Survivor 51 player tries to make history by forgetting the rules of the game

When host and showrunner Jeff Probst promised permanent uncertainty, I thought he was just talking about the gameplay elements that would be tossed into Survivor 51 (and the subsequent seasons beyond that), but apparently, he also meant that some of the players would be permanently uncertain about how to play the game.

Spoilers for Survivor 51 episode 2, “Weaponized Honesty” ahead!

While in the premiere episode we saw the Toka tribe showcasing gameplay that usually wouldn’t be seen until after the merge, episode 2 was definitely shocking, but in a much less dynamic way…

To kick things off, Ana Sani basically spent the entire episode word-vomiting half of her tribe mates names—including her own. To the fact she was surprised to go home after the people she was calling out banded together to take her out is definitely curious since all she was doing was throwing multiple names out and not actually solidifying anything with anyone (at least from what we could see).

But still, at first, after losing the immunity challenge, the Savu tribe all still seemed to be on the same page about Eric Macksoud going home—as they’d agreed upon in the premiere episode. But then Linnea Capobianco overheard Carter Krull saying, “they know we’re onto them,” and immediately went into offense mode to switch the vote from Eric to Ana since she—and the others she convinced—now believed they were coming for one of them.

In reality, however, Carter was talking about the crabs they were trying to hunt to eat. So half of this episode’s strategy came from mishearing a conversation about crabs, which is both hilarious and iconic.

But the biggest moment of the episode came when Rob Antonson began a personal journey on an emotional roller coaster. It started after Savu lost the reward challenge, coming in hot by blaming Linnea when her portion of the challenge was towards the beginning and they were still neck-in-neck with Toka as she was running the course with Eric.

And then losing again at the immunity challenge seemed to set something off inside of Rob. He made it very clear to the viewers at home that he hates being a loser and now that there were two losses under his tribe’s belt, he was ready to quit.

But, of course, he’s not a quitter, so he had to think of a clever way to get out of the game where he still came off as a hero. So he decided to single-handedly “save” Eric from the majority vote being placed on him. The first step was pulling Eric aside at camp and telling him that at Tribal Council, he was going to tell him exactly what to do and he just had to trust him and do it—without actually telling Eric the plan.

Then, at Tribal Council, Rob kept his promise by publicly telling Jeff he wanted to talk to Eric before voting and pulling him aside to tell him that everyone was coming for him and he needed to play his shot in the dark and if that didn’t work, Rob would play his idol on him.

What Rob probably should have known going into the vote was that he was not the leader at camp and he didn’t know everything and he was in fact in the minority of the tribe while Eric was in the majority. So of course, Eric didn’t listen and went with the majority’s secret plan to vote for Ana.

But Rob still had a plan he just hadn’t told anyone about. And, to be fair, if he had told someone, even production in a confessional, he probably wouldn’t have embarrassed himself on national television. Because he decided, with Eric playing his shot in the dark and not having a vote, and everyone else’s votes on Eric, Rob was going to vote for himself and then make sure Eric was safe so that Rob himself went home instead.

Which is why he seemed shocked and baffled after writing his name down in the booth when a producer jumped in and said, “You can’t write your own name.”

But that’s, like, the most basic rule in Survivor…

Remember all those players who wanted to quit, but didn’t want to look like quitters so they had other people write their name down but there was one extra rogue vote because that player couldn’t write their own name? Remember all the Final Two seasons where Jeff specified that because player 1 would vote for player 2 and vice versa—because they can’t vote for themselves—player 3 with the immunity necklace would decide who was going to the end with them?

Like, this shouldn’t be shocking news. And, of course, I wanted to give Rob the benefit of the doubt and wondered if maybe seeing Christian Hubicki write his own name down in Survivor 50 is what inspired him and he assumed in the open era, “anything goes,” because that’s what they keep saying. But at this point in time, Rob was on the island before that episode of Survivor 50 aired, so he had no idea that Christian voted for himself and went home just one season ago.

So while Rob may have come up with a brilliant—and historic—plan to save Eric, there’s a reason it hasn’t been done before…because it’s literally not allowed.

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