Brad shares the best bonus scenes from the previous episode of Survivor: Crust of Destruction.

This Week In Secret Scenes

“Sorry, I Can Leave”

Hey people who read the recaps but don’t watch the video: watch this video. Words can’t describe.

This Week In Confessionals

“I’m In A Good Position”

Laughs in dramatic irony

Alright, here are some select quotes from these two Eric confessionals:

“If you can remind them that all they have to do is stick and Loved Ones here you come, it’s a really compelling argument.”

Narrator: It wasn’t.

“Their head’s not in the game. They’re not building exit strategies, They’re not building contingency plans.”

Narrator: They were.

“If I can keep people focused on their Loved One visit, then I think I can keep them focused off of me.”

Narrator: He couldn’t.

“I don’t need 3. I need to get to the Final 4. ‘Cause no one’s going to beat me in fire.”

Narrator: … Like, c’mon dude.

“Where I am right now, I feel comfortable with. And I think largely that’s a result of me being a little ahead of the curve. A little bit ahead of the people around me in planning.”

Narrator: He was not ahead of the people around him.

“Getting to the end of this game isn’t that hard. Getting to the end and winning, … that’s the challenge.”

Narrator: But by the end of the night, Eric found that getting to the end was, in fact, that hard.

“Maybe We Sent Joe Too Soon”

Well, Joe seems like he’s enjoying himself at the Edge of Extinction. It’s definitely different from Ponderosa, as he says. But the advantage here is that Joe isn’t just hanging out with fellow jurors, it’s that he’s hanging out with the jurors who might (potentially) being voting for him to win a million dollars, should he win his way back in. It’s a feature (a bug?) of the Edge of Extinction that viewers have pointed out since we learned that the people still at EoE would be both active players and jurors (nevermind that Reem and Keith and Chris were all at each other’s throats after only five days together). But as people have claimed, the challenge to win your way back into the game seems built for Joe Anglim, and Joe seems to know that he can pull an Ozzy here (the South Pacific version of “pulling an Ozzy,” that is). And with that knowledge, he’s trying his best to leverage his exposure to the jury as best he can.

“It’s Freaking Me Out”

Alright, now contrast that Joe confessional with this one from Chris.

With Keith having left EoE, Chris is now the second-most senior member of the Extinctioneers (the Edge-Ex Crowd?). And it’s starting to show. Content of the confessional aside, you can tell that Chris is having trouble putting a sentence together, in a way that usually shows up when a castaway makes it to Day 34 or so. For reference, we’re at Day 22. The level of fatigue, starvation, and sleep deprivation at EoE is beyond what is normally experienced in Survivor, and we all know what even that level can do to a person.

Chris breaks down his almost third-person account of how his brain took over, rerouting his thought processes from searching for the advantage to getting food and just lying down. Chris knows the end reward of winning the game and how this advantage could lead to that life-changing million dollars. And despite knowing that and wanting to search for the advantage, he can’t stop the dissonance that is keeping himself from looking for the advantage. The players at EoE seem a bit feral with nothing to do all day, but the severe deprivation of foundational Maslowian needs is bringing out the primal side of these players. There’s game to be played, but first and foremost, they need to survive (hey, that’s the name of the show!). And so while he doesn’t like it, Chris knows that the caloric value of advantage searching is net negative. And even hiking for rice might not be a worthwhile endeavor. And so he gets food and lies down.

It’ll be interesting to see how long Joe’s good mood at EoE lasts.

“I Can Do This For Hours”

Have you ever had something so easily within your grasp only for it to slip away due to events beyond your control? It’s frustrating as fuck, y’all. One particular example for me was my 8th grade squaring dancing competition. Side note: Did you know that schools make kids square dance because Henry Ford (yes, the guy who founded the car company) was a white supremacist who was scared of jazz? I wonder if schools are still making kids do that. Anyway, it was a big deal because (1) the gym teachers went to the extra step of branding it as “The Hoedown” (and considering the lack of sweet tea in my childhood town, that name was geographically inappropriate) and because (2) they hired professional callers to run the square dance. Plus, there was a prize, but being winners was enough at that age. The Hoedown was held the day before Thanksgiving Break, which was also the day that all the teachers threw class parties. Second side note: teachers don’t like doing more work than they need to right before a break. But aside from the “fuck it, have fun” nature of parties in every period of the day, I was looking forward to square dancing (dear god, what the fuck am I writing?) because my square was far and away the best group of the period. We all knew that we were the best, and we all knew that the prize, whatever it was, had already been deemed to be ours.

Onto the third note: teachers don’t like more work before a break, but we hate a test right after a break. Which meant that all of the tests in all of your periods fell on the day before the day before break. Being the studious over-achiever that I was, I ran myself into the ground preparing for those tests. Driven to the point of exhaustion, as they say. And on the morning of The Hoedown (I can’t believe I keep typing that), I remember putting on my backpack, the thought “I think I might fall” entering my mind, and waking up on the ground.

Now I’d like to say that everything turned out just fine, but the facts are that I missed the best day of the fall semester, my square lost without me there, and that things are evidently not fine as I’m spending the first warm and sunny Saturday of the year inside, writing about Survivor clips off the literal cutting room floor. Not that I hate doing this, I should clarify; I enjoy it, which is a sign that something is wrong when juxtaposed with the view outside my window.

Anyways, what does all that have to do with Lauren? The connections between our stories are tenuous at best, but I’m just happy to find some sort of parallels between me and this bad-ass boss. She faints in the middle of a challenge, says “damn, I lost” upon waking, and a few hours later is mulling over the game implications of her passing out and how she might be more of a target because of it. And that was before she unflinchingly held her idol at Tribal! I unironically want to say “ugh, her mind” and tell y’all that if you’re not stanning Lauren by now, you need to get your shit together.

“I’ve Got to Fight Harder”

Despite not buying what Eric (and Ron) are selling with their “Loved Ones” pitch, Rick is rolling with Eric (and Ron) because he can see a path to the end with that group. Rick doesn’t elaborate on what that path is, but he is certainly confident in what he sees.

Onto the part of Rick’s story that has been somewhat elusive since he’s returned from EoE: why does Rick seem so bitter? The votes against him at the merge didn’t help, but Rick shares that through his reflections at EoE, he realized that his loyalty would’ve cost him a million dollars. Were this any other season, Rick’s being loyal to David at the first Tribal after the swap would’ve ended his game. The alternative would have been to turn on David out of self-preservation, and while that’s not the noble option of the two, this is not Jeff Probst’s Best Friend Race. Rick knows that if he wants to win, he needs to take big swings and that he can’t hold himself back by playing nice. Which means that Rick is playing with more of an edge (insert pun here) but also that he’s not limiting his allies to the people he’s shared buff colors with before. Rick has not just been reborn in the game, but he’s in the middle of breaking bad, so it will be interesting to see how his story unfolds.