Brad shares the best bonus scenes from the previous episode of Survivor: Border of Obliteration.

This Week In Secret Scenes

”Not Cool, Dude”

You’ve already seen most of the clip, but you can watch it (1) to see how Keith is starting to crack after more than a week at EoE and (2) to hear Chris call Reem a nice person. Probably won’t happen again.

”You’re Losing Your Mind”

Literally nothing happens in this clip. Which is the point, you see, because there’s nothing to do at the Edge of Extinction. The most narrative tension we get from this scene is whether or not the homeless hermit crab will like the shell that Rick picked out for it. So overall, this is a good Secret Scene inasmuch as it contributes to flushing out the experience at the Edge of Extinction, but it’s also not a scene that you need to watch if you’ve just read this paragraph.

This Week In Confessionals

Before we jump into the confessionals, here’s what’s up: because it’s standard practice for everyone still in the game to get at least two confessionals and because no one has really left the game, the volume of confessionals is not decreasing over time. So doing these video posts every week isn’t really tenable, even outside of personal/professional stuff going on right now. I’ll be doing a post for next week in addition to this week, but these might go out of regular circulation after that. And even though I’m grateful for Emma who wrote one of these earlier in the season, I don’t think I’d load that time/work commitment onto other writers. Which is all to say that if you’ve got a bonus content itch that hasn’t been scratched, the channel that all of these videos are posted from is still up and running, and you can check them out to get your fix. But like, don’t signal boost them because I’m pretty sure they aren’t supposed to be uploading these. Outside of that, I might do more posts here and there, but it probably won’t be a weekly thing like other seasons.

”I Have No Idea What The Hell These Things Are”

This is a quick one. We get a closer look at the advantage Chris got, and combined with the preview, it looks more and more like the challenge to return to the game will be Jailbreak. It’s a nice homage to the Outcasts and Redemption Island challenges that came before it. I think the groves on the rods are new, which I don’t like because that’s lowering the skill demand that this challenge puts on players. But they also might have been there before and I just didn’t notice them. I also find it funny that Chris thinks that this might be a ladder, as if those reeds could support a fully grown human.

”Everyone Knows That I Lose”

Talk about an ironic confessional. To break down all of the points Aubry covers here:

• Anything can happen at Tribal, and she knows that she’ll always have a target on her.
• She wants to use the idol when it has the most leverage; to do so, she might even draw votes onto herself.
• She’s loaded up with advantages but will not play them at Tribal because she wants to use them post-merge to make big moves.

Classic example of looking so far ahead that you miss the pitfall in front of you. Aubry knows that she’s a target, that she was on the bottom of the original Kama, that alliances have not yet been “forged in fire.” And yet she’s rolling the dice here to save her advantages for a rainy day, despite the fact that she’s in the monsoon.

I wonder how Rick reacted when he found out that Aubry was booted without playing the extra vote he gave her.

”A Weird Soup Of Unhealthy Relationships”/“It Is A Disaster Here”

I don’t understand the Meryl Streep analogy, but these two confessionals from Rick and Aubry give good insight into the tense and fraught nature of the Edge of Extinction. Everyone is bickering with everyone else, and when there’s no challenge or tribe vote to unify people for a common cause, you’re just stuck in a waiting room with people who annoy you. It’s a new social dynamic for Survivor, and it makes me wonder if this is why people watch Terrace House. I’m interested in how it plays out when there are twice as many people just hanging out at EoE.

”I’m A Threat”

Everything old is new again. And to understand what I mean by that, watch this clip.

Anyway, apparently the people are clamoring for Julia confessionals. Full disclosure: I wanted to edit a clip where Julia gets three words out followed by two minutes of a static screen saying “An error has occurred.” Except that I don’t know how to download YouTube videos, and I don’t want to put in the work to learn how (on top of actually editing the dang thing).

So instead of that, you’re getting a full Julia confessional. Which, I should note, is not good. It’s actively bad. Laughably even. wE jUsT wAnT tO mEeT aLl ThE pLaYeRs tHo. There’s a reason the editors aren’t giving you that. Case in point: Julia says the phrase “I’m a threat” (or some semantic equivalent) nine times over a roughly 100-second clip. Once every 11 seconds. That’s a higher frequency than “No collusion” in a Trump presser. And ya know, if you have to say it…

”It’s A Very Strange Partnership”

Remember when every confessional from David was about voting off Wentworth? How did we get from then to now? Well, losing Rick at the swap contributed to that (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em). But David says that watching Aubry get voted out changed his perspective; if returnees are being targeted and you’re a returnee, you need a good returnee shield for cover. Which means David needs Wentworth and Wentworth needs David. Presumably, both would need Joe to make a three-person testudo, but David repeatedly says that he needs to work with Wentworth to get to the merge. It sounds like after next week, all bets might be off.

This Week In Gifable Moments

When CBS All Access started blocking screen capturing and both reddit and twitter let you down