“I will give you two words to guide you this entire season. Just two words: Permanent Uncertainty.” - Probst
[Applause]
“I’m curious, why does that get a round of applause?” - Probst
“Chaos.” - Rob
“Opportunity.” - Kristin
“Interesting. Bookends. Chaos can be opportunity. Opportunity can create chaos.” - Probst
Rob and Kristin set the tone for Survivor 51 with two simple words: Chaos and Opportunity. Up until that moment in the Marooning everything that Jeff Probst said could have been scripted, but as soon as he asked the question everything was out of his hands and suddenly in the hands of the players. What the players choose to do with that power is up to them. This is their story. That is Survivor.
Chaos and Opportunity are not new terms in Survivor. They’ve been around for as long as the show itself. The very first season of Survivor: Borneo was nothing if not chaotic (4-1-1-1-1-1-1 vote, anyone?), while also being the story of the first group to see the opportunity to form an alliance that could take them to the end of the game. One of the reasons that Survivor has been around for over 50 seasons and counting is because there are an infinite number of lenses through which we can analyze the game, and the people playing it.
I view Chaos and Opportunity as a spectrum, much like many things in life. Survivor is full of so much nuance, and I don’t want to reduce anyone’s game to simply being “chaotic” or “opportunitistic”, but I think exploring which of the ideas each player is likely to default to based on what we’ve been shown so far can help us make sense of how this new group of players are going to approach the Open Era of Survivor.
And what better way is there to divide them than with a draft? Rob and Kristin make perfect team captains for “Team Chaos” and “Team Opportunity” respectively. The first private confessional that we get from Rob once the tribes reach their camps was about having a potential connection with Eric due to both of them being from Rhode Island and then immediately saying Eric has to go. Later in the episode we’re shown Rob spreading chaos by telling his tribemates that Eric is looking for a hidden immunity idol while knowing full well that Eric is out finding (and catching) Nemo.
At the other end of the spectrum Kristin took every opportunity she could find to build a bridge. The first connection of the season that we’re shown is Kristin asking Sharonda on the raft if she is a college athlete. We’re shown her saying “we got each other” to Kilby’s limp thumb after she beat him in the thumb war. Later in the episode we hear from Sharonda that she has two #1’s - Kristin and Ori. Kristin took the opportunity to step up for her tribe to negotiate. She took the opportunity to make fire with the supplies that she negotiated for.
Chaos and Opportunity are not mutually exclusive concepts. As Jeff said, “Chaos can be opportunity. Opportunity can create chaos”. It’s easy to see Rob’s actions as taking an opportunity to get rid of a physical threat and rally the tribe together against Eric. It’s less easy to paint Kristin in a chaotic light based on this episode but I think it’s fair to say that the further she makes it the more likely it becomes that the opportune move for her is a chaotic one. For the purposes of this draft I’m viewing “Team Opportunity” as those who I think will default to building bridges and creating options and “Team Chaos” as those who I think have shown a willingness to accept or create chaos to get themselves ahead. There’s not necessarily a clear distinction but we’ve been given good insights so far into how these players are moving and this is how I think Rob and Kristin would draft their teams if they saw the premiere without knowing the outcome of the season.
The first round draft pick for Team Chaos has to be Brady. His willingness to make a move the moment he felt threatened, regardless of what his “ally” Devin wanted, solidifies his spot on this team. His first instinct wasn’t to talk to Aaliyah or preserve a harmonious 9-1 vote against Jenna. Brady seized the opportunity to get rid of someone who said his name but in doing so has accepted that life at camp after Tribal Council is going to involve some chaos.
The top pick for Team Opportunity was a little harder to narrow down. I think there are a few people who would be strong candidates but we have to start somewhere and I think Sharonda is the place to do it. The main storyline on the Savu Tribe was Eric and how the tribe was reacting to him. Nearly everyone on the tribe got a confessional to talk about their thoughts on Eric. A notable exception is Sharonda. The content we got from her was about approaching the game strategically and having two #1’s, in Kristin and Ori, who were also notably absent from a majority of the Eric storyline. Ori was shown talking about it in small groups at camp but as far as we’ve been shown both Kristin and Sharonda are more interested in building relationships than who they’re going to vote out if their tribe loses an immunity challenge, which I think bodes well for their longevity.
I’ve always loved a good Snake Draft (and I’ve been called a snake in a social-strategic setting on more than one occasion) so we’re going to go right back to Team Opportunity to start the second round of drafting. I don’t want to just start naming allies and claim that they have a similar playstyle but I do think Ori is a great choice for Team Opportunity. Ori immediately built a bond with Jelly, Ori was a part of the Helicopter Alliance on the Marooning Beach. Ori immediately built a bond with Sharonda and confided in her about his experience, or lack thereof, with Survivor strategy. Ori didn’t get a confessional talking about Eric. Perhaps the strongest evidence in support of this draft pick is Ori’s response to Jeff prior to the immunity challenge: “Do your job, when the opportunity presents itself make the play…don’t do too much, but when the time comes pull the trigger”. Saying it doesn’t mean that’s how he will play, but we don’t have anything to show that Ori is going to be flipping the script any time soon.
Back-to-back picks for Team Chaos and we’re not making tough choices at this point. Devin and Patt both make perfect sense. If you had asked me prior to the immunity challenge I would have put Devin squarely on Team Opportunity. I loved his line about speaking French in the early game: how it’s all about “We”. I also loved watching him throw that all out the window the moment Brady suggested voting out Aaliyah and moving himself decidedly towards Team Chaos. Devin said that he and Brady are two sides of the same coin and I think there’s a lot of truth to that. Both of them firmly stood their ground and both of them accepted that there would be fallout from this Tribal Council. They each had opportunities during this cycle of play to be a part of the “We” and in the end they both chose the “Me”. I think it would be a struggle to put any player who used the phrase “radical honesty” at Tribal Council on Team Opportunity.
Patt is another player that seems comfortable creating chaos. While Jenna was the first to throw Aaliyah’s name out to Brady, it was Patt who had the guts to say Aaliyah’s name out loud, at Tribal Council, as a potential target. That moment felt like a catalyst that led to the live discussions that seemed to be what put the nail in the coffin for Aaliyah. The one comment from Patt that gave me pause about putting her with Team Chaos was when she spoke about seeing Jenna take on the puzzle and empathized with Jenna’s situation, which ultimately led her to tell Jenna that Jenna’s name was going around, and Aaliyah’s eventual elimination. She did take the opportunity to build something but I think it was at the expense of larger group cohesion, and that combined with her actions at tribal earned her a spot on this team.
The next two players to join Team Opportunity are Kilby and Ana. Kilby’s preseason content made me think he would be much more chaotic than what we’ve been shown so far. Volunteering for something like a negotiation for supplies can sometimes backfire but I think Kilby had an appropriate level of restraint before volunteering and didn’t oversell his talents, which tends to buy some goodwill from tribemates who can empathize with being in his situation while being thankful that they weren’t the one put in the hot seat. Later during the strategic scramble after the immunity challenge we saw Kilby seemingly try to be the voice of reason and bridge the gap that formed between Brady and Devin. He even acknowledged in confessional that sometimes the guy in the middle of the road gets run over. Ironically, I think the chaos that has been brewing on the Toka Tribe is good for Kilby because he is the type of personality who could get singled out if the tribe remains cohesive and this kind of early conflict presents an opportunity for him to build bonds behind the scenes.
Ana is possibly the player I was most excited to talk about in the context of this draft. I loved Angie Caunce’s Player Archetypes when she was releasing them and seeing Ana immediately start categorizing her tribemates as a way to assess her position in the tribe scratched an itch in my brain that I didn’t know had been there. She was portrayed as a reliable narrator who understands the social hierarchy that is forming. Ana identified Rob as a leader and Carter as his sidekick, and she was also approached by Carter to be a part of a group after Rob confirmed to Carter that he liked her. Not only was she able to see the hierarchy, but she was able to ingratiate herself to it. She has a tolerance for the chaos that a player like Rob can create while still having a methodical approach to it.
We’ve reached the halfway point in our draft. I’ve already established that I view Chaos ←→ Opportunity as a spectrum and if we view this draft in the same light then the team captains and first few rounds of picking are the extremes on either end of that scale. As we get further down in the draft order the players start to have less defined characteristics of these attributes or we have less contextual evidence to support putting them on one team or the other. But making a decision and sticking to it is the Survivor way, so we press on.
We have back-to-back draft picks for Team Chaos. Joining Rob, Brady, Devin, and Patt are: Jenna and Maggie. Jenna admitted to struggling with opening up to her tribemates and I think she is the type of player that will benefit from chaos occurring around her, even if it involves her. Jelly and Aaliyah throwing out Brady’s name to Jenna and Patt was a misstep but Patt and Jenna are both on Team Chaos for a reason. They had the opportunity to build a bond with Jelly and Aaliyah and instead chose to run the information back to Brady. It was an opportunistic move, and it did end up paying off for at least Jenna in the short term, but sacrificing the relationship with Jelly and Aaliyah is enough to push the scales towards Team Chaos for me. I think that it’s likely that we see Jenna start to build bonds in the coming episodes, but with her name already in circulation I think she’ll find herself needing the cover that the chaos brewing on the Toka Tribe provides to have the time to build them.
Maggie’s biggest tell was her confessional immediately following the immunity challenge where she identified herself as an older person on the tribe and said “I don’t want it to be me”. She threw out Aaliyah’s name to Mike for being slow at the challenge and it felt to me like she may have built social bonds but they weren’t strong enough to keep her from being paranoid. It seemed like she would have probably been happy with anyone leaving, so long as it wasn’t her. We’ve seen the “anybody but me” strategy work multiple times before but there is usually a good amount of chaos involved in that type of free agent gameplay.
Two more picks for Team Opportunity. Eric and Carter slot in nicely here. One of the first bonds we were shown forming was Eric and Rob both being from Rhode Island. We know how Rob feels about that but from what we’ve seen so far Eric is focused on building bonds with his tribemates. He had a confessional that ended with him saying “they’re gonna be my friends and we’re gonna take this game by the cajones”. Even though his attempts at relationship-building have been shown to be failing, it does still seem to be his chosen approach.
It might seem strange for the sidekick of the captain of Team Chaos to be on Team Opportunity but I think Carter provides some necessary balance to Rob’s game that might help propel him further than we expect someone playing so hard so fast to go. While Rob is the one creating paranoia around Eric, Carter is the one talking to Ana and getting the ball rolling. Carter had a confessional saying “I think the piece to my puzzle is going to be: play with someone you trust with your whole heart”. His approach is one of relationships, even if his closest relationship is with someone who creates chaos.
The next two draft picks for Team Chaos are Lewis and Alexis. Lewis struck me from the beginning as an agent of chaos. He seems like he’s here for a good time, not for a long time. I think there’s an argument that Lewis’ choice to go to Exile Island gives him many opportunities but to me I saw him walking away from 20 possible relationships and missing out on a lot of the initial bonds that are forming. I don’t think he’s going to struggle to make friends when he joins a tribe but I think he would be more willing than most to make a move for the sake of entertainment, regardless of what the fallout might be.
Alexis is where things really start to get murky in terms of the distinction between Team Chaos and Team Opportunity. We didn’t really get much individual content from her for supporting evidence, but we did get a confessional saying “if we lose a challenge and we have to go to tribal council, Eric’s gotta go”. It’s not much, but her tone of voice when she said it landed with me as someone who was willing to cut someone to advance herself (loosely “anybody but me”), and without context for the relationships she may be building she belongs to Team Chaos for now.
These are the final two real draft picks for Team Opportunity as they will be stuck with whoever Team Chaos doesn’t pick in the next round of drafting. Left on the board we have Christian, Jelly, Linnea, Mike, and Thein An. Of those five choices I think Linnea and Christian have the most defensible positions on Team Opportunity. Linnea’s confessional saying “I’m really good at making people open up to me and I feel like Survivor is the ultimate first date. I’m first dating everybody” really shows her approach to the game. We got no content from her to indicate she wants to do anything but build bonds at this stage of the game.
Christian ended up on Team Opportunity because when speaking about Eric in confessional he seemed to empathize with why Eric might be a little overzealous. Even if he is identifying that someone is standing out, he’s doing it within the context of being able to relate to that person. I think empathy is one of the strongest traits a player can have and while I think Christian would be willing to cut Eric to advance himself further I also think Christian is the type of person that could maintain that bond if/when Eric leaves.
We have Jelly, Mike, and Thien An remaining on the board and two of them will be joining Team Chaos. At this point I’m splitting hairs trying to justify who belongs where. I think a good chunk of these players fall in the middle of the spectrum between chaos and opportunity and I won’t be surprised if many of them end up making an absolute fool out of me later in the season. There are two wolves inside each of us; both of mine are telling me to hurry up and make these final picks.
Rounding out Team Chaos we have Mike and Jelly. Mike was one of the harder players to place. He was shown to be involved in the strategic decision-making but he was largely absent from the drama once the true scramble started. He even has a confessional saying “my focus right now is on my social bonds”. The one thing that stood out to me, and the reason he ended up on Team Chaos, was his willingness to potentially let his tribe be at a disadvantage during the negotiation for supplies to protect his own secret. I don’t think the potential consequences were all that bad even if Kilby came back with the two least desirable items, but it does show that Mike is willing to sacrifice comfort to advance his own game. Mike strikes me as the type of player that will subtly influence chaos without causing it outright.
Jelly could probably be higher on the roster for Team Chaos but I think what kept me from picking her sooner is that she does seem to be building bonds. She seems to be trying to prioritize relationships over chaos. I know that she was involved in throwing out Brady’s name to Jenna and Patt and that, combined with her vote for Jenna, landed her on Team Chaos but it didn’t feel like it blew up her spot in the same way that it seemed to for Devin. It could just be that Jelly will be the next casualty and the editors chose to prioritize the conflict between Devin and Brady but the way Jelly was moving in this episode had me questioning which team she truly belonged on.
And that leaves us with Thien An to finish off Team Opportunity. The only private thoughts that we got from Thien An was her calling Devin a “weeb” and saying that under his smile he could be gaming hard. I think that impression may have informed her decision to vote for Aaliyah at Tribal Council but we were also shown multiple instances of people talking to her about the vote. She clearly has relationships as she was involved in the vote talks but I don’t have enough context to put her higher on either list because the relationships weren’t shown with any clarity in regards to her allegiance.
Team Chaos and Team Opportunity finally have full rosters.
This draft was a very specific lens through which to analyze the premiere of Survivor 51. It’s based on loose definitions of the teams and a lot of assumptions about 72 hours of lived experiences condensed into 90 minutes of heavily-edited screentime. The spectrum between Chaos and Opportunity is a living organism and the players have the freedom to fluidly move between the two extremes. The winner will be the person who best combines them and I can’t wait to see how they do it.