You Gotta Be on 24 by 7

“The game is on 24 by 7. It’s so hard,” Bhanu tells us after his tribe, Yanu, loses immunity. And he’s right. If you’re not paying attention to every detail, even the smallest slip up can come back to haunt you, maybe even several times.

We see this right away when Liz is innocently talking about her success in business - an AMAZING thing - and Tevin tells us that that’s a big ol’ red flag.

Liz is just innocently introducing herself to her new tribe on Survivor, although in this game, people will look for any reason to target you and good things in real life - like say, multiple exits (AKA selling a business) - can be enough to send you to Ponderosa. Tevin is here for the money and you’ve got too much of that to be part of his business plans.

For our fallen star of the episode, Jelinsky: he was set up great to start with Q, Kenzie, and Tiff, but he wasn’t locked in 24/7 and that led to a snuffed torch.

Sure, Q might have agreed with him to quit the Sweat challenge. But Jelinsky didn’t anticipate that Q would judge him for it.

Sure, Jelinsky might have made two potential allies on the journey that he could lean on come merge time. But by caving and by telling the truth to his tribe, he lost more trust with the people he needed to even make it to Day 4.

Sure, he might be great at puzzles and could step up to do them. But he lost one at the very first challenge after already failing at Sweat.

Just one mistake can cost you and Jelinsky made a bunch.

What wasn’t a mistake: focusing on the way forward. While it’s always better to take Survivor one day at a time and to be flexible, you need to be thinking about each stage of the game all the time. While Jelinsky was looking far ahead, which isn’t always an error, his mistake there was talking about it too much to ever get there.

The Siga women, Jem, Maria, and Moriah, all excelled in this episode because they were focused 24/7. Jem mentioned that they were comfortable and that meant looking to solidify numbers going forward. Maria turned Jelinsky into putty at the journey. And Moriah recognized her past weaknesses in connecting with people and made it a strength as she built bonds fast. These players are thinking ahead, which you have to do - you just can’t tell everyone what you’re planning, as poor Jelinsky did this week.

We’ll see if any of the other mistakes we saw in the premiere spark early exits.

Player of the Episode: Tiffany

• Having so much fun out there that she laughed about her tribe going to tribal council

• Has solid allies in Q and the queen of the island, Kenzie

• Finds a Beware advantage and gets her vote back along with an idol

Look Out For: Jess. I’ve been there. It’s the start of a reality TV show and you can’t sleep. Your personality feels muted and you’re just not on. If she can find her balance, look for an Emily Flippen-like almost-first-boot to merge threat.

In Danger: Bhanu had a big episode, with lots of character moments and tons of screen time. He is either about to make a run or, more likely, he’ll be hanging out with Jelinsky sometime soon.

Until Next Time,

Kevin 🐍

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