![\"I](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/9f585bb31a4aa81c9f01dc4816da38cfbf-Survivor--episode-9-.rsquare.w400.jpg\")
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Survivor<\/a><\/p>\n I Deserve All of This<\/p>\n \n Season 50<\/p>\n Episode 9\n <\/p>\n \n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n 2 stars<\/p>\n **\n <\/p>\n \n Photo: Robert Voets\/CBS\n <\/p>\n Yay! I get to dog on Jeff Probst for more of his silly antics! Hurray for me! Well, as much as I love it, I also kind of hate it because it means an otherwise standard episode of Survivor was made that much worse by Jeff, my favorite target, who has been wearing the same shirt since the Bush administration.<\/p>\n It starts at the challenge, the classic in which players have to hold their body weight hoisted in a bucket, and the last man standing \u2014 and this is a challenge made for men \u2014 gets immunity. (Apparently, the challenge is called \u201cWrist Assured,\u201d and according to this fan wiki<\/a>, several women have won but only because the last man and the last woman each won individual immunity. Monica Culpepper is the only woman to win the challenge solo, way back in Blood vs. Water, and she was only up against two men.) Mr. Jeff, as Jonathan always calls him, says this is the point in the game where he usually asks people to sit out the challenge to earn rice, but this time, it\u2019s going to be different; he\u2019s going to make a side bet. If five people think they can outlast him in the challenge and they do, then they get the rice. If he outlasts even one of those players, they don\u2019t get the rice.<\/p>\n Jeff says this whole thing was Jimmy Fallon\u2019s idea, and I don\u2019t mind it so much in theory. Jeff says more than 90 percent of people polled on The Tonight Show wanted to see Jeff play. But we don\u2019t want to see him play just a challenge; we want him to play a whole season. We want him out in the cold, sleeping under a leaky tarp, getting yelled at by the host, starving himself, trying to form alliances and decipher impossible twists. When Jeff says, \u201cThat\u2019s how we do it on Survivor,\u201d we want Jeff to understand exactly how it is they do it on Survivor. Based on how he did in the challenge, he does not, in fact, know how they do it on Survivor.<\/p>\n The real problem here is that Jeff once again makes the proceedings all about himself. (There\u2019s an entire article<\/a> about how this is happening more and more and exactly why it\u2019s a problem.) First, it was the impressions, then it was the rap, then it was his bonding sesh with Zac Brown, and now here he is making the challenge Jeff-centric when we could be hearing from the players. Usually, I root for someone in a challenge, but this time I don\u2019t care about the outcome for immunity; I just want to see Jeff embarrassed. The best part of the challenge is when everyone is shit-talking Jeff the way he always does the contestants, and we get a montage of all the terrible things Jeff has said to people who\u2019ve done badly. Of course, the first three, the meanest comments of the bunch, are all solidly directed at women. We don\u2019t see the targets of some of the insults, and while one is aimed at a tribe composed entirely of men, I would venture to guess most of those targets have two X chromosomes.<\/p>\n Anyway, Joe predictably wins a challenge based on upper-body strength, and Joe, Jonathan, Ozzy, and Tiff all outlast Jeff so they win their rice. (They bargained to get the number for the side bet down to four. What, was Jeff not going to play in the challenge? Jonathan probably could have talked him into a one-on-one.) But a majority of people outlast Jeff, including Aubry and Christian, and while they are both several decades younger, I would be smarting if I were Jeff.<\/p>\n Jeff says that Joe, as the winner, has to send someone off on a journey. He asks for volunteers and then has the volunteers square off in a game of rock, paper, scissors, and Christian is chosen. I kind of hate this method. Joe is someone who is all about strength, but he\u2019s leaving it up to fate to decide rather than being strong by taking a stand and making a choice. RPS is the easy way out. Everyone is worried that Christian may come back with an advantage because they\u2019re thinking of voting him out. Well, if Joe had just used that noodle of his, he could have picked someone else, but no. He was too fried from holding a bucket in the air and humiliating Jeff. Okay, since my main objective of this entire episode was achieved thanks to Joe, I think I can forgive him.<\/p>\n That said, I absolutely love this journey. It\u2019s one they\u2019ve deployed a few times over the past several seasons, where a person is on a barge and has to do a puzzle while weights tied to ropes go over the side. They act as a kind of timer where, if the last weight is dropped, it takes the puzzle with it and the person loses. This is so much better than watching sand go through the hourglass like it\u2019s the days of our lives. You can hear the splash of the weight and see the ropes unspooling. It\u2019s inherently cinematic and visual, especially when we follow the weights under the ocean and see a shark in the distance and then, right behind that, Zac Brown is still underwater, spear hunting. He never went home! Hi, Zac! Bring me back some sea bass. Also, the contestant can hear those things too, which gets their adrenaline pumping, letting the panic set in and making the challenge that much harder. So hard, in fact, that Christian loses.<\/p>\n The advantage is, again, thanks to Jimmy Fallon. He calls it \u201cOne in the Urn,\u201d which just makes me think of \u201cthe shocker<\/a>.\u201d If Christian had won, he would have gotten to place one vote in the urn for that tribal council right at the challenge. It\u2019s basically an extra vote you have to use immediately. On the hierarchy of advantages, an extra vote is already at the bottom, and this one having a time limit places it even lower. If advantages were fruit salad, this would be cantaloupe. The real twist here is a disadvantage because, in losing, Christian has to take an envelope back to camp and read its contents in front of his tribe mates. The letter says that Christian lost and that at tribal that night he has to vote for himself. This is even worse than losing a vote because it seeds the pot for other people voting him out, penalizing him for losing at a side quest he was chosen to go on by luck. (Sure, he volunteered, but still.) I think the danger of losing this challenge far outweighs the advantage from winning it.<\/p>\n