gonna faint she was out of breath like it just shows you the toll that this game has taken on them and i think it gives you again another appreciation for why applebee's may have been so enticing and you might have thought it's like a michelin restaurant type of meal that you're gonna get just because you're that hungry michelle when you're out there yeah so i think it was it was impressive to see but ultimately

17:24 We obviously see jonathan's try pull it out it was pretty one-sided they get the puzzle put together before anybody else can get up there and really challenge for it and they send rocks to exile now the only other thing we haven't spoken about on exile we've spoken a lot about the decision we've spoken a lot about the twist but jake you and me both we've been low on rocks for most of the season we've given them a lot of crap on this podcast at times rightfully so the editors are doing a really good job at painting the picture of this corporal or this general at camp that just barks orders what did you think of rox's story here in this episode and it's specifically learning a bit more about his personal life and the eyesight that he's got that potentially he will lose in the future and that he has to take the beauty and i thought we saw a very different picture here from roxane dare i say i might even be a rockstar fan moving forward here i might want him to do really well in the game because of this one episode listen i've always i don't think i've crapped on roxroy like as a character at all i think it was all based on his the game gameplay yeah very lackluster which kind of continues into this episode but overall as a character i thought he's been pretty fascinating honestly like in this new modern

18:45 Survivor we mainly see people that are just so into the game and just you know can't really take themselves out of it whereas rockstar seems like he's way more like into season six butch survivor amazon gather the firewood and keep the fire going and get the shelter going and so he was just living his best life out there on exile and i thought it was honestly i was i was fascinated like i said i think really cool story of just appreciating where he is in life you know he just kept saying like ugh i'm so lucky to be here and i think that would be me as well even if i'm out there alone two days and two nights might rain on me you know i have to build a shelter by myself keep the fire going no food i would still be like wow i'm on survivor i'm in fiji like this is incredible and so it's just really cool to see someone actually kind of appreciate that yeah and the people on my group the ones who didn't like him all of a sudden said oh god now he's making me like him now because of the whole thing that he said i mean survivor really pulled at the heartstrings this episode with them with

20:05 With hi and who else was with romeo i mean really pulled at the heartstrings with all three of their stories and i thought wow we don't really get this in australian survivor we don't get to know what rocks and lifting the balls and you know hardly any confessionals and if you get a confessional it's just strategy it's not really personal life to any great extent yeah i was gonna i was gonna say it's all about gameplay big moves these two players are the only people that you should worry about or care about in regards to the game plan but like jake said before we went live here that apparently the confessionals are that well split at the moment that jonathan is the lowest person still in the game after this episode he's got the least confessionals which is hard to believe because i feel like we know jonathan so well and he's such a fan favorite already on the show that it really gives you an idea as to how well splitted all of these confessionals were and obviously i agree with kylie here saying that this was the best episode of the season because similar to the merge they gave everybody an opportunity to shine we heard everybody strategize we heard everybody's plans at the merge what they want to do to move forward in the game and i feel like some other franchises can learn from that or other seasons and if the editors ever listen to any of the fans hear this please continue

21:25 To do what you've been doing this season you've had it out of the park with the editor maybe it is just because the cast itself is so likable that people want to give them more airtime to actually tell us what they're thinking out there also marcus here mentioning that he loved roxroy saying to pros that he would have to interrupt him to attend to the rice he's very old-school type of player trapped in a very fast-paced game and yeah i love it i love roxroy i'm the same as you jake i never really pooed on him for who he is as a person or as a character but definitely his gameplay i thought was lacking at times prior to the merge and i think that his gameplay will continue to be lacking but we're now also getting to see this other side of him and for me it's just such a inspirational story and sad at the same time to know that he potentially could lose his vision in the near future and that he's only got limited time on earth to really take in the beauty of what samoa offers out there and i was impressed by his work ethic even on camp and putting that shelter together i don't know if anybody that listens to this podcast know who david goggins is he's an ultra marathon runner a very inspirational guy who was a navy seal and did a whole bunch of different things and rocks roy reminds me of david goggins his attitude to life and just getting on with it and getting things done and i think that it is admirable so i really enjoyed roxroy here in this episode but let's go back to the camp now obviously rockstar

22:45 Is left at exile the rest of the tribe is now going to merge and different people are going to start talking to each other here and we very quickly see that jake hyde does not want to be left behind he wants to take charge of this merch section he's the one that comes together with the six players that he's trying to form an alliance with that has elements of different tribes together and he very quickly paints a target on chanel now ultimately we know he's going to miss this opportunity to take chanel out here do you think that hai is playing too fast here or do you think this is the exact pocket that he wants to sit in as a new school survivor player if you don't make it happen someone else is going to make it happen out there yeah i think you just said it right there i think you got to take charge in this merge very fast-paced game that you know jeff is kind of pushing like oh it's only 26 days the game is so fast-paced and i think it honestly isn't especially with all these twists that are being thrown at them you just got to prepare for anything and you know have a backup plan and make sure you're safe and hai is absolutely doing that and i don't think you know i would be worried that maybe he's coming off as playing too hard to the other players but they seem to want to work with him after this episode i think drea you know just said like i'm absolutely

24:06 Not gonna vote high tonight like i really want to work with him i think a few other people like made comments that they're like yeah hi really like him so i think he's in a very good spot i think hai is more passionate to the camera during his confessionals and i think he tones it back up quite a bit when he speaks to the other tribe mates you can see that and i think that's good for him whereas you know tori is the same whether she's with the private camera crew or with the try mates he's very good at explaining his game i think he would be really killer at a final tribal council i think yeah it's interesting you mentioned about toning it down and talking one way to the cameras and one way to your camp members your tribe mates because i picked up something and i know i'm jumping ahead here but we'll definitely come back to this point i picked up something at tribal council where romeo was telling everybody his strategy and how he's approaching people and reading them when they're lying to him and i thought wow romeo you're being very open about how observant you are in front of jeff and the rest of your tribe i still find it amazing how this far into survivor where season 42 people still make these rookie mistakes out there michelle and they don't know how to differentiate between the person that they're

25:26 Going to be on camera or the person that they can be behind scenes and then how they should be perceived in front of their tribe members out there so i do think that romeo has a lot of fans i know online and i've spoken to a few of them on digital messaging and stuff like that but i'm fearful of romeo i don't think romeo is gonna do so well here i mean he's quite scared this episode as well jake in the early stages and doesn't want to make any moves and then suddenly when he gets immunity now he's suddenly ready to run around and make moves i feel like as a great player you should play with the same level of calmness and level headness no matter if you're at the bottom or if you're at the top and if you remember right jake that's my criticism that i had of romeo coming into the merge i said i don't know how he's going to play if he's at the bottom and i think we saw a little bit of this here i don't think he is the complete player i think you yeah you know i think i kind of defended you but i never fully was completely on board with that sentiment towards romeo but i think you totally were right with this episode i think he was very passive when he thought he was on the chopping block and then the second that it got reversed with roxroy he immediately was like i'm gonna take over this game you know it's like kind of like he and hai like switched places like hai was talking before when he had immunity that like i'm gonna take

26:46 Over this game and then the second that it switched romeo like kind of took his place and was like wanting to and ultimately romeo was on the wrong side of the vote so i don't really know if that ended up happening what he was saying but i thought romeo was really funny this episode even if he was a bit passive before the immunities ended up going his way overall i do i think i think he's gone soon i really do rami had a really great scene with hai where they talked about their experience as both gay men and some of the stereotypes they have to deal with and you know you could see it really bothered romeo out then this is the first time that we've had more than one i think and correct me if i'm wrong here chat or jake i know you probably have a better memory than myself but i feel like this is the first time we've had two gay men reach a merged tribe where they could have this type of conversation openly zeke and brett oh bro brett wasn't really openly gay though he kind of told it only to zeke so what about yeah and also and also ty and zeke did zeke and thai make the merch together i feel like they did i don't know if there was any scene with them

28:06 Talking about it together though but anyways even if it was wasn't the first time i still thought it was a really good scene yeah and also i forgot the other tug at the heart strings scene with jonathan and mike i was going to mention that next there's so many yeah it is it is so crazy and while we're on the topic of mike i find mike's social game to be the best social game out there and i think i called this as well jake i don't know how i'm calling these things in the previous episode when both me and you had mike rank really high i think this is the first time he made both our top threes going into last week and we were both very high on him because we thought his social game was of such a nature that when he hits the merge he's going to be able to fit in with a lot of different people and again here you see he's got hi who's close to he does have short-term memory though because in the beginning of the episode he says i would take a bullet for high and lydia and then he ends up moving out of the way as soon as lydia gets that bullet coming but you know outside of there i'm not gonna you know give him too much grief for that because you can't save everyone but i found it very interesting how he connects with so many different people on the island like mike michelle i think is a real contender to potentially go out and win this we might still be judging a book by its cover when we look at mike like even though he's telling us people look at me and they think i'm not intelligent people look at me and they think i'm not strategic

29:27 You know i think we as an audience may still be sleeping on mike even up until this point even with him telling us this to our faces and mike has had one of the most consistent edits so far this season from beginning to end so if it's not omar who i've been on and i know marcus has said that potentially omar could be the dummy winner edit like ricard was last season it's highly possible then mike is another potential option that i think could very well still win this season what do you think of mike here michelle while we're on the topic i can't sort of read him very well he's striking me a bit like a mark aussie survivor because he's sort of playing under the radar he's not really out there but he's got connections so i can't but he's not getting the edit that mark was getting so i'm really in two minds about what's going to happen with him jake what do you think of mikey in this merge episode for me if i had to rank him i don't know where he's going to be he might make my top threes i almost feel like he couldn't have played it better than what he did here in this spot i really don't know i mean like you said he kind of shot himself in the foot with what he was saying about taking a bullet for

30:47 For his alliance he didn't end up doing that in fact he ended up voting for her so that was a bit interesting i don't know if that was some the editors trying to clown him but maybe it was just that i don't know it was just meant to be an interesting confessional but i'm really impressed with mike and i think i may be a little biased because he's on my he's on my draft team that we did at the beginning of the season and i felt kind of like a fool after drafting him so high because i don't know him i was i just wasn't expecting you to be so low on him after it happened i think i was just expecting you to be like okay yeah hey i don't get it all right like i get it right most of the time an australian survivor you as survivor i don't think i've got that same impressive track record about who i think is going to win but what i am scared of is that both omar and mike is in your draft picks team and i think both of them are the best two like the best two shots to win this game at this point and i could be completely outplayed here towards the end of the game but i think i might take a slight lead after we do our removal of the lydia person from this game because lydia was in your in your draft pick team here as well i do want to talk a little bit about the advantages because

32:07 The advantages that are still in the game shell it allows for different people here at the merge episode to have conversations with each other so obviously i forgot about the whole amulet thing it came out last night like oh that's right what does it do i can't remember so many advantages but the interesting fun dynamic here is that you've got high lydia and who's the last person lindsay say lindsay hi and who's andrea there we go so they're getting together here to have a conversation about if they're going to work together and they're all saying to each other yeah we the numbers are so much more important than having an immunity idle or having the stronger power in the game but you know that those three are behind their backs they've got the knife ready to go and they're going to be cutting each other very soon like who do you think is the person most likely to get it over the others here because hai seems to be the one that is vocalizing at the most of the camera so i feel like he's going to make the first move he's vocalizing can i really trust these people or lindsay said that i think trey has got it over lindsay at least yeah she could be equal with i yeah i know drea says that she wants to work with high but

33:27 I think that's just temporary i think that she's eventually going to want to cut him and i think that prediction time putting on my prediction hat here i think drea is going to make a huge move in a couple of episodes to take him out and then who knows what's going to happen with lindsay but maybe she spills the beans about the advantage and saying like oh yeah andrea did that because of the amulet but that's what i think and yeah i think dre is eventually going to get it over on them and that's pretty powerful that it becomes an immunity idol but very powerful really tricky to pull off which is what i really love about the advantages it's not just given to you for free you really got to work for it and having to take out two people that you know because now you don't you can't rely on the other pre-merged tribes to take them out for you have to actually kind of do it yourself to take them out and not get caught because if they find out you have an idol then it loses so much power and you see the blade coming because when you take the first person out immediately the other person is like oh crap i'm next in line it's not easy to pull it off at all i guess that idol that dreyer has could come into play

34:48 Here if they need to idle someone out of the game potentially it's something where that could work now obviously the idols give different people in the game the opportunity to also form links you see marianne and mike talking you see mike andrea talking they also have another hidden bond in the game there that could potentially pull them together and it's going to be interesting to see how they're going to navigate past that because i feel like there's so much advantages and idols in the game right now that if they don't take a stab at each other it's going to be a very one-sided game two or three votes from now with so much power sitting in between drea marianne and mike i still think marianne is probably with the idol in her pocket the person that i could see get voted out with an idol in her pocket of this thing i don't know if she actually realizes the situation that she's currently sitting in and she is also like i mean she's a lot of fun to watch she's got great personality her emotions go from extremely happy to extremely sad when she thought she was gonna go home in a nanosecond out there but i'm worried for marianne michelle at this point because i don't think taku's got her back like she's got some of taku's back in any case yeah i agree i thought oh my god is she going last night with the idol and i wouldn't put it past her because she'd probably think she was really safe

36:08 And wouldn't need to use it yeah i'm worried for her because yeah she's very entertaining and she's got some strategy there because she can pull up stuff from past seasons and she just knows what she's doing i like her she's not gonna make it to the end though yeah it's interesting christian says here i think high goes after lindsay first and then yeah i think so yeah okay yeah dress got all the ammo so it's gonna be hard to take her out especially if she if she sees you coming it's going to be very hard to take dre out in this game in the spot lastly here we i guess we move through to the immunity challenge itself roxroy comes back and joins the tribe they find out that he had this big decision that he had to go make and also shout out to drea for i guess reading the play before it even happened and saying that i think they might be able to return or reverse the outcome of the immunity out there so well done to drea for seeing it coming but rocks lets them know he chose to make himself safe and therefore a different group the other six that thought they were immune they are now not a part of the merch and they have to participate and compete here for their spot in the game and like we said earlier this is really a challenge when it comes to patience

37:29 Balance and putting these blocks of letters together and spelling immunity and ultimately we see that jonathan does have he is human he does bleed he does not win this one and tori comes out and actually takes this first win at a time when she really needed it what did you guys think of tori's performance here and do you think that in survivors sometimes you know you're the main person on the target on the hit list today but surviving one round she may still be able to weasel her way in somewhere where she's ahead of chanel because high seems really focused up to the point of almost tunnel vision on chanel at this stage in the game so do you think that she may have bought herself more time in the game by winning this challenge at a crucial time here i think she has only because we've seen it in the past where someone is people are really focused on putting out one person they get immunity and then all of a sudden everyone's their brain switches to somebody else and they're suddenly going for somebody else and that other person is sort of forgotten for the next three tribals and it happens a lot so i think she could have bought herself some time and she could also be now playing harder than what she ever has before to keep herself in as well yeah i agree our nunes here says the less physical future challenges there are the more at risk jonathan will

38:49 Be because and that's the thing people look at jonathan they're like oh he's this massive big guy that's just gonna go out there and win all these challenges but jakey looks like you know he's an athlete but we know that survivor isn't all about brute strength like i mean how often did you see james clement go out there and win a bunch of challenges right i don't think he won a single immunity individual i don't think he did which is yeah pretty crazy and especially with these this one today where it's like kind of a balancing act you know the big boys they can struggle with balance and that's one thing that is pretty common nowadays in the modern game and so it's not a guarantee that jonathan's just gonna beast his way through i mean it's definitely possible he definitely put up a really good fight today he was super close at one point to getting it done but i overall it was just it was a really good performance from tory just to be patient and just by the way hot take love tori i'm like a big tory fan because michelle knows michelle knows she's podcasted with me a few times jake you know i love the characters i love the people that make me feel a certain way when i look at the screen i'm like tori you know why did you do that you're

40:11 I don't really like tori and survivor but if she was on the amazing race i'd love her because they are the people i love the ones who just rile everybody up they're the ones i love but she's driving me crazy in this game i can't love her now i love it even more because i want michelle to be frustrated all the way to the final three with tori somehow just like every week she just survives and then i'll go on to the australian survivor fan page and see people rage about it and get immense satisfaction out of tory just surviving another round out there you know i love it i love like the thing with tori is she reminds me of like a less effective angelina you know like angelina i think was more capable than tori but i feel like they're almost similar in a lot of ways jake definitely i've been seeing that comparison from like episode one people are like oh tori is totally angelina and i just think that's hilarious because i totally see it like it's not a perfect comparison by any means but if there's anyone on this cast that's like that it's tori and i agree she oh yeah marcus i've seen that she is a bit of a oh really a social media that interesting see this is the problem this is what you guys don't know about me i take social media in doses right so i'll go on there i'll read a bit of social media i'll post something up there i'll comment on a few things but i don't live on social media and follow these guys

41:32 Very intensely i like for me i just enjoy watching them through the show but i don't know how controversial the things are that she's saying outside of the game but as a tv character i think i can appreciate her as a tv character separately from who she is as a person and vice versa that makes sense just said she's a nutter i mean i haven't seen her on anything but this morning i think it was my it was an instagram it was twitter came up romeo came up on my twitter and i'm not even following him and he was saying thank you for all the support obviously he had this outpouring of support overnight and everyone was he said i'm trying to get back to everybody but he's obviously had thousands of messages and he's trying to reply so you know obviously social media is a bad thing but it can also be a good thing especially for romeo yeah exactly and i was we didn't really address it but i was going to say like if you all i know it's easier said than done but if you're afraid the people in your life the people that are close to you is not going to accept you as a person then those are not the kind of people you should have close to you in life like the people who matter will care and the people who don't matter won't care and they'll move on you know so it's just the way i don't know it's a very cold way of looking at it and if you've had you know it might be your brother and you're like man my brother's an absolute you know person who don't like

42:52 You know me or what i stand for potentially and i love my brother i don't want them to judge me i can understand how that is tough you know but yeah like i mean i hope that romeo does get a lot of that outpour and love out there because at the end of the day man there's nothing more miserable than not being yourself i think at the end of the day and having to live a different life so but yeah like as a tv character absolutely love tori i mean if there's ever a heroes versus villains two seasons she would fit right into that villain stripe with drea is the fun villain that everybody loves and tori is the villain that everybody hates but still you know i think it would be really fun and we haven't had good female villain characters on the show since i feel like almost angelina like i can't think of anybody else that kind of fits that mold and i feel like everybody is so scared to be this villainous female character out there you know because well i was getting some parallels to australian survivor last night when a lot of the alliances were talking about voting out a lot of the girls or they were saying i don't trust chanel or i'd maybe someone else should go or lydia or lindsay and i'm thinking gosh all the girls are being targeted can you imagine this on australian survivor at the end of last season when everyone was saying oh it's all this mate it's this bro worship and

44:12 All these women are being vilified and it's not even and i'm thinking god here's here it is going on in american survivor and probably no one's thinking twice about it yeah christian is saying draz love is sinister in the i think it's on the next one and i love it yeah i can't wait for dra to like fully embrace the badass villainous that she is in this game because i know she's just like we were talking about this early on jake i was right like i've rated drea my number one player twice out of the five episodes so far i'm the only one that's rated her that highly and i said i see tony vlachor's upside in her she can work in chaos i don't know if she's got the social game that tony had i don't think she does but she's also improved a lot over the last couple of weeks because in the beginning i think she was already playing like players should play at the merge in episode one where now everybody started catching up to her so she's not out of place anymore because everybody is kind of playing a very aggressive game at the merge i think that draya the further she gets in the game the more dangerous she's gonna get and at this stage if i'm looking at the table a dream win would be a very exciting win like for her to get to the end would be how did she get there how did she do it would be explosive for her to win this game i agree i would be very satisfied

45:33 If she won at this point because it means that we're going to see some pretty cool moves from her pretty cool navigating around the numbers and i just want to say pre-season i was i think i was pretty high on her as a player but i thought she was a bit dry in her preseason interviews but that's not very monotone when she talks yeah she's got a very monotone way of talking very almost reserved but it's like it cuts so deep even though she's like you know there's no emotion to it but it's like she's saying a lot with her words instead of being expressive if that makes sense which is very sad i was just looking at cast photos from the from before the season began and there was a photo there of dreya and i'm like is that draya she's smiling i just found it really weird to see this full beautiful smile and i don't think i've seen it on the show and i'm like okay that is just weird i think i think it's so funny she laughs at herself a lot like she laughs at what she says in confessionals and i think that's just really funny that she can she doesn't seem to really get a kick out of anyone else but herself i think that's kind of funny i'll have to look out for that now in the future i don't i don't specifically remember that but one of my

46:53 Favorite lines from her so far was that if someone in business was going to cost her a million dollars she'd just fire them but in survivor you got to work with them type of thing and i just love that because drea is a business woman she runs her own business michelle she brings that cut-throatness to the game of survivor you know so i'm here for it like i'm enjoying it at this stage and christian says here the dre is cool calm and collective which i agree with now we go back to camp it's going to be a mad dash it's going to be a scramble before they go to tribal council rockstar is trying to fit in and find his person he immediately bonds with mike and with jonathan him and jonathan talk about going out and catching fish you know so again i feel really good about rocks roy here i think he's gonna do a lot better than what we expect and i wouldn't be surprised if we saw a lot of this negativity early on for roxroy because they wanted to paint a picture of him not winning at the end but then him somehow getting to the end of that bike scene it's like now that we're starting to like him a little bit as well at the end we would be able to go back and say okay we get why he didn't when he's a little bit bossy at camp he does some of these things that put people off but i think people might drag him along towards the end of this game i can very easily see him being there for a lot longer but clearly roxroy's story this season is one of discovery a journey that is going

48:13 On and it's about more than just the game itself where other players potentially might take that crown the season but i found it very interesting because with everything shifting everybody seemed to be team jonathan oh he's so nice to have around camp he's going to bring us food we love having him let's not care about the fact that he can win immunities but jake it changed in a hot second here when jonathan became eligible as a vote and suddenly everybody had their knives out and they tried to go from even the six people or the five people that he wanted to work with in that liars try to make a move here on jonathan i mean he's right there like you've seen him the past you know however many challenges just killing it and you know it seems like every episode someone makes a comment about oh then jonathan he's goliath you know he's the snowbilly jeff not very true very true jeff doesn't seem to care that he's painting his own target on jonathan's back but just while we're on it sorry i know i'm interrupting your training forward i'm sorry how much do you think jeff would have absolutely raged if this hourglass twist was the thing that actually got jonathan out of the game because you know he loves jonathan right and oh that was do you think it would have been the end of him bringing out new twists after this he'd be like i'm done with new twists

49:33 No clearly i'm doing too much not the new twist but something maybe like this where it takes away immunity from because here's the thing that really annoyed me a bit of a side tangent here the three people that received the most votes were lydia jonathan and marianne and they were the three people who contributed the most to that challenge lydia and marianne worked on the puzzle and were able to close it out and then as we know jonathan was able to really build up a lead for them and pull everyone up the ladder he was able to pull the boulder out with the help of everyone else so that just kind of annoyed me that like not only did the people who went immunity were they the ones on the chopping block which was the whole point of the twist which is just ridiculous but it was the three people that like really like kind of contributed the most to the challenge that kind of pissed me off because at least last season sydney i don't really remember if she contributed too much to that challenge but this season i think it just annoyed me a bit more yeah you know what i don't understand is that it's a completely different challenge game after merge you know you want to get out the people who've got the stamina who obviously

50:54 Don't have the big muscle mass but they're the ones who are going to win a lot of the challenges that happen after merge different kind of challenges whatsoever and they never go for those people they never go for the smaller people who are obviously strategic but also can win these challenges i always go for the big guys the big guys aren't winning a lot of challenges after merge by the way well done to high for recognizing that because i look at who is those people that could win a lot of challenges hai is one of them and he's like hey i'm a physical threat i need jonathan in the game so i think that he sacrificed his alliance member lydia here to keep his shield in the game because he knows he's not next in line people will continue to focus on jonathan is not going anywhere so it's a smart move for both him and mike to keep him in the game and like christian sees here you potentially could see a jonathan and mike dio i think mike feels really close to jonathan since they've got such a similar story or a similar experience in life that they thought okay well we've got enough people we can work here we can sacrifice lydia in this vote potentially but it was a tricky vote because we ended up with quite a split like two on jonathan two on marianne one on lindsay and then five on lydia obviously omar didn't get a vote in this as well really bad play by chanel not to tell omar about

52:14 This he was always going to find out about it what was she thinking not telling omar listen you've lost your vote but luckily omar knew this in time so when he heard that the vote could potentially be on marianne and also on jonathan he ended up finding a way to move the target off completely from any of his taku members that's why i still think taku has some longevity in this game as long as they can keep those four in the game very slowly but surely they are going to have some power within the numbers let's not forget marianne i believe it's got an extra vote and an immunity so they now have five votes as a collective in the next round if they can vote together so much idols so much advantages still in the game things are about to blow up michelle i think that you know everybody is going to be bringing their weapons very soon like in the next couple of episodes these things are going to start getting flushed yeah it'll be good be good to get some things out then they'll get other things back in and just get things being used i agree well we've got a little bit of work to do here on the draft picks for this week let's have a quick look at where we're standing over here we have got a new person and lydia being voted out so for the first time i think this season i'm taking a lead here jake we've been pretty even throughout the season but like i said

53:34 I am worried you still have omar you still have mike there i can i kind of can see a way for lindsay still like i feel like those are your three best players on the board at the moment i do have high though who was my pre-season winnipeg still in the game i've got drea who i think could be an exciting winner i've got jonathan still in there as well and then the three in the middle i'm not too sure if a winner come on rocks i mean you could still rock our world and go to the end you know it's so funny chris your top three or the three that are the first in your line are the three that i've sort of picked at the end of this double episode are my three picks to get to the end so we're gonna we're gonna talk about that nick so great segue into the next part of this podcast as we get into the finishing stages here everybody in the live stream feel free to give us your number three number two and number one player for the week based on what we saw on this merge episode myself michelle and jake we've been ranking people throughout the whole season with our guests we're going to be continuing our rankings to see if anybody potentially could overtake jonathan this week and we're going to start since you mentioned it first michelle let's start with you who's your number three pick here for week one of the month i'm thinking roxroy i'm thinking rockstar is my three i've got

54:54 Oh i see dreyer and hi i'm sort of alternating between one and two depending on what people say to me about them look drag could make it to the end but so could hide but i'm putting higher one dryer at two rockstar at three so okay so you've got rockstar three drea at two hired one okay i like that i like those picks jake since we're going three two and one who's your three two one let's see i've got i think i have okay mike three drea2 homer one all right let me just write this down because i am going to forget it i just know i'm going to forget it so you've got mike three yep trailer to draw two and armor one omar one and michelle your list here was roxroy three dreyer two high one hi okay who are you i'm gonna go i'm gonna go okay so my number three for the merge episode is gonna be omar he continues to be someone that i keep a focus on in this game getting the

56:14 Vote off his people not having a vote but still dictating who actually went home this episode was impressive to witness i can still see people seeing him as that scheming person in the background and wisening up to it i mean do hi really need omar in this game no he needs jonathan because jonathan is a shield for him but i feel like omar is high 2.0 like they're the same player and i might want to be jonathan's omar rather than having omar in the way between him and jonathan if he wants to get him as a shield because they're both looking at the game the same way at the moment so i'll put omar as my number three here in the game my number two in the game i'm going to put as high i am worried for high there's a part of me that's worried that he could be the ricard of the season it's funny how someone else mentioned that america be either omar or high is the record of the season i know which one it is more high more high is more ricard yeah i see it with him but i have to give him credit for having urgency this episode getting people together to form the alliance that they wanted to have and actually making things happen like i feel like so many players and survivor have got thoughts and ideas in their head that never manifest and they end up leaving the game without they even having an opportunity to actually play it and he is someone that at least is playing the game at the moment so i do respect that from haina

57:34 I do think between him and omar he's got a higher likelihood of winning challenges at the end stretch here and going on a run so i feel like he's a bit of an undercover person here and then it's funny most of us oh how if i left it's so tough because now i have to think this these two players here for me that's very much still in my mind and it's strange you can't say i don't know i know but like i just want to give honorable mention to mike who's just gonna miss out on the final three and i feel bad about it because i feel like mike has played i feel like he's played such a good social game but i just and i might still be underestimating you mike if you ever listen to this you're probably not i might still be underestimating you i just haven't seen the strategy and you're putting a vote to give i feel like hai has got more of that urgency in getting things happening in regards to that but his social game is next level and if he gets to the end he's going to be a likable person that a lot of people are going to vote for so yeah sorry mike you're not in my top three this week i'm gonna go with draya for the third time this season jake that's crazy third time this season i'm a massive dress stand like by the sounds of it at the moment but dread to me has just got all the power all the tools i feel like it's dress game to lose at this point with everything that she's got before the connections she has i feel like she's in a very solid spot but this is exciting guys we've got a merged episode full of fun characters

58:56 So many people out there that different people can shout for i'm sure a lot of people will disagree with our picks as well so chris short-term memory is the first thing to go good point michelle you'd think people would learn after 20 years after the merge it's a new game so christian says alabama muscle beach boy and jersey hoboken firefighter the true contenders are dream mike jonathan hai and omar i'm just really loving this season michelle like you know this has been so refreshing i feel like after australian survivor this season where there's been so much negativity online yeah and it was so one-sided survivor 42 we need the american editors to come over and do the australian season just once so that australian public can see how it should be edited for christ's sake but is there a case to be made here that sometimes when you're on the other side of the world you crave what you don't have like because so many of the aussie or so many of the us fans love brains versus brawn like when it was on paramount plus people were raving about it jake and they couldn't get enough of it right so oh yeah but that's the characters and the weird wonderful characters that australia has however you need to edit everyone the same i'd love to have the same amount of confessionals

1:00:16 As the americans have you know very much across the board like what happens kerry he's saying number three drea number two hi number one omar says a lot of people thinking the same as us here right notification saying marianne is my number one a problem in the future is the is a shield yeah i could see like i mean marianne she's my number one in my heart like you know i love her as a character i don't know if she'll win this season but then she's fun to watch this season yeah guys i think that's pretty much it for this episode it's been a lot of fun talking to you about the merch episode if you are still listening to this at this stage on the audio version or even here in the live stream firstly thanks to everybody that listened to this in the live stream and there was also very involved and active and chatting it's always fun to have you guys along for the ride but consider subscribing consider hitting a like and commenting below to let us know what you thought of this episode you would have seen i've just brought out a top five australian survivors on the channel that i would love to see return i'm gonna do my top five taking points for this week as well now that i've got my new camera set up there will be some more content coming out for that so very excited about it keep an eye out for it but for now i'll catch you guys next time and thank you for watching bye