Look, there was a lot going on at this week’s Survivor 48 Tribal Council. There was a successful Shot in the Dark play by Mary. There was a person who had no vote, yet kept walking up to the voting urn pretending to vote — even though by the third time he did it, you would think everyone would have figured out that there was absolutely no reason to do so. There was a revote to the revote that once again ended in a tie. But I want to focus on something else that may have slipped by relatively unnoticed due to all the other chaos and confusion.

After the third vote ended in a tie between Sai and Justin, Jeff Probst had to sit down and explain the most perplexing situation since Cirie was voted out of Survivor without a single vote against her. I have watched every second of Survivor over 48 seasons and cover it professionally for a living and even my head was spinning. The host informed the tribe (and the entire viewing audience, who by this point was so lost they may as well have flown in on Oceanic flight 815) that now was the time where the tribe would openly discuss whom to eliminate, and if they could not come to a decision, then Sai and Justin would be safe and the others would draw rocks. Just one problem: Mary had no vote and was already immune, thanks to her Shot in the Dark.

So, as Probst explained, “The only person who has a voice at tonight’s Tribal is Cedrek. So Cedrek, you will decide who goes home tonight, either Sai or Justin. And if he can’t come to a decision, there’s no need to draw rocks. It’s only you. You will go home.”

Keeping that last part in mind, I want to pause for the cause to acknowledge that Cedrek really blew it here. He had the opportunity in the palm of his hand to make this the most bats— crazy, nonsensical, ridiculous Tribal Council in Survivor history, yet passed on the chance. Because look again at what Probst said there: “Cedrek, you will decide who goes home tonight, either Sai or Justin. And if he can’t come to a decision, there’s no need to draw rocks. It’s only you. You will go home.”

Why did Probst even tack on that part about how Cedrek would go home if he could not make a decision? Why would he not make a decision? He made one in the three previous rounds of voting. Why would he not here? And yet once Probst even brought up that possibility, all I wanted was for Cedrek to not make a decision and force Probst to kick him out of the game. Granted, Cedrek getting talked into changing his vote from Justin to Sai was dramatic. And Cedrek voting for three different people(!!!) at one Tribal Council is kind of crazy. But had Cedrek actually for some reason not been able to make a decision, as Probst implied could be a possibility, and been eliminated himself — that would have been absolutely seismic. It also would have bought him a lifetime supply of free double dough pizza pies and chocolate-dipped cannolis at Luigi’s, yet I digress.

Talk about BIG MOVES! That would have been the biggest ever. Instead, it was just your typical seen-it-a-million-times-every-single-week-successful-shot-in-the-dark-play-leading-to-a-revote-leading-to-another-revote-leading-to-someone-changing-his-vote-and-eliminating-his-biggest-ally-in-the-game. Yawn. Hum-drum.

I obviously have plenty more to say about this Tribal Council, but before we do, let’s get into some other noteworthy things that went down in episode 3 of Survivor 48 — the episode where pizza went to die.

A Noble comparison

You may have seen the positively scandalous collection of Survivor hot takes unleashed by the new cast that dropped yesterday, but guess what? I’ve got a hot take of my own! Hotter than my repeated defense of Fire Tokens? Maybe not. Hotter than my insistence that the Ghost Island theme (if not execution) was amazing? No way. Hotter than my double thumbs up on the Shot in the Dark addition? Possibly. But here it is: Chris Noble is one of the most entertaining Survivor players of the past decade.

You are welcome to disagree. Many will. But if you choose not to heap lavish praise on a guy who referred to himself as the Noble One, broke into intermittent white boy rapping, and made sure to watch the minimum amount of the show he was going to compete in for $1 million, then that’s on you. Noble was TV gold, and part of that gold was his lack of awareness about the game mixed with his lack of self-awareness on the island.

When I met David in Fiji before Survivor 48 began, my hopes were raised that we just possibly might have a Noble 2.0 on our hands. Like Noble, David was a super nice guy, but was also very confident in himself (as we have seen on the show). It’s probably not a massive surprise to also reveal David had not seen a whole heck of a lot of Survivor. My hopes were further raised when the “Previously on…” for this week’s episode showed clips of him talking about wanting to be the hero and showing the world how good he is.

“Oh, boy! Here we go!” I figured, rubbing my hands together creepily in anticipation of a huge and grand Noble-esque gesture to come once the actual episode began. But that’s not what happened.

Instead of David waxing nostalgic about the time he wrestled an alligator or shotgunned 40 ounces of chocolate milk or… I don’t know… saved a damsel in distress or something, what we got was a shockingly candid admission of how he lived in a trailer parked in front of his dad’ house. Now, before we continue on, there is no way in hell I am going to sit here and not acknowledge that Kyle’s reaction to learning his 38-year-old tribe mate lived in a trailer in front of his dad’s house was to yell out “OH, SICK, DUDE!” at the top of his lungs. I literally don’t think it is humanly possible for me to ignore something like that. The Clones from Kamino have Order 66 built into their DNA; I have obsessing over awkward tribe mate interactions into mine. Kyle, I will literally love you until the end of time for that.

But back to David. David did not agree with Kyle that living in a trailer on his dad’s property was “sick.” In fact, he felt it was quite the opposite. “I think that’s pretty pathetic,” he said. “It’s a very humbling experience.” To see David put all the bravado aside and open up about his life in that way was pretty shocking. And he wasn’t done. “I only have a girlfriend if I win a million dollars,” he told his tribe, explaining that his girlfriend would leave him if he did not win because she wants to be a stay-at-home mom and can only do that if he is providing for the family. First of all, harsh. But that was a pretty startling admission to make. (Alas, perhaps not a strategically smart one, seeing as how nobody would want to sit next to that story at final Tribal Council, so players are now incentivized to vote him out, but we’ll put that aside for the moment.)

To see Captain America himself dealing with these insecurities was not at all what I expected, and actually kind of bummed me out, because I already have way too many people I am rooting for this season and can’t possibly take on one more. It also proved for once and for all and without a shadow of a doubt that there truly is only one Chris Noble.

Evas-dropping

YOU STOP IT RIGHT NOW, THOMAS KROTTINGER! YOU TOO, BIANCA ROSES! How dare you both conspire to take out my girl Eva?!?  I mean… yes, technically Eva did kind of bring this on herself by throwing your names out first as potential victims to Star. And sure, giving Joe the friendship bracelet for his daughter in front of the rest of the tribe may not have been the stealthiest maneuver. BUT THAT MATTERS NOT! You are both hereby placed on double secret probation until further notice (or until the tribes swap, which appears to be next week, so I guess you are merely getting off with a strongly worded warning. But consider yourself officially warned!)

The other big Civa event this week outside of Star, Thomas, and Bianca joining forces was Joe rubbing it into flint-less Vula’s faces by starting the biggest fire Survivor has ever seen… at least since they stopped letting tribes burn their camps to the ground at the end of every season. The bonfire was nice and all, but who knew the stoic and gentle giant was also so damn funny? I’m no wine guy (“Do you have Milwaukee’s Best on tap, please?”) but watching Joe transform into a sommelier to discuss the finer points of his “Hungry as Hell” and “Stranded on an Island” vintages was pretty amazing. And unexpected. All the big boys surprising us this week!

Running wild

We’ll talk plenty of Vula later, once we circle back to Tribal Council, but I couldn’t live with myself if I did not acknowledge all the times Mary just randomly broke into a full sprint to avoid Sai’s babysitting while idol hunting. The thing that makes Mary going full Chariots of Fire even more hilarious is that there is nowhere really to run to. I’ve been to the Vula tribe area six different times over the years. It’s not that big. And there’s really only one direction you can go. Even if someone runs off, you can just sort of zombie shuffle over at a moderate pace and you’ll catch up.

But the woman likes to run! Mary also broke into a sprint completely unnecessarily last week to get her shoes before getting in the boat for the journey. And I love her for it. (Psst… we’ll also have an exclusive deleted scene up on Thursday morning showing a lot more babysitting drama that did not make the final edit.)

Blind ambition

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

That is me pretty much every time I have ever watched a Survivor blindfold challenge as people crash into large wooden objects at slow-to-moderate speeds. It goes without saying that the crotch shots are obviously the best. Unquestionably hilarious.

Less funny when it’s you taking the shots, of course. I learned this the hard way in Fiji for Survivor 48. This is one of two challenges we tested with the Dream Team, and it was actually my first-ever blindfold competition. (Yay?) Naturally, I smashed my head into the same horizontal wooden pole that David did. It hurt. But I also laughed watching David do the same thing on TV nine months later, so I guess it’s still funny???? Also, is there a body part that David did not hit? Whatever. He’s huge. He can take it. A few other quick notes after doing this challenge and seeing what ended up on TV:

• The challenge was designed for there to be two pairs of people blindfolded and tied together for each team, and that is how we did it in the rehearsal. But because Vula lost the first two immunity challenges and only had four players, that meant someone for each team had to go solo — hence Joe’s solitary sprint to the water bucket.

• That force of the water actually kind of hurts a bit when it rains down on you. Or maybe I’m just a pathetic weakling. (Probably a little from column A and a little from column B.) But I remember that surprising me.

• Once again proving that challenge changes are often made at the last minute after producers watch several rehearsals, when we did this challenge, one pair of blindfolded people did the slide puzzle together. My partner, Mike Bloom of Parade, and I each took a different section of the puzzle to move. But by the time it got to the contestants, it was just one person tasked with moving the pieces around. This change actually surprised me at first because there was a bit of a learning curve in terms of the caller having to explain which player should move what, which they lost once it went down to only one player with hands on the puzzle. Of course, one person could just step back on a two-person team and let the other do it all, but would the teams think to do that?

In any event, Lagi won their third out of four challenges, while Civa took second and poor, poor Vula was heading back to Tribal Council once again. But first…

Flame on

Don’t listen to me. I am not to be trusted. Because sometimes I completely contradict myself, and now is one of those times. When it comes to minigames on Survivor, I generally prefer games of skill as opposed to games of chance. It’s why I was so upset that the brilliant concept of Ghost Island (I stand by it!) was undone by underwhelming 50/50 games like that super-boring Guess the Bamboo.

So I should be complaining about players this week just rolling a bunch of dice and hoping for the best. But I can’t! Because I actually thought it was kind of cool. Granted, that’s probably because I am a big board game nerd and have a natural attraction to anything that involves rolling cubes. Anyway, there were seven dice, and if four flames came up first, they won an extra vote, but if it was four skulls, then they lost a vote. You all know I don’t love the journeys and don’t love people gaining and losing votes so much because I think it makes it more difficult for viewers to follow what is going on with the Tribal Council vote — and this week illustrated that confusion perhaps more than any other — but damn if I don’t want to have that stupid Survivor Yahtzee game at my next party. (NOTE: I do not throw parties.)

Once again, everyone took a different tact once they got back to their respective beaches. Kamilla (who won) told Civa the truth. Bianca (who lost) only told Thomas what really happened. And Justin (who also lost) did not tell anyone. And that one decision, more than any other, may have ended his game.

Justin’s last stand

Okay, let’s get back to that extended dance remix of a Tribal Council. I first want to touch on something that Probst said before the voting began, calling the Vula tribe “one of the most dysfunctional groups we’ve had on Survivor.” I take slight issue with that. Don’t get me wrong, they are absolutely terrible when it comes to challenges. Just awful. And yes, there has been some tension between Sai and Mary, but nothing out of the ordinary in that department. They haven’t seemed to be a complete mess of personality clashes and egos. They just aren’t very good at obstacle courses. And thus concludes my only vaguely passionate defense of the Vula tribe.

Of course, the big moment of Tribal that kind of got lost a bit after all the revoting was Mary giving us the second-ever successful Shot in the Dark play in which a contestant actually saved themselves from an elimination with a SAFE scroll. The irony in all of this is that when I asked each of the Survivor players before filming began to share a franchise hot take with me, this is what Mary chose…

How incredible is that? It’s like the wonderfully ironic opposite to Babe Ruth pointing to the left field wall with his baseball bat and calling his home run shot before it happened. I think it’s safe to say that Mary no longer considers the Shot in the Dark to be “kinda wack.” (If you want another chuckle, go check out what Justin’s hot take was.) Anyway, since Mary and Justin did not vote, and Sai and Cedrek both voted for Mary, that means there were no counted votes cast and it was on to a revote. Here are my assorted thoughts on what followed.

We all know the best course of action is to keep idols, advantages, and disadvantages to yourself, but it appeared Justin may have miscalculated by not sharing his lost vote intel with Cedrek. And after it was revealed there were only two votes in the urn, I assumed Cedrek would vote out Justin, since Justin left him in the dark on that. But then Cedrek voted for Sai! Did he not care? Was he not sure it was Justin who had lost his vote? But then Probst went and told all of them that Justin had no vote (and for that reason, Sai could vote on the second revote) and yet Cedrek once again still stood by his bro and voted for Sai. That definitely surprised me.

What happened next was even more surprising. After the most convoluted explanation imaginable — which is what you have to do once you start taking people’s votes away, which is a whole other discussion — Cedrek was told he got to cast the deciding vote. He proceeded to tell Sai that he made a day one alliance with Justin and she should recognize that as she walked up to get her torch snuffed.

Sai then turned on the waterworks and repeatedly pointed out how Justin did not even tell Cedrek about his lost vote. She worked Cedrek and worked him hard. Justin, on the other hand, invited Cedrek to Luigi’s no matter what his decision was. I get what Justin was doing here. He was trying to draw a contrast with Sai and the type of person Cedrek would want to play with moving forward. I do think there was some strategy at play there. But I still wish he would’ve fought a bit harder. Because I think Sai successfully made Cedrek feel super guilty about cutting her from the game, and once Justin offered a classy guilt-free alternative, Cedrek jumped at it.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

One thing I do want to note in all of this is that we have to assume that the vast majority of everything that was said at this Tribal Council did not make it to air, even more so than usual. When you have three rounds of voting, and a successful Shot in the Dark getting played, and multiple rounds of necessary deep-dive rules explanations, most of the other stuff is going to get cut. Maybe Justin did fight harder. Maybe Sai presented some other compelling reason to keep her. Maybe Mary got up and just started sprinting all over the Tribal Council set for no good reason. We just don’t know!

What we do know is that Justin definitely got screwed by going on that journey. Which reminds me of something that Probst told me before Survivor 47. Here’s what he said then:

“One of the tenets of the new era, if you really examine it thoroughly, is that it’s always a player’s choice of what they want to do. The Beware Advantage says very clearly, ‘If you don’t want take the risk, then leave this here.’ You don’t have to take it, but if you choose to take it, then the risk is yours. It’s the same with a journey. You’re rarely forced to get on a boat. It’s usually a tribe decision or it’s a random draw with rocks. All we say is ‘Somebody needs to get on this boat.’ And then in most cases, you don’t have to participate in the journey. You have the option, not always, but you have the option of getting on the boat. So that’s one of the things that this idea of putting the show in the hands of the player is something we’re leaning more and more into.”

Unfortunately for Justin, he did not have a choice. He was forced to get on the boat when Lagi picked the pizza man, and he was forced to take part in the game of chance that would ultimately send him home. Kind of a brutal way to go. I do think, had Justin told Cedrek about losing his vote, that he would probably still be there, but he was still put in a terrible position due to no fault of his own. It’s like ordering a plain pizza and some jabroni putting pineapple on it for no damn reason whatsoever and just ruining everything.

We’ll chop it up with Justin about all of that when we chat on Thursday morning. You should also see what Probst has to say about this wild (and wildly confusing) Tribal Council. And if you are in the mood for more Vula babysitting drama, we’ve got it for you courtesy of an exclusive deleted scene. While we’re at it, I’ll throw yet another reminder to check out the full batch of cast hot takes because they certainly are… interesting.

Okay, it’s your turn to weigh in with your thoughts on the episode. Did Justin get a raw deal by being forced to go on that journey and play that game? Should he have told Cedrek about his lost vote? And did Cedrek make the right or wrong decision in switching his vote to keep Sai? Hit the comments section to hash it out and I’ll be back next week with another scoop of the crispy.