Survivor: Game Changers: Why Did Jeff Varner Go Home?
Survivor has never been an entirely impersonal game, but after last night’s episode, it seems relevant to talk about how Jeff Varner went personal.
Warning: Although the events of the April 12 episode of Survivor: Game Changers have made their way all around the Internet by now, if you haven’t seen it, beware spoilers.
People on Survivor throw words like trust around quite a bit. Even if they say they don’t trust other people, almost everyone ends up finding someone they like a little bit. Often, part of winning the game comes down to convincing people who want to like you why it was okay for you to vote them out so that they will give you the million-dollar prize.
I say all this because there are certain lines that don’t usually get crossed on Survivor, and Jeff Varner crossed one on last night’s episode.
He was not in a good situation, and he knew it, by his own accounts in the confessionals. He’d known it as soon as Sandra went home at the prior Tribal Council. The two of them were on the absolutely wrong side of the numbers. If Sandra, a two-time winner, could not work her way around such a dire situation, the odds for Varner had to be even lower. He tried nevertheless, talking to each person, and then Zeke told him he was going home.
But then at Tribal Council, things became rather ugly. Jeff openly asked Zeke the following: “Why haven’t you told anyone you’re transgender?”
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As soon as Debbie, Andrea, and Tai each turned to look at Jeff and speak up to defend Zeke, the chances of Jeff going home grew even larger, even though some had seemed open to voting Ozzy out earlier in the day. By the time Ozzy and Sarah also spoke, it was certain.
“That has nothing to do with the game. That’s personal!” Andrea says, as you can see in the video Survivor has posted, and that’s just it. You need not look further than Zeke’s face to see how it affected him.
Have things gotten ugly before on the show? Of course they have. The game of Survivor, by virtue of the fact that humans play it, cannot be entirely impersonal. But to do something like that in front of the entire tribe…well, he may have said it was about the game, but the game consequences were immediate.
Next: Jeff Varner's Statement on Social Media
The personal consequences remain to be seen.