Survivor 51's Helicopter Alliance Explained: Is Devin Running the Game?

0:00 The popular belief online is that Jenna played a better game than Devin for three episodes, but Devin survived because he drew the right buff. Cuz, you know, you've got someone like Jenna who outplayed the Fab Five with her alliance and got herself into a great position in that tribe for all of it just to be, you know, swap screwed. Yeah, she's definitely not the first. I know there's many people that have been swap screwed in the history of Survivor, but these are the kind of things I don't like to see. And then you get into a tribe of five where you don't have much room to maneuver. The counter argument to this is Andre, should she have done more to cultivate relationships on both side of the alliance. That is the counter argument. Like a truly great Survivor player will always know that no matter what side you're on, you should still work with the other side to a certain degree, but it was so soon after the Patt blindside.

0:50 It was so raw. Patt thought she could trust Jenna. I think that probably played into these two's estimation, right? Because Patt and Patt saved Jenna in the first round for her to turn on Patt. I think you can't really trust someone. You can't blame Devin and Julie for not trusting her either, you know, because of what she did to Patt. So, there's definitely flaws in her game. >> It's a good point that if you're a good player, you should be able to maneuver and negotiate your way around whatever happens. Like Survivor at best has variance. So, variance in the cast, variance in format, variance in pretty much everything. So, a good player should probably account for that variance, especially when literally Jeff is saying, you know, I've even got I don't I don't forgot what he keeps on saying, but you know, permanent uncertainty, right?

1:41 >> Yes. >> so, I mean if you think of all the good all-time great players, would they be all-time great players if they were swap screwed or they were in a tight tribe, didn't have any room to maneuver, especially when there's three people in the helicopter alliance there, where it's pretty unsurmountable. You can't do Unless you've got an extra vote, you can't really do anything. and it's kind of like an under the radar type of alliance, where it's not immediately obvious. They had a 5-minute-long conversation at the very start of the season, and then there wasn't There's no way for you to sort of catch Would even an old-school player, would like a Kim Spradlin or would a Tony have figured out that the helicopter alliance existed, right? and even if they did, could they do anything about it? Because they didn't >> We've seen this. We Well, we've actually got a case study for this, to a certain degree, with Tony coming back to play Australia versus world, where it was a very small tribe, and he had absolutely no room to maneuver, and he couldn't do anything.

2:39 Like Tony without idols or tricks in his bag, the Tony bag of tricks, like he is the best who ever played, but even he can get [laughter] into Yeah, even he can like he was desperate. Yeah, the he brought his shoe, you know, to Tribal Council, but you know, even he ran out of runway with a smaller tribe, right? Where there just wasn't anywhere for him to maneuver. He didn't have the gunpowder powder in the game to do it. Sarah's saying I think Jenna, in my opinion, got swap-screwed. She was doing so well, and even said herself she was in a good spot, and then gets put into a smaller tribe with someone who didn't like her for no real reason. And I totally agree. I totally agree with you. And I thought just on the Jenna thing, I know we're jumping back and forth, but we'll come back to Shonee as well. Andre, just while Sarah's brought up Jenna's name here, I thought for all Survivor 101 reason, she probably played it right in this moment by not trying to create an alliance with Who was the extra person that was in that tribe?

3:39 It was Alexis? Yeah, it was the right move not to try and cuz it would have gotten back to Devin and Jelly that she was playing both sides, because Alexis would have probably talked to Ori would have gone back to them and would have backfired on her even worse. So I thought she played it correctly. I think the big issue here just is Jenna not knowing what the Ori relationship is with Jelly and Devin. And yeah, like it would have been the right move probably in most >> anything that she could have done like all right, the best case scenario is that look there's no way that they're going to be able to break up the helicopter alliance. It's just not going to happen, right? They didn't know about helicopter alliance either. So they were playing with all that information as well. So really the only thing that you can really do is throw Alexis under the bus. Like that's literally the only thing you can do. >> Yeah, because I think which is what she did.

4:31 >> She couldn't even play the shot in the dark, right? Cuz she played it first episode. >> it first. Yeah. >> Yeah, exactly. So it's like what more can you do? Then this is I mean, you know, we've hopped on about it, but that's why this format just doesn't work because there's literally there's literally nothing you can do. >> Jenna robbed or no? >> She was. I mean, she was you made the point earlier that if she was truly a good player, possibly she could have gotten out of it by I guess throwing Alexis under the bus. All right, well let's actually talk this out, all right? It's like okay, so if it's between Alexis and Jenna, what could you possibly have do to make Alexis be the target knowing full well that you probably The thing is you don't have your tribe your old tribe members. Whereas I feel like Alexis and Ori are pretty close. So I think Ori probably has some sway over Devin and Jelly.

5:23 To say hey look, let's just let's keep her. It's fine. So could you have really done anything especially when in your previous tribal council you explicitly went against Devin? Probably not. So it's like and if I was Jenna at that time to flip a five a five six votes to your favor. I mean, that was very good game play and that was the only thing that they could she could have done to protect her people. So, the fact that there was going to be like a tribal swap and I think maybe in the back of your mind you know there's going to be a tribal swap maybe or probably Like you got to if you're if you're I think you roll the dice. He's like let me take control now cuz you don't know what's going to happen. And that's kind of one of the flaws with the whole idea of permanent uncertainty. It's like you kind of also need to know the rules of the game or you kind of need to know the board layout for you to play the game optimally.

6:21 You can only play what's in front of you. >> You don't want to be penalized for playing a good game and for outwitting and outsmarting like is he really playing the best game right now? That's sort of what the sentiment is out there because the one thing I will say about Devin is that he has shown a willingness to talk to everyone and be friends with everyone. Like I found it interesting. I come back to the previous episode when they were trying to find a common enemy to vote out and they landed on Patt as that person. So many people that were not in the Fab Five were saying absolutely you can't take out Devin. I'm solid with Devin. And that's evidence of a good social game. You might not like the guy. You might not like his smirk, but he is playing a good social game and that is kind of what I was pointing out earlier where Jenna, we saw evidence of this early in the season. It's probably because of what's going on in her personal life and the betrayal that she's felt in her personal life seems a bit more close to a lot of relationships and things like that and probably just chose her people.

7:19 So, I will stand on the side of absolutely it sucks that she was swapped into that tribe, but I also think she didn't do herself any favors by not making sure she's got connections on both sides. >> Why is compromising on Patt a bad move from her? [snorts] Should she have kept Patt instead? Cuz imagine if it was her, Patt, Alexis, and then Jelly and Or right? Then all of a sudden things change pretty significantly. >> Or should she have done Patt the same solid that Patt did for her in the first episode and gone back to Patt and said Yeah, like say to Patt like, "Hey, the vote is starting to swing your way. Just so you know, I'm solid with you guys. I'm not as close to the Fab Five as you are, but I need you to help me ingratiate myself on that side. Like get me in there." Like and that way maybe that was the move, but she was trying like what makes it hard is I don't actually know truly who's Jenna Who was Jenna close to?

8:14 Like who was her true ride or die on that side? We didn't really get enough information. Was that the end? >> Yeah. Yeah, no, well obviously the reason why we didn't get that edit was because she got voted off, right now. She got screwed. But then again, like last season we had Genevieve and we kind of knew where Genevieve stood and that made it a lot harder. So maybe they saw that and be like, "Look, let's just not really give her too much of a edit because like we she went like the first episode was actually quite impressive to see her get out of it and then episode three was very impressive as well. But it's just like, you know, episode two, episode four, let's just kind of sweep her under the rug because it's like, you know, it's a little unfortunate that things sort of fell the way that they did, but yeah, maybe getting rid of or compromising on Patt was probably the move. Maybe that's like the counterpoint to her being screwed.

9:07 Maybe she wasn't screwed. Maybe that was because she didn't she didn't salvage that relationship. Yeah, with the helicopter alliance, they're not going to It's not going to be obvious, I feel, because it's like they did They had a very similar alliance in Big Brother and for 90 days nobody knew that this alliance existed because it was an implicit thing. The helicopter alliance implicitly trust each other. Like every single member of the helicopter alliance we've seen confessional saying, "I'm very close to this person, but these people that I met for 5 minutes at the helicopter, they're my true alliance." I don't think we've ever seen anything like that in Survivor yet. Like I think this is literally unprecedented. Like this is an implicit alliance, which is probably the stronger the strongest alliance you could possibly have is somebody that you implicitly trust apart from like All-Stars season cuz I think All-Stars seasons are very similar to that in a certain degree, where you'd have an All-Star cast and they kind of like know each other outside the game, but inside the game they haven't even like spoken to each other.

10:10 I think it's very similar to that, where it's like Ori knows that Jelly is going to bat even Devin's going to bat for him. Like he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't need to talk to them at all. He can spend 100% of his time with Alexis. Jenna can spend 100% of her time with Well, maybe not with a Devin, but you know, maybe with Jelly. and they would have they would have no clue that those two those three 100% working with each other. So >> Yeah. >> I think Yeah, I think that's by far the most powerful thing in the game. >> Very powerful. >> Worst thing The worst thing that could happen is for them to expose that to anybody else. They need to separate as much as possible they can. Like try to never talk on the island because they can run the game. >> Can you imagine how strong this alliance would have been if they still had Ali in the game and she wasn't the first one voted out of the season? Like they could have steamrolled in a good way this season.

11:03 And it's interesting how quickly these players found each other and they just had that instant connection to the point where they were in different tribes, didn't speak to each other, but they could come back together and it was like they talked yesterday, you know? And it was such a quick "Hey, I got you. I got you." kind of moment on the beach and they just seemed to work cuz we've seen a lot of the times alliances come together that quickly in the game, where people try to make alliances on day one and you connect with the wrong people. You connect with people who fundamentally want to play the game in a different way that you want to play the game and how you see it and it ended up being a disaster and it didn't happen in this case. So, it's interesting like if the Helicopter Alliance do end up winning this season, we will go back and probably study this season and just say like how did this happen? Like we will we will dissect everything about the Helicopter Alliance and it could go down in folklore as one of the best alliances ever just because of how quickly it got together and how solid it was from the beginning. >> I do know that the Helicopter but it's like even with the Helicopter Alliance, it's like we know that they're going to be a dominant alliance but the question is the winner going to come from the Helicopter Alliance?

12:01 >> Yeah. I don't know. >> Or are they going to have a big boss? Are they the big boss? Are they are they the final boss that the win eventual winner has to overcome? Like is that like is that the story that they're telling?