Or how I finally gained the courage to write the novel I’d dreamed of

Plus get an exclusive map drawn by Erik Reichenbach.

It was Day 25 of Survivor: Cambodia, and the monsoon had been beating down on us for three days. It was rain like I’d never seen before, sheets of water gusting sideways through our shelter front. My tribemates huddled together, moaning and crying during the worst night of their lives. 

My night was even worse. I became violently sick with a case of severe gastrointestinal distress (and you can hashtag that). Multiple times, I stripped off my clothes so they didn’t get soaked, left the shelter and walked into the tempest to be ill. Naked and drenched by the storm, I thought to myself—how can I have the courage to do this, but not the thing I truly care about?

I left Cambodia committed to writing a novel.

A night to remember!

 I’d always imagined I’d be a writer. But I never had the courage to sit down and write. I guess I hoped if I got big-enough glasses, if I purchased another elbow-patched sweater, a novel would burst from my fingertips and flow onto the page. When Survivor found me in 2008, I was working at a tech startup, certain there was more to life than wireframes and conference calls. I wanted to go on an adventure, to strike off into parts unknown—but safely. A wilderness escapade with a CBS medical chopper standing by felt like the perfect compromise. 

I remember the thrilling freedom of those first moments, standing on a hilltop overlooking the Brazilian cerrado, when Jeff Probst tossed us a map and told us to hike to camp. This whole outland was ours to explore! Then an air-conditioned van pulled up to whisk us away. 

“So this is reality TV,” I thought. “We’ll pretend to have hiked for hours, and act sweaty and exhausted.” But when the producers slid open the doors, we weren’t at camp. We were in an even bleaker location. “Your hike starts here,” they said. 

That was reality TV, I soon learned. The adventure was real, but boats and vans shuttled us between perfectly-framed locales and massive multi-stage challenges.

Hot, lost, and carrying multiple watermelons

After leaving Cambodia, I realized I had a story I could tell that I’d never seen in fiction before. I could capture the truth of reality television. Tell the human story of how people like me step into these shows eager for a defining experience, and find that hope both warped—and fulfilled. How everybody—both cast and crew—are obsessively pursuing their own personal winner’s edits.

My debut novel Escape! is the encapsulation of everything I’ve thought and felt about this incredible genre. It follows Kent Duvall, a has-been reality great, who goes back on TV desperate to recapture his faded glory. There he meets a new contestant, Miriam Bloom (shout-out to Mike!), who’s stepping onto the beach with the same naïve optimism I did, along with six other scheming, duplicitous, ridiculous contestants. Their goal seems simple: flee the island. Find the treasure. But they soon learn that the biggest challenge isn’t the obstacle courses or the venomous snakes (I had a krait in my book before it was cool). It’s the puppet masters pulling the strings. 

That’s the other place I hope this book sheds light: on reality producers. I think people have this idea of reality producers as cynical gods manipulating the threads of fate. What I’ve seen firsthand, as a contestant, a TV exec, and through my work in a reality producers’ trade group, is that reality producers are really hard-working professionals, who love to tell amazing stories. But sometimes, their need for explosive TV can drive them too far. My character Beck Bermann is reeling from a tragedy in her own life, and her attempts to use the players for her personal redemption arc prove disastrous. 

**

If that sounds like an appealing yarn, I hope you consider pre-ordering my novel at stephenfishbach.com. Pre-orders are so important, because they determine if a book hits bestseller lists. Thanks to the incredible support from the RHAP community, the book is on the cusp of hitting these lists … but still the cusp. If I’ve seemed a little manic with my promotion, it’s because the goal is so close, and hitting these lists would change my life. It would give publishers the courage to purchase my next book.. And perhaps most importantly, it’s one and done. You hit a bestseller list for one day, and you’re a “bestselling novelist” forever. Put it on my tombstone. 

So I’ve come up with what I think is a cool pre-order incentive. I’ve asked Erik Reichenbach to draw a map of my fictional jungle island. If you pre-order a hardcover in the United States, I’ll mail you a limited edition copy of the map that Erik draws, while supplies last! This may take a while, because first Erik has to draw the map, then I have to send out hundreds of mailers, but I promise it WILL happen. Just email me proof of purchase and your address to escapefishbach@gmail.com*! Include the word MAP in the subject. It's the perfect holiday pre-order for the Survivor fan, book-lover, or map aficionado in your life. (Even if it won't actually be ready by the holidays).

*(if you’ve already ordered a hardcover copy of the book you’re eligible for this too! Just email me at escapefishbach@gmail.com!)

Erik hard at work - not on the map. But you can just imagine him hard at work on the map! 

I set out with so many ambitions for this novel, but what surprised me most was how it took on a shape of its own, going to wilder and darker places than I expected. Every reality TV contestant thinks they’re the star. But ultimately, Escape! is about what happens when you realize that you’re not the hero of your own story, but a character in someone else’s. 

I hope this book captures everything I love about reality TV: its absurdity and comedy, its occasional tragedy, and the desperate human need at its core.  Most importantly, I hope you have fun reading this story, and are surprised by the places it takes you.

-Stephen  

Stephen Fishbach is a Pushcart Prize–winning writer and former television executive. A two-time Survivor contestant (voted onto the show the second time by more than ten million fans), he’s worked on the network side as a vice president at MTV and freelanced for a reality producers’ trade group. He cohosts a weekly Survivor podcast as well as the literary podcast Paraphrase. Stephen graduated with honors from Yale and received an MFA in fiction at NYU. His short story “To Sharks”—an excerpt from Escape!—was published by One Story and garnered Stephen the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.

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To preface this, don’t expect much on a grammatical, profound essay. I’m Jelinsky, y’all know better. I write like I’m texting my best friend. I hope you enjoy!

Kevin asked me if I wanted to participate in The Confessional, and I immediately agreed. I had been bouncing around in my head on a theme, but after reading Teeny’s writing I thought of something. 

Surviving after Survivor.

Everybody thinks they’re going to win Survivor. If you don’t, you should not be applying for the show. What I didn’t realize before playing the show was that the real surviving actually begins after the show starts airing.

Obviously I was voted out on day 3, so I didn’t do much surviving on the island. But I feel like I’ve survived a battle just as tough afterward, and I’m sure many fellow castaways can agree. 

It’s routine that after your episode of survivor airs, you do press the following morning.

I remember after I got voted out, I was so excited to talk about my journey out on the island. Being able to talk through some of my decisions, as well as the quitter narrative that was being pushed onto me.

What I wasn’t expecting was the millions of people telling me how my Survivor experience actually went.

“Jelinsky is a quitter.”

“If he thinks Q quit the sweat task, he really is delusional.”

“Legend in his own mind.”

I’m sure there are some people reading this right now that are thinking that.

I quickly learned that I can’t defend myself to over a million people and have them all agree with me.

There is so much that happens out on the island that doesn’t make the edit, only you really know what happened to you; and even then, you still don’t know everything.

As much as I would love to take ownership of being a quitter, and according to Survivor Wiki, “giving up at the slightest sign of resistance…” That’s just not true.

It’s not true.

I can go on for hours about what was not shown on the episode and the strategy behind every decision I made, but that’s not the point of this message.

In fact, I don’t regret anything that happened out on the island. Maybe I am a quitter… maybe I am delusional, but that’s what makes me a legend! My presence was certainly strong, and trust me… there is a reason every tribe was in on the joke. Think about all of the Jelinsky moments that didn’t make the show… there are several for sure.

If there is one thing I’m certain of besides being a legend, is that I’m a walking contradiction.

But a nicer way to say that is I am a 3-dimensional human, just like everybody who plays the game. Everybody has a story, everybody has decisions they make daily, even you reading this right now!

A 3-dimensional human (CBS)

A note to the Survivor 48 pre-jury, the rest of the cast, and all future players who come afterward, don’t let others morph your brain on what happened out there.

Only you know what happened out there, stick to it.

Surviving after Survivor is not easy.

I commend all of you that do it.

Even trusted media sources who make you look awful, comparing Bhanu, Jess, and myself to feces, the chaff being winnowed down from the strong, it’s what you sign up for.

Survivor doesn’t cast people who they don’t think can handle it!

This game really bonds people in a way you can never explain… trauma bonding is a common phrase describing it.

It also tears people apart.

And some people just never even talk to each other ever again.

I’m rambling now, this isn’t a thesis.

I’m honestly so grateful at how delusional I am, because self love is probably the most important trait you can possess when trying to Survive after Survivor.

The last note to my readers and future readers, your family is so important during all of this.

No one will love you like your family loves you. Thank them for all of the experiences they have given you, all of the lessons they have taught you, and all of the love they shower you with.

No matter what you do, whether you get a DUI, steal from the Gucci store, or embarrass yourself in front of millions, they will always love you no matter what.

They have to.

So after reading this long text message I just sent you, remember to love yourself, and love your family.

And don’t forget,

Long Live Jelinsky.

-Jelinsky

You know who Jelinsky is. No bio needed. Legend.

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America. 

You have now borne witness to Australia’s David, our Golden God. 

His epic domination of the Deal or No Deal Island finale made global television history. Not to mention finishing the job that Boston Rob couldn’t 😉

Survivor: Australia vs. the World is coming soon. 

You’ll learn that down under, we’re built different.

Squint your eyes and cover your ears and we might seem similar. JLP is a hotter version of Jeff. We cast more brawny players, though our diversity agenda hasn’t quite caught up.

But there are two key cultural traits that set Australians apart from Americans—and they manifest in the game of Survivor.

Sweeping generalizations can get you in hot water, but sit right down, folks, because here’s the tea.

1. We don’t really like successful people.

2. Self-deprecation is survival.

Tall Poppy Syndrome in Australia is real.

ChatGPT tells me: “Tall Poppy Syndrome originates from the idea of cutting down tall poppies to make them the same height as the rest, symbolizing an aversion to individual success that stands out.”

In short: We criticize, tear down, and resent people who are just a bit too successful, beautiful, rich, or funny.

Trying too hard? Bad. Chill out. Don’t take things too seriously.

And this is where Point 2 kicks in.

If you stick your neck out and express an opinion, you can always retreat to safety with self-deprecation. Criticize yourself. Cut your own poppy down before someone else can. Don’t give the haters a window to sneak their attacks through.

Jump between Points 1 and 2 enough times, and you can turn anyone who stands for anything into a paralyzed, stuttering mess that everyone can laugh at. The joke is on you, sucker.

In the States, you can stand up at Final Tribal Council, declare, I AM THE GREATEST AND HERE’S WHY, and possibly win—unless your name is Russell Hantz. Not in Australia. Humility, hard work, and grit Must. Be. Acknowledged.

So in a game where you have to convince others that you played the best game, how do Aussie players navigate this contradiction?

The truth is—many don’t. Countless Australian Survivor players stick to the status quo, making for some regrettable gameplay.

For fear of standing out, they reluctantly go with the flow, hide behind vague concepts of “mateship,” and sail off into the sunset when their goose is cooked. Nothing gained, nothing lost.

(This was particularly true in the early days of Aussie Survivor, though in the AG era - AFTER GEORGE - Aussie players are becoming more Hollywood and less Hobart. But let’s not allow facts to derail the argument.)

So, in a global contest of the best of the best, will our Aussie players be lambs to the slaughter—easy prey for Parvati, Tony, and Cirie?

Hell bloody no.

Because in Shonee, George, and Kirby, we have players who know how to weaponize these annoying cultural traits to their advantage.

Shonee, George, and Kirby (10Play)

Shonee.

To people’s faces, Shonee leans into both aspects—pretending to be silly, unserious, and sometimes bored by the whole shebang. To the big egos, her focus on margaritas over manipulation screams, “she’s no threat.”

But behind the façade, Shonee quietly plots to take down the big dogs—and when she strikes, she delivers blows with the heat of Lady Liberty’s flame.

In All-Stars, while everyone else was ignoring her, Shonee found a clue to an immunity idol, LIFTED THE WATER WELL to retrieve it, and then played it correctly. Most players struggle to do one of those things well.

With her sassy one-liners and easy-going schtick, Shonee assembled a formidable posse and took out a swathe of enemies.

At the merge, she deployed Wonder Woman-like social powers to flip a crucial vote and take down alpha-dog Zach—a rare disruption to golden god and DONDI star David’s stranglehold on the game.

With a single devastating eye-roll, wannabe haters were reduced to shrivelled sultanas.

And that barely scratches the surface of our soon-to-be four-time player.

George.

The reason George is George is that he takes a sledgehammer the size of Texas and smashes these stupid social rules into smithereens.

He shocks the socks off timid souls. Upon impact with King George, people recoil like they’ve gulped a mouthful of piping hot tea.

Did George just say that?

Is that an idol tattooed on his chest?

That’s not in the spirit of the game!?!

By breaking this social contract, George carves out space to play on his own terms. He attacks the establishment—the alphas and haters—while fighting for (or at least appearing to fight for) the underdogs, the battlers, and the down-trodden. 

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In Brains v Brawn, George blew up the first tribal council to save players traditionally looked down upon as weak. Even in his chaos, George still invests in allies. His friendship with Kara springs to mind, but Gerry almost gave up the game to let George through to Final Tribal Council!

So is George the truly benevolent King of Bankstown or a ruthless tyrant?

Depends on who you ask.

Kirby.

Never in Australian Survivor have we seen such a proud and strong Indigenous Australian woman in the game—and what a pleasure it was to watch.

At the start, Kirby laid in the long grass, observing, analyzing, assessing. She disguised her career as a professional athlete. She mocked her own fitness, constantly pointing to Viola’s incredible 10-pack of abs.

Don’t shine bright. Don’t stand out.

But as the game evolved, Kirby stopped playing by “the rules.”

Who the hell wrote these rules anyway? Certainly not Kirby.

The old guard was dull, and Kirby wanted to have fun. She drew lines in the sand and claimed to be the best. And the reason it worked?

She flipped Point 1 on its head.

Kirby was confrontational, forcing her opponents to take a stand, to own their positions—something most Aussies hate. Squirming at the direct attack, many would respond by trying to call out Kirby’s brashness.

With deft charm and a grin, she would point out the folly of getting emotional.

It’s just a game, after all.

Like moths to a flame, players scrambled to exist in Kirby’s orbit.

That’s power.

So, what have we learned?

To be a great Australian Survivor player, you need to understand—and exploit—the hidden social codes that shape our culture.

Play too big, and you’ll get cut down. Play too small, and you’ll fade into irrelevance.

But the best players?

They know when to strike, when to self-deprecate, and when to let others destroy themselves.

And what about the US players?

Parvati, Tony, and Cirie are legends for a reason. They’ll sniff out these quirks in no time and twist them to their advantage.

But there’s one more secret weapon the Yanks can deploy.

Despite all our talk of cutting down tall poppies, deep down, Aussies love a bit of American flair.

If a US player leans into a little silliness—flashes a bit of that reckless, larger-than-life charm and mocks themselves just a wee bit—we’ll eat it up.

Because, for all our “we’re built different” bravado…

a part of us secretly yearns to be so bold.

Now let’s rewatch that DONDI finale one more time. Congratulations DAVID!

-Mark Warnock

Mark was 3rd place on Survivor Australia’s epic Titans v Rebels season.

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I was talking with Stephanie Berger recently, and she said, “Have you ever thought about the fact that the most offline experience of your life, which was those 25 days in Fiji, is somehow the foundation for the most online experience of your life?” There is a really fascinating intersection between Survivor and the internet. As much as I like to think of myself as a student of the game, the Survivor subculture has been an equally interesting realm to me, prior, during and post playing.  As season 48 is on the cusp of the merge, a critical halfway point where the arena of public opinion gets bloodier, I feel compelled to dig into the surreal, unusual, fleeting and extremely specific type of visibility that going on Survivor provides. 

Part of me wanted to do a quasi Buzzfeed-esque listicle or personality quiz about this. Something like, “Which Type of Survivor-Player-Lurking-Online Are You?” - because there are types. There’s a Genevieve, who voluntarily had the least amount of follower growth, who doesn’t have a Twitter or reddit account or any interest in making one. When we were on Lavo beach, Genevieve told me she would much rather play Survivor if it were unfilmed, and I called bullshit, until I realized she really never was going to take her Instagram off private. I probably represent the other extreme, that is to say incessantly refreshing the #Survivor47 hashtag during episodes, typing my own name into the live discussion on reddit and listening to about eight podcasts a week of people talking about the season.

I like to imagine this as sort of Kinsey Scale-adjacent. As your season is airing you fall somewhere between a Genevieve (less than bare minimum online investment) and a Teeny (absolute maximum). It won’t come as a shock that identifying in the middle, as a bi-online consumer of yourself, is probably the best of both worlds. Given that it’s been a few months since my whirlwind, I feel like I have a clearer perspective and so I wanted to form a guide. These are some of the healthy ways to enjoy the rare experience of being on your favorite show, and how to avoid some of the harmful sides of the Sur-cyberspace.

HEALTHY: Claiming or Reclaiming the Narrative with a Joke

Production has a ton of rules about contestant output during the airing. You can’t tag your castmate, you can’t explain why you voted X instead of Z, you can’t go on a podcast, and on and on. There’s no part of the fine print that says you can’t clown on yourself, and I’ve found that to be the most endearing, real, and funny posting from other reality alumni. It was also the most cathartic for me, especially during a moment of catching heat. There’s so much variance among the types of fans commenting on a show like Survivor. Much like the game itself, the fanbase is composed of humans with entirely different backgrounds, preferences, biases, and game knowledge. Trying to appeal to this pool of casuals and hardcores and gay high school stans and Barstool employees and NPCs is virtually impossible, and I’m not even talking about in the game or the edited product. I’m talking about online. There’s one universal language between the fanbase and it’s … here comes the corny crux of my point… laughter. Making fun, making light, making sure everyone including yourself knows that this whole situation and whatever people are responding to, for good or for bad, is all a little ridiculous in the grand scheme of life. 

I don’t mean to devalue the importance of processing the very serious experience that is Survivor, but there’s a time and place for that — and it isn’t sandwiched between these nameless and faceless commentaries on X dot com.

Having no control over the edit or the reaction it causes can feel alienating and scary, and it’s important to remember you fully do not have to play the victim to either of those things. You can demonstrate a deep sense of self-awareness and humor in the face of large-scale public embarrassment; there’s something powerful, confident, and complex in that. There is an opportunity for a beautiful juxtaposition of humiliation and humility that paints a much more dynamic picture than that of most character arcs on a season of Survivor. It’s something I’ve always admired and tried to emulate. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.

 I truly don’t know if there’s a better or funnier representative of what I’m talking about than Brandon Donlon. 

Stephanie and Mary throwing their hat in this ring.

Sol getting ahead of the jury outfit moose knuckle discourse.

This is pretty on the nose. 

HARMFUL: R SLASH SURVIVOR

Survivor reddit is a lot like weed. It’s hard to keep the relationship in moderation. Either you are waking and baking, subconsciously clicking the app to check the forum for new threads and thinkpieces, seeing if Edgic has come out with the confessional tracker or if whoever “Robot” is spoiled the season... or you’re clean. The attention that comes with being on national television is a drug not unlike any other substance, which means you have to be careful about the frequency with which you consume it and the places and people you’re getting it from. r/survivor is a dangerous dealer. It’s the interface where people with the most vitriol and the least compassion congregate behind usernames like JustSalad-312 or wastedthyme20, and only know how to speak in hyperbole (somehow every season features the most boring player of all time, the best player of the new era, and the least deserving winner). They make immovable decisions about people based on 30-second scenes and become armchair psychologists — diagnosing, psychoanalyzing, prescribing.

In my personal experience, it was wild to witness the outrage over my choice words for Sam. People were so confused, “she hates men but she so clearly wants to be one…” Well, yes, StrategicCoconut42, that’s kinda the whole thing. I remember one time someone said I was playing Candyland while everyone else was playing Catan, and kudos to them because that’s really true and funny. It could be entertaining and even insightful to read people accurately grasping my pitfalls and parts of my personality, and some of it pushed me to get all introspective. But mass amounts of people dunking on me for comments I made while starving just wasn’t essential reading, though it felt like it at the time.

For a good week after the Operation Italy episode came out, I couldn’t escape the internet's hatred of my antagonist foil to the scheme. It was unlike anything I’d ever lived through before, and I turned to some folks whom I know faced similar levels of backlash, all of whom advised me to get off of reddit. I will admit that I was stubborn about this, insisting that my relationship with the forums wasn’t unhealthy or even affecting my ego. But, you know when you know. The later into the season, there are fewer players on screen to analyze, and the discussions become narrower. I deleted the app with a few episodes left of my season and never once did I miss it. Stepping away from reddit accelerated my process of being able to zoom out and realize that everything was okay. I had a loving girlfriend supporting me, friends in real life who were not on these web pages, a long line of people who came before me who SURVIVED both the game and the airing and the fans, and a cast who rotated our turns in the hot seat, but more importantly were people I got to play Survivor with. That is what matters, what lingers, what means the most. Not these threads that are buried under new ones every season. It passed for me, and it will pass for you, and it’ll pass faster the sooner you delete the app.

HEALTHY: Engage with the nice and normal fans

Yes, there are nice and normal fans. Your DM request inbox will probably be flooded, especially on your boot or finale episode.  I’ve found it quite fulfilling to reply to ones that have left some mark on me. People who really see me, or who tell me their children were rooting for me, or words that surprise me. It is a magical opportunity to resonate with people and let’s be real, we are all going to be on social media for the duration of the season anyway. Why not use some of the screen time to connect with the direct positivity being floated to you? Instead of spending time meandering around different interfaces and being blindsided by StrategicCoconut42 reading you to filth on a random Thursday morning, make Thursday morning roundups for replying back to the people who evoke something from you besides rage.

Okay, as I write this and try to think of other advice, I can feel the soapbox growing out of the ground and I can feel my inner hypocrite coming out of my spine like in The Substance. Truth is, I could tell you not to search your name under the hashtag, or to be selective about which podcasts you listen to; I could tell you not to start beef with your castmates online (but I actually would never tell you that because I love when that happens); I could tell you to make a loved one go through your comments before you, or to lean on your fellow castmates, or to shitpost, or to be super earnest, or to block the fact checker who posts the weekly polls. I could tell you not to quote tweet someone hating on you, or not to spoil your own season in exit press or I could tell you that in six months none of this will be viral anymore as Survivor 49 starts up and Season 50 leaks start to spread. I learned the lessons through living it, but what is undeniable is that so many of the conclusions I came to were all things told to me beforehand. And I suppose it is up to you whether or not to arrive at these universal conclusions on your own, or to accept them as fact and evade the triggers altogether. But there is something beneficial about being prepared, knowing there are simple ways to make this easier on yourself, and that there are outs if the light turns dark.

I lived the entire range of how a fan could feel about me during 47, and retrospectively I enjoy having been this perfectly polarizing figure. After all, every player I have ever loved has been a multidimensional, complex person on the show and has received their fair share of hate as well. Having been in the game long enough to say something that pissed off Middle America only feels right for me. But if I never looked online I never would’ve known that was even the case. When I meet fans and viewers in person, I’m met with nothing but openness and curiosity about the experience, and I am growing out of my habit of trying to qualify or self-deprecate about how I played because more often than not, people don’t even know what I’m talking about. 

There’s definitely no going back to the time when Survivor aired on Thursday night cable and the only place you could discuss it was in the break room or at the dinner table. This online community is here to stay, and for the most part I think that it’s wonderful. Like, don’t get me wrong, I was listening to a 2-hour retrospective of Big Brother 12 in my car earlier today and I have videos online of me breakdancing and pretending to be Julie Chen at the age of 10. I think I’ve listened to Cesternino’s voice to fall asleep more nights than I haven’t. Heck, I’m writing for a reality tv newsletter right now. I love this shit and I am in it deep. 

However, to put it in voting terms, the majority of the millions who watch Survivor aren’t obsessing over message boards or trapped in online echo chambers. Most would just be thrilled to meet someone who played the game they love. Last week, I hired movers, and the boss—probably in his sixties—lit up when he realized who I was. He told me I had to go back on the show. This man, who I might have once assumed looked like the cruelest reddit commentators, instead spent his time hauling my endless bags and praising my game. He probably couldn’t tell you what number season I was on or analyze my jury management, but he did think I was cool enough to ask for a picture.

And maybe that’s the real takeaway. Your Survivor season ends. The debates, the rankings, the reddit threads—those all keep spinning for the next group, but life moves on. Outside the bubble, no one is keeping track of the amount of times you voted correctly or challenge wins. They just see a person who did something so cool once. Those moments put my feet on the ground. That is reality.

-Teeny

Teeny was a contestant on Survivor 47 and writes about all things culture, gender and life on teeny.substack.com

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When I was asked to write this a few weeks back, I said yes with full gumption, excited to settle in with my popcorn, take notes, break down the episode, and analyze the relationship dynamics shaping the biggest moments of the week. That’s always been my favorite part of Survivor—the way alliances, trust, and social nuance build toward a majority consensus to vote someone off the island.

But this week? Instead of rich interpersonal strategy, the outcome was buried under layers of gamification and production “knick-knacks”.

According to Merriam-Webster, a "bit" is defined as "a short theatrical routine" or "a piece of comedic business or repartee”. This week’s episode of Survivor 48, aptly titled Committing to the Bit, confirms that New Era Survivor is essentially a live board game—one that allows for some strategy but mostly relies on pure luck. It’s an overproduced bit that players are forced to endure.

Have you ever played Mario Party? For those unfamiliar, it’s a video game that plays a bit like Chutes and Ladders—you roll dice, move along the board, and either collect goodies or land on unfortunate circles that set you back. Along the way, you play mini-games to earn coins, which you then use to buy stars. Some games require skill, but many rely on luck.

How do you win? End up with the most stars. But here’s the catch—at the end of the game, the so-called “Mario Gods” award bonus stars based on completely random criteria, like who rolled the lowest numbers overall or some other arbitrary factor. Random rolls, random game mechanics, and ultimately, a random winner… hm...

At its best, Survivor is an intricate social experiment, where strategy, relationships, and adaptability dictate the outcome of each episode—and ultimately, the winner of a million dollars. At its worst, it’s a live game of roulette, where twists override gameplay and the most pivotal moments are dictated by sheer randomness. This week’s episode (and so much of New Era in general) was inarguably the latter.

A social experiment or a game of chance? (CBS)

The outrageous number of producer-driven ‘twists’ is creating an unfulfilling experience for viewers. This week, I was mostly lost during Tribal Council, chasing down the rules like Sai running after Mary on Vula beach. It felt like an incoherent swirl of a Shot in the Dark immunity “success,” vote nullifications, votes, re-votes, and players skipping over (or not even realizing?) that one of four people no longer had a vote, or I guess two...or whatever.

When one of our Survivor coverage heroes, Dalton Ross, titles his recap The Most Confusing Tribal Council Ever, you know the mechanics have officially forced the game beyond recognition. (By the way, I love Dalton—go read his articles. BONUS: plenty of Ghost Island references this week, so I’ll spare you mine!)

If you’re looking for a clear breakdown of what happened, Gia Worthy (@classicallygia) put together a fantastic six-minute video—complete with a whiteboard—to explain the madness. Season 43’s Dwight Moore even followed up with a 4.5-minute explanation into why this week’s mechanics aren’t consistent with previous seasons. And let’s be real—when a former Survivor player needs ten full minutes to untangle a single vote, something is off.

And the players? They’re not exactly having a blast either.

As Bianca pointed out, "We all know journeys don’t usually end well." No, they don’t.

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Kamilla added, "A game of chance means I have no say in what happens." Yes, Kamilla. You only took six weeks off your life and lost months (maybe years?) to casting anxiety, so why would you want a say in your own game?

And in what might have been the most relevant and foreboding sentiment of all, Justin lamented, "I don’t have a voice tonight at Tribal Council. I’m like a sitting duck."

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy parts of this circus. There were highlights: we know exactly where alliances are forming in all three tribes (with Kyle and Shauhin in the best positions, in my opinion), we saw how Joe and Eva’s sweet friendship is (rightfully) starting to raise alarms, and we witnessed David unknowingly admitting that he and his girlfriend desperately need a serious compatibility conversation.

But what do all of these moments have in common? Real people, real stories, real relationships. Unmanufactured moments.

This isn’t the first time I’ve said that Survivor producers underestimate the power of human storytelling. If you haven’t yet, listen to your favorite Survivors on the Road to Reality. The Survivor casting team does an incredible job of finding people who bring intrigue, intensity, and humor to every season. In my podcast, I interview former cast members about their lives, and trust me—each conversation is fascinating. Because the people finding Survivors don’t mess around. They find incredible storytellers. They find interesting characters and narrators. Trust me, every single person cast makes for a great interview. Somewhere along the way, Jeff and the production team lost the plot. It was never just the game that kept us coming back—it was always the people who played it.

If it’s a fear of repetitiveness and a need to keep the show fresh: different puzzle decodes, weird phrases with bunnies and broccoli and literal rolling of dice for the same idol aren’t what has kept Survivor going for all these years—it’s the different people who make it interesting season after season.

So, Jeff, I beg you: Let. The. Players. Play. The game will be fascinating and engaging again - once you get out of the way.

As much as I’d prefer to keep the gambling in Vegas and not on the Survivor beaches, I suppose there’s a certain charm in watching the madness unfold. I held my breath as Cedrek was forced to make his decision. I was throwing my hands up in the air with frustration and confusion. And maybe that’s the real viewing experience of New Era Survivor: embracing the chaos, knowing that sometimes the game will make perfect sense, and other times, it’ll leave us furiously Googling “Survivor advantage rules” after the episode ends. Either way, we’ll keep showing up—because like it or not, we’ve already committed to the bit.

-Kellyn

Kellyn Bechtold (Survivor Ghost Island)  is a holistic career coach and business advisor. Her new consulting venture for small business founders, The Out Beyond, is launching this summer. Her Survivor podcast, Road to Reality, can be found on Spotify or wherever you listen to RHAP content. Follow her on socials everywhere @TheKellynB.

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The Amazing Race holds a special place in my heart. At the wee age of 10, I was already making my friends race around my small town of Walla Walla—solving puzzles, eating weird-flavored jelly beans, and U-Turning each other, sparking middle school drama. Over the years, I’ve become a student of the game, as some might say, and I had the opportunity to prove it alongside my mom on Season 36 of The Amazing Race. While I may have been able to solve multiple puzzles, I couldn’t quite figure out how to find my camera crew… but enough about last season because SEASON 37 IS OFFICIALLY HERE!

Starting off with a bang, Season 37 introduces a never-before-seen twist: The Fork in the Road. As a longtime fan of The Amazing Race, hearing there would be a double elimination had me on edge. The last time a season started with a double elimination, a team got eliminated at the starting line because they couldn’t find a license plate. Imagine getting cut before you even leave the country—what a nightmare! But this time, the double elimination was clever, well thought out, and added a unique strategic element to the episode. When teams arrived at The Fork in the Road, they had to choose which path to take, forcing them to make a game-changing decision right off the bat. While some teams picked the perfect route, others took a risk, opting for a task they weren’t as confident in just because fewer teams had chosen it. Ultimately, two teams fell victim to the twist and were eliminated in Episode 1.

Phil at the mats in episode one (CBS)

I could talk about The Amazing Race for hours, and the Season 37 premiere was one of the best in a while. But I also want to take this opportunity to NERD OUT over Amazing Race statistics—specifically when it comes to parent-child teams. Racing with my mom was such a blessing; I got to watch her accomplish things she never could have imagined, and she got to see me live out my childhood dream. Over the years, there have been multiple parent-child teams, and while many have become Amazing Race fan favorites… only one has ever won the race in 36 seasons! That title belongs to Dave and Connor, a father-son duo who took home the win in Season 24.

Breaking down the stats and dynamics:

• Mother-Daughter Teams: There have been eight mother-daughter teams on The Amazing Race, but so far, none have finished higher than 7th place. However, I believe that could change this season with Melinda and Erika!

• Mother-Son Teams: Historically, they’ve done really well! Out of seven mother-son teams, the worst placement has been 8th on their original season. Two teams have made the final three: Sheri & Cole and Margie & Luke, with both winning on their second attempts. Despite my mom and I trying to flip the script and claim the first-ever mother-son win, that title is still out there for the taking!

• Father-Daughter Teams: They’ve been some of the strongest competitors, and they’re usually my pick to go far in the race. This season, Ernest and Bridget had a strong showing in Episode 1, finishing in third place. Meanwhile, Anna Leigh and her dad won multiple legs before being cut short just before the finale in Season 35. One of the most notable father-daughter duos, Ron and Christina, nearly won Season 12, finishing in 2nd place.

• Father-Son Teams: Interestingly, they haven’t performed as well overall—though there are outliers! The legendary Mike White and his dad, as well as Corey and Rob, are fan favorites and, of course the only parent-child winners, Dave and Connor, who won Season 24, All Stars.

It’s fascinating to see how father-daughter and mother-son teams tend to perform better than other parent-child pairs. Maybe there’s some truth to the “mama’s boys” and “daddy’s girls” stereotype—perhaps their communication and collaboration styles just click when tackling the race’s challenges.

I know plenty of people who’ve told me they could never do The Amazing Race with a parent, but I’ll say this: it was one of the coolest opportunities to grow in friendship. You get to see your parents push themselves in incredible ways, and for parents, they get to see their child all grown up, racing around the world beside them. If you’re considering applying for The Amazing Race, we need more parent-child teams! So grab a parent (or even a fit grandparent—we’ve seen one of those make the final three!) and submit that application.

I love The Amazing Race, but more than that, I love seeing how it transforms relationships. I grew up watching it with my family, and maybe one day, I’ll get to watch it with kids of my own. Huge shout-out to the entire production team for bringing magic and adventure to our screens every season!

If you’re not tuning into Season 37, now’s your chance! Catch it this Wednesday night after Survivor!

-Danny

Danny Butler is a puzzle designer, reality TV fan, and board game fanatic. He ran The Amazing Race 36 with his mom, Angie, where their Team Walla Walla placed 6th.

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The marooning is an unfathomable moment.

For most Survivor players of the New Era, it is long in the making– the culmination of years of loving the show, applying, and dreaming of being the “woman in front” or the “guy in the middle” who announces their name to Jeff and the rest of the Survivor world. But when it finally happens for real, you are overcome with a strange, out-of-body feeling for which there is hardly any reference to describe.

And when you’re half blacked out from adrenaline, Jeff will wake you up with a slice of wisdom, as he did for the cast of Survivor 48:

Each of the 18 new castaways are realizing at that moment that they are no longer a fan, or an applicant, or a casting finalist. They are Survivor players, and they’re in it right now.

In that respect Jeff’s words ring true: the game has begun, and every single action from here on out matters. This, of course, is immediately fulfilled by the initial challenge, where you are beset by the pressure to perform. But that part is mostly reflexive. It’s something you’ve hyped yourself up for, and have no choice but to attack. The same could also be said for when you first arrive at your tribe camp, and introduce yourself to your new tribemates. This is all part of the ritual, this is something you’ve envisioned for a long time, and in that way it’s nearly automatic. All you have to do is fight off the feeling of surrealness and stick to the script.

But that only gets you through the morning. At a time very soon after, you will have crossed the threshold in a much more substantial and irrevocable way, and that is by making your first real game decision.

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This will come at a brief but electric moment when you take an action you did not predetermine, and that could only come from bouncing off the dynamics of the five particular human beings you’re living with. It is when all of your years of theorizing about the game are thrown to the side, and your instincts take over. It’s a horrifying thrill, and it should be… because it means taking a leap with an uncertain outcome, one that will set the trajectory for your entire game. That is when you finally become a Survivor player, and it can lead to glory or failure, eventually fall to ruin or be overcome, but no matter what, there are no redos.

Now, readers will recall that last season I put on an absolute masterclass on how not to start Survivor. My first real game decision happened on Night 2, when I debated whether to resign myself to being anxious and completely sleepless before the morning’s immunity challenge, or to attempt to do something about it. That is when I woke up Rachel and thereby set off a long, chaotic chain of actions, reactions, and Southern European machinations that defined the absolute roller coaster of my game.

A long chaotic chain of reactions started for me on night 2 and lasted until night 23 (CBS)

The casts of Survivor 48 and future seasons should take heart to know that you can come back from an opening blunder. But recovery or not, there is no doubt that if I had made a different decision, everything subsequent would have changed, and my entire game would have gone in some different, perhaps orthogonal, direction.

What were the opening moves made by our new players? Kyle’s first decision came earlier than most, when he agreed to compete in the Fight for Supplies challenge. We don’t know if this was part of Kyle’s playbook. It almost certainly wasn’t, as this type of volunteering usually results from a split-second gut decision after gauging the cues from your tribemates. Regardless, he knew as soon as he put his hand up that it would in some way chart a course for his entire adventure on season 48.

And when that jug shattered, he immediately felt the consequences of his decision. He’ll never get to know the first impression he would’ve made if he arrived at Civa beach with the others. Instead, he put himself in a hole that he’ll have to actively dig himself out of to find footing in the game. But maybe even more noteworthy was his second game decision, when he decided to help an injured Kevin fill his jug more quickly. When you prepare for playing Survivor, you will never have the foresight to say, “Okay, if I lose the Fight for Supplies challenge I’m going to help my competitor in order to build an early relationship.” That comes from being present and discovering in real-time the type of player you will actually be, whether or not it matches up with your preconceived image, and these formative decisions will incite the Survivor Butterfly Effect for the rest of the 26 days.

Next, we can look at the opening moves at Vula, where two diametrically opposed gamestyles were on display. Both Sai and Stephanie seemed to arrive with premeditated approaches. Sai had the self-awareness to know that hitting the beach at a breakneck pace was going to be her game, whereas Stephanie appeared confident that tamping down her innate leadership would serve her well at the start.

Sai and Stephanie’s diametrically opposed gamestyles (CBS)

For Sai, her first real decision was whom to work with and against, and how she would navigate within her budding alliance. This presented itself when she found the Beware Advantage:

Even if she would have kept the advantage a secret had the task been something she was more confident in, this decision set the tone for her grouping with Kevin, Justin, and Cedrek, and is toothpaste that cannot go back into the tube. Something we can already credit to Sai is her commitment: she knows how she wants to play, and once she makes a decision, she leans into it with full force. She fully included her alliance into the Beware task, and was very decisive with her plan to target Stephanie.

Stephanie, too, was decisive in her own way. Her plan from the very start was to play a social-first game as a means of letting the strategy come to her. That is a tried and true approach and no less valid of a strategy than Sai’s: we’ve seen many examples, including even in this episode, of players putting their best foot forward socially, like Stephanie intended to do, and being rewarded with invitations to multiple alliances.

Unfortunately for Stephanie, the specific dynamics of Vula were such that those opportunities never truly came. There was certainly a moment within the first three days where she could have pivoted and changed her pace, but she made the decision to stick to her guns. We’re not results-oriented here at The Confessional, but we can say with certainty that this choice defined her game.

Opening moves on Lagi involved figuring out their numbers ones early (CBS)

Over on Lagi, we see players make the ultimate early decision: who will be my number one? Many come in looking for a ride-or-die, but actually choosing one must happen in the moment, and it carries consequences larger than any other.

Eva made her opening move with intentionality. She is another person with a deep awareness, and knows what it is she needs to navigate Survivor with her autism. She made a beeline toward Joe and determined that he was to be not just the ally for her, but also her support.

And this in turn was the inciting incident for Joe’s entire game. Whatever he had in his mind about his impending Survivor journey, there’s no way he could have accounted for this specific connection and what it means for him. It was a true turning point:

I doubt he predicted that he would say this about a competitor so early into the game, and yet he has stayed true to his instincts and leapt into it fully.

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We don’t know where this path will lead for Joe and Eva, but no matter what happens with their bond, the significance of the moment itself cannot be undone. The same goes for the 17 remaining castaways, each of whom have played their opening. Just as in chess, where the decision to open with pawn to E4 or pawn to D4 looks insignificant to the untrained eye, it’s the most important move you’ll make, and sets the foundation for the game at hand.

-Andy Rueda

Andy Rueda was one of the standout characters and strategists of Survivor 47, where he helped orchestrate Operation: Italy, one of the most jaw-dropping moves of the new era. Originally from Buffalo, Andy now lives in Brooklyn where he is a data scientist.

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If you listen to the Why ___ Lost podcast, you know that Jessica Lewis and I go through each of my Rules for winning Survivor and discuss how each player who lost – or eventually won – did in following them. After each season, I evaluate whether any tweaks need to be made or examples added to the Rules so we thought it would be interesting to do so here!

The rules actually started after Borneo as a newspaper article! I was a freelancer doing mostly book reviews, but had started writing about Survivor on a website, so I presented my editor with the idea and they went with it! Beginning in Season 2, I started writing Why ___ Lost columns on that same website. The first set of Rules was highly based on how Richard Hatch had won, and a lot of that has remained in the core through the years. Certain Rules have moved around in importance or even been removed completely, such as Providing Food Wins Allies. Others were clarified or emphasized, such as when I added Play the Social Game to the title of my Pretend to Be Nice Rule as emphasis after Russell Hantz’s back-to-back losses. 

Once I started podcasting Why ___ Lost on RHAP with Rob almost ten years ago (it was originally him and me!), the Rules continued to change as the game itself did. It wasn’t until after Jessica joined me that the Rules solidified into their current state. They can’t change now because she worked with Erik Reichenbach to create our Rules Poster, below. However, I still make minor tweaks almost every season.

Survivor: Micronesia and Caramoan’s Erik’s Rules Poster

While the Rules Poster is just one large page, the full Rules themselves take up many pages on RobHasAWebsite.com – over 30 pages in my Word document! There are still a fair number of people who go through the whole thing and even players who sneak them into the Survivor pregame, such as Rob himself back in the day and even more recent players like Voce, Cassidy, and Carson. Those are where my smaller changes come in to address both general trends in the way we see the game changing and specific things that players have either done very well or… not so well. Admittedly we don’t update the website every season and I generally save them up. But as seasons have gone by, I keep notes about what needs to be changed in the next version, so let’s take a look at the most important ones here!

We start with the first Rule, which tells players to scheme and plot. There is a fair amount of discussion about using alliances and sub-alliances within the game, and I added a paragraph about Survivor 44’s Carson because the way he played was a good example people can learn from.

This additional example notes Carson had:

Rule 2 is of course about the flip-side, not scheming and plotting too much and, importantly to the new addition, keeping your scheming secret. Part of the Rule already says, “as much as players might feel like it’s a good idea to let the targets know in case they make it to the final three and have to face those previous targets at the jury, the fact of the matter is that it’s better to risk it and at least get to the final three rather than giving your target an opportunity to turn the tables. Then you can talk to the jury about how good a player you were, and hope they buy it. This is especially true nowadays with the prevalence of so many idols. You never know when your target might have one and you certainly don’t want to let them know they should plan to use it.” After last season, I’m adding in:

There is another part of Rule 2 that talks about needing to keep in a person you don’t really trust for a while longer if it means keeping the alliance, and therefore yourself, secure. There are already a number of examples, but I added another one. It’s from an international season and I know not everyone is caught up with everything all over the world, so this is a modified version of what will go in the Rule:

Skipping to Rule 4, which tells players not to let their emotions control them. There is already an example about Survivor 41’s Tiffany putting aside her fast friendship with Voce to vote him out. After Survivor 44, I wanted to add something more to clarify the situation regarding emotions in the game:

Skipping a bit again, Appendix A tells players to keep their end goals in mind. This section used to also be a Rule itself, about voting out the weak then the strong then the weak then the strong. I made some changes and additions to the early language to represent what we’ve seen in the New Era compared to prior seasons. 

The Appendix notes: “Early on, the weak are often those who will hurt your tribe's chances in the immunity challenges or who will cause divisions in the tribe that will overall weaken the group dynamic – which will in the end hurt just as much as losing challenges.” Now it continues:

Finally, I made an addition to Appendix B because of the example we had from the end of Survivor 47. This Appendix discusses the jury phase of the game and Final Tribal Council. There are already suggestions about what to do at that point, but Rachel’s win emphasized that sometimes it doesn’t really matter what a player says by that time because the jurors’ minds are made up. This is not a criticism of jurors who do that, but rather advice to players that they need to recognize this and ensure they don’t wait til the end or do things earlier that put them in a bad position:

There we have it, the latest changes to the Rules Jessica and I – as well as a guest almost every week this season – will be using on Why ___ Lost to evaluate each player who leaves Survivor 48, and the one who wins it all!

-David Bloomberg

As Survivor 48 begins, be sure to watch for Why ___ Lost every week on RHAP: We Know Survivor! David Bloomberg is one of the original Survivor writers and has been covering the show and reality TV in general for over 24 years -- online, in newspaper columns, on his reality TV websites, and for almost ten years in podcasts. He also posts reality TV videos on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram as @DavidBloombergTV and talks quite a bit about the topic on Bluesky as @DavidBloomberg.

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Australian Survivor’s landmark tenth season premiered today. A group of 24 players (!) in two tribes (!) of both Brains and Brawns are squaring off in Samoa in the franchise’s sequel to the beloved theme. If any of that sentence excites you and you want to hear more, you’ve come to the right place.

If you haven’t jumped on the Australian Survivor bandwagon by now, what are you even doing? Here’s five reasons why it should be your next reality TV obsession.

Go Old School

We’re not here to New Era shame, but some corners of the fandom may be missing some of the mechanisms, structures and grandiosity of old school Survivor. Well, Australian Survivor has you covered. Really, a lot of the best “innovation” of the franchise is in elements that US Survivor already got bored of and discarded, which we then lovingly stole. We’re talking two tribes, swaps, themes and nary a Shot in the Dark in sight. Survivor AU actually does innovate well on this basis, and while some twists and non-elimination episodes may go too far or surprise US viewers as a structural necessity, some cool idol inventions, challenges, moments and gimmicks have revolutionized the global lexicon and helped the franchise make its own mark. Over here, we pledge allegiance to the Cookie Idol.

The Cookie Idol and a guy with a crazy multi-season character arc (10Play)

The Scale

To quote the inimitable Sandra Diaz-Twine talking about Australian Survivor, “the game is too long, there’s too many people, the challenges are hard and the pay day is not that great”. What I think she was trying to say is that Australian Survivor puts its players through their paces. They play for around 47 days (sometimes longer!), reaching the merge nearly a month into the game. Two massive tribes going head-to-head feels like two grand concurrent merges, that then swap before total chaos ensues. Everything is done for maximum effect, everything is epic. This style might not be for everyone, the edit may not be the most subtle and, as Sandra attests to, it’s a long journey, for both players and viewers. However, when it’s good, as it so often is, this journey is incredibly rewarding. You’ll watch three mammoth episodes a week and somehow still want more.

The Track Record

As stated, when Australian Survivor is good it’s fantastic, and we’ve seen that in droves in the last two years. A new team at the helm of the last two seasons – the half-returnee Heroes V Villains and all-newbie Titans V Rebels – have absolutely earned their stripes. Two years ago, Heroes V Villains produced a season so impressive it landed itself on the New York Times’ list of 2023’s best TV moments, for a show that doesn’t even air in America. They said (it was me, I said it) it couldn’t be matched, but then Titans V Rebels came along with superb casting, scintillating storytelling and the franchise’s best ever production decisions to prove them (again, me) wrong. I’m not sure that even one episode out of the season’s 24 was a skip. If this season’s pre-season cast bios are anything to go by, it looks like they’ve struck more gold. You’ll be joining the franchise on maybe the hottest run in Survivor history. I personally think that the last two seasons are the best back-to-back outing in all of global Survivor lore.

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The Crossover

In case you missed it, a highly anticipated international grudge match is taking place later this year, with icons such as Parvati, Tony and Cirie already announced as the US representatives. That’s right, while Australian Survivor already dipped its toe into the Reality TV Cinematic Universe by casting Russell Hantz, Sandra and two seasons of Sandra’s daughter Nina (whom we’ve claimed as our own), later this year Australia V World is jumping all the way into the pool, throwing the franchise into the crosshairs and crossover that’s so popular in current reality television. Don’t just dive in for this exhibition season, step in now to understand the franchise, meet the ever-dashing JLP and even go back to discover some of the Aussie icons who will be taking on the global greats. 

The Movement

Beyond its place as a tough international competitor, Australian Survivor has won fans the world over for an often brilliant product, so much so that it’s become something of a movement. I know it’s niche to be obsessed with a three-to-four-hour-a-week commitment from a country you maybe only know thanks to Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, but you’re also reading a reality TV newsletter, so you’re exactly our kind of people. If you’re yet to find out what a Golden God is, if Macedonian Jesus is just a religious figure to you and if you were spared from the season-long meme of whatever a Juicy Dave is, then you have so much to learn. Welcome!

I’ll be covering every single episode (!) with episodic recaps, weekly feedback shows and exit interviews all season long, right here on RHAP. See you there!

-Shannon

Shannon Guss lives in Australia, where she is one of the great minds in reality television strategy globally. She is a podcaster, commentator, editor, journalist, host of international Survivor coverage on RHAP, host of Talking Tribal on 10Play, and has been a production consultant on Survivor South Africa. She also appeared on the seventh season of Australia’s Next Top Model.

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This week, “Boston” Rob Mariano was banished in Episode 7 of THE TRAITORS after another memorable run on a Reality TV social strategy game. Rob’s effort in the turret as a traitor was captivating to watch for us viewers and had all the hallmarks of the way Boston Rob always plays these games.

Boston Rob’s style can be summed up in one word: control. Whether he’s outsmarting his fellow castaways on Survivor, calling the shots on The Amazing Race, stirring up intrigue on The Traitors, or even trying to work his magic on Deal or No Deal Island, his game plan is all about dictating the narrative and dominating the other players. 

With all due respect to “The Boston Rob Rulebook”, here is my synopsis of how Rob does it:

• Always start aggressively: Rob’s first move is always to assert himself into the game’s leadership position. He’s a master at getting his foot in the door—whether it’s forging alliances or asserting his presence—so that everyone else is forced to react to him.

• Control everything, especially the vote: Once he’s in charge, Rob doesn’t leave anything to chance. He builds tight, unbreakable alliances (often using what you might call his “buddy system”) and meticulously orchestrates betrayals, always making sure he’s the one calling the shots. Every vote, every social interaction, and even every off-camera chat is carefully steered to serve his agenda.

• If you’re not with him, you’re against him: The beauty of Rob’s strategy is that it translates no matter the game. On Survivor, it’s all about controlling the tribe and neutralizing threats. On The Amazing Race, he uses quick thinking and negotiation to force other teams into taking penalties. And on The Traitors and Deal or No Deal Island, his reputation alone is enough to sway dynamics in his favor—he’s always working to keep his fate firmly in his own hands. 

In short, Boston Rob doesn’t just participate in these games—he remolds them to suit his vision. His approach is a blend of strategic foresight, psychological warfare, and a dash of charm that makes every move look inevitable. And while his tactics might leave some scratching their heads (or plotting their revenge), there’s no denying that Rob’s relentless pursuit of control is what sets him apart in the world of reality TV strategy.

Now that Rob’s run on The Traitors has come to an end, I thought it would be fun to try and rank Rob’s reality TV appearances in order of Rob’s trademark control over the game.

Honorable Mention: Island of the Idols

Although Rob was not a competitor this season, Rob still made his presence felt in a BIG way. Stationed on the “Island of the Idols” with Sandra Diaz-Twine, he mentored new players by testing their decision-making and risk management. His aura of dominance was felt without even playing when the show erected giant statues of Rob and Sandra for the players to idolize.

The statues of Rob and Sandra (CBS)

9. Survivor: Winners at War

Playing against fellow winners, Rob quickly aligned with other “old-school” players (Parvati Shallow and Ethan Zohn) to watch each other’s backs​. Rob’s biggest control move was when he coerced his entire tribe to all empty their bags at tribal council to reveal where an idol might be.

Rob lost a valuable number when Ethan got taken out of the game and things got worse after the swap. On the swapped Yara tribe, Rob urged everyone to stay together at camp and not scramble before Tribal Council – essentially a “buddy system on steroids.” Unfortunately for Rob, he was dealing with Sophie, Sarah, Adam and Ben and not the members of the Ometepe tribe. With the opportunity to put a big time notch on their Survivor belts/resumes, they decided to send Rob to the Edge of Extinction for a second honeymoon with Amber.

8. The Amazing Race 11 (All-Stars)

Competing as newlyweds, Rob and Amber came out of the gate strong. They won the first three legs in a row, a record at the time​. Rob and Amber leveraged their extensive Reality TV experience to make quick decisions and stay calm under pressure, which kept rivals in a constant state of unease. 

Rob and Amber returned for their second season of The Amazing Race with a clear IDGAF attitude. Not being there to make friends, they blew past the competition and Rob took great pleasure in using any opportunity to sabotage his rivals.

However, leg 4 was a total disaster for Rob & Amber. Rob struggled in a task over misspelling Philippines, dropping them to be on the second flight to Argentina. Perhaps being a little off their game by not being in first, Rob and Amber struggled to find a letter that was addressed to them in the roadblock. They got beat out by Charla & Mirna and experienced one of the worst nose-dives in Amazing Race history dropping from consistently being in first to eliminated from the Race for the very first time.

7. Survivor: Marquesas

We first met Rob Mariano in Survivor: Marquesas as a 26-year old cocky construction worker from Boston, Massachusetts. Despite the distractions of an early showmance with Sarah Jones, Boston Rob formed a counter-alliance on the Maraamu tribe to take out Hunter Ellis – the tribe’s strongest member and leader, and a Reality TV icon was born. One of the most shocking moves in the early days of Survivor history was felt by over 20 million Survivor fans who tried to understand what was happening. 

By “dethroning” the perceived tribe leader so early, Rob disrupted the traditional Survivor hierarchy and asserted his control. This bold move was virtually unheard of at the time and earned Rob a reputation as a fearless Survivor strategist​. Rob said “It doesn’t matter if my team is stronger physically or even stronger mentally but just that they obey”.

The move to blindside Hunter turned out to be Rob’s lone strategic power move in Marquesas. He might have gone out right after the swap had Gabriel been a reliable ally for the Rotu alliance (and how Reality TV history might have changed if that had happened!). However, he stuck around and Rob’s potential and off-the-screen charisma left audiences wondering what could happen if Rob ever got another chance. 

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6. Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains

After two stints on the Amazing Race, Rob finally returned to Survivor after a six year absence. Rob almost always portrays himself as the one that is the only sane person on a tribe of nincompoops. On Heroes vs. Villains, Rob found himself as the experienced leader who was able to galvanize a chaotic Villains tribe. Rob was focused on camp stability and challenge strength and found loyal allies in Tyson, Sandra, Courtney, Coach and Jerri. 

While Rob tried to provide control through stability to the Villains tribe, he met a formidable foe (or Foa Foa) in Russell Hantz. Russell is almost the antithesis of Rob in that Russell uses chaos to create an environment he can control whereas Rob wants to provide security for his minions in order for them to do his bidding. 

Despite Russell’s effort to sow chaos, Rob had Russell and Parvati outflanked and devised a plan to split the vote between Russell and Parvati to flush out a hidden idol​. Had it not been for Tyson’s last-minute misvote, it’s entirely possible Rob controls this whole game down to the end and wins Heroes vs. Villains - completely remapping all of Survivor History.

5. The Traitors Season 3

After being part of a game-opening twist, the players didn’t invite Boston Rob to join the game. Instead he got installed as the fourth traitor at the end of the season premiere. Rob entered what will likely go down as The Traitors’ most dysfunctional group of traitors ever. 

Boston Rob does not take a backseat to anybody on Reality TV and Rob sees how much of a voice Bob the Drag Queen has, both in the turret and amongst the faithful in the castle. Bob the Drag Queen made a key mistake when he announced that one of the three caged newcomers (Boston Rob, Wes and Derrick) must be a traitor, and Boston Rob didn’t appreciate this.

Boston Rob springs into action and weaponizes the earlier suspicions that Dylan Efron had around Bob the Drag Queen to turn the faithful against him. When Bob the Drag Queen was revealed as a traitor, Rob was seen as a conquering hero by many of the other players and built an incredible amount of goodwill.

Even with mounting suspicion placed on him by Derrick and Wes, he managed to make it a few more rounds - even getting the vote flipped around on Wes on a night that Rob could have been banished. Ultimately, I believe Rob picked the wrong target to go after in Brittney Haynes (a player who was too well liked with little suspicion on her from the group). So while Rob’s time in the castle was cut short, he proved to be a truly dominating force at the roundtable.

4. Deal or No Deal Island

Fully aware that his Survivor fame painted a target on his back, Rob addressed it head-on. Rob actively convinced others that keeping him around was in their best interest because of his contributions. By positioning himself as an asset, he diffused the urge to vote him off early. This strategic charm offensive made his competitors willing partners in his plan, essentially buying Rob time in the game.

Rob applied game theory to ensure he was never at others’ mercy. Knowing the Banker’s “Deal or No Deal” twist could eliminate a player without a vote, Rob maneuvered to avoid any scenario where he lacked immunity. He dominated in excursions (challenges) to secure safety for himself whenever possible, refusing to leave his fate to chance.

Rob and his ally Aron on Deal or No Deal Island (NBC/Peacock)

His strategic foresight paid off – Rob reached the final four with an excellent shot to win. Unfortunately, a misunderstanding around the rules gave Rob a time penalty that he was unable to overcome, landing him in fourth place for the season. Had Rob gotten through that challenge, he undoubtedly would have won the final challenge and taken on the Banker to win a few more million dollars.

3. The Amazing Race 7

Racing with Amber shortly after Survivor All-Stars, Rob applied Survivor-style cunning to the Race. While The Amazing Race is a much different game than Survivor, Rob was able to integrate his trademark game of control to the race. For instance, when faced with a Roadblock requiring a single person to eat four pounds of meat, Rob realized he couldn’t finish it. Instead of accepting last place, he convinced other teams to also quit the task and take a four-hour penalty alongside him​. By “Tom Sawyer-ing” the others into quitting too, Rob ensured multiple teams would take the penalty, not just him and Amber

In another leg, Rob showed financial and social savvy by pooling money from other teams to bribe a local bus driver. He orchestrated an early stop so those teams (and his) could disembark sooner, using none of his own cash in the bribe​. This is textbook Boston Rob, forcing others to do something that benefits the group (and himself) that he himself somehow declines to take part in.

Rob and Amber should have won the Amazing Race 7 had it not been for one of the most controversial moments in Reality TV history. Rob and Amber were the only team who had arrived in time to catch the first plane back to the US when the plane miraculously (or non-miraculously for the Mariano family) returned to the gate to allow eventual winners, Uchenna and Joyce, to board the plane. While production claims the pilot made the decision to allow the other team to board, Rob and Amber felt like the show had screwed them over. 

While Rob and Amber can’t claim an Amazing Race win (and another million dollars) on their resume, Rob’s tactics brought Survivor-style maneuvering into The Amazing Race in a way that it had never been before. While Rob will always be a Survivor player first, Rob and Amber proved to be one of the most dominant Amazing Race teams ever assembled.

2. Survivor: All-Stars

Little did I know when I donned the red buff on the beaches of Panama in 2003 what I had gotten myself into. I did not have the foresight to know that I had stepped into the game with the GOAT and I would be first in a long line of people to discover that during Survivor: All-Stars.

Rob allied with Amber Brkich on day one, creating a tight duo that steered the pre-merge Chapera tribe’s strategy​. Rob provided stability for a group that continued to win and avoid tribal council against the floundering Mogo Mogo tribe. During that time, Rob and Amber cut separate deals to go to the end with Big Tom, Alicia and Jenna along with Rupert. 

However, after a tribe swap isolated Amber away from Rob, perhaps the most impactful deal in the history of the show was struck when Rob persuaded Lex van den Berghe to save Amber at a tribe swap by promising, “You take care of her, I’ll take care of you… if you can.”​

And “Take care of Lex” was exactly what Rob did when he betrayed Lex at the very next vote. This ruthless honor-your-deal-until-it-hurts-you approach allowed Rob and Amber to have full control of the rest of the game until they reached the Final 2. 

While Lex, Tom and Alicia cast their votes for Amber to cost Rob the win, he was able to get the last laugh when he proposed to Amber in one of Survivor’s most memorable finale moments. While Rob didn’t get the win on Survivor: All-Stars, he proved himself as Reality TV’s most notorious player and continues to return for two more decades of Reality TV dominance.

1. Survivor: Redemption Island

In his fourth try – which he won – Rob played a nearly flawless game of control. He built a majority alliance of loyal followers on day one​ and systematically removed anyone who wouldn’t pledge loyalty. Rob even implemented a rigid “buddy system” rule, forbidding his allies from speaking alone with rivals so no one could plot against him. 

Rob’s calculated cold-bloodedness is demonstrated by the way he targeted players. He had a keen sense to get rid of the early dissenters right away. Rob proved willing to cut even close allies if it meant securing victory. He befriended and carried Grant Mattos deep into the game, then eliminated Grant before he could become a final threat.

He controlled every vote with this tight grip​. His best move may have come when he eliminated one of his own tribe members at the merge as Matt Elrod returned to the game from Redemption Island. Matt proved to be too much of a wild card and Rob realized that by eliminating Matt he could control the majority and keep his allies fearful that the same fate could happen to them at any point. 

Rob was in complete control of his game during the entirety of Redemption Island. Rob sat next to his hand-picked goats at the end of the game in Phillip and Natalie, only to be robbed of a unanimous win by Ralph Kiser’s one vote for Phillip (spelled Phile). In Redemption Island, Rob completed his magnum opus of strategy and earned his one and only Reality TV win. Jeff Probst praised it as perhaps the most perfect game of Survivor ever. 

Boston Rob is one of those players you just can’t ignore—whether you’re a die-hard fan or a casual observer, he has a way of making every moment on screen feel like a front-row seat to a master class in strategy and showmanship. There’s something endlessly fascinating about watching him work the game; it’s not just his razor-sharp tactics, but the way he owns every room he’s in, turning even the simplest move into an unforgettable statement. 

Sure, his game is ruthless, but it’s also laced with a kind of magnetic charisma that keeps you guessing what he’ll do next—often with a smirk and a quip that makes you wonder if he’s playing us as much as he’s playing the game. In a landscape where so many players stick to playing under-the-radar just to squeak out a forgettable win, Boston Rob is the antithesis of that type of player - and that is why, whether you love him or loathe him, you just have to watch.

-Rob Cesternino

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The Traitors has been a massive hit and everyone involved has come out on top right?

Well, no, actually. There is a bit of a power struggle going on in reality TV right now and this one hasn’t been happening at the roundtable.

Come on in and let me tell you about the arms race in unscripted television.

When streaming services first came on the scene, their original scripted drama series were super popular and a huge focus. But it appears that in the last couple of years, Netflix, Peacock, and Prime have all seen the dollar signs in something that you already know: unscripted television can be incredible.

While I’m not a fan of the dystopic nightmare that is Prime’s Beast Games, it supposedly had 50M viewers in 25 days.

Netflix added almost 20M subscribers in 2025 and has plans for a variety of Traitors-like crossovers featuring casts from its existing unscripted hits.

And The Traitors season three is Peacock’s biggest reality debut ever. Which brings me to the drama that happened away from Alan’s banishments…

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Corie Henson, NBC Universal’s Executive Vice President Unscripted Content, Competition, and Game Shows, and the person responsible for NBC/Peacock’s versions of The Traitors, Love Island, America’s Got Talent, Deal or No Deal Island, and more, is leaving the company.

What does leaving the company mean? We don’t know, and we won’t, but there are clues as to what went down and how she got banished.

Donna Langley, chair of NBCUniversal Entertainment and Studios, is bringing all the different pieces of NBC’s scripted and unscripted shows together. Instead of having Henson oversee all unscripted programming, Langley has a new head of NBC programming and Peacock scripted, Pearlena Igbokwe, as well as a new head of NBC-owned Bravo and Peacock unscripted, Frances Berwick.

Between Igbokwe and Berwick, the new NBC squad has a major focus on reality television; Igbokwe will likely be overseeing America’s Got Talent, Deal or No Deal Isalnd, and The Voice, as Berwick oversees The Traitors, Love Island, and the Bravo reality world. Langley’s three-headed alliance is merging the scripted and unscripted worlds to take advantage of unscripted’s resurgence.

NBC sees the dollar signs in unscripted and so do other streamers. And they’re right to. While CBS’ Survivor and Big Brother and ABC’s The Bachelor have been running for many years, their traditional model hasn’t changed much. The shows air at a certain time on a weekly release and international distribution is complex, limited, and infrequent. Meanwhile, Netflix can release a show in almost 100 countries simultaneously while Survivor 48 will be distributed in just a few upon airing.

The thing is, NBC is a traditional broadcaster. They’ve just been more successful innovating in unscripted.

It’s not like ABC and CBS aren’t trying to get involved in the arms race. ABC is a division of Disney, where Disney+ and Hulu are already in the reality streaming game, while CBS has Paramount+. The Traitors broke through for Peacock, while the other network streamers have been trying their best. Paramount+ has had The Challenge exclusive seasons streaming there and actually has had a decent library of reality TV since its inception. It’s just that nothing has captured the zeitgeist in the same way The Traitors has for Peacock.

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In some ways Big Brother is the most innovative of the CBS shows, yet it still falls behind. Big Brother: Over the Top (OTT), a streaming-only version debuted in 2016, likely a little prematurely. Three seasons of Celebrity Big Brother and one of Reindeer Games provided the kind of all-star style accelerated gameplay that Traitors gets all the credit for and Netflix is copying, although these shows only released on CBS and its app.

It’s also hard for the other traditional networks to compete with NBC’s aggressive expansion, part of which Henson originated. She did work with the BBC on Traitors, and also set the groundwork with them to release the upcoming Destination X. Complex partnerships mean that these shows can be released globally and fast.

This is a key point because when the broadcasters’ streaming services usually acquire content, they might only acquire the rights to that content in certain regions. Streaming a series in an OTT environment (meaning streaming via digital devices) is a lot less complicated when the streamer also owns the production from start to finish.

To take it further, when companies have unscripted and scripted reality TV combined, they can jump on a huge hit and make spinoffs. The scripted Squid Game season one was massive? Great.

Netflix’s unique structure allowed it to make Squid Game: The Challenge, which was another hit, release it in 93 countries, and is reportedly filming season two of that show right now, likely to be released between scripted Squid Game seasons 2 and 3. It’s a feedback loop that makes their wins bigger as they have to deal with far less red-tape than many shows that air at 8pm weekly on traditional broadcasters.

What if instead of character development we yelled about the prize money? (Prime Video)

It is worth noting that some of these big wins need to be taken with a grain of salt - or a small piece of Feastables. When Prime says that Beast Games did 50 million viewers, what does 50 million actually mean in their context?

They won’t even tell us!

Amazon declines to go into detail about whether the number entails active subscribing households, people pressing play, or another formula to make 50 millions. These streaming services aren’t beholden to report numbers to anyone but their execs so although Beast Games seems like a huge hit, they could be just yelling big numbers at us like Jimmy does.

The funding models are getting more sophisticated and complex. In many non-US countries, like Canada for example, shows have to acquire sponsorships to pay for their runs, especially on the traditional networks, which are having their own issues in Canada too.

Henson’s genius with Traitors was seeing the global potential and partnering to make it happen. Streamers could carry English language versions of shows from different countries so that when someone watches The Traitors, they might stumble onto the UK version along with the US one - and eventually AUS, NZ, CAD, and more.

If you speak a language, as many readers of this newsletter know, you might find a compelling reality show from the other side of the world in that language. No one who watches Survivor Australia can argue that it isn’t fantastic. But CBS and Australian 10Play haven’t figured out how to integrate their brands together like NBC and the BBC have with The Traitors and with Love Island.

So why did Henson leave? I don’t have definitive answers whether it was voluntary, she was forced out as part of the restructuring, or if she was crushing it so hard that the NBC bosses got upset. What is clear is that her impact has created a battle across streaming services and across networks to keep up, to work together, and to let great unscripted content cross borders and share fans.

Streaming services are in the lead and as they keep growing, the networks will be forced to innovate.

Hey, at least Survivor has an official podcast now, I guess.

BBOTT season 2 anyone?

-Kevin Jacobs @ The Confessional

Kevin is the winner of Big Brother Canada 10, a film nerd, and a go-to-market tech guy. Find him on all platforms @kevintedjacobs where he talks about competitive reality TV and good movies.

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In Survivor seasons 41 and 42, Jeff introduced the “Do or Die Twist”, a thinly veiled version of the Monty Hall Problem. In Jeff’s version, 41’s Deshawn and 42’s Lindsay both came last in an immunity challenge and had to select one of three boxes looking for safety/an image of fire. The twist was that the other two boxes had skulls, meaning the player would be eliminated and tribal council would be cancelled if they selected a skull. Both times, Jeff revealed one of the skulls, and Deshawn and Lindsay had the opportunity to switch their boxes. They both chose to stick with their original box and both times, they were safe.

Both times their math was wrong. Like the original Monty Hall problem on the classic show hosted by Monty Hall, Let’s Make a Deal, the move is always to switch after the host reveals one of the wrong answers, because it actually doubles your odds. But you already know that because you’re a wise confessional reader… and if you don’t it’s completely unintuitive so check out the Wikipedia page.

One of our guilty pleasures here is Deal or No Deal Island (DONDI), a game of black widows, golden gods, and doctors of dermatology who are trying to compete for large sums of money in a game of strategy, a lot of luck, and some complex math.

The Do or Die Twist on Survivor 41 (CBS)

This week, we aired one of RHAP’s greatest recurring podcasts, “Ask Dr. Christian Hubicki”, where we asked the aforementioned Survivor: David vs Goliath star if DONDI logic is similar to The Monty Hall Problem.

Deal or No Deal is largely a game of chance; for those of you who haven’t watched DONDI, every episode ends with a game of Deal or No Deal where the goal is to make a good deal with the banker. The game begins with a bunch of dollar amounts in closed briefcases - come on, you had to watch with Howie at least once - and then the player chooses one case for themselves and progressively selects other cases to open and remove from the game. Based on those amounts, the banker will then make a variety of offers to try to save themselves money while leaving contestants happy.

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If the player doesn’t accept any deals by the end of the game, the player has the option to swap their original sealed briefcase with the final sealed briefcase left in the game. So we asked Christian, is this the same as the Monty Hall Problem? Should players always switch if they’re in that position?

According to Dr. Hubicki, DONDI is fundamentally different. With the Monty Hall/Jeff Probst Problem, the host always makes sure they don’t open the winning door or winning box. This increases the odds of the player selecting the winning door because the probability of winning shifts to the closed door or box that the player didn’t originally select. With DONDI, the player might open the highest value case which would lower the banker’s offer. This couldn’t happen on Let’s Make a Deal or New Era Survivor.

See Christian’s complete explanation here (RHAP)

There it is. The math says you don’t have to switch, even if the math is a probability, not a guarantee. Just ask Deshawn or Lindsay.

Have a great week, and try not to throw your other Traitors under the bus - if you can!

-The Confessional

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Dear Reader,

Despite being known and announced as the “Traitors Expert” to you, the lovely audience, I too have felt like strategies/gameplans that I have once held on to are either expiring or evolving from where they were even a year ago. Today, I would like to dive into some of these thoughts and share them with you.

The Traitors is a global phenomenon that has now built strong franchises across the world. Despite the size to which the show has grown, it still remains a baby amongst the Reality TV landscape. With the US and UK franchises only just beginning their third seasons, both the audience and the players are learning emerging strategies as we watch the show play out. 

The early era of The Traitors, alongside prior knowledge of other competitive Reality TV shows, has brought a very fun yet divisive conversation with regard to how one should be playing this game. In Big Brother or Survivor, the gameplay is very nuanced, yet the objective is simple. Vote out the other players, get their votes at the end, and win the title and money that comes along with being a champion.

The Traitors is different. While the barebones objective is to make it to the end and win - the journey is anything but simple. A Faithful is told their game is to find these Traitors and prevent them from immortalizing their shame on the internet.

Step 1: Find Traitors. Step 2: Banish Traitors. Step 3: Profit.

Simple on the surface, yet riddled with complex and nuanced decisions to go along the way. This objective really only is as simple as it sounds for the Faithfuls at the final "Fire of Truth." If they are able to get rid of the Traitors in the finale and end the game, they will win. Whether it is two, three, or four Faithfuls, they will split the pot and be able to claim that they were never duped by the duplicitous Traitors. The journey to the final Fire of Truth as a Faithful can only be described as a roller coaster, a choose-your-own adventure story where a simple cough could land you out of the game before you can say “Alan”. 

I think before I talk about the ways either role of Traitor or Faithful could play, I want to highlight what I believe to be the couple of factors that I think are CRUCIAL to the way someone should play in the event they are on The Traitors. And honestly, I personally feel like these apply to playing any other competitive Reality TV game.

The most important factor in how one should play is located in the mirror. Knowing who you are and how you come across to others should absolutely dictate the type of game that you should play. Not everybody can play from the front and take charge, and not everybody can lean on their charm to take them far. Identifying the type of person you are is vital in order to navigate both the doors you yourself will open and the obstacles you yourself will put in front of you. Are you someone who is perceived to be naive? Good. Let them think you are naive and dupe them with that knowledge to further your game. 

Only Carolyn could play the game she is playing (Peacock)

The one other crucial thing that should dictate how you carry forward in the game is one that you will not know about until you are at the castle: the cast that you will play with in this high-stakes game of whodunnit. Depending on the types of personalities that you are met with in the castle, you could either be in a good spot to start or a tough one. Since the dawn of Reality TV, one of the biggest appeals has been the guarantee that personalities will clash. The unfortunate reality is that there is a very, very small subset of people that can plug into any group and thrive.

If you’re like me, you fancy your odds of getting along with many different groups, but you also require time to get there. I am someone who is very easy to get along with and talk to, but I am also EXTREMELY shy and quiet when I first meet people. The degree of shyness varies from personality to personality. So, in a game like this, with so little time to make a first impression, presenting the quiet, withholding front is only going to guarantee that I am looked at as suspicious. But if I know this going in, and I see some people who I believe to be my speed, I am able to gel with them a lot quicker, allowing me to begin to lay down foundations while I proceed to open up to the other folks that I may be shy with at first. 

I say this because I feel like there are many winners across many franchises who have been able to utilize these two factors to navigate their games and emerge victorious. The winner of The Traitors Canada Season 2, as an example, is VERY fresh on my mind. The winner had pages and pages of notes of different scenarios they would adapt to depending on factors such as how they would be perceived, how many people knew who they were coming into the season, and so on. Using this, alongside personally curated outfits and mannerisms, they projected an image to their fellow castle-mates on a level we have never seen before. They made the cast see them exactly how they wanted to be seen. It was an incredible feat, and if you haven’t watched that season yet, let this be an endorsement for you to check it out now!

Now let’s go back to those in the turret/conclave who don the cloak of the Traitor. As I said, their job is easier than the Faithful. They are automatically guaranteed to sleep in the night whilst the faithful have to worry about being murdered. Their odds of leaving the castle are half compared to the Faithful. They do have their own obstacles, though, of lying and attempting to hide those lies from about a dozen and a half people out-of-the-gate. They also have to walk the tightrope of avoiding being double-crossed and backstabbed by their fellow Traitors who may be looking for solo glory. Or are they the Traitor looking for that sole-winner title?

Have they successfully marinated trusting Faithfuls to take to slaughter at the end? Or are they being dragged to the end by a so-called Faithful friend who has them clocked and will be turning the dagger on them at the final Fire of Truth? We’ve seen every iteration of these scenarios play out for the Traitors. We’ve seen Traitors who want to genuinely split the pot with their devious Traitors at the end, and we’ve also seen Traitors who want to stand tall over the rest.

Do you have a majority in the turret? Or are you the outcast amongst your fellow cloaks? Do you have Faithfuls who are going to bat for you? Or are you being looked at? If you have a majority, and there are Traitors better connected than you, they can help keep your name out of people’s mouths. Whereas if you’re riding solo Jason Derulo-style and have suspicion on you, today may be your last in the castle. 

I bring up these questions and scenarios because I genuinely think the simple objective given to the Traitors at the start of the game is anything but. Let’s say there are 50 questions and scenarios that can happen to a Traitor. So many of them clash with each other and could crash you out of the game. But that same combination of situations could be the road to victory for another. Of the eight completed seasons of the English-speaking franchises of the show, we’ve seen many different outcomes play out. Even amongst the games that the Traitors have won, the way they played their game and got to the end has been so vastly different that I can tell you I do not think there is a clear-cut way a Traitor should play.

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The Faithfuls have their own complex web of navigation and movement to select from. Whilst they are told they have to find and banish a Traitor, I personally disagree with this notion. I believe the objective of the Faithfuls is to IDENTIFY a Traitor. What they do with that next is completely dependent on the style of game they want to play, their own motivations and desires.

See, if you identify a Traitor, you can do so many different things. You’ve unlocked a branch that can split into many different avenues. If you choose to push that Traitor out, are you doing so because you are hoping to land yourself into the turret with recruitment? Or are you just trying to help the Faithful by pushing a Traitor out? If you’re keeping the Traitor in, are you going to begin cozying up to them to avoid being murdered in the interim? Or do you intend to go to the end to cut them at the Fire of Truth? Are you self-motivated, or are you team-motivated?

Whilst most of us in the competitive Reality TV sphere have long identified that the Faithful game is very much a solo game masked as a team effort, there are still some that see it as a “Good vs. Evil” endeavor, in which they will always look at getting rid of people on the basis that they are Traitors and Traitors alone. This might be the only definitive way I would say is the incorrect way to play The Traitors as a Faithful. The reality is, if you are SO vocal in doing so, the remaining Traitors are not going to give you the satisfaction of being celebrated by the castle for long because they are not going to wait to get got by you as well.

Other players are silently adapting the Sandra Diaz-Twine school of thought: as long as I’m not the one going, I will vote out a Traitor or Faithful. Why? Because in order to even BE in the conversation to win with your beloved Faithfuls at the end, you have to make it to the Fire of Truth with a small subset of people. Those people can and absolutely do consist of both Traitors and Faithfuls. You’re trying to lock up your spot in that group, but you do not have the benefit of trimming the cast with murders at night. You have one vote at the Roundtable and a dream. You have to get your way the old-school way: make bonds and social connections, and then subtly nudge those connections to use votes the way you would like them to. 

This week’s episode gave us everything and more (Peacock)

But also, the reality is we’ve seen players come in with the mindset that they want to play a certain way, and then can’t help but land where they do. All of these ways to play are well and good until you’re in the line of fire for blinking or taking an ill-timed sip of your drink. Now you’re playing the survival game. But there are also some that will actively try and get some early suspicions on them as a means to avoid being murdered. The Traitors LOVE to keep people with suspicions on them as bait to be banished at the Roundtable. So, as long as you can avoid being banished, suspicions can be good for you in the night… to an extent.

I think because of how chaotic The Traitors is as a show, and with how little the players will have to navigate with as far as information goes, this game is inherently unpredictable, even more than other shows. There are going to be players that absolutely break the mold and the game with masterful performances, but they will be few and far between. Because the reality is: there isn’t a tried and true way to play The Traitors.

You can’t just get numbers together, dwindle them to the Final 6, and then play from there. Because of the different roles, different motivations, different permutations and combinations of win conditions, plus the uncertainty that you even get to the Final 6 with the role that you began with, these plans will go by the wayside QUICK. I do think there are optimal ways to play The Traitors. And while I do think there are incorrect ways to play The Traitors, I, Pooya, do NOT think there is one correct way to play The Traitors. 

As a format, The Traitors is a show first and a game second. There are and always will be people who do not enjoy the show because the game format is skewed towards the Traitors. But I cannot begin to explain how much I love this show. It is extremely thought-provoking to me to the point where I often think about a lot of these different scenarios, situations and decisions made in the game. I fell in love with competitive Reality TV for the social game of it all. The connections are made with ulterior motives, the connections are made with genuine feelings, and the connections are broken with inner struggles. The Traitors is riddled with a lot of those, alongside poor gameplay, optimal gameplay, and popcorn-worthy television.

This week's Traitors US Season 3 episode gave us all of this and more. The Roundtable is a blessing for good television and a heartache for early departures. The Turret is a vehicle for murder, but an arena for a clash of personalities. Breakfast is breakfast, and who doesn’t love breakfast?

I am beyond grateful that I get to talk about this show weekly, and I am so happy to find passion in a show I believe in. I legitimately could continue talking, as I genuinely feel like I have even more to say and questions to answer that in writing this, I have opened up for myself. So, maybe we will get the opportunity to expand on these thoughts in the future. But for now, I thank you for reading all the way to this point.

Sincerely, 

The Duke of Deception

Pooya AKA The Duke of Deception is the host of RHAP’s Traitors podcasts and is without question, one of the global experts on Traitors strategy.

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Follow me on a journey through the Scottish Highlands as we start another season of everyone’s favorite new reality show, The Traitors! This show has quickly risen to the top of my reality TV list, and I recommend it to everyone. Between the mix of reality stars, the glorious castle, Alan’s clever wordplay, and the thrilling game of life and death, this show is so electric - every single episode. 

*Spoilers for the first three episodes of season three ahead 

Part of what makes The Traitors such a fun show is how difficult it can be for the players to find the Traitors. Sometimes the Faithfuls are like chickens running around with their heads cut off. It’s also exciting watching the Traitors successfully fool their fellow players. I mean, what’s more fun than watching THE Danielle Reyes cry over a murder SHE committed!? Or seeing Boston Rob sway an entire roundtable with one line!? We even get Bob the Drag Queen putting on his crown to rule this castle with lies and deceit. 

Alan is the best (Peacock)

But… after the glee of all the murder goes away, I’m left with a bit of shame, guilt, and just one question. 

How fair is this for the Faithfuls? 

These first three episodes of season three have shown me just how much of an information disadvantage the Faithfuls truly have in this game. The first roundtable was absolute CHAOS. As a group, they accused ten of the 22 people in one sitting, while the Traitors went on to receive ZERO votes at the first roundtable. Even later on when Jeremy and Dylan were actually on the correct path - paranoia, suspicion, and fear of others - ended up saving the Traitors completely. There are four Traitors in that castle and they have only received 1 of the 39 total votes cast in the first two rounds. 

All of this along with the data from all U.S. and international seasons of The Traitors tells us… the win rate does currently skew towards the Traitors. 

Bob was right… these Faithfuls are “Miss Guided”.

So in the interest of trying to keep this raging war between Faithfuls and Traitors as interesting as possible, I’m here to give some expertise on the five signs you are talking to a Traitor.

(My traitors resumé: In high school, I would invite 20-30 kids over to play mafia in my basement REGULARLY. I wish I was making that up) 

#1 Overly Defensive

Faithfuls understand that other Faithfuls are just as confused as they are. Being overly defensive shows that you are probably hiding something. Gabby said it best, “Faithfuls should be open to all sorts of theories.” She’s right because Faithfuls don’t know the truth. Only the Traitors KNOW things for certain. A great example of this is when Bob the Drag Queen heard that Dylan was suspicious of him. He then got overly defensive when talking to Brittany and Nikki. They should have ended that conversation thinking they might be talking to a Traitor. 

#2 Quiet at Roundtables 

If you are talking to someone who is super quiet at the roundtables… you are probably talking to a Traitor. Who could forget the downfall of Dan “The Goat” Gheesling from season two. Not only was he quiet at roundtables, but he was quiet everywhere else. This is a lesson I learned from being a Catfish on The Circle. When you’re hiding something, like being a Traitor or a Catfish, you subconsciously feel like, “The more times I open my mouth, the more opportunities they have to catch me.” Every single time you speak, there is a chance you could say the wrong thing. So to fix that, you naturally want to say less. Now, that being said, Bob the Drag Queen is doing the opposite at roundtables, which I love to see, but it’s not the norm. Danielle, Carolyn, and Boston Rob each have only said one thing at the first two roundtables (that we have seen) and they were all VERY careful about not REALLY accusing anyone.

Bob The Drag Queen being loud at roundtables is outside the norm for traitors (Peacock)

#3 Contradictions 

Faithfuls SHOULD have very little to lie about. The exceptions, in my opinion, are shields and withholding suspicions to not die early. So if you catch someone contradicting themselves, and it’s not about one of the aforementioned reasons, they are probably a Traitor. Traitors are way more likely to have shifting reasons for why people are guilty. Take RHAP Traitors 2 when Claire was targeting Tiffany most of the game and then once Claire was recruited, she stopped completely. Be on the lookout for inconsistencies and contradictions! In this sort of situation, I think it’s best to look out for people you might call a “sellout... bro”.

#4 Bandwagoning 

One of the surefire ways to tell if you’re talking to a Traitor is if they are quick to jump on the bandwagon with every idea you have. It’s a smart move for the Traitors to bandwagon onto ideas they know are wrong but also, ideas started by another player: just as Dylan so correctly pointed out. It’s also very important to be able to tell the difference between someone just gassing you up, or engaging with your ideas. Admittedly this can be hard for reality TV stars since the only people cast on reality TV are narcissists… don’t worry I can say that, I have friends that were on reality TV.

#5 Survivors

Are you talking to someone from the hit CBS television show Survivor? If so then you have a FIFTY PERCENT chance you are talking to a Traitor! Between all three seasons of the U.S. version, they have cast eight survivors and a whopping four have been Traitors. If you are going to roll the dice with a Survivor player, know your odds.

I mean like…. at some point these people have to catch onto this… right? Right?!

Big Brother players currently stand with 3/7 of them being Traitors. ALMOST 50% as well!

I feel strongly that the Faithfuls have a harder job. While we do follow the Traitors - it is the name of the show - they are the main characters. I’ve found myself drawn to the plight of the Faithfuls. Are they helpless until a Traitor makes a mistake? I don’t think so…and I want so badly to see these clueless Faithfuls put this puzzle together, even if they are blindfolded!

Where we are at currently in season three, I think we have a challenging game ahead of us with some reality TV titans battling it out. Some players are onto Danielle and Bob the Drag Queen, and with Tony being a Faithful, will eyes shift to Sellout Rob? I personally think those three need to be listening to CAROLYN a bit more (but hey, what do I know). Either way, I can tell we have an exciting season ahead of us!

Are these tips foolproof? No. There are always going to be shifts in the meta and the classic double bluffs, but this is a great starting place for when you put on your detective Faithful hat. I hope these tips can help you in any future games or even identify any Traitors in your real life! 

-Alex Brizard 

PS I’m back like Boston Rob, just to say that Ayan asking Wes if he does TikTok was hilarious. 

Alex Brizard was a contestant and a catfish/traitor on The Circle Season 4 on Netflix. @awildbriz on all platforms. 

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When I was on Survivor: All Stars back in 2003, it was a totally new concept: Survivor was bringing its players back to compete again. The entire thing was revolutionary, and it changed the way reality TV works. Fast forward 21 years of my life later and returnee seasons on Survivor, and on other shows are the subject of constant speculation, fan-casts, and something I am guilty of, BrantSteele simulations.

We’re in a season of change in 2025 again, and that is what I’ll call the Traitor-ization of television. Until the last couple of years, The Challenge was the only show that had a lot of crossover with other shows and especially other networks. Now, after the success of the America version of The Traitors, we are living in the reality TV multiverse. Like in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, different shows have their stars, or their pseudo-solo vehicles, that then come together to create major crossover events and totally new shows.

Season one of The Traitors brought us a Cirie victory, something reality television fans had been clamoring for for years, even if they originally dreamed of seeing it on a different show. She did it in cutthroat fashion, but more importantly, did it in a cast of Survivor, Big Brother, Housewives, Bachelor, and alumni from shows across ABC, CBS, NBC, Bravo, and more. Season one ended up winning the Emmy for Outstanding Casting for a Reality Program. A message was sent to the industry: the biggest reality stars were bigger than any one show and casting directors had to pay attention.

Traitors took its own message to heart and doubled down for season two by eliminating any civilians from the cast. It went from a half-and-half Fans v Favorites style to a full on all-star format. Season two then won the Emmy for Outstanding Reality Competition Program so it’s no wonder that the show is keeping the same casting format for season three, premiering this Thursday, and beyond.

An Avengers level cast coming this week (NBC/Peacock)

But it’s not just about Traitors. Some shows have heard this message and others are holding out. Deal or No Deal Island (DONDI) season two is about to start with Dr. Will’s return to competing on reality TV, Parvati’s post-Traitors renaissance, and introducing Survivor Australia’s “golden god” and superstar, David Genat, to American audiences. The Food Network’s next season of Worst Cooks in America has Cheryl Burke, Rachel Reilly, Tiffany Pollard, and more. Last year, Amazon Prime aired The Goat with players from Survivor, The Bachelor, The Real World, and others. Speaking of Survivor AU, its upcoming Australia v The World has already confirmed some of the biggest US Survivor players along with its own stars. Network lines have been crossed, and now we’re crossing the international date line too.

Alan Cumming’s lauded gig as the host of Traitors may have had some influence as well. Joe Manganiello hosts the stars on DONDI, Manu Bennett headlined The Summit, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan has been announced as the host of NBC’s upcoming Destination X (with rumored reality stars as part of its cast, of course). USA’s The Anonymous premiered with a mixed group of a Big Brother winner, a two-time Survivor AU alum, and even blurred the lines with one of the “stars” of the Fyre Festival documentary.

E!’s House of Villains (hosted by Joel McHale, another actor/host with a busy resume) is two seasons deep. Hulu’s Got to Get Out reportedly has another full Traitor-ized cast for its premiere, sometime in 2025. Big Brother had Cirie on as a twist last year, although Survivor seems to be resisting the temptation to do any kind of international or cross-network casting for now.

So what does this all mean?

Well, it’s complicated and what it means changes for the different stakeholders. For one, competitive reality TV fans have a TON of shows to choose from. The quality can rise to the top or fans can follow their favorite personalities across networks and countries to see what they get up to. Josh Martinez crossed into Spanish language programming with Telemundo’s Los 50 this year and he may have brought Big Brother or The Challenge fans with him.

Networks are trusting known names: to host and to play (NBC)

For the shows themselves, casting is only going to get more competitive as the best personalities have more demand than ever before. The Challenge has lost its monopoly on casting from other networks. The networks also seem to trust that celebrities like Manganiello, Morgan, Bennett, and McHale, can provide the familiarity to launch successful new shows. In the case of Manganiello and McHale, this has proven to be true; we’ll have to see what happens for Destination X and a possible Summit renewal. Networks will either have to catch up to The Traitors style or rely on the formulae that have worked for them in the past. Hosts aren’t the only ones who need to have audience familiarity because reality stars with credibility are more valuable than ever now.

For the best reality stars, it means more leverage in appearance fees and contract negotiations (including reducing times on things like network exclusivity), while the less-popular ones might just have to show for nothing and give more power to the networks. With so many shows, reality TV casts will have tons of folks waiting in the wings. It also means that a Boston Rob or Johnny Bananas type career on reality TV is more accessible to some of these folks as the abundance of shows keeps growing.

But what about for new casts? We’ll always be seeing new reality stars on these shows and we might see more folks than ever playing for their next show, which often makes for weaker gameplay. Since, I’ve talked about Traitors being a sort of reality TV multiverse, similar to the Avengers and the MCU, I wonder if at some point we’ll get tired of seeing the biggest stars over and over, the same way audiences seem to have tired with Marvel. In that case, we might be in for another renaissance of new shows with new casts taking over.

Whatever happens, 2025 is going to be a really fun year of reality television, and with so much competition in competition reality, my hope is that the best, most interesting shows rise to the top. And if all of this leads to more international crossovers of Survivor, Big Brother, and shows that haven’t even premiered yet, I’m not complaining.

What shows are you most looking forward to this year?

-Rob Cesternino

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It was a year of huge moments and big blindsides on our favorite shows. Here are ten of the most interesting and what made them special.

Traitors US 2 - “One Final Hurdle”

The great thing about new competition reality shows is that the strategy evolves. In the finale of Traitors 2, CT and Trishelle broke MJ’s heart. CT, Trishelle, and MJ were left at the end of the game. CT and Trishelle both decided to keep banishing players. Trishelle was weary of CT and CT wanted to split the pot with her. They knew that MJ was 100% not a traitor. After a 1-1-1 tie, CT convinced Trishelle to actually vote MJ out, even though they both knew that she was definitely faithful. The devious faithfuls split the prize money and sent a very pissed off MJ home with nothing. Traitors strategy is evolving every season and MJ was the unfortunate victim.

Big Brother Canada 12 - Episode 26/Victoria’s Nomination and Eviction

BBCAN’s final season had some big moments, although none was as huge as its two returnees having one of the biggest fights of the year at the final five, a typically boring round of gameplay. Anthony and Spicy V were these two powerful forces in the game, constantly playing around each other and playing together (*like a different dimension of Feras/Kirby). It ended with an explosive fight and shattered glass as Spicy V’s game came to an end. Pre-existing relationships can be damaging to a season, although sometimes they lead to moments of elevated emotion that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

Survivor AU: Titans v Rebels - “The Best Actor Reward”

It’s hard to pick a single moment from one of the most ridiculous Survivor seasons ever featuring the all-time great Feras/Kirby dynamic. Titans v Rebels had shifting loyalties, great gameplay, bad gameplay, and full-on-chaos. The Valeria blindside was everything that Survivor Australia does well: campy, silly, and overly dramatic with signature performances from Feras and Raymond. Raymond wanted to boost his resume and he and Feras schemed to use Raymond’s Ultimate Vote Advantage (which is basically an idol that only works if everyone else votes for you) to take out Valeria. Raymond could pull this off because he had established himself as a total goof through the first 37 days of the game which goes to show how important perception is in Survivor. He took advantage of how others were seeing him and it made for great TV.

Valeria was sent home with only one vote (10play)

Survivor 46 - “Spicy Jeff”, “Run the Red Light”, “My Messy Sweet Little Friend”, “Mamma Bear”

The greatness that was Survivor 46 has been forgotten too soon. These people were crazy and unpredictable and if you like mess, this was a heck of a season, including a four episode run where Hunter, Tiff, Venus, and Q were all voted out while holding idols. It is confounding that that happened four times in a row and it’s going to be something that changes the meta again. The memory of all of these players leaving with idols in their pockets will prompt more players to play what they have while they have it.

The Circle 6 - “It’s Giving Sus”

There is an inherent need to people-please in a lot of these games, so when someone does what they want, it’s endearing. QT and Jordan went head-to-head and could not get on the same page about who to block. QT left the influencer chat and did what she wanted to do, which led to some heat between them. Normalize making the self-interested, unilateral move to try to win the game you’re playing!

Big Brother 26 - Episode 24/Joseph’s Eviction

The AI Arena made BB26’s eviction episodes must watches. In the final arena, Rubina won safety and Joseph and Kimo were left on the block. Joseph then left in a 4-3 vote where Angela apologized to Kimo for not being able to save him while Makensy changed her vote IN THE DR. Makensy actively thinking about whether to evict Joseph or Kimo made for amazing TV and it wouldn’t have happened without the AI Arena. Big Brother eviction episodes can often be slow for those plugged into the season and into the feeds; this episode was one of the best eviction nights in recent memory, casuals and feedsters alike.

Makensy’s vote put the “live” in “live eviction” (CBS)

The Mole Season 2 - Episodes 4 and 5

Sometimes we get too fancy with strategizing on these shows and that’s what happened on this season of The Mole. In episode 4, players were offered a movie night that would give them more info on who was the mole. Every single player except Q took the opportunity. He was blindsided by this - and also may have made himself the most obvious non-mole ever. In episode 5, Neesh bid the entire pot for an exemption, which is hilarious and kind of annoying. Netflix was probably thrilled that their players became such self-destructive gamebots that they would empty the pot without much pushing. This created entire ebbs and flows of gameplay where a more strategic player like Muna started just playing a straightforward game because too many players were getting too cute with their strategies.

Traitors: Canada 2 - “Tensions Rising”

Neda put on a masterclass of playing innocent to the faithfuls, pitting them against each other, and making the cutthroat moves she had to make to win the game. The biggest move was taking out fellow traitor, Kyra. No one was aware that Kyra’s faithful brother, Nick, was in the game and that he all but knew that his sister was a traitor. This made life hard for Neda, who even admitted that she was happy to split the pot with the other traitors if they played nice. Traitors moves fast, so when Neda realized that Kyra wasn’t on her side, she took swift action and in this one episode, Neda played, to quote her, the “I’m just a little girl” card to the other faithfuls, and took Kyra out in a matter of hours. This opened up the door to finally murder Nick, who Kyra had been protecting, and cleared the path to a W. Neda wrote the textbook on how to play an under-the-radar game as a traitor and if you’re playing this game without a big target on your back going in, study Neda.

Survivor 47 - “Operation: Italy”

Operation: Italy has to be included here. The planning, editing, and story made for one of the best Survivor episodes of the year, and maybe of all time. While this move has been dissected to death, one thing that stands out is that Caroline, its victim, was playing an excellent game. She was well-insulated, had solid allies, and if Rachel hadn’t won immunity in that round, Caroline might be our winner instead. Part of Operation: Italy is understanding the edit. From exit press, we heard that Andy, Genevieve, and Sam all had their different approaches and reasoning for the move. We didn’t get all of that, but we especially didn’t get Caroline built up as the true threat that she was. She nailed the structures necessary to make a run in the New Era and a little bit of bad luck, good competition, and strategic machinations sent her packing.

Old school Big Brother came back in more than one way, especially in the House of Villains finale (E!)

House of Villains - “Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown”

After Mr. Pectacular and Wes got into it in the penultimate episode, it only made sense that their rivalry would come to a head in the finale. Jessie made Wes get on his knees and beg for his vote, and then Jessie betrayed him and gave Safaree the win. The thing about House of Villains is it really doesn’t take itself too seriously. This was an epic, old-school reality TV moment and we can only wish for more excessive and embarrassing drama in 2025.

Thanks for reading The Confessional this year. We can’t wait for 2025!!

-The Confessional (Rob, Kevin, and Team)

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’Twas the night before the finale, and all through the tribe,

The fire was dwindling, four torches still alive.

With the jury at Pondy, their questions ready to go,

Those heading back to camp prepared, ready to start the show

Alphabetically first, Rachel is castaway number one

Challenge beast, successful spy, and advantage queen - what hasn’t she done?!

But maybe that’s the issue, fly too close to the sun and fire can determine your game

Either way, as a Survivor 46 alternate I may be biased, but she appears to have a strong shot all the same

The Final Four (CBS)

Second up, Sam, is a likeable castaway with a few magnifico moves tied to his name

The only guy left and youngest of Gata has navigated this season like a mouse in a maze

Manipulating and maneuvering, he’s shown to have a keen pulse and kept his threat level at bay

However, will the jury see him as the chef? Or just a well-informed patron at this season’s buffet of gameplay

Sue is next - a 45-year-old with cheekbones as sharp as Jeff’s pocket knife

Her game has ramped up these last few episodes, proving her crafty and intentional when faced with strife

Also, while it didn’t cause a tsunami-sized wave, keeping her idol a secret, she was greatly restrained

Regardless, it’s now up to her peers if that’s enough for ‘Sole Survivor’ to be gained

And finally Teeny, who came in blazing hot

Winning the first Fishy of the season, acclaim was bought

Their relationships are strong and vulnerability inspiring

But is that enough to outdo others’ larger moves rapidly firing

Explaining that the holidays are here soon! (CBS)

So cin cin and prost to the season, the drama, the lore,

To the blindsides, the backstabs, and challenges galore.

Outwit, outplay, outlast, this cast has brought me delight

Merry Survivor to all, and to all a mouth-watering final night!

-Mo

Moriah (Mo) Gaynor was on Survivor 46. She is a wonky nerd, shameless collector of hobbies, and high jump gold medalist. Follow her on Bluesky or Twitter.

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We have to go to Italy this week, although before we do, let’s take a quick layover in systems thinking.

Systems thinking is the idea that most things are interconnected and that when one part of a system changes, it affects the entire thing. It makes sense of the world by looking at it as a whole, instead of its component parts.

Take the butterfly effect, for example, where a butterfly flapping its wings is theorized to have an effect on a tornado’s path weeks later. Or more presently, how a viral Hawk Tua video could lead to an alleged cryptocurrency racket where fans of a TikTok somehow ended up losing millions of dollars.

Systems thinking often invokes stocks and flows. Stocks are things that increase or decrease, like the water in a bathtub, and flows indicate the moving of that water in or out.

I bring this up because the season’s biggest move, Operation: Italy (O:I), has been analyzed from front to back with some even comparing it to the biggest moves in Survivor history. While I’m a sucker for a plurality vote (where a minority achieves the majority by manipulating the majority, like this week’s 3-2-2), I’m not going to rank the move or talk about its obvious merits. What I will do is jump into a systems thinking type analysis of O:I and see where it leads.

Ready to nerd out? You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.

Systems are interconnected and overlap (e.g. without Tony’s disastrous Game Changers performance, there is no way he wins Winners at War), so for the sake of this discussion let’s create a closed system. Let’s block off this season of Survivor, and more specifically, who is going to win in the system of Survivor 47. It’s about whose stock/winner’s equity is flowing upwards and whose is flowing downwards.

Adrien Brody, Timothee Chalamet, or Andy Rueda for best actor this year? (CBS)

Andy is first on the list. It wasn’t a big move for the sake of making a big move; it was a move where he recognized his low stock at the bottom of the Underdogs alliance, and took action to change the structure of the game. When you’re making a BiG MoVe, you’ve got to consider how it will echo throughout the next rounds and change everyone else’s positions.

For Andy, he’ll have to utilize Sam and Genevieve as shields in order to make it to Final Tribal Council (FTC), either with them or without them. At the same time, he is playing for the win, not second or third place.

He understood his place in the system and took action to reshuffle the deck. He recognized that he needed a resume-building move to earn the jury’s respect. While Andy likely reduced his chances of making FTC by increasing his perceived threat level, he increased his chances of winning a jury vote should he make it. That’s the way everyone should play: go for the win, even if you reduce your chances of placing higher.

It’s actually harder to determine Andy’s place in the game because he changed it so much in one move. We saw Sol notice that “Andy flipped again” from the jury bench. There seemed to be a slightly negative connotation to this. Looking at the jury as a monolith where everyone has the same opinion would also be a mistake. That system has people who might see Andy’s move as impressive and others who might not respect the lack of loyalty. As their perceptions change, different players’ stocks rise and fall.

Inside the game, Andy will have to manage the double-edged sword of changing the tribal dynamics while also being aware of other players being wary of working with him when they recognize the potential for him to flip.

Andy brings some fascinating approaches to navigating the Survivor system here: he understands how he is perceived and adjusts accordingly; he balances risk and reward and is willing to embrace uncertainty with his moves; finally, he is also self-aware enough to know that he wants to leave an impact, or a legacy, on the season. In almost a full season, he never gave up and finds himself going into the finale (or the pre-finale), with a shot at winning the game.

The editors crushed it on this one (CBS)

Genevieve and Sam’s places in the game are less complicated. They were ostensibly on the bottom and they had no choice but to make a move. Now, as they go into the round of six, they pulled off an epic move and have nowhere to hide. If I’m Teeny or Sue, Genevieve and Sam are still my top targets because they only added to their perceived threat level. They had no choice - O:I kept them in the game - although they’re left in a precarious position at F6. There is a concept in systems thinking about feedback loops: where actions cause other flows. Genevieve and Sam had to take the action of O:I and it also continued to increase their threat level.

They actually have to do the opposite of Andy now: figure out a way to either reduce their own threat levels or figure out a way to increase everyone else’s threat levels. If they can pin O:I on Andy, maybe they can shift the flow of threat onto him. Things change so fast in this game that although Genevieve and Sam appear to be in danger, surviving a round can change the course of the game.

O:I didn’t just change the game for its orchestrators in Andy, Genevieve, and Sam, but for the entire rest of the cast and the season. Caroline is the biggest loser here as she ends up going from a reasonably insulated position in the core four of her, Rachel, Sue, and Teeny, to sitting on the jury.

While Caroline might advocate for Sue’s game at Ponderosa, Sue is probably drawing dead and is the least affected by O:I because her stock was already relatively low. Still, Sue is going to play a key role. From what we’ve seen, she has the slimmest chance of winning a jury vote. She could be another good target for Andy, where if he can take her out at six, more people might want to sit with him at the end because he’ll take away one of the lesser threats who could be aiming for his spot. Sue could also be a key ally to whomever ends up as Sole Survivor…

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That brings me to our next player, someone who might be the real winner of the system changes post O:I. Rachel winning immunity forced Team O:I to settle for taking out Caroline as a back-up. While O:I was originally designed to take out Rachel, she ends up as one the biggest beneficiaries, without getting any blood on her hands.

First off, Caroline was occupying a similar space as Rachel in the system: a strategic player with decent insulation. If Andy has raised his jury threat level to that of Genevieve and Sam, he might have accelerated his own exit. If Rachel takes out the O:I squad, in any order, she has a good chance of winning the game beside Sue and Teeny, whereas Caroline still being there might have complicated things. Caroline and Sue were the closest duo in the game, and now Sue is an ally for Rachel to pull in even closer. Plus, Rachel still has her block-a-vote and her idol with only two rounds left to play advantages.

Team O:I also thought that Rachel was the biggest threat outside of their group. Now that she has been left out of another vote, her threat level might be diminished in their eyes and she might be able to break up that group for her own self-preservation and find her way to an FTC where she has a chance of winning. It doesn’t matter if others’ stocks are rising if you get them out of the game before the end. It just matters that you have a better flow of momentum/jury credit/gameplay than the people who are beside you for the jury’s decision.

Teeny’s role in the system is going to be fascinating to see unfold. They probably don’t have a ton of winning combinations at FTC but we’ve also seen that Teeny has great relationships with members of the jury like Sierra and Sol. Similar to Sue, Teeny’s allegiance in the next couple of rounds will determine the endgame. They’ll likely have to pull off an O:I level move to get the respect of the jury by increasing their stock and decreasing others’ stocks enough. Given the twinkle in Teeny’s eye after they realized what Andy had done, I wouldn’t count them totally out just yet. Teeny is a superfan who knows what epic gameplay looks like. It would take a BiG MoVe, but this is one case where a big move is actually necessary if Teeny wants to go for the win instead of second or third place.

In Survivor, timing is everything. A move that looks genius one week can be your downfall the next. Whatever happens and however Operation: Italy affects the larger Survivor system and whoever ultimately wins, Andy, Genevieve, and Sam should be proud of their iconic play. It’s better to make a move than not to make a move at all, especially because it’s so incredibly difficult to predict the results of a game-changing move on a system as complex as a game of Survivor.

When the opportunity to change the system arises, you take it, and you hope that the ebbs and flows of that move leave your stock as the most valuable at the end of the game.

-Kevin Jacobs

Kevin is the winner of Big Brother Canada 10. Find him on all platforms @kevintedjacobs where he talks about competitive reality TV and good movies.

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While I try to practice gratitude in my everyday life (I’m thankful for my friends, partner, education, shelter, and food), Thanksgiving provides a unique opportunity to reflect on some of the less obvious things I’m grateful for. So as this holiday weekend comes to a close, I’d like to tap into my sentimental side and reflect on what I’m thankful for when it comes to Survivor. Like many fans, I sometimes find it easier to nitpick about things I dislike than to pause and reflect on all the good things Survivor has done and changed over the years. So to counteract all of the cynical complaints I’ve ever had, here is a shortlist of Survivor treats I’m most grateful for.

New Era Superfans

“Back in my day,” superfans were a casting type, not a normative description of most players. There would be a few of us superfans on a season, trying to hide our love for obscure podcasts like RHAP, with the majority of the cast being recruits who were either casual fans or who had never seen the show before. While this mix of fans and recruits could sometimes lead to a healthy amount of unpredictability, it could also lead to stale or frustrating gameplay. 

Even if every cast member isn’t a Day One superfan, people who know and love the show bring an energy that less-invested recruits don’t. (For example, Rome from season 47 binge-watched every season in a matter of months. An expert on strategy he was not. An electrifying ball of energy - most definitely.)

Back in my day, superfans were a casting type (CBS)

In the new era, it seems like almost every cast member is a fan at some level. Some might say a cast full of fans leads to robotic, homogenous gameplay.  I say it leads to devastating blindsides (see: Aysha, Anika, and Tiyana from this season), novel strategic moves (see: Rachel’s use of the Shot in the Dark to get a read on whether she should play her idol), and players engaging with the fan community more (see: everyone getting on Cameo as soon as they can connect to wifi on Fiji Airlines). The stakes of the game are so much higher when every vote-out is a crushing of someone’s dream. 

Diversity Initiatives

The work done by the Survivor Diversity Campaign (SDC), in particular, Black Survivor players like Brice, Wendell, J’Tia, Davie, Sean, and many more I haven’t named, changed the game for good. They are the true game changers. Survivor has a history of mirroring dynamics in the real world, in which minority players (whether in the numerical minority or in a minority racial/sexuality/gender group) are disadvantaged. The SDC changed that. After the SDC got a sit-down meeting with their showrunners, CBS announced an initiative for 50% POC casts that applied not only to Survivor but all of its reality shows. After that change went into effect, we got four women winners, four POC winners, and three winners who are out members of the LGBTQ+ community. As a person who falls into multiple minority groups myself, I have felt so seen and represented since these changes have gone into effect, something I never felt growing up watching reality television in the 2000s.

The Crew

The official Survivor social media has been ramping it up with the behind-the-scenes peeks into how the sausage gets made. Anyone who has been on one of these reality shows knows how much energy, effort, and attention goes into making the magic happen. As much as we dogpile on “the edit” for focusing too much on one storyline over another, or on Jeff and the producers for introducing another lose-your-vote twist, I am immensely grateful for the hard work that the crew puts in. This includes casting directors, producers, editors, camera operators, boom operators, sound mixers, divers, dream teamers, wardrobe, production assistants, the art department team, and so many more roles that go under-recognized.

Just recently, the Survivor Instagram featured Vanna Cheal, a carver who intricately chisels the season’s logo and immunity idols out of wood - a role most of us probably never even considered existed, but one that is crucial to creating the immersive and detailed world we see on screen. On the less delicate end of things, we can also learn how the diving team sets up challenges with equipment that weighs hundreds of pounds. 

And to see the way the landscape of the crew has changed is exciting. A producer from my time on the show six years ago, Andrea, was recently featured on Instagram. When I saw that post, I immediately saw that Davie from my cast commented “Night Lady!”, a term we dubbed her six years ago before we knew her name because she was our night producer. Now she is on a logistics team for idols and twists, and it’s so thrilling and meaningful to see her move on to new and exciting roles – especially as a woman in a typically male-dominated field.

 All of these behind-the-scenes remind us that as important as the cast is to providing us with entertainment, Survivor doesn’t get made without the labor of hundreds of crew members. So thank you crew for making the show we all love (and love to complain about). 

The Survivor Alumni and Fan Community

It wouldn’t be a Thanksgiving-themed post without the requisite sappiness. I am so grateful for the community I’ve found through being both a player and a fan of Survivor. I’ve made some of my closest friends not only through my season, but also from seasons across the years. I’ve spent my birthday at a Survivor watch party. I’ve stayed in the homes of people I’d only met in person a couple times before. I’ve connected with fellow academics and students over Survivor. I’ve found a niche group of people who enjoy discussing and overanalyzing and making dumb memes about the reality shows I like. 

Grateful for this community

I did not anticipate what that community would look like when I applied to be on Survivor – back then, I was only a part-time lurker of RHAP and the r/survivor sub (I remember when it had less than 50k subscribers - now it’s at 579k!), and I had no connections to any of the fan events or past players. I thought it was unreal that I got a chance to be on the show. I never thought it would open me up to a whole new world of friends, with whom I podcast, play online games, and stay at casinos until 4am in New Orleans. This community is the thing I expected least out of being on Survivor, but it’s the thing I have come to value the most.

So if you’re reading this, thanks for being a part of it. And may we all be thankful for every new season of Survivor!

-Gabby

Gabby Pascuzzi was one of the main castaways featured on the fan favorite Survivor: David vs Goliath. She is a PhD student and lives in Buffalo, NY.

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As Gabe walked out of tribal council, I started thinking about how being on the bottom in Survivor’s new era might be better than being on the top. Gabe was seen as a big threat and his life in the game was cut short. Meanwhile, more than half the cast feels like they’ve been hanging on for dear life and our winner is probably in that group.

Every vote after the merge has been a dogpile so far. Sol and Gabe walked out with most of the votes fired their way. In Sol’s case, Genevieve said his name and most people just fell in line. The players are mostly reluctant to really push for a specific target and are happy to just settle with making sure they’re in on the vote even if they’re not in on the plan. It’s like “going along with the house” in Big Brother. With so many players feeling left out, if they can be part of the majority, at least they show others that they’re open to options.

Stephen Fishbach pointed out on the Know-It-Alls this week that a lot of this is because there are not firm alliances. If there were, players could control the flow of information a lot better. As Genevieve described it, it’s a bunch of people who have lied to each other, and everyone is competing for who can give a name out last.

This makes sense because when you loop someone into information that they don’t have, in many cases it helps build your relationship, especially if they feel like they’re on the bottom. In Survivor 47, most of this cast has a path to the end and part of that is because they are all jockeying for the best strategic position and the top/bottom isn’t actually so clear.

The reason that Gabe went home this week might be because Genevieve had a slight edge on Gabe’s position. Both were perceived to be the strategic leaders, the heads, of their respective tribes. By taking out Sol, Genevieve weakened her own Lavo numbers, while leaving Gabe as the leader of a very intimidating four Tukus.

While Genevieve played this right, Kyle may have accelerated his own downfall. He felt like he had to get Gabe out, even if keeping Gabe in the game might have given Kyle a shield for when he doesn’t win immunity. Now, when Kyle loses a challenge, his game is likely going to be as deceased as the bat on his favorite accessory. 

Kyle and said accessory (CBS)

Meanwhile, there is a group of folks left out of votes who seem to be in little-to-no-danger. Andy, Rachel, Sam, and Teeny have all felt at the bottom. They have realized that and seen each other’s poor positioning and come together to be in quite a powerful position. When we talk about jockeying for strategic superiority, the way to turn the game around is to find others with similar interests, and to work together.

Andy was in such a bad position early on that people forgot about him. Rachel, having been left out of Gata and shafted with the Tuku 5 in the split tribal council, has fallen off of people’s radars.

Sam was complaining to Jeff that he was on the bottom this episode. The reality is that he might not have a ton of agency; however, his perceived bottom-ness makes him a vote that a strategic player is going to try to recruit. Sierra leaving while Sam didn’t even have a vote made him seem helpless. And who is going to waste a big early-mid merge vote on someone who isn’t very threatening?

Teeny recognized that they’ve been visibly left out of votes more than once and seems determined to make sure it doesn’t happen again. When you’ve got so many players trying to get themselves into the best possible position, being on the bottom or being left out of one round of votes can actually be an advantage. Teeny was in on the vote this time, and I think we’re going to see them being more and more involved as we move towards the endgame.

Is Teeny going to get their revenge for Sol? (CBS)

The tough part about all these players feeling like they’re on the bottom is that at Final Tribal Council, someone needs to own their game. If players are sitting there thinking they got dragged to the end, the jury will feel that. As the castaways jockey for position, whoever slays the dragon(s) - Genevieve? Andy? Teeny? - won’t have to work too hard to make their case that while they might have been on the bottom, they deserve to finish on top.

A lot of this feeling of being on the bottom or at the top is purely based on perception. The ideal position is running the game from the shadows, pretending to be out of the loop, and only having the jury start seeing the truth as they reach Ponderosa and as the game gets to Final Tribal Council. No one is playing that way this season, though, so we’re bound to see someone who once felt like they were in trouble walking away with the million.

Acute awareness of everyone’s threat level is a hallmark of how Survivors play in the new era. Everyone wants to make a move to pad their resumes but they’re also hunting anyone who has already made a move like that. Is it a feature or is it a bug? I think it’s still too soon but if this continues to be the trend we may see the best players being the ones who can thrive in a Medium Moves Era.

-Rob Cesternino

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