Survivor fans have a bit of obscrue episode to watch tonight, Friday, Feb. 13, as part of CBS's Road to Survivor 50 lineup. One episode after watching an epic Ozzy Lusth and Coach showdown in Survivor: South Pacific, CBS is jumping over a lot of good seasons to make a stop on Survivor: Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers.
In tonight's episode, which is a re-airing of "The Survivor Devil," the 12th episode of the season, we're catching up with Chrissy Hofbeck, one of the most underrated Survivor players of all time. Chrissy turned in performance this season that would have won many seasons of Survivor. Instead, she finished runner-up to Ben Driebergen on a 5-2-1 vote.
The episode originally aired on Dec. 13, 2017, so it's been almost a decade since Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers, which is one of the most, we'll call it, interesting themes of the show to date.
"The Survivor Devil" begins with six players left: Chrissy, Ben, Ryan Ulrich, Devan Pinto, Ashley Nolan, and Mike Zahalsky. Ben has just played a hidden immunity idol at the last Tribal Council after every player left in the game voted for him. He knows that he's on the bottom, and he knows that his only chance in the game is to win immunity or find another immunity idol.
Overall, and this is no offense to Chrissy, but I don't remember this episode being a particularly good episode for her. She has some incredible moments, including reward and immunity wins. Those moments are memorable. It's her third individual immunity win of the season. Chrissy also makes some key missteps that basically lose her the game this season.
By not taking Ben on the reward or keeping someone in her alliance to be keeping watch over him at camp, Ben finds and plays an immunity idol before voting begins at Tribal Council, which keeps him in he game when he clearly should have been voted out.
Chrissy won the final two immunity challenges, and somehow, she didn't win the season. That's in large part because of the strong game Ben played. Many fans forget that this is the second of three consecutive hidden immunity idol plays by Ben to stay in the game.
While Chrissy wins immunity to finish the season, and ties the record for individual immunity wins by a woman on Survivor, Ben just keeps playing idols and then wins the fire-making challenge to win the game. It's one of the most impressive ends to a season that I can remember. We always see the winner take control of the game right at the end, but Ben did so in dramatic fashion and stole the season.
I'm super excited to watch this new episode on CBS tonight because I'm probably forgetting so much more about this episode than I remember.
After "The Survivor Devil," CBS's Road to Survivor 50 continues next week with five big episodes! Then, when that's over, we only have a few days before the Survivor 50 premiere on Wednesday, Feb. 25.