Survivor season 35: Why was Desi Williams voted out in 11th place?

It turns out Jeff Probst can just invent tropes and pretend they’re things that exist. Somehow, it was the reason why Survivor season 35’s first juror is out.

The editors have so many hours of footage on their hands; it’s quite remarkable of a task just to get a team working together to make the most compelling, enthralling, but perfectly narrative story each season. Survivor season 35 is about spiders and snakes, with the game befitting those who play either role. Desi Williams certainly did not fit either of those boxes, and she paid the price for it.

That’s a poetic way to look at things, surely, but it’s not the reason why Desi Williams was voted out in 11th place to take the first spot on the jury bench. No, there is a myriad of reasons why, but it all circles back to a simple attempt to build a story going on at a distant Tribal Council.

Back during the fourth episode of Survivor season 35, “I Don’t Like Having Snakes Around” (eh? snakes?), Jeff Probst made an off-the-wall allusion of possibly voting Desi to get around voting out Joe. “This is like a movie,” he said. “It’s kind of like that moment where they want to get the bad guy, so they get the bad guy by getting his wife!”

First off, no, good guys in movies are not heroic by going after the bad guy’s wife. It’s the kind of comment that sits at the bottom of the editing room floor, presuming they still edit footage by cutting away frames of film. However, it became the perfect analogy and foreshadowing of Desi’s demise in Survivor season 35.

After she won the first Individual Immunity Challenge, she established her abilities as a challenge threat. Unfortunately for her alliance, having five Healers meant the Heroes and Hustlers ganged up to chop down their numbers, creating a 7-4 split as of the last episode. With numbers dwindling, she stood out due to her past performance.

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She even hung around late into the second Individual Immunity Challenge, giving the majority ammunition to target her and vote her out. Still, with an Idol possibility, the plan heading into Tribal Council was to split votes between Desi Williams and Joe Mena.

Joe, however, wasn’t ready to go down without a fight, instead picking a fight with Ben and trying to paint a target on his back. Ben, for what it’s worth, was the one shown agitating Joe after overhearing him while in his Spy Shack, so the two made everyone aware that they have a bitter rivalry.

Why does all that matter, and how is it relevant to Desi? Because of her reaction to the fight: “Joe just caused another blowup at camp. It’s certainly unsettling. I hope he knows what he’s doing because I realize there is a target on my back, but Joe’s instincts have worked well up to this point, so this could either work out really well for me or really badly for me.”

Almost everything anyone says with any amount of optimism in the post-merge phase of Survivor is just setting themselves up for failure, and it comes true once again with Desi. You have to think logically from both an editing and gameplay perspective for why to keep Joe over Desi.

When Joe is the brash, thorny life preserver you desperately grasp for, you’re going to sink sooner rather than later.

Many of you are thinking, “Man, I hate Joe. Why the hell did they keep the guy who found two Idols and annoys everyone around?” That same annoyance is a Final Tribal Council godsend. His rivalry with Ben comes to the late-game benefit of Ryan, Chrissy, Lauren, Devon, practically anyone who could sit beside Ben at the end. Joe’s ability to get under Ben’s skin is a major weakness everyone else can exploit.

Furthermore, Desi Williams has a strong social game, is liked by mostly everyone not named Chrissy, has Joe as an ally that (if voted out) would rally for her in the jury phase and can damn well beat almost anyone in a majority of Immunity Challenges. With the number one target, Cole, safe after winning Immunity, and Mike needed to vote Joe by Ben to secure a split vote (due to Lauren losing her vote as part of the Secret Advantage), the stars aligned in a re-vote where everyone had to vote for either-or.

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Desi’s closest allies in Survivor season 35 were Roark and Jessica, both taken out by the Chrissy-led majority alliance. When Joe is the brash, thorny life preserver you desperately grasp for, you’re going to sink sooner rather than later.

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