Survivor 47’s funeral and foibles were fun, even if they lead to an obvious winner

The question going into Survivor 47 episode 13: How would Survivor follow its spectacular heist episode, and break a usually three-hour finale into four hours?

The answer: with another strong episode, even if it didn’t match the highs of last week, unless you were yourself high, in which case it was probably a joy and a half.

It gave us two challenges, two Tribal Councils, and two very different votes, including a blindside of the majority of players.

And this episode sent one player, Rachel, into the actual finale with just a fire-making challenge between her and the $1 million, having vanquished her biggest threats in the game.

The start of episode 13 start was not very promising: Jeff Probst walked slowly into Tribal Council, talking about this season’s themes—”a constant shift of power” and “some very savvy social gameplay, neither of which are, you know, themes—and breaking down the final six players, “a final six that nobody would have predicted.”

Narrator McExposition told us, people who watch Survivor, that Andy had “one of the worst starts in the history of Survivor,” which is also how I’d describe this intro, ha! That was followed by a recap, so it was four minutes into the two-hour episode and four-hour finale before anything new happened.

I will give Probst this: Walking while talking through the entire season in one interrupted take, with no teleprompter? That’s impressive. Jeff Probst is still one of the all-time best in the hosting business, even if his producing gets in the way.

Having been blindsided by Andy, Genevieve, and Sam, Sue was apoplectic. “Tribal really sucked tonight,” she said. “Right now, I want to rip Andy’s head off his shoulders.” Sue, please wash your hands and face before conducting any surgeries.

Andy was delighted and surprised at his own success, and Genevieve said she’d make sure everyone knew it was his plan. Andy did not want such credit. He lied to Teeny, saying he thought of the plan on the way to Tribal Council and Sam and Genevieve had no knowledge, and even Teeny was like, uh, nice try, dummy.

Andy was also a little anxious about his position in the game. “If you two cut me at five, I’m going to puke my guts out,” Andy said. Should this episode have a barf warning?

Teeny said that “me, Rachel, and Sue all look like idiots” and asked, “What the hell, Andy? That was insane to do.” But it really wasn’t, and it’s interesting that Teeny 1) thinks this, like everything, is about her, and 2) doesn’t recognize it as a brilliant game move.

And really, what’s going on here—as we saw later in a montage—is that Teeny has been continuously, repeatedly deceived throughout the game by people she thought were allies.

“My brain can’t catch up to all the things I need to unlearn what I thought was going on,” Teeny told us in the second hour, and the editors showed us all of it. “I fell into every single trap,” she said. “How could I have been so stupid?”

That’s a tough position to be in, to realize that you were never party to the actual plan, and repeatedly used as a pawn to make those plans happen. But also, that’s what happens when you don’t step up and play. All season we’ve seen Teeny reluctant to do anything, to try something, and I wonder if the others picked up on that.

All of that makes Teeny an obvious final-three goat, and I think Sue is right there with her. Sue basically spent all season stewing about Kyle because he voted for her once—back when she was in her early 30s and Ace of Base was playing on the beach’s 8-track—and then apparently spent the rest of the season looking for idols that weren’t there and contouring her face with ashes.

Teeny joined Andy, Genevieve, and Sam for an evening chat about how Rachel is the threat who must go, because she’ll beat them all. As if to prove that, Rachel followed them and eavesdropped.

For us, watching infrared camera footage, it seemed obvious Rachel was so close, but Rachel shared how “one of the thing that you can’t grasp at home” is how dark it actually is. The editors cut to a black screen to illustrate darkness. I look forward to seeing how they show us water is wet, fire is hot, and Sue is 59.

As much as I loved Operation Italy, I love that Rachel, the next target, now has a secret plan of her own, which comes down to a secret idol that absolutely no one knows about. So what did Rachel do? Told Sue. RACHEL WHAT NO!

Sue was on the ground, digging around the water well, trying to find an idol. Rachel was concerned (“are you okay?”) and then just told Sue.

This is what makes Rachel a better player than I’d ever be, though, because her gamble worked. “It was scary to tell Sue about the idol. But at this point, I need Sue,” Rachel said. And Sue said “I trust her; she’s shared so much with me.”

Between the two of them, they have two actually hidden immunity idols, and one block-a-vote advantage. That’s a pretty terrific position to be in before an immunity challenge.

That challenge: a water obstacle course ending with a Survivor logo puzzle, with the bonus of reward at The Sanctuary™: Where Actually Something Amazing Happened Last Time So I’ll Skip Mocking Its Shitty Rewards For Now!

The big news of the challenge was that Narrator McExposition yelled “first you gotta leap” to people standing on a platform who were probably confused and thinking they should just curl up in a ball instead, and then when they actually did jump, he yelled, “That’s how you do it!” But not …on Survivor?!? Is even our host tiring of his tiresome lines?

They all were working on the puzzle at the same time, and Rachel and Genevieve pulled ahead. Probst yelled, “Right now, if you are Genevieve or Rachel, you gotta keep bustin’ it, because you got someone on your tail.”

“Nobody else even close. You might have more fun just watchin’ like I’m doin’,” Probst said, dropping so many Gs they were forming a garbage patch in the ocean.

Genevieve pulled ahead, and when she had two pieces to go, Probst was still screaming “Rachel with another piece!” Okay, friend, do we need a nap?

For her reward buddies, Genevieve chose Sue and Teeny, and I was waiting for Teeny to yell about how Genevieve was just trying to buy her vote.

Could anything remotely as interesting as last episode’s plan happen at The Sanctuary™? Nope, but it did have the fun of watching Teeny get drunk and spill secrets.

“When you didn’t play the idol?” Teeny said, and Sue was surprised to learn that. Teeny blamed the wine. “I revealed myself as the 23-year-old that I am in that I can’t get a few drinks in me without spilling the secrets that are really, really important to people in this game,” she said.

But Genevieve was kinda thrilled. “This is amazing for my game,” she said, because a fake idol everyone thinks is real is stronger than no idol.

Back at camp, Rachel, Sam, and Andy chatted, and Sam showed more thigh. “It felt like the closing of the book of Gata,” Sam said when he told Rachel he was voting for her.

“I love you guys; we will hang out after this. I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at myself,” Rachel said. She was crying, which probably appeared to the guys like she was resigned to her fate, though we knew the truth.

Survivor 47’s Sam, Rachel, and Andy—half of the Gata tribe—in the first part of the season 47 finale (Image from Survivor via CBS)

“When things feel obvious and easy, that’s when players think: Maybe now is a good time to do something,” Genevieve said. “Tonight, let’s not do something crazy; tonight let’s just do Rachel.”

Cue Andy ready to do something crazy. “I’ve been on a real hot streak, and I’ve been pulling off really cool moves that I could sell to a jury,” he said. Yes, that’s true, but, uh, once? So let’s just slow this bus before it careens over the edge, maybe?

Rachel told Andy that she’s blocking Sam’s vote and voting for Sam. Both Rachel and Sue promised Andy they wouldn’t vote him out if he joined with them to vote out Sam, though Sue’s face twitched when she said it, like, Eh, I’m probably lying.

Would Andy flip again? Nope, he overplayed instead. “It’s best for me to vote you out tonight,” he told Rachel. “You’ll be on the jury, but I actually care more about your perspective of me.”

Then he proceeded to list all the reasons why he should win the game, and sang it as a sea shanty:

I once was a player so beautiful and bold
Forget the meltdown, nothing it fortold
I schemed and plotted with a mind so bright
I took out Caroline with my strategic might
Andy, Andy, my time has come
Vote for me when you’re on the jury, hun!

Of course, he was singing—I mean, telling; I made that song up—someone who he thought was dead in the game, but actually held his fate in her hands. “I’m choosing the second-to-last member of the jury tonight,” Rachel told us.

The question going into Tribal Council, then, was whether Rachel and Sue would vote for Sam or to Andy, brand-new threat but remarkably good sea shanty singer.

“I haven’t quite known what was going on,” Teeny said, in front of the jury, throwing some more dirt on the grave that is her game. After Sam said something similar, Rachel had enough.

“Jeff, can I call bullshit? Andy flipped,” Rachel said. “I don’t know why we’re pretending we don’t know what happened.”

This will inevitably get compared to what Dalton Ross called “the greatest Big Brother moment ever,” because of the word “funeral,” and they are similar in that both were targeted players. But Dan was actually at risk of exiting the game, and held his own funeral to save himself; Rachel knew she was not at risk, but played along with everyone else eulogizing her to blindside them.

The more interesting metaphor for me was how Rachel described her battle with Genevieve: “We’re like Voldemort and Harry Potter—we’re weirdly intertwined but one of us has to die.”

Genevieve, though, recognizing the strength of her foe, said, “While we had her funeral, she may arise from the dead.”

Everyone voted, Sam’s vote was blocked (as he expected), and then Probst got ready to read the votes. That’s when Rachel said, “You know, Jeff. I think the only thing better than attending your own funeral is knowing that you’re going to wake up alive the next morning.”

She pulled out her idol, played it, and Probst revealed who Rachel and Sue targeted—and it was Andy! Holy shit! He went from orchestrating season’s (the new era’s?) biggest play to tooting his own horn so loud the sound waves bounced him to the jury.

“Amazing job,” Andy told Rachel while hugging her.

“I finally was the one who knew what was going on, and basically no one else did,” Rachel said, throwing shade on Sue, who also knew. And again, this is why Sue’s not getting any final Tribal Council votes, either. Even her closest ally doesn’t respect her game!

Later, Sue said “I’m like the smart one, keeping my mouth shut,” which is true, but it’s also leading to confirmation of what she feared: “everyone’s going to freakin’ underestimate me.”

This kept the Rachel/Genevieve fight on for another day—and I hoped it’d continue right to the final Tribal Council, giving the jury some actual options.

By the way, all of that happened in one day, the day after the Caroline blindside.

Rachel began day 24 searching for an idol, and Rachel following her, echoes of TK following Sol.

In the shelter, Sam went through Rachel’s bag. “Day 24, it’s about time we searched someone’s bag for stuff,” he said, and added, “I feel so naughty doing this.” You should; that’s awful, going through someone’s clothing piece by piece.

Time for an immunity challenge: an obstacle course with balancing and balls! It’s the Best of the Same Things. After running up the beach and digging through sand, they had to balance balls and stands on top of each other, while perched on a wobbly board.

“You know how these challenges go,” Probst yelled, and yes, we do.

The same thing happened as the last stacking challenge: Probst kept saying someone was in the lead, and then they dropped all their balls and had to start over. That happened multiple times—and then the editors just montaged all the piles dropping again and again.

Genevieve was going for her final ball as Rachel’s tower teetered; then Genevieve’s tower fell and Rachel placed her last one successful.

“It’s over. Rachel has won,” Probst said. His sentence actually continued: “…her third individual immunity, guaranteeing herself a spot in the final four.”

But this, her third individual immunity win, is probably the moment that locked her in as winner. Rachel’s winner’s edit has been evident for a while now, though she’s been in a precarious position, and while she might still have to make fire, she’s a lock if she makes it to the final Tribal Council.

Even her competition knows: “I tried to tel them at the final nine,” Sam told Rachel, “that you were going to win the game if we didn’t vote you out.”

Part of me wished for a Rachel loss, because I assumed Sue would have given up her idol that no one knows about, and thus given us two Rachel idol blindsides in one episode. But that’s just me being greedy.

To save himself, Sam told Teeny that Genevieve’s idol is fake. I thought he was telling the wrong person, but it turns out he knew Teeny would blab to Rachel. So that’s Teeny’s game: being used a trustworthy link in the telephone chain.

That’s when Teeny really realized how outside of everything she is. Sam told us, “I see her realize in real time, Oh crap, I’ve known nothing about what’s actually going on in this game.“

Sue and Rachel were skeptical that this was a ploy. So Teeny went to Genevieve, who confirmed things: “It is fake and I’m a sitting duck,” she said.

That took us into Tribal Council, where there was quite a candid discussion about everything that happened that afternoon, followed by some whispering between Teeny and Rachel.

With Rachel, Sam, and Sue all voting for Genevieve, it kinda didn’t matter which way Teeny voted, but in the voting booth, she was conflicted, standing there for a long time. At one point, she said, “I’ll decide in the next 30 seconds.” (Teeny now says “I knew Rachel and Sue were voting Genevieve and put one on Sam just to make sure. Was planned.” That plan makes sense but that does not explain the voting booth delay or the whispering.)

Again, it didn’t matter, since Genevieve’s idol was fake and there were three votes on her, so the Rachel vs. Genevieve feud finally has its winner. And so does Survivor 47, it seems, though perhaps next week’s two hours will hold more of a surprise.

Not a surprise: It’ll still be a final three, despite the two-hour length.

As a preview, on this week’s On Fire with Jeff Probst, our showrunner said CBS asked the production long before filming to make this season 14 episodes, and Probst said that, when discussing it with EP Matt van Wagenen, “what we really quickly realized was if we structured it so that part one got us down to four players, then in part two we could spend a lot more time with our final four as we lead into the Final Four challenge and then the fire making, and then the final three and then the final Tribal Council.”