A heartfelt confession and ball play kept Survivor 47 lively despite an easy vote

Survivor 47 episode 10 was one of those episodes of Survivor where not much happens, and there is a lot of filler, but is actually useful filler and a very entertaining hour—though it was, of course, 90 minutes, and those last 15 were especially drawn out.

From Teeny’s heartbreak to Sol’s vest to Andy tonguing a ball in slow motion, there was a lot to love in this episode, even if the vote ended up being a simple one.

“Everything I do from now on will be to avenge you,” Teeny said at camp, speaking to Sol, whose blindside also blindsided her.

Teeny was “devastated” and “pissed off” and hurt, having learned that Sol was being blindsided by Andy during last episode’s Tribal Council.

She told Genevieve, “I’m sorry because you were so close—so close—to your goal of making me feel stupid for no reason.” Teeny added, “It speaks volumes to how you see me.”

Genevieve tried to do damage control, saying “I already feel so beholden to you, and when I see you crying, I genuinely regret what was a good, right move for me.”

They ended up bonding, sort of, over how different they are in the game: Teeny believes everyone and everything, Genevieve trusts no one. Genevieve told Teeny that she expected to be backstabbed or blindsided: “at some point, you will, and you will have to for your own game.”

Genevieve told us that this “doesn’t feel like a fun game any more,” and also that the “tallest blade of grass gets cut, and I grew a lot yesterday.”

Sam got out his lawn mower. When Andy said Kyle or Gabe was next to go, depending on who won immunity, Sam said, “Genevieve scares me.” Unkempt lawns scare me, too, Sam.

Meanwhile, Andy bounced around camp, talking to Kyle, and suggesting an alliance. “There’s an expression I like: it’s called loyal to the soil,” he said. “Once I’m loyal, it goes all the way down to the soil,” where I’ll be when I have a public tantrum and sell you out.

Andy told us he wants to “play people off each other,” and later shared that he’s “looking for opportunities to build bonds on all different sides of the fence.” Um, Andy, I hate to break this news, but there are just two sides to a fence.

Thankfully, he abandoned that metaphor and switched to a new one. “I want to go across the aisle and build a really good relationship with someone on Tuku.” He chose Sue, and said “I think we could sit at the end together.”

To solidify their new bond, he said, “I feel like I look at you, I see a partner, like in crime, like a partner in this game”—like someone who is your age, 31!

Andy was also thrilled with Sue’s beef with Kyle, and the editors had a blast illustrating this with a montage of Sue beefing. I especially liked her mocking Kyle—”I’m a good guy, I’m a dad, I’m a this”—and then the editors cutting between Sue saying “he wrote my name down” and her slamming a machete into a coconut, onto which she’d drawn Kyle’s face. Okay I made that part up, but it was still great.

Tangent: Do people still applaud Andy every time he opens a coconut? Do they congratulate him on every successful aqua-dump?

The editors also had fun illustrating Andy going on to a different metaphor: of him as a spider, superimposing players faces onto a spider web as Andy said, “all I’ve got to do is crawl over here and decide who my next victim is, bite their head off, and crawl over here and decide who my next victim is after that.”

Okay, sure, you can have your own ID special. Just please stop talking about biting off heads.

Survivor 47’s players at the episode 10 immunity challenge: Genevieve Mushaluk, Caroline Vidmar, Kyle Ostwald, Andy Rueda, Sam Phalen, Rachel LaMont, Sue Smey, Gabe Ortis, and Teeny Chirichillo (Image from Survivor via CBS)

For the reward challenge—an actual reward challenge—the players split into teams of three, because there is no such thing as an individual reward, I suppose.

It was a fun challenge, though: They had their feet and arms restrained, and thus had to slither through sand, up and over two hills, to move a ball. Then, they had to roll their ball into a target.

The reward was a trip to The Sanctuary™: Where Survivor Rewards Go to Die, and a meal of just wraps, salad, cake, and iced tea. This is a shitty reward, sure, though I wondered if this is actually preferable to a massive, greasy meal for people who have mostly empty stomachs.

The best part of this challenge was the image above: slow motion of Andy’s sandy face and sandy tongue mating with the ball so he could bite it and fling it forward. It was a spectacular visual and a far more effective strategy than Genevieve blowing her ball. Tee hee.

The blue team of Kyle, Rachel, and Sam were in the lead the entire challenge, despite Probst’s best attempts to convince us that the red team might catch up.

At first Narrator McExposition had little to offer: “They have a big lead. There are three balls to land. They have landed one. … Blue has only landed one ball.”

Then he tried to make it into an actually competitive challenge: “it would be a massive comeback for red!” he yelled as Sam sunk his ball, blue’s third. Did blue get credit? No, red did! “A valiant comeback effort by red; they will not get a shot as this challenge is over, wow.”

Congrats to Andy, Caroline, and Gabe for impressing the host so much with their failure!

At the reward, Kyle told Sam and Rachel that Gabe should go. “It’s just a matter of time before he strikes me or I strike him,” he said. Sam agreed: “If we don’t get Gabe, he’s going to get us.”

Rachel, having to endure two bros talking strategy like she wasn’t even there, told us, “I would like to vote out Genevieve,” but also noted Sam keeps betraying her.

At camp, Gabe was worried about Kyle, too. “Nobody’s beating Kyle,” he said.

At camp, Teeny was in mourning over the shift in her relationship with Genevieve, which she described as “almost like a breakup for us.” Teeny was lying in the shelter, crying.

This led to Teeny talking about how her isolation in the game was mirroring “stuff with my identity that I haven’t really sorted out.” She talked about “the insecurities I feel in my own skin sometimes,” and told us, “I don’t know exactly how I fit in, in a sort of man-and-woman binary world.”

“I’m dealing with a lot of very personal inner world issues, and I’m trying to mask them for the sake of my game, and it’s getting harder because I’m losing people I care about,” she said, “I just feel really alone myself in this game and my place in this world and who I am.”

Then Teeny’s bag caught on fire, which was hilarious and sad all at once—”another cherry on top of the mess that my game feels like right now,” Teeny said.

New-era Survivor has gotten better at including this sort of backstory for players, and it generally fit in well here.

But it’s particularly poignant that this happened to be broadcast at the end of Transgender Awareness Week, which is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to remember people who’ve died because of anti-trans violence.

That’s not because Teeny is trans—they identify as non-binary, and are Survivor’s first nonbinary player—but because trans people, too, struggle with figuring out who they are and how they fit into a world that demands a binary even though binaries are bullshit. (Here’s a great breakdown of how not even biological sex is binary!)

Coincidentally, Wednesday was also the same day that creepy Speaker of the House Mike Johnson declared he wants to know what people’s genitals look like before they use bathrooms in the United States Capitol—all of this is just to be cruel to one person, an incoming, elected House member.

These people’s obsession with trans people and genitalia is bizarre. Also, are we confident Johnson can use the men’s room under his dumb rules? Because he sure hasn’t demonstrated he has any balls as Speaker of the House.

The immunity challenge was balancing things—balls, yay!—but began instead with Host McOvercomplicateeverything declaring, “This is the rice negotiation. I need four people to sit out in exchange for rice.” Later, he declared, “The set price is four.”

So, Jeff doesn’t know what an auction is, and he doesn’t know what negotiation is, either.

Then came a fascinating turn. Kyle offered everyone giving up their Shot in the Dark instead. Probst was flabbergasted that no one wanted one of his fun new game elements. “This is a massive sacrifice from where I sit over here,” he said.

Yeah, no. In seven seasons, the Shot in the Dark has been played 13 times, and has worked exactly once, when Kaleb saved himself in season 45. And Survivor worked very well for 40 seasons without that. People now offer to give up their Shot in the Dark because it’s almost a liability, like so many of the new-era advantages.

At the commercial break, Probst said, “I never saw this negotiation coming!” Then he said, “if you have clever ideas like that, apply to be on Survivor.” Oh, if I get cast for Survivor I can suggest changes to Survivor? Hmm.

Narrator McExposition had to recap everything we’d just seen when the challenge started: “You all agreed to give up your Shot in the Dark in exchange for rice, so now immunity is really important because you’ve got nothing else, other than some kind of advantage or idol.”

Again, like Survivor used to be.

The players balanced balls on pizza tins, and I had a grand old time with all the ball jokes, like when the wind blew their balls. Probst said things like:

• “It just got a whole lot harder with two balls.”
• “Everybody grab your third ball.”
• “Now Kyle’s balls are starting to move.”
• “Now Kyle’s balls are starting to move.” YES HE SAID IT TWICE.

It came down to Sue and Kyle, and Kyle won. Probst told Kyle, “This is your fourth individual immunity win. There are an elite group of players who’ve won it five times. What is that feeling? Nobody could expect to do this well, even though you dream it might happen.”

I think that rice negotiation got him over-excited, because while there are six people who’ve done that, there are 12 who have four individual immunity wins. Let’s just focus on what’s happening now, okay? Thanks.

With Kyle safe, Gabe became the target; Sam says he’s the leader of Tuku.

While Teeny wanted revenge against Genevieve, she acknowledged, “I know the timing is not right right now; I know we need to get Gabe out first, and that’s what I’m sticking to.”

Gabe, though, wanted Genevieve out. And he continued with his low-level villain version of unearned cockiness, saying, “I’m making it to eight with three other Tukus, and the fact my fellow players around me have allowed this to happen is mind-blowing.”

Gabe told Caroline she’d be final three with him and Sue—and said that right after he criticized Genevieve for overplaying too soon.

Caroline, though, had other ideas. “If I vote out Gabe, I can really start my game.”

While it seemed like Gabe was the easy vote, Rachel told Caroline “once Gabe’s gone, who’s everyone else looking at here” and suggested, “what if we do her sooner?” Her = Genevieve.

Kyle told Gabe it’s him or Genevieve, leading Gabe to talk to Genevieve in a fascinating conversation. “Somebody—I’m not saying you—has my name out there,” he told her, and she played that so cool the ocean started to freeze.

The editors gave us one final brilliant, Emmy-worthy sequence, cutting between Gabe and Genevieve’s confessionals, basically completing each other’s sentences. Who would it be?

Tribal Council was basically a lot of wasted time, made more miserable for the players because it was pouring rain while they killed time.

But the rain also gave us the jury—Sierra and Sol—walking in, wet and yet still hot, like they were models on a Parisian runway. I’m sure some people discovered their sexuality last night is Sol shirtless in a vest.

“Let’s talk about today’s rice negotiation,” Probst said. Let’s not!

The only other notable thing in all of this talk was Rachel doing some excellent jury management. “I don’t think that Sierra and Sol would e sitting over there if we were voting out the weakest people in this tribe,” she said. That’s not subtle, but I think it’s probably effective.

Probst read the votes, and there were two votes for Genevieve, and she said, “Oh no. It’s gonna be me.” She really was worried she’d be blindisded! But then there was another vote for Gabe—and the rest were for him, too. Gabe was out.

He said “good game” to everyone, and then, as he left, said, “I’ll be back,” which I assume means on the jury.

Again, this vote was a simple one, one we knew about from the start: Kyle or Gabe, Kyle wins immunity, it’s Gabe. But some deft editing placed us in Genevieve’s paranoia—and gave us a licked ball and so much more.

An episode dedicated to Barb Probst

Survivor 47 episode 10 concluded with this title card:

“Dedicated to Barb, the biggest Survivor fan of all time. See you on our next adventure.”

That lovely, heartbreaking note was for Barbara Probst, Jeff Probst’s mom. Jeff’s brother posted on Instagram that “she had full-time care for dementia and died one week before her 86th birthday,” on Nov. 7, 2024.

By all accounts, Barb was a fixture at live Survivor finales and interacted frequently with fans. If you’d like to see a picture of her, Jeff and his mom were on The Talk together about 10 years ago.

My thoughts are with Jeff and the entire Probst family during this time.