Survivor 33 Recap "How To Be A Dumb Surfer"

  Previously on Survivor, the Cool Kids were completely blindsided by Michelle being voted off. They didn’t realize that Survivor casts more normal people than Big Brother and so didn’t realize that being in a powerful alliance turns off people not in said alliance. Despite Taylor’s insistence of not being a “dumb surfer”, I think we can all agree that this episode helps cement that he is indeed a “dumb snowboarder”.  How so? Well, let’s talk about the episode.

  The episode starts off with Jay proclaiming how stupid the millennials are that voted against him. He mentions that Zeke and Hannah are at the bottom of the GenX tribe, and so voting out a millennial was just hastening their demise. I disagree with him because I doubt that the GenX tribe will stay strong, but I can see his logic. Taylor and Jay reconvene and decide that they need to make the tribe like them again and that their main way of doing that will be to throw Adam under the bus. 

  Taylor, for some reason, still thinks he is being sneaky about the stash of food he has. But A.) Everyone knows he was eating the tribe’s food already, so I hardly doubt that anyone at this point doesn’t know he stole food. They just may not have known the extent of it. He was called out on it at the last tribal, but for some reason still thinks that people didn’t know about it. #NotSmart

  Jay tries another approach of sneakiness by attempting to get back in Hannah’s good graces. Hannah tells him that she felt used and that if she had stuck by the millennials she would have ended up as a goat. For those of you new to Survivor, a goat is a person you take to the final 3 because no one would ever vote for them. What Hannah doesn’t realize is that she is a goat for both sides. The millennials now won’t vote for her and the GenX people never would have voted for her. She keeps talking about wanting to build a resume. But, she already has. A bad one. A can’t even work at McDonalds bad one.

  So we get to the reward challenge where 2 teams of 6 are competing for a day at the spa with some good food. In an absolute blowout, Sunday, Brett, Chris, Taylor, and Ken win. I thought about describing the competition, but the amount of time it would’ve taken me to type that up would have been longer than it took for them to win. At the spa, Brett decides to get really really drunk. Unfortunately, this doesn’t provide much entertainment because he apparently can control his alcohol and does not make any game changing mistakes.  

  While they are at the reward challenge, Jay sees this as an opportunity to mend fences with Adam. Unfortunately, Adam wouldn’t know how to mend fences if he had a degree in it. He immediately asserts that Jay is on the bottom and there is nothing he can do about it. Jay predictably is then angered and tells Zeke and Hannah about the conversation. Both Zeke and Hannah roll their eyes at Adam. You suspect the guy of having an idol but you blatantly tell him that he will likely have to use it soon?! Not only that but in terms of social game that was an idiotic move. Even in Adam miraculously made it to the final tribal council, he would have no shot at getting those jury votes.

  Before the immunity challenge, Sunday starts becoming insecure about fellow GenX member Jessica, She is so paranoid that she contemplates keeping Jay and Taylor to get Jessica out first. This reveals 2 things. 1.) Jay’s social game is good enough that people are finding excuses to keep him around. 2.) Why do girls always have to target other girls? There are only 3 girls left in this season compared to around 10 boys and you are telling me Jessica worries you the most? What about David the guy who has lied to you almost every day? I’m telling you, I don’t think her decision is based on any strategy except be the last girl standing.

   At the immunity challenge, the players had to stand on a small beam and balance a ball on some wooden concoction. If you fall off the beam or drop the ball(pun intended), you are out of the competition. There was also the added component to the challenge. If you felt safe enough, you could opt out of the challenge and spend the time eating food. Will and Zeke opted out. Zeke makes sense as there was no way he was going home. Will’s decision was dumber. He would have gone home last week if he hadn’t won immunity, but now he thinks he is safe enough to sit out. I get that he thought he wouldn’t win, but at least try. Eventually, Ken ends up winning.

  Immediately after, David decides that the vote should be split between Jay and Taylor to ensure that one goes home even if an idol is played. Sunday doesn’t like this plan and wants to campaign for Jessica to go instead. Brett says that he will talk to Chris, but no conversation is shown, so yeah that doesn’t look like a possibility at all.

  This leads to an explosive tribal council where I didn’t know if I was laughing at the stupidity of it, or if it was genuinely funny. Taylor decides to sell out Adam in an attempt to stay. He reveals Adam’s advantage that he can steal a reward. However, to do that, he also had to reveal that he stole the food again. Adam did a fairly decent job at reiterating that his advantage didn’t really have any impact on the game so it shouldn’t impact voting. Taylor did a decent job in saying that Adam knew way more than he let on about Taylor stealing food. Taylor even lied and said that Adam HELPED him steal the food and ate it alongside him and Jay. That’s a lie. But, it makes sense that Taylor would say that. Adam is already doubted by the tribe and anything Taylor can say to make that worse is worth doing. Even if it only ends up helping Jay. Another funny exchange occurred where Jeff was asking people about their reactions to Taylor having stolen food. Jessica immediately tries to make it an age thing. Jay becomes my lord and savior because he counters that it is not an age thing, and that some millennials aren’t raised like that. Finally, someone said it! My parents didn’t raise me to be stupid either. But, the kicker was that in explaining this Jay indirectly refers to Taylor as a “dumb surfer.”  Taylor immediately looked offended, but likely only because he is a snowboarder and not a surfer. I’m not sure Taylor knows the meaning of the word dumb. He might be that dumb.

Best Player/ Also My Favorite Player

  While in danger still, he did a decent job of cementing relationships to help him exploit cracks in alliances. He has also lost Taylor who ultimately was just deadweight to him. He was even smart enough to vote out Taylor to ensure that the votes weren’t split against him.

Worst Player:

Need I say more?