Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans, Episode 3 "Did you Vote For a Swap?" Gameplay Breakdown

 Snap.

I never thought I would see Jeff Probst rap on Survivor.  I still can't believe I witnessed such a thing.  Is he going to leave Survivor to pursue a rap career?  And then there was a whole episode of interesting social strategy to go along with it!  This was a really great episode with no production B.S. to get in the way, so let's get into who played well and who sucked!

Who Played Well:

Starting on the the new Cila tribe, Cirie really has an incredible social game.  She's gotten into an alliance with Christian, Devens, and Emily and gotten close enough to them to learn about Aubry and the Boomerang Idol.  Her social game might also save her if she can work her magic on Dee in upcoming episodes.

The only other person I have here from Cila is Kamilla, who dominated the Immunity Challenge.  She put herself in the hero position and delivered with a fantastic win.

Moving onto Kalo, Chrissy managed to secure Immunity for her tribe with her comeback win on the puzzle.  Maybe after her conversation with Coach and the confidence boost from this win, she can turn her game around.

We also got to see Aubry, Tiffany, Coach, Colby, and Joe making some good, new connections on their tribe.  They're all doing what they can to set themselves up for success.  I also really like that Tiffany told Aubry that Genevieve is coming for her.  It creates a nice chasm for Tiffany to exploit.

Moving over to Vatu, I was terrified when Mike White had what seemed to be an emotional breakdown and telling Stephenie that he was going to vote for her.  It turns out that was an excellent ploy to take out Q instead.  I don't know if this would have been the right move coming from anybody else, but Mike is such a unique person in a unique situation.  His only chance to win is to make big and crazy moves all the way to the end and basically dare the Jury not to vote for him.  It'll probably blow up in his face at some point, but it worked here.

Angelina and Ozzy both managed to get into the majority as well.  Both of them did a good job of connecting with Emily, which saved Angelina.  Ozzy may have been reluctant to vote out Q, but once they had the numbers, it was smart of him to join in.

Who Sucked:

Back on Cila, while I liked that Devens told Cirie about the Boomerang Idol to protect his alliance, it's borderline unforgivable that he didn't manage to get that info to Emily.  I know that they didn't have much time and she was talking to other people, but you have to find a way to make that happen.  Casually walk past her, kick her foot, jerk your head, and get her to come with you.  This nearly blew everything up.

Rizo made a bad judgement call in how he described the events of Survivor 49 and his vote for Savannah over Sophi B.  This really pissed off Charlie and I wouldn't be surprised if this takes down Rizo.  You gotta watch out for people's baggage on returner seasons.  He tried to connect with Charlie by telling him about Ozzy's Boomerang Idol, but it might be too late to make that bond.

Charlie has to watch himself here.  I don't blame him for being haunted by season 46, but he has to make sure it doesn't impact his game this time.  So far, it's only been in confessional, so no damage done yet.  Taking out Rizo is fine, but his trauma shouldn't be his primary motivation.  He needs to check himself so he makes what is actually the right move for his game.

Moving on to Kalo, the only person I have here is Genevieve.  I like that she's working on her social game.  We saw her trying to bond with Coach, Colby, Joe, and Tiffany, but I think she pushed Aubry's name too hard and too fast.  She should have eased into throwing out names.  I won't be shocked at all if Aubry Idol's her out of the game in the not too distant future.

Back on Vatu, like Devens, Christian really screwed up with telling his alliance about the Boomerang Idol.  It's good that he told Cirie, but awful that he didn't get to Emily before the Swap.  Once they started dropping their buffs, Christian shouldn't have bothered telling her.  It not only made Emily trust him less, but it's not a good look to be whispering to someone like that on the mat.  He did manage to patch things up with her later, but by that point she had already told the entire tribe about Aubry having an Idol.  He did help take out Q, but his poor performance at the Immunity Challenge is what got them sent to Tribal Council in the first place.

Emily doesn't get off scot-free.  Sure, Christian and Devens screwed her over, but she shouldn't have run off to give information to Ozzy and Q so quickly.  She needed to calm herself down and have a clarifying conversation with Christian.  She eventually did that, but she caused a good deal of damage first.  It's good that she took out Q and I like her trying to build a side-alliance with Ozzy, but she has to watch the loose lips.

Stephenie ended up being completely left out of the vote.  She's very lucky the other players were more scared of Q than her.

We really didn't get enough from Dee or Jonathan for me to say either way.

As for Q, he was a much better player this time around.  I don't think it was anything in particular that he did here that took him down.  He definitely talks more than he listens, which may be why Emily didn't end up siding with him, but it would have been a bad move for her to go with him anyway.  I think he got taken down by his reputation from 46.  He was chaos incarnate on 46, and even if he hadn't done anything too crazy yet, the other players saw it as only a matter of time.  You gotta make sure you make the most of your opportunity to play Survivor the first time.  You may never get invited back, and even if you do, your reputation alone is enough to doom you.

Verdict:

Best Player of the Episode goes to Mike White for his emotional ploy of saying he was targeting Stephenie, but taking out Q instead.

Worst Player of the Episode goes to Christian Hubicki for not passing information on to Emily when he should have, rushing it when he finally did, and blowing the Immunity Challenge.  I will give Emily a dishonorable mention though.

Looks like we have another celebrity appearance next week for some reason.  Why?  Hopefully it either has no impact on the game or, like the Boomerang Idol, is a genuinely cool twist or advantage that just has a celebrity involved because it's season 50.