Survivor 51 Episode 5: Was Kilby's Move Worth the Risk?

0:00 Was it worth the risk for Kilby to put his neck on the line here in this moment? >> 100%like in fact it was a no-brainer to me. As soon as May came over and said we got four votes there is no world that I could ever see Kilby ever turning on Lewis. >> So the more interesting tribe dynamic probably ended up being the Dina tribe here in the early stages with Cristian, Eric, Kilby, Lewis, and Sharronda. Lewis Andre finally gets back up after 25 24 hours of being sick. So clearly there was something going on there but it's kind of like a little bit of deja vu with him here where twice now he's lost key moments in the game early on to make these connections. And for most of the episode it looked like he was down and out on his luck. He tried a lot of different things here to try and save himself. The biggest one probably being the blood ring that he was trying to sell to Sharronda.

0:54 What did you think of the attempt? What did you think of Lewis's gameplay here this episode? A couple of episodes ago we said that he's great playing from the bottom. Do you still believe that? What's your thoughts about Lewis in general? >> I mean I absolutely love it. Like look the blood ring wasn't the greatest. It was okay. Like it was you know it was it was a good kind of idea. It didn't obviously work but I think he to me reminds me and maybe this is a hot take. He reminds me a bit of Tony. He reminds me of like a proto Tony like a young Irish Tony where he's willing to like if you think very early on in Tony's first season he was playing from the bottom with Trish right? And he was kind of in the minority and he just basically he just worked day and night hard like worked came up with creative angles.

1:45 And I think this is kind of what Lewis is doing. Like Lewis is a person that volunteers to go to exile. Lewis you know is playing from the bottom. He takes control of the tribe with Carter. He makes a really close connections with individuals and he's able to wrestle power away from majority using creative ways. He got very lucky, but I feel like Tony got very lucky as well. Like Tony was able to find the god idol. Tony was able to, you know, get some of these really good advantages early on. And when push comes to shove, Tony is willing to and Lewis is willing to, you know, throw stuff at the wall and just see what sticks. And I think that makes a really good Survivor player. Maybe I'm Maybe I'm a little bit sort of quick on the trigger here, but I think all the evidence that we're seeing on Lewis is what my original presumption about him was that he's an active player.

2:37 And you'd always prefer to have an active player like a Lewis and someone like Mike who is very reactive, right? so I'm very high on Lewis. He's shown She's shown us twice in two episodes three episodes I would say I would argue in the very first episode too that he is a very proactive player and you know, people like saying oh it's luck of the Irish, but I think it's luck of Lewis. I think he's making his own luck. >> So I do really like Lewis. I do still think he's a great player playing from the bottom, but was there a whole ton of luck of ton of luck involved this episode that got them out of the predict predicament they were in? 100%because if Maggie didn't go over there with a boat trip, I don't think Kilby would have put his game on the line for Lewis in this moment and there was just no other move to be made. So any praise that you give to Lewis this episode, I do think you have to give Kilby that praise as well. I do think you've got to give Kilby his flowers, because he was the one that was actually, at the end of the day, taking the risk with Rocks and sticking to his promise to Lewis that he will go to Rocks when he was probably going to be safe.

3:40 And he's still in a very, like, who are they going to be more upset with in the next episode? Is it going to be Kilby or is it going to be Lewis? I feel like Kilby is going to get a lot of that coming his way. >> 100%like in fact it was a no-brainer to me. As soon as Maggie came over and said, "We've got four votes." There is no world that I could ever see Kilby ever turning on Lewis. And I'll tell you why. If they just vote off Lewis and Kilby keeps his extra vote, then under no circumstances is Kilby not the next person that gets voted off. At least if you get the two extra votes, that's all you can like I think one of the extra votes you have to use anyway on that Tribal Council, I feel. the other one I guess you don't have to use straight away, but what do I would be curious to know which one of them got the extra vote, but either way, you're Kilby's always going to be the next one voted off.

4:31 We've seen how tight the Savu four were. Like if they weren't going to like budge one millimeter, they're not they're never they're going to get rid of Kilby. no matter how close. So, if you are if you're Lewis, you almost want to be the target as soon as you get those extra votes because you're not the one drawing rocks. So, you are giving it out to Kilby. I guess there's maybe motivation that Lewis is maybe a little bit more motivated not to pull rocks than Kilby. First thing you need, so yeah, Lewis was down and out for 24 hours cuz he was sick. I mean, I so what? What's important is that they all both they obviously spoke about it because they obviously were trolling Linnea. They were obviously planned to mis-miswrite her name before beforehand.

5:24 Like it was a performative thing. They were definitely in it together. So, then we obviously didn't see that conversation cuz obviously as viewers you want to have a little bit of suspense and you want to be a little bit shocked and surprised where it turns out that they go to rocks and you want to show as much waffling from Kilby as possible. We saw a lot of waffling. That was just editing. We all know that Kilby at the end of the day really planned this out with Lewis. So, that makes me think that they are closer than we actually saw. And with Kilby just, you know, throwing Lewis under the bus as much I mean, that probably could have been from a couple of days earlier as well. So, very strong play from both of them. I think it was a no-brainer personally because they would have been on the outs anyway. At least now they've got a chance at least. >> Andre, we are high praise for Kilby and for Lewis in this moment.

6:15 Let's talk about those that fell on the other side of this vote. We need to talk about Cristian, Eric, and Sharonda and specifically how they were putting this pressure on Kilby saying, "Hey, Lewis would never have done this for you. He's going to cost you your game." And they were so bullish. They were so confident the bravado in them taking on the underdog Kilby in this moment. And then as soon as Colby stone cold said to Jeff Probst, "I'm not changing." You could just see Cristian the panic in his face. Him almost crying at that point to Sharonda and to Eric saying, "What do you guys want to do? I don't want to go to rocks." Like you could just see the fear. There's levels to Survivor, Andre, and there's different types of players in Survivor. And I think this showed us who's the cream that rises to the top and who's at the bottom at this stage because this was a fearful game. Like >> Yeah, I mean once you get to that situation, you're pretty much screwed either way cuz it's like there's no way that you can I mean, there's a 75% chance you're going to lose that.

7:12 And you're what you're risking your game for Laurel? Like who cares? You see you met her you met her 7 days ago. Like it's irrelevant. If I was Cristian, like I it's clear that Eric and Sharonda were like they didn't want to go to rocks. They didn't want to go to rocks. And Cristian's like, "I'm actually willing to go to rocks." I think Cristian should have like we've seen Cristian's edit it's been very milk toast. He's been not a character. He clearly has some power and some agency in that in that tribe, we just haven't seen any of it cuz he's boring. If I was Cristian, I would have actually forced rocks. >> Yeah. >> I mean like >> Cuz they had to be unanimous. >> Yeah, it would have trashed my game with three people, but I think >> been memorable. He would have been memorable. >> If you want to be If you want to play with the big guns, if you've got someone like Lewis, if you've got to if got someone like Kilby, that are playing well like Shonee is playing very well.

8:10 She's playing very under the radar. She's playing very well. Eric's maybe not so much. But if you want to if you want to play with the with the big guns, you've got to do something big. So, that makes me think that look, Eric is spineless in that situation. Shonee just did what was smart. I get it. But with Cristian, I didn't understand Cristian. If he did if he was really close to the Savu, it's like, "Look, I don't care guys. Like, this is this is Savu 4. I'm willing to die on the sword for it. Let's go. Let's go." And then, I think people would respect him in the same way that they respect Kilby. Like, all of a sudden everybody hated Kilby and now everybody loves Kilby, at least in the audience. >> But let's talk about the whole Maggie of it all here. You know, Maggie ends up going on the boat. Brady said, "This is the worst thing that could have happened." But in my mind I was thinking at that moment this is the best thing that could have happened cuz Maggie is very quickly becoming my favorite player in this game because she brings chaos and she's willing to roll the dice.

9:07 She's willing to do something. You know, if you two episodes ago I was like, "What is it with this woman, Maggie, that is so paranoid that she needs to force Brady to give her this advantage in this moment?" But it actually clearly had a really positive effect on Maggie's game here, where she was able to go to this tribe, talk to people individually to gauge what the feeling of the tribe is, or the temperature of the tribe, and then deciding, "I'm going to go all in with my allies here." I'm giving them both of my advantages."You have to give her as much credit as you give Lewis and Kilby in this moment because she was willing to in a large way sacrifice a bit of her game here as well. She doesn't have, like they always say, it's better for you to have the advantages in your hand than in someone else's hand; but she prioritized allies and numbers over her own game in this moment, which I thought, for a player that is seen as a wild card, that was actually a very sensible and logical thing to do in this moment, and a lot of other players would not have done this.

9:59 >> Yeah, and why are we taking Brady's word that she's a wild card? Like I've actually seen I've seen her outplay Brady over and over again. I've seen her take the like convinced Brady to give the extra vote to her. I've seen her vote out Brady's allies twice. I've seen her you know she didn't win out the draw but Brady didn't put in his shot in the dark to be drawn. He needed food too much. So it's like Brady put up or shut up. Like I think Tyson's a better example in Blood vs. Water because he was the one that forced rocks and he ended up winning because of that. I mean maybe that's results-orientated thinking, but I think that sort of having your way with I think Kilby has a much greater chance of winning because he had that gumption to go to rocks.

10:49 I think that is a [clears throat] that's a winning path to make.