Everyone always talks about the physical challenge of being on Survivor. They talk about what going without food and sleeping outside for a month can do to a person, but winning and losing Survivor is more often about managing your emotions amidst those physically taxing conditions. It’s easy to literally survive on Survivor, but it’s very hard to play a thoughtful, strategic game while doing it. That’s why we see meltdowns every season over things like Applebee’s, and that’s why we saw one last night over a coconut.
Ordinarily, however, those meltdowns occur a little later in the game. That was not the case on the premiere of Season 47 last night, and it’s probably why the reaction on social media was so over the top. People couldn’t believe we were already getting such an emotional reaction before the first Tribal Council even happened. So, let’s talk out what went down and where the Internet’s head is at with spoilers from the episode.
The incident in question happened on the Gata Tribe. Andy Rueda, a self proclaimed math guy from Brooklyn, seemed to be doing okay initially with building some connections with his fellow castaways, but he eventually started to get a little paranoid about whether he was on the bottom of the tribe. This paranoia started leading to some strange behavior including waking up his wannabe secret ally Rachel in the middle of the night to talk about his feelings of insecurity and later questioning in a confessional why everyone cheered for Jon when he opened up a coconut but no one cheered for him.
When you crack a coconut and no one cheers #Survivor pic.twitter.com/O4R14IffrgSeptember 19, 2024
Later, after the Gata Tribe took a beating in the first Immunity Challenge of the season, Andy collapsed on the ground. He said it was a physical thing and he was overheated, but there was quite clearly a lot of emotions wrapped up in whatever was going on, as well. Once he composed himself, Jeff asked him how he was feeling, and he let out a Virginia Woolf style stream of consciousness expose about how he feels like he’s on the bottom of his tribe and how he was thinking about throwing his closet ally Pod Save America host Jon Lovett under the bus. He also, brought up no one cheering for him when he opened his coconut, which elicited confused reactions from the other tribe and a sea of WTF tweets on social. Here’s an example…
You could NOT waterboard that coconut line out of me on day 3 of survivor in front of EVERYONE 😭#Survivor47September 19, 2024
After his outburst, Andy seemed poised to give up. There was a part of me that thought Jeff was literally going to ask him if he wanted to quit right on the mat at the Immunity Challenge, but instead, he gave him a bit of a pep talk and sent Andy back to the beach to keep playing. For awhile, he still seemed pretty convinced he was going to be voted out and was moping around, which led to plenty of tweets like this one, which has thousands of likes…
Andy after no one cheered for his coconut:#survivor47 #survivor pic.twitter.com/vPnHchUL77September 19, 2024
But one aspect of the New Era of Survivor that people don’t talk about enough is players often complete unwillingness to take the easy vote. Everytime there is someone who seems like the obvious candidate to be voted out, people start scheming to overthink it and turn the votes to someone else. Jon was guilty of that, as he tried to swing all the votes onto Anika, which was never going to happen. That left the rest of his tribe deciding whether to vote him out for playing too hard or vote out Andy for being extremely messy. They ultimately decided to get rid of Jon, but if the scenes from next week are any indication, it’s probably going to be a lot of ups and downs with Andy.
Andy seems like a likeable person with many positive character traits. I thought he came across very well at Tribal Council, and they gave him a heads up on who to vote for, which is always a good sign that you’re not that far out of touch. But at some point, you need to be in charge of your own mental well-being, and you need to just trust that paranoia is going to exist on Survivor and you have to manage it. Hopefully he’s able to get it together enough to let those positive qualities shine through in the weeks to come.
You’ll be able to find out as Survivor 47 airs on CBS on Wednesday nights this fall. It’s already looking like it should be a great season, and its conclusion will bring us one step closer to the much-anticipated Season 50, which will feature all returning players. I can’t wait!
