Amid people getting up and whispering to each other and starting a major blindside, Survivor season 35 episode 12 saw some important firsts.
Last night’s Tribal Council was as explosive, crazy and “WTF” as Joe Mena promised. We saw fan-favorite Lauren Rimmer voted out after a series of random missteps and blunders of overconfidence, giving up part of her security to a player so on the outs he didn’t need it and lying about not keeping a secret advantage on her person should she need it.
What was missed in all of the chaos was that this Survivor season 35 episode 12 Tribal Council saw a series of firsts ever seen in the show’s history. First off, although it was technically half of a Hidden Immunity Idol, the shell half she gave to Mike was thrown into the fire, effectively burning any chances she had to use her other half to create a safety advantage.
That was the first time in the show’s history where an idol was burned at Tribal Council that wasn’t a fake one tossed in by Jeff Probst. Technically, Lauren willed her half to Mike, making it his property to do what he wants with it. Players have tossed Hidden Immunity Idols in the past, including the fake merge Survivor Gabon group with the idol found at their feast. Furthermore, Colton threw Bill’s HII away in Survivor One World, but because it was Bill’s property, they had to retrieve it and give it back to him.
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From a voting perspective, we also saw a voting result never seen before in Survivor. When Ben used his Hidden Immunity Idol to negate his votes, he was successful in thwarting every single vote against him, thus turning his sole vote for Lauren Rimmer into a deciding 1-0 vote. Never in the history of the show has a player successfully gotten “does not count” against every single player on their tribe besides themselves.
Lots of people were emotionally distressed, people were yelling, players were strategizing and idols were burning; it was one of the more chaotic Tribal Councils ever, yet saw multiple records being broken in relative silence because of it.