We finally reached the expiration dates of two advantages in Episode 12 of Survivor 49, and both were played, with mixed results. One failed because of when the other was played, and the vote block failed because everyone turned on Steven, and his planned 3-2 majority became a 1-4 boot. Rizo also very publicly almost played his idol again, then didn't. It was an entertaining set of plays, even if nothing really worked as intended.

It was also a little frustrating, as the show had been stringing us along for half the season, hinting that Sophi was going to use her Knowledge is Power against Rizo, only for her to backtrack on that plan at the last second. Even so, there was still a lot to like here. The Tribal Council cascade of advantages was still dramatic, and the editing of the middle segment, where Sophi and Steven are revealing their respective advantages to their (alleged) allies, was expertly done.

Your sign from God could be gas

Sophi got fueled up on Mexican food and margaritas at the Sanctuary reward (thanks to Savannah), and after six episodes of keeping her Knowledge is Power advantage completely secret, and promising to use it to make a big move and steal Rizo's idol, Sophi ... just told them about it, and pledged to use it on Steven instead (which, because of the rules of Steven's advantage, was never going to work). In Sophi's words, "[Savannah and Rizo] are the people that I love most in this game, that I trust most in this game, but there's been parts of me in this game that feel like I want to turn on them at some point. I think this was almost a sign from God that maybe I shouldn't do that."

And that was that. Instead of a potentially game-winning move, a safe non-move. After stringing us along for half the season, constantly swearing she was a cutthroat gameplayer who was willing to put in the work and do anything to win the million, Sophi decided to go the safe route instead. On the one hand, it was understandable: these *are* her closest allies, she's friends with them, it's probably a bit risky to make such a big betrayal (Jesse in S43) at this point in the game. But it's a good risk to take! And after all that, it turned out Rizo's divination was wrong about what Steven's advantage actually did. (Sigh.)

On the other hand, though, her logic at this point was also a little bizarre. Sophi talked about how some of the people in the game were going to be her friends for life (probably true, at least for a few years), and maybe that's why she backed off at the last minute, and couldn't backstab, and ... Sophi, what would your grandmother say about that? Apparently we've come a long way from "I'm not here to make friends." (Sigh, again.)

In a weird corollary to this point, right before Tribal, Sophi has a confessional about how her grandma would want her to use her KIP to take Rizo's idol. (Listen to your grandmother, Sophia!) But the confessional was clearly taken the day of the RC, because it's the same spot as all her reward-related comments, and she says "I didn't know them 22 days ago," which is an odd number to be using on Day 23, but makes sense on Day 22 (when she was at the Sanctuary). I'm pretty sure everyone in the final six is well aware when they're up to Day 23 of a 26-day game. Nice try to get our hopes up one last time, editors, but that should have been our first tip-off that all hope was lost for Knowledge is Power finally working as intended. Oh well.

(Note: The subtitle of this section isn't entirely intended to be sacrilegious, mostly just a nod to the Minutemen classic, "The Roar of the Masses Could be Farts.")

Sandbagging and the social-strategic game vs. safety

Damnbueno speculated this week that maybe Rizo has been sandbagging his individual challenges, in order to not appear a threat. (Rizo currently ranks in the bottom 8th percentile among all prior US contestants in individual challenge performance, so if he is sandbagging, he's a Rizgod among mortals at doing so ... but that Ep1 "Fight for Supplies" argues that maybe he's not faking?) Along similar lines, Rob Cesternino specifically asked Steven why winning challenges made him, Sophie, and Savannah be seen as "threats," when generally juries don't care all that much about challenge wins when picking a winner. While there is a lot of groupthink in modern jury decision-making, I think this gets at the different ways people who are in the game during the jury phase think about their competitors.

My impression is that people who are confident in their alliances and position in the game probably don't care that much about who wins immunity challenges, because as long as their intended target doesn't win, they're fine. This is a common attitude among the most strategically-minded people. It does help if at least one person in your alliance can win challenges, though. If you have such a person as part of a dominant alliance, this devalues the challenge beast's perceived contributions to the plans, they're just there to ensure your target isn't immune. If you're outside that alliance, that challenge beast becomes a visible counter-target, while also lowering their perceived influence on the game. You'd like them out, sure, but they're not really a huge threat to win the game.

In contrast, if there are a lot of alliances and the game is fluid, or if you're on the bottom and the game has a dominant alliance, and you're not really sure if you're going to make it through the next Tribal because everyone is lying, that immunity necklace starts to look pretty enticing. You want the safety that necklace provides, and if you are not one of the people winning all the necklaces, then those people need to go, so you can win it yourself! Relatedly, if your game is mostly physical, and your main plan for getting to the finals is just winning every challenge, then other people who are good at challenges are the people you'd most like to get rid of. The latter example is why someone like Ozzy respects and casts a vote for Brad Culpepper in S34: Game Changers: Brad did what Ozzy wanted to do.

This season has a mix of those two attitudes. Probst claimed at Tribal that this season was "fluid," but that's not really true in any meaningful way. Rizo, Savannah and Sophi have been rock-solid since the merge, and the various groups of people who have opposed them have worked with and against each other at various times, with generally poor results. (David Bloomberg called Probst's claim "Probstaganda" on Why __ Lost [with Omar Zaheer!], which I enjoyed). But it was still loosely original Hina opposing the Tres Leches, with Alex and Sophie individually trying to play the middle, along with the Jawan-Sage pair doing the same. Taking out the elite challenge competitors like Steven and Sophie was great for the Tres Leches alliance, because now Savannah probably has a clear path to win out to the finals, lowering the chance that a Sage or Kristina can sneak in. These last two moves didn't make much sense for Sage and Kristina, although Sage wanted Sophie out as revenge for Jawan, and both Sage and Kristina felt Steven had a lot of friends on the jury, which made him dangerous to keep around. But now they have no allies around, and are in a 3-2 hole (unless Sophi finally flips).

But for Rizo and Sophi, having Savannah winning immunities is great. Other people have wanted her out so they can win the necklace, but now they don't have the numbers to do anything. And if Rizo (or Sophi, but mostly Rizo) can get to the finals against Savannah, he has a solid argument that most of the moves the trio made were the result of his efforts. How the jury views that argument largely depends on what kind of player they saw themselves as: I'm guessing challenge beast Sophie probably would vote for Savannah over Rizo, but someone like Steven might lean more towards Rizo's strategic arguments. The most memorable Final Tribals explicitly set up that contrast of strategic domination vs. physical prowess. Hopefully we get that here.

Steven's game vs. Kristina and Sage flipping

One jarring moment in the episode came in the "advantage reveal" segment - where we kept flipping back and forth between the Sanctuary feast and camp, with Sophi telling Savannah and Rizo about her Knowledge is Power, while Steven showed his Vote Block parchment to Kristina and Sage. (A really nicely done bit of interweaving two sets of footage to produce a cohesive single story with parallel but contrasting plans.) The weird bit? When Steven finally spelled out his plan to the two back at camp, their response was a flat "Yeah."

Not "OMG! We're saved!" Not even a smile! Just stone-faced, almost bored, "yeah." (Maybe Steven over-explained it? I dunno.) No wonder Steven is now a juror.

Later, after the IC, we see Kristina's slip-up about deciding between writing Steven's or Sophi's name, which does make Steven (rightfully) a bit worried, but I'm wondering if the move was already in play before the RC/reward? It certainly looks that way. Steven did preface his reveal with, "I've been a bit cagey about this," and maybe that's what turned them against him so early. By waiting two days after he earned his advantage to tell his two closest allies what he had won, they probably felt like he wasn't really with them.

We do see Kristina and Sage discussing this *after* the IC, and we know it has to be at that time, because Kristina mentions there are two more challenges left, and they want to keep Steven in so that Savannah doesn't sweep the last two ICs. (It's also sunny, which was not true before the RC.) Maybe Savannah was always Plan A, but her winning immunity forced them to go back to the Steven plan? I dunno. But Steven's sales pitch after the RC sure looked like it fell on deaf ears. (In his exit interviews, he sort of implies that maybe Kristina and Sage didn't understand that he would be playing his advantage before they left for Tribal, so it was bulletproof with respect to anything that happened at Tribal.)

Overall, I don't think Steven really did anything glaringly wrong in the game, except maybe be too likable. He just got kneecapped at the split-teams vote when his #1 ally, MC, was taken out. It was a vote that was completely out of his hands, so what could he have done? And then shortly after that, the Uli-vs-Hina power dynamic shifted against him as well. (The Alex boot removed an unreliable but still-useful number, then the Jawan blindside took out his next-closest ally.)

In general, it's a good idea to keep idols and advantages secret. But since Steven had already told *everyone* that he had an advantage, not giving his allies any additional info (in a timely fashion) probably did hurt him a bit. But I think overall, he was mostly just a victim of bad luck. He might have fared better if he'd started off in Uli, but that wasn't an option, obviously, and by the time the merge hit, he was already a marked man for having been on Hina. Sometimes you just can't win.

When the players don't have all the information

Savannah's note when she went up to vote at Tribal Council (above) explicitly told her a way to get around Steven's advantage. What's odd is that Steven's original advantage note (below) did not spell out this possibility, and in fact seemed to imply that his target would be *blocked from voting*, rather than losing a single vote. (Even though it's called "Block *A* Vote," to be fair.)

That's a bit problematic. Steven's note does spell out that the blocked vote extends through a tie and revote, which is good. But nowhere does it make clear that only one vote will be blocked. In contrast, it says "You must declare which person you want to block from casting a vote." (Which sounds like what happen when someone loses their vote - they can't use an extra vote, nor play their Shot in the Dark.) It even includes a warning that if the target has already lost their vote, the advantage will have been wasted.

It's not a huge deal, but it would be better if there was more clarity in both instructions to the advantage player and their target. Or at least equivalent levels of clarity. Right?

Can Savannah win five immunities?

I've already hinted above that it's likely, but the answer is very much: Yes, she should be the favorite. There's a caveat here: She's almost exclusively won endurance challenges (except this week's RC), and the F5 IC is clearly not that. But still, look at the numbers, in percentiles of individual challenge performance for these players, vs. all US players historically (by Mean % Finish, or MPF):

Savannah should be the prohibitive favorite in the two remaining challenges, especially if the final IC is something endurance- or balance-related. That means she's really well-positioned to win five total immunities (again, her total above includes an RC win), which would shatter the current women's record of four. It's rare for any records to be in danger in the new era, but this is one to keep an eye on.

The land of tepid takes

Welcome back, Sophi! ... er, Soph? With Sophie now on the jury, Sophi was free to regain the I in her name in the intro. Sage called her "the REAL Sophi" when they got back to camp. And then? For the rest of the episode, almost everyone called her "Soph," especially in confessionals. Occasionally even "Blue Soph." These people, sigh.

Were those letters really handwritten? Both Sophi and Rizo gushed about how great it was to see their loved ones' handwriting. And even after looking at high-quality screen grabs of the letters ... I'm not 100% convinced they were actually handwritten. They're all very neat, with consistent kerning and word spacing, very horizontal lines. That's hard to pull off on a blank sheet of paper.

In the past, they've actually just been printed out using a "handwriting"-looking font, on colored paper. This made sense - you can do it by email in a few hours, whereas physical letters take a long time to get to Fiji, and the game is only a few weeks. Sophi's (above) doesn't appear to be that - there are a few connected letters (the S and V in "deserve"), although it does have a censored word, with no visible redaction, just a blank space ("holy !!!!"), which is very weird. Maybe they were originally non-cursive handwritten as neatly as possible on lined paper, scanned, emailed to production, edited, and printed back out?

These people are so dumb! How can Rizo be the only person left in the game that knew that idols expire at final five? This has been the rule pretty much forever. This was a huge risk for Rizo, because if anyone had known the actual rules, it would have been a blaring alarm bell that Rizo has no intention of playing his idol at F6, which would have made him an enticing blindside target. Historically, it's at least been F5 since the dawn of F4 fire (S35: HvHvH), because Mike Zahalsky asked on social media (to Probst, who didn't answer) that if the final vote is going to be at F5 going forward, can they at least have idols expire at F6, so there's a clean vote at the end, and people have to play well enough to survive that? (Again, no response, but that was a reasonable question.) On Future Past Survivor this week (also with Omar Zaheer!), Kosta the Survivor Factchecker said idols *did* expire at F6 from S17: Gabon through S21: Nicaragua. But that was a LONG time ago. Rizo said in the episode that his lie was based on a claim his idol had special rules because it was found in the three-tribe phase, but if anything, it then should have expired at the merge, or in a few Tribals, not SEVEN Tribals later.

Violating the fourth wall: When he voted, Rizo said to himself: "Think this through ... they have three votes, we have two. [Sigh.] I have to play my idol." This reversal was the biggest surprise of the Tribal. Rizo actively lied to the audience in what is a quasi-confessional. Is that GODly? Did he change his mind? Given that it was clear he never planned to play his idol here in the first place, did he just talk himself back out of it, and the editors left that out? I dunno, feels like a betrayal, still.