THE FINALE EXPLODED WITH BETRAYALS, FIRE, TEARS… AND A WIN NO ONE COULD IGNORE CQ

Jonathan Young, Rizo Velovic, Joe Hunter, Tiffany Ervin, and Aubry Bracco on ‘Survivor 50’.Credit: 

Robert Voets/CBS

I wrote a version of this last week, so forgive me for shamelessly plagiarizing myself, but as I was sitting on the sand tucked below the row of cameras waiting for Jeff Probst to call in the barge on day 1 of Survivor 50, I asked myself a seemingly simple question. Who among this supersized group of 24 combatants would be the most storybook winner for this epic, anniversary season? Two names immediately sprang to mind.

One was Cirie Fields. Cirie had been so close so many times and was taken out in unusually harsh and cruel ways. She lost a final four tiebreaker at fire on Panama. She would have won Micronesia, making it all the way to the final three… not realizing that because of all the evacuations, producers went down to a final two instead. Then she was eliminated on Game Changers without a single vote cast against her because she was the only person without an idol, immunity, or advantage. She is arguably the most popular Survivor player ever and was long overdue for her crowning glory. Everyone in America was pulling for her.

The other name was Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, simply because having a season 1 player who was there on day 1 of the entire franchise come back after the longest time ever between seasons (42!) and win would have been incredible. Those were the two.

But I have to say… Aubry Bracco is not too far off. I’m not going to bore you by reciting her résumé because she already did it herself many times over the course of the season. Aubry has been very open and honest about the turmoil she experienced after her crushing Kaoh Rong loss to Michele Fitzgerald, so to watch her come back and avenge that defeat — and earn twice the money in doing so — was pretty awesome.

Survivor has given Aubry so much (even before the money!), but it also at times took a huge emotional toll on her, starting with that day 2 panic attack her first time out. As if that was not bad enough, she also had to pretend to be excited to do Ron Clark’s Kama dance on Edge of Extinction, and the secondhand embarrassment I felt for her in that moment was almost more than the firsthand embarrassment I feel for myself every time I am interviewing a reality TV contestant who is half my age.

I don’t get not being excited about an Aubry win. The fact that she was even on this season was so unlikely, which I told her two days before the game began. She then had a rough first few days — clearly on the outs with her original tribe and taking the olive branch extended by Genevieve and snapping it right in front of cameras. But she bided her time and then bobbed and weaved in between alliances. She struck when Ozzy gave her an opening. She won the final immunity challenge to save herself yet again (although would anyone have lost to Rizo at fire at that point?).

Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you Aubry should beat Todd Herzog or Parvati Shallow in our Best Survivor Winner Ever Backet, but this is a win worth applauding and celebrating. I heard a lot of chatter this past week with people being bummed about the final five heading into the finale, and I get that losing Cirie and Rick last week was a double shot of brutality, but it’s not like we were left with scraps.

Aubry is a certified gamer, Tiffany has proved time and time again to be wildly entertaining when we are allowed to see her, and Rizo is a fantastic and fascinating character in that he is extremely good at this game except for two key elements: making fire, and getting his fellow tribemates to realize how good he actually is.

I never in a million, billion, trillion years thought I would write the next few words that are about to be typed on my laptop, but, objectively, Jonathan Young played a very good and aggressive game of Survivor. Does he need to cut down on yelling “YES! YES! YES!” at the top of his lungs every time he wins something? Yes. Does that mean he should also stop doing the worm after he wins an immunity challenge? No. Am I worried that he will crush me like a bug if I write something not so nice about him? Maybe.

I will admit to rolling my inner eyes when Jonathan told me before the game that Boston Rob had shared some tips and tricks with him that he would put into play, figuring we would just see the same ol,’ same ol’, but the guy did play a much more active game. Even if you are not a fan of the man, that is worth appreciating.

And then there is Joe. This has to hurt. Just an absolute gut punch. He said he was embarrassed by Kyle and Kamilla when he made it all the way to the end of Survivor 48 and only received a single vote. He comes back a year later, gets all the way to the end again, and then this. Joe is an extremely proud man who has been given many incredible gifts lately — including a reconciliation with his wife and a job from Tyler Perry — but I know him well enough to know that having to go through this again and be rejected by a jury of his peers was not on his to-do list.

Every time I have talked with Joe, I have enjoyed our conversations immensely. I also get why players lost patience with how much managing he required during the game. My hope for Joe is that he is able to put this all in perspective and realize how rare and incredible it is to make it wire-to-wire in two straight appearances on the show. Ninety-nine percent of all Survivor competitors would kill for that result.

So don’t cry for the guy. After all, Rizo will cry for him! Rizo cries over everything! Hahaha, that’s me just razzing the Riz… which for some reason sounds way more graphic and disturbing that I intended. But we will certainly get into everything that went down on the Survivor 50 finale. Well, at least everything that happened in Fiji and was not part of the reimagined Los Angeles reunion portion of the evening. So let’s get into it.

Tiff in a tiff

I don’t know if it’s true that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but watching anyone scorned on television is usually pretty fun. And what makes it a thousand times better is when that scorned person is refusing to interact with anyone yet then does not look where they are going and falls into a hole, thereby requiring assistance from the people she is pissed at while trying to maintain a measure of angry independence.

The scene between Aubry and Tiffany was so good in so many ways. Aubry came over to make nice, essentially saying Tiffany should not be mad at her because “My name went down tonight too,” and Tiff just threw it right back in her face with “You should ask yourself why” and explaining that it was only because Aubry went behind Tiffany’s back planning to get her out before the challenge.

“Don’t come over here giving me fake sympathy,” she retorted. (I love retorts, by the way. They are like responses, only with a side-serving of sass.)

Tiffany is out here referring to her former ally as “Snake Ass Aubry” and explaining how “I have fire in my veins right now.”

I love the way producers were able to pull her aside for her confessional while she was still so hot about losing Cirie and being the original target herself. It wasn’t like anyone was doing anything wrong here, by the way. Aubry was playing the game, and Tiffany was well within her rights to be upset about it. This result was the spiciest moment of the finale.

Fishing for a win

The final five immunity challenge is usually when you get the big obstacle course build with a puzzle at the end, and that’s what we got here. I thought the new element of using a fishing pole to retrieve a machete (kind of like a vertical monkey’s fist) would be interesting, but it all seemed to happen kind of quick in the edit and didn’t appear to play much of a factor.

Even though I enjoy and actively lobby for these big obstacle courses, you all know how I always say that they are only window dressing for what actually matters, which is the puzzle. If you’re the fastest on the puzzle, you almost always win the challenge no matter how you do in the first 95% of the contest. Not true here though, as Jonathan (who was first to the puzzle) won immunity by only one piece over Tiffany in a photo finish. In fact, Jonathan almost lost the challenge and potentially altered the entire course of Survivor history by taking a time out to go puke over the side railing mid-puzzle.

Do you remember that time a team was eliminated on The Amazing Race because one of them needed to pee before checking in at the final Pit Stop? I’ve legit had nightmares over the years of that happening to me and still think that might be the worst way to be eliminated on any reality competition show ever. Do you pee your pants on national television or preserve a shred of dignity and use the facilities so you are not meeting Phil Keoghan reeking of urine? That may sound like a no-brainer to you when a million dollars is on the line, but you just know that camera crew would totally be going for close-ups of your soiled crotch area and possible liquid running down your leg and into your shoe.

Anyway, Jonathan did not lose because he had to blow chunks mid-puzzle, but it was very close to happening. Also, how is a guy vomiting one minute and then literally throwing his stomach on to the ground to do an impromptu worm the next? I don’t know, but if John Kirhoffer is not off brainstorming a worm challenge of Electric Boogaloo proportions right now, then my main man is doing it wrong.

Tiffany’s last stand

There are no sweeter sounds on all of Survivor than hearing a player say they want to get things off their chest. I don’t know if Tiffany Ervin will ever outdo that time she begged Bhanu and his one million hearts to stop kneeling and begging at her feet, but this was a pretty fantastic last two days of Survivor for her. She won a challenge to save herself, came one more Jonathan barf bag second from winning another, got spicy back at camp with Aubry, and then kept the fire burning even as her torch was about to be snuffed at Tribal Council.

“Right now, my flavor is spicy,” she told Probst at Tribal Council. “We’ll see tomorrow when I’m on the jury.” (Oh, it stayed spicy.)

Now, her argument did not make a ton of sense that it was “asinine” that people were telling her she had to go because she was too good and they could not win against her, because that was the absolute truth! She tried to compare herself to Joe, who she said nobody was worried about even though he also had three immunity victories, but as we saw in the final vote, Joe had no shot at winning at the end so of course people wanted to keep him around. Also, as the Hostmaster General pointed out, Joe was in an alliance with the people keeping him around.

But it doesn’t matter. I loved it with all my heart all the same. Tiffany fought till the very last second and proved she earned not only her spot on Survivor 50, but in the final five as well.

Motion of Simmotion

I think I was wrong. Now, that will not surprise anyone who has accused me of being comically incorrect on a variety of Survivor-related topics, be it my controversial season rankings or passionate (some would say misguided) defense of Fire Tokens. But I think I was wrong with my fan vote for the final immunity challenge. I voted for the Plinko contest, mostly just because it has only been run three times before, while Simmotion had been run nine times already, including in seasons 42, 44, and 48. Now make it 10 times.

It’s definitely been a bit overkill with that one, but holy smokes it is always super dramatic. What I love about this challenge is the shocking suddenness of it. You don’t typically see anyone struggling and obviously about to bow out. One second you are in it to win it, and then a slight second lapse of concentration and you’re done. I always find myself gasping whenever a ball drops because it seems so out of nowhere. And the challenge once again delivered here as Aubry — who had only won a single immunity contest over four seasons — beat all the boys when she absolutely, positively needed it.

And you saw both sides of the ABC Wide World of Sports coin with Aubry’s thrill of victory (going over and hugging Jeff) and Joe’s agony of defeat. Joe looked absolutely pissed, angrily wiping away sweat from his brow and ear. Pissed at himself, I’m sure, but I can’t say for sure because I was too distracted by the fact that Aubry simply refused to untether her wrist after the challenge so was celebrating awkwardly with only one arm for a seriously prolonged amount of time. Joe was out of that contraption in less time than it takes Rizo to start crying, but Aubry just refused to free her captive arm, and I loved every absurd second of it.

Also, how amazing that Aubry saw that Simmotion was one of the fan options and then went out and bought a version of it on Etsy to practice? That purchase most likely won her $2 million. She Carson Garretted that s—!

Firing on all cylinders

The amount of crying Rizo Velovic did on Survivor 49 could have completely refilled the Colorado River Basin, but the guy has kept his emotions mostly in check during his return visit. That all changed on day 25. And it all had to do with fire.

Speaking of which, how out of touch are we as Survivor super fans? Like, I had a general sense that a smaller group of us hardcore fans really, for the most part, do not like the final four fire-making as a producer-generated manipulation to keep certain types of players in the game, and that a larger swath of more casual fans who have a life and other interests besides obsessively following all the minutia surrounding a reality competition television show do like the undeniable drama it provides.

But I assumed the fire-making would be voted off the island for season 50 anyway, due to the fact that it is the now regularly established part of the show. Voters often embrace change just for the sake of change, because variety is the spice of life. (I apparently actively avoid spice seeing as how I have been writing about the same TV show for 26 years and counting.) I incorrectly deduced that people would vote against fire-making even if they liked it, just to get a different flavor and see what a new era game looked like without it. Once again, I was wrong.

Anyway, knowing Joe was the most beatable at the end, Aubry told Rizo and Jonathan she was putting them into fire. And then the waterworks began.

“I told myself after season 49 I don’t want to find myself in this spot again,” Rizo told us through tears of him losing to Savannah at fire just two months prior. “I feel so good about my game and that is what is eating me alive right now. Dammit Rizo, how can you be so good but so bad at the same time?”

I kid about all the tears, but this is what makes Rizo so endearing, the fact that he — like Ozzy — allows himself to be so open and honest about his feelings. The whole RizGod shtick would not work without it. He would come off as some insufferable douche if he did not show us the true emotional vulnerability underneath that silly persona. When you see how much Rizo generally cares about this game and his family, you realize he is much more than a look-at-me character fishing for attention. There’s a depth there that a lot of players would close off, but Rizo lets you see it — warts and all.

The editors did a good job leading up to the fire battle making you think Rizo actually had a shot — with Joe giving him valuable instruction along the way — but it was never close, and pretty soon Jonathan was stalking around the Tribal Council set yelling “YES! YES! YES!” after punching his ticket to the final three.

The Loved Ones pump fake

Oh, those cagey Survivor producers. They brought in those letters from home at the auction to make players and viewers think there would be no Loved Ones visit this season (even though Fiji Airways flew in half of North America at various points during the season). But it was all a ruse! Because here on day 26 came a boat with Jonathan’s brother, Aubry’s mom, and Joe’s wife.

I get why they did it this way, so the final three would have that celebratory moment with a family member of making it all the way to end and we could watch them hug as the soaring music hit a crescendo. It all makes sense and it was a big emotional beat before the intensity of final Tribal Council. But I would have done something slightly different. I would have had the final four Loved Ones come a day earlier, so they could watch their players compete in the final immunity. Imagine that tension ratcheted up even higher as Aubry’s mom and Joe’s wife are on pins and needles watching them compete head-to-head for $2 million. And then imagine the reaction as Aubry collapses not into Jeff Probst’s arms, but her own mother’s.

Australian Survivor does this, and it works. (Of course, they also bring out the Loved Ones for the reading of the final Tribal Council votes, which always seems supes awkward to me for the losers. I wouldn’t want my wife to have to stand there and watch me get zero votes from a jury of my peers without a few months of preparation at a live reunion. No thanks.) Anyway, if they ever do bring out the Loved Ones again, I think they should try it for the final immunity challenge. Not that they listen to me.

Final Tribal Council

I think we all realized Aubry had won Survivor 50 the second Joe’s ball dropped, but even with an inevitable march to victory, there still were some intriguing moments during the final Tribal Council questions from the jury.

Watching Aubry and Jonathan going back and forth in attempts to claim credit for the Ozzy blindside was probably the biggest highlight between finalists (Aubry seemed to take the W there), but of even bigger note was some of the jury tension coming to the fore.

Let me start by saying this: Not all jury members, but the majority of jury members have an agenda with their questions, and that agenda is usually to prop up the finalist they most want to win the season — either because they view them as the most deserving, or they were in an alliance together, or they really, really, really don’t want the other people to win.

The savviest jurors are subtle in their approach. They ask a question that does not seem out of the ordinary, but is in fact one their preferred player is best equipped to answer. I say all this because there was absolutely nothing subtle about Stephenie’s approach. Chrissy had already made her own pro-Jonathan stance very clear when she announced to the jury how outstanding Jonathan’s social game was by getting Steph to fall on her sword for him, but Stephenie took it to another level when she went on a prolonged monologue about how Jonathan was the total package.

“Is this a question?” an exasperated Tiffany inquired.

“No,” Cirie answered.

This caused Dee to ask others to be more aware with the “questions” they were asking. And the jury spice continued when Stephenie then portrayed Aubry playing the middle as a negative, which Cirie then turned around to point out was a positive because it showed Aubry had changed up her game. Look, it was all at least semi-respectful. Nobody was yelling or wagging fingers or anything, but you love to see it! The same way I want my players invested, I want my jurors invested in the outcome as well — and the investment was clearly there.

The Jury Q&A ended with Christian once again espousing his theory of narrative warfare, which he brought up in his pre-game interview. Basically, it was an opportunity for the final three to essentially make their closing statements. Aubry got the soaring music as she talked about taking time away from Survivor to work on herself, and how she played for 137 days. Jonathan spoke of transforming himself from a one-dimensional big guy to a dangerous player.

But I want to give Joe some props real quick, especially since he didn’t get much props from the jury when it came to votes. Joe answered this last question by talking about how he was able to get to the final three in both seasons and only had his name written down one time combined on the way there. Those are straight facts — and pretty impressive ones. Now, you can argue that he made it this far on 50 because people saw him as player they wanted to sit next to at the end, and that is a totally fair demerit, but it’s still wildly impressive.

Not as impressive as Aubry, however. She finally got her Survivor win and can now exhale and push out those reality TV demons that have lived inside of her for the past 10 years.

And that pretty much brings us to the end of Survivor 50. I don’t necessarily think it was the best season ever, as Jeff said he believed it to be. But that is an insanely high bar to clear. I do think it was wildly entertaining and the cast did exactly what was asked of them by giving the producers and viewers everything, just as the host requested on the day 1 marooning.

If you judge a season by the anticipation you feel each and every week to watch the next episode, then Survivor 50 was pretty damn high. Highest of the new era for me, although it is very difficult to compare it to a new era newbie season like anything in the season 45 through 47 range because they are such different animals.

But we’ll leave that there for now. Because there is plenty more to get to — namely, my exit interviews with the final five! Keep your eyes peeled for my convos with Aubry, Jonathan, Joe, Rizo, and Tiffany. Thanks so much to everyone for playing along this season. I tried my best to give you a mountain of inside access, interviews, and other fun bells and whistles. I hope you dug it. And hopefully I’ll find a way to Billie Eilish Boomerang myself back here for season 51.