There's not much that can be said about Episode 11 of Survivor 46 that hasn't already been said. It was the third straight episode in which Q was played up as the obvious boot, all to mollify an idol-holder who was then blindsided instead. It did also feature a dramatic individual reward choice (after a combined individual reward/immunity challenge), which was a nice surprise in the new era. And we did start to see the season's strongest duo finally contemplate turning on each other, which is not great, per se, but has been the theme of the season.

So if you were expecting a massive, power-shifting move at final seven, you may have been disappointed. Voting out Venus (at the time, probably the least likely remaining player to win - which, as she said in her exit interviews, was her key pitch for staying) was not it. But strategically, it made sense for Charlie and Maria to stick together for at least one more round. Jesse Lopez blindsided Cody Assenmacher at final six in Survivor 43, while holding an idol, and even that was a round too early.

Despite the anticipated big move not materializing, we did receive more information about how the remaining players view each others' positions in the game, which is always welcome. Maria's big move of the previous episode (blindsiding Tiffany) vaulted her into the perceived "running the game" position. Maria protected that spot by winning individual immunity, and from her choice to bring Q along on reward, we saw that several people view Q's vote as being in Maria's pocket. (Mostly because Charlie was telling them that.) And we learned that if Charlie decides to stick with Maria and faces her in the final three, he's probably going to lose.

That set up the (ultimately avoided) conflict of the episode, as we spent most of it listening to Charlie's strategic thinking: about timing, about his résumé, and his alliances. Charlie has been one of the key narrators all season, and we as the audience have largely seen the game through his perspective. That suggests he's in a good position to be this season's winner ... unless the edit has been misleading us this whole time. Which is it? Well, we'll find out in a couple of weeks.

Venus and the so-close episode

Venus's story this entire episode was about coming painfully close to being safe, then falling just short. Nothing exemplified that more than her performance in the reward/immunity challenge: Struggling mightily on the balance beam portion, such that she was the second-to-last person to reach the final stage, only to catch up quickly - becoming the second person to place their first ball, after Maria. She then had her second ball in the position to make the winning move, tilted her pole to place it, and ... it clanked off the rim. One of the closest also-ran performances in a challenge, ever. She was then in the running for the last reward pizza slot, only to be the final cut before the rock-paper-scissors decision-making game.

At the time, none of this seemed all that consequential, because we had already seen Venus playing extremely well as she found an idol during a group search, then displayed quick-thinking skills in going back and pretending to keep looking. She thus ended up with one of the rarest accomplishments of the new era: Finding an idol that nobody else knew about. Except that then, as Tribal loomed, Venus made the exact same mistake the previous secret idol finder (Hunter) had made: She broadly hinted to someone (Charlie, in this case) that she had an idol, tried to leverage that status for the upcoming vote, and then everything fell apart as the (semi-) reveal made her the target instead.

Part of the reason Venus's attempt to bait Charlie fell flat - something that was edited out, and we only learned about in Tiffany's exit interviews - is that Charlie had done almost the same thing the round before. Venus suggested that she was holding a mysterious maybe-idol/maybe-advantage that they could use together at the following Tribal, if she made it through this one. Tiffany said that one of the main reasons she didn't play her idol at the Tribal she was booted was because Charlie had approached her and pitched a plan to vote Q that round, then save her idol and use it to blindside Maria at the following Tribal. Obviously, the two plays aren't exactly the same, but the delayed gratification aspect was.

Since we weren't shown the Tiffany-Charlie scene, we have to assume Charlie's intent all along was just to placate Tiffany into holding on to her idol, allowing her to be blindsided. Either way, though, Charlie was well aware of plans where idols were held, the vote was supposed to be Q, and the idol-holder was voted out with their idol. It was his plan!

The edit vs. in-game perspectives

Kenzie had a shocking confessional (for the audience) this episode, where she described Charlie - who had the second-most confessionals ever in a single (non-finale) episode - as the "jester" to Maria's crown. Despite Kenzie being left out of the prior vote, she's generally had good reads this season, so if she's thinking that, it's probably a good reflection of the feelings of the rest of the cast. Charlie can certainly turn that around, but he will most likely need to make a move to do that, not keep deferring the "credit" to his fellow players. Based on what he said this episode, it seems like that's coming. (Then again, three episodes ago he said, "I'm coming for you, Q," and he still hasn't.)

A lot of this could be explained away by this episode serving as "the rise of Charlie" - as the audience, we've been privy to his in-game maneuvering from the beginning, whereas he's still largely been playing in the shadows, from the vantage point his competitors have had. That in-game perspective could certainly change after he makes a move publicly, and in the new era, this is about the point in the game where you want to do that. Still, this disparity between what the audience sees at home and what the players perceived in real time while playing the game has produced some other similarly red-flag moments the past few weeks.

Two weeks ago in her exit interviews, Tiffany listed Kenzie as one of the people she thought she could beat fairly easily in front of the jury, pointing out that Kenzie had been left out of a lot of alliances, and that Tiffany herself had several in-game accomplishments (idol find, at least) that Kenzie did not. This conflicts pretty strongly with Kenzie's presence of a reliable narrator, someone who's been playing hard (also mostly in the shadows), and who has built a lot of strong emotional connections with her castmates. Kenzie seems like (from the edit) someone the jury could feel good about handing a million dollars. (To be fair, Tiffany's point here is not that Kenzie would lose in *any* Final Three, just in one in which Tiffany was also there, which is still consistent with the edit.)

In another shocker, Venus says in her exit interview with Rob Cesternino that her impression at the time she was voted out was that it made sense to vote out Q, because the cloud of chaos he'd spread at so many consecutive Tribals was so impressive that, if Q had gotten to the end, he would probably win. That's almost the exact reverse of how it appears at home: Everyone seems to authentically not get along with Q, and he seems like a potential zero-vote finalist. (Maybe our perception is clouded by Charlie pushing to vote out Q this week, though.)

On that topic, Q is also a great example of how the edit shapes our perceptions. He's already run the gamut of big-character moments, from asking to be voted out (twice), to the Q skirt, to narrating Hide and Seek, to snickering in confessional about how much food he's eaten the past two episodes, to the utter chaos of the Tevin boot Tribal Council. Surprisingly, there's even more depth, even greater dimensions to Q's game, some of which have been edited out.

No matter what you think about Q (or Liz), you should watch the EW secret scene this week. In it, Q goes out of his way to engage Liz in a discussion about their shared backstories of growing up in poverty, to let her know that while it looks like he's the "have" and she's the "have not" in the reward-getting game over the past two episodes, he understands what she feels like, and tries to defuse their conflict and move past any persistent grudges. It's a great look for Q (and Liz), one that gives both of them more emotional depth, and it's disappointing this scene didn't make it into the episode itself. (Charlie likely would have gracefully assented to handing over a confessional or two to make room for this.)

The edit takes away, but it also gives, where Q is concerned. We know from Tiffany's exits that Q refused to let Maria or Kenzie swap out so Liz could go along on the Applebee's reward (not shown). And in the Tevin boot episode, both Hunter and Tiffany have said in their exit interviews that Q made a hail-Mary attempt to convince Tiffany that it was Hunter (not Q himself) who had told Maria about Tiffany's idol, and who had been pushing to remove Tiffany from the Six. He did this right before Tribal, while Hunter had been called away for a confessional interview. This type of cutthroat gameplay is quite a bit more devious than Q has been shown as playing so far. (Also, Q just revealed on twitter that he was supposed to vote for Kenzie this week, meaning the two votes on Kenzie would immediately send her to the jury had Venus played her idol ... but he decided to vote Venus instead.)

So to sum up: Q is both a better, more empathetic person AND far more sneaky and unreliable than he's been shown on TV. Q is everything! If the edit was consistently hiding negative things, you might conclude Q was in line for the surprise Qaos win. Does that follow when both saintly and underhanded scenes have been buried? Who knows?

Either way, don't trust everything you see on a highly edited TV show as being the complete story.

Shorter takes

Maria's choice: A lot of people had a lot of opinions about Maria's slow (then roshambo) decision-making over the reward attendees, but as pointed out on Know-It-Alls, no matter who a reward winner chooses (or how), someone's going to be mad. One option that she didn't seem to consider is one that might have placated more people, one I will call "the Underwood": Why not give up her own spot, allowing one more person to eat, while sending herself back to camp with the three "pizza losers"? Nobody could stay mad at her if she's there with them in camp, and she wins the favor of someone like Liz. Obviously, giving up food you just won when there's none in camp would be extremely difficult, but here's no rule against this, right?

Beast update: Charlie and Maria have now won two challenges each, sharing the season lead in victories. They're also the top two players remaining in Mean % Finish in individual challenges, with Charlie at 70.6% and Maria at 67.5%. (Kenzie is a distant third at 57.4%, and Liz, Q, and Ben are all the 40s.) So they're the co-favorites for the three remaining ICs. One of the impressive aspects of Charlie's game has been his threat management, and despite challenging Hunter in a couple of early individual challenges, Charlie's not having the necklace this time around surprisingly resulted in zero people targeting him. (At least as far as we were shown.) Can he keep performing well while not being targeted? We shall see.