'Survivor 46' recap: Two blindsides are better than one (2024)

This week’s episode of Survivor 46 morphed into a Doublemint gum ad as we doubled our pleasure and doubled our fun with not one, but two blindsides. More amazingly, apparently both of them were orchestrated by Venus! I know! It doesn’t seem to make sense, but I have sources that confirm Venus swam over to the old Siga camp and influenced the entire yellow team into voting out Tim. Evidently, she even convinced Tim to vote himself out, until producers intervened and told Tim he was not allowed to do that.

Not satisfied with those somewhat pedestrian examples of Survivor mind control, Venus then went to Tribal Council and convinced Jeff Probst to do away with the final four fire-making, go back to a final two, and resume skydiving or jet-skiing the votes back to a live reunion show. I’m telling you, it’s all there in the outtakes! RELEASE THE SECRET SCENES, CBS!!!

And that wasn’t all. Realizing the Tribal Council set is actually on the same island as the Survivor art department, Venus snuck out after the Soda torch-snuffing and persuaded production designer Zach Jensen to make a huge statue of her at the exact same size and scale of Boston Rob and Sandra.

Venus is the mastermind, the puppet-master, the evil genius, and the stealth conductor of everything that happened this week on Survivor. Or… you know…not. But make no mistake, if Zach Jensen isn’t going to do it, then fans should build a gargantuan and mildly disturbing facial statue of the young Canadian. Not only did Soda giving (and Venus taking) credit for the blindside lead to a hilarious reaction shot of a clearly fuming Tevin (who actually orchestrated it, even if he voted for Venus as a Shot in the Dark protection), but the data analyst has been a great chaos agent all season long.

To judge a player’s value to a season, you not only have to look at what they do, but how other people react to what they do. Whether it’s via Randen, Soda, Tevin, or Maria, Venus has created tons of drama and story this season. Hunter said in our mid-game interview she wasn’t really participating in any of the Nami social activities — and my guess is Venus would counter that by saying she was not included —but Venus definitely has been playing the game. Whether she has been playing it well is up for debate… and indeed has been debated early and often on social media, but she is undeniably playing and forcing other players to act and react to her latest shenanigans. And those shenanigans have added some spice to season 46. Like I said, build her a statue. And no, Venus did not orchestrate this opening section of my recap. Just ask Tevin, he’ll tell you.

Let’s hit on the other big stuff that went down on episode 7 of Survivor 46.

Rock the vote

First off, I have no idea what a Nuinui is. I downloaded a Fijian dictionary because apparently that’s where I am now in my life, and it says “nui” means “to hope, to hope for, to yearn for it” so I guess Nuinui means to really hope, to really hope for, to really yearn for it. I have no idea how that ended up as the tribe name, seeing as how I asked the entire cast before the season what they wanted the tribe name to be and the cast barely even seemed to know what the most common Fijian word, “bula,” meant. And certainly nobody appeared even remotely hip to the Nuinui trip. Seeing as how half the cast wanted to name it after the dogs or children, perhaps Nuinui is for the best.

But forget about all of that. I can’t believe it took me this long to get to the best moment of the entire Survivor season! And that moment would be when Venus accused Soda of voting for her at Tribal Council and Soda replied that it must have been Moriah who did it…even though Moriah did not even vote. Of course, this would have been even better had Soda actually cast the offending vote and then blamed it on someone who very publicly and openly did not vote because she played her Shot in the Dark. But it was still good stuff.

And, to be clear, I don’t blame Soda at all for not remembering Mo didn’t have a vote. I am terrible at keeping track who has no votes, who has two votes, who has six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree. Too much math!

All this drama was positively delicious, with Tevin noting that the Venus-Soda feud was “showing the people how toxic and dangerous they are to the game.” But just when it appeared like this could be a major story moving forward, fuddy-duddy Charlie blew it all by coming clean that he cast the Venus vote. Booooooooooo! Did you not learn anything, Charlie, by the public’s insatiable attitude for Taylor Swift boyfriend drama that spectacle sells? Why would you blow out that lit fuse? That fire could have raged for at least 20 more hours had you left it alone. Team Q on this one!

Also, a special night 13 shout out to Kenzie for helping Ben calm down when he woke up in the middle of the night in panic mode. I mean, I don’t want to give her too much credit. Kenzie could have made this episode 17 million times better if she had then gone over to Venus and said that she had actually been the one to vote for her, thereby creating major confusion on multiple levels, but if she was not going to do that, then I suppose helping Ben is the next best thing.

Getting a leg up

“Bring in the boats!” I guess that’s what Probst says now when they stage immunity challenges at sea??? I like it. Of course, I’d like it even more if he would also start saying it at challenges on land. “Bring in the boats!” Just completely nonsensical. He should totally do it. I’ll tell Venus to convince him.

This week’s immunity challenge —which split the tribe into two teams to balance on a triangular platform out in the water, with two immunities at stake and one person later being voted out by each team —was another example of how unpredictable challenges in the ocean can be. This exact same contest was run in the same waters for Survivor 42 and the most anyone could last then was three minutes due to the huge swells. This time, the water was essentially glass and I honestly think the majority of players would still be up there had Probst not plagiarized from Andrea Boehlke and Brenda Lowe and forced the nine remaining contestants to lift one foot in the air.

Am I mistaken, or did they not even show the players on the lower perch and just picked up the “action” on the upper perch before they went to the top platform? If so, that was probably a solid editing decision. Realizing that there really was not a whole lot going on during the vast majority of this challenge other than people just kind of standing there, the producers did the smart thing and essentially turned the competition into a comedy segment, with Q getting increasingly frustrated as people kept messing up his alphabet game. Charlie even made up for his miscue the night before by intentionally screwing up just to frustrate the Alphabet King. (Also, am I the only one not buying that Q “threw” that challenge?)

In the end, Kenzie —KENZIE! — won immunity for the yellow team, and Maria lasted the longest out of everyone, ensuring not only her safety, but also that her group would go to Tribal Council second and the person voted out would make the jury, while the player booted from yellow would not. Meaning Tim essentially didn’t make the jury due to rock draw. Well, that and what was about to happen next.

+ 1 - 1 = 5

So just how solid was the +1 alliance of six that Q, Tim, and Hunter formed on their jury? Not so solid, it seems. When Q brought up ousting Ben since he was not part of the six, Tim kept countering that “Hunter is Nami” (even though Hunter was also part of the six). No doubt, Tim was in a tough spot here. Because Kenzie won immunity —KENZIE! — he could not even counter Q’s strike at Ben with someone else who was not in the alliance of six. So he had to choose between his Siga alliance and his shaky and unproven +1 agreement.

What was even more interesting was Q’s response to Tim's reticence. Yanu and Hunter had the numbers. All they had to do was go ahead and put the numbers on Ben anyway. Instead, Q immediately shifted to voting +1 member Tim out. (Then he shifted again back to Ben. And then he shifted again back to Q. But all that is neither here nor there.)

In a way, Q’s willingness to bust apart the +1 alliance was even more rash than Tim gunning for Hunter. And Tim looked legitimately shocked once Probst starting repeatedly reading his name on parchment. You could see the emotion when Tim froze while walking after having his torch snuffed —wiping his face before continuing. “I was a leader, not a loser,” he proclaimed in his final words, to which I would ask: Can’t one be both?

Tim is a unique dude, and I like him. You could tell by the way he called out the names of tribe mates’ family members that he was looking to connect with people past a game level. I mentioned this in my premiere recap from when I was on location, but the way he cheered on his puzzle-solving tribe mates by yelling, “I’m not shouting, I’m motivating!” while calling out the names of Maria’s three sons —“This is for Seb! This is for Leo! This is for Juju!” — was super cool to witness and a level of challenge-cheering participation I had never seen, especially on day three.

Whether he is, indeed, the sexiest dad to ever do this, I leave for others to debate and discuss, but he’s an interesting guy, even if we didn’t get to see enough of that on the actual show. The silver lining about not making it to the jury is that he at least got to get back to his family earlier, which I’m guessing cushioned the blow a bit.

Nami civil war

To the untrained eye, Charlie would have seemed like a dead duck after Maria won immunity, but the fact is Nami has more cracks than my 19th century house, and my 19th century house is basically held together with duct tape and dreams. Everyone from Nami wanted someone from Nami out. “I want to be the curator of the first blindside of the season,” Tevin told us. TOO BAD HE FORGOT TO TELL VENUS, HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Soda was definitely down to get rid of the Canuck in their midst, but she may have erred when she told Tevin how close she was with Charlie, explaining that “I have him really tight.” That could not have sat well with the guy who was already so worried about her social game that he proclaimed, “Soda got to goda.” He then mobilized Liz, Maria, and Charlie to take out his former ally.

But, of course, all roads lead back to Venus, who started pitching the Siga twosome on getting rid of Tevin or Soda. And the twosome’s reaction to Venus’ approach spoke volumes. Maria told us Venus is oblivious and does not read the room well, which is all well and fine. People say similar things about other players approximately every 13 seconds on this show. No big whoop. But they rarely say it to somebody’s face. “When you come at people, you come at people,” Maria told Venus as an explanation for why she didn’t like working with her.

But what Charlie did was actually even more telling. Quick Survivor quiz: When you are either on the absolute bottom or are supposed to be pretending you are on the absolute bottom, and someone approaches with a plan to save you and vote someone out, what should you do?
A: Get down and kiss their feet.
B: Say “Yes, yes, yes, a million times yes! Now may I kiss your feet?”
C: Immediately recite as many Taylor Swift lyrics as possible that either convey a sense of profound appreciation or an unhealthy obsession with feet.
D: Just respond, “Nah, I’m good.”

You basically do anything but answer D. Yet, when Venus approached Charlie about voting Soda out, not only would he not commit EVEN THOUGH THAT IS WHAT HE WAS GOING TO DO ANYWAY, he pretty much just said no right on the spot. What a weird thing to do. Just say “Yes! Sounds good! Let’s do this like Brutus ‘cause we always knew this!” (Maybe not that last part.) You are supposed to be pretending you are desperate, so act like it! This interaction seemingly ended up playing no role in Soda eventually being blindsided, yet I am obsessed with it anyway —especially the fact that it did not set off alarm bells for Venus that she was out of the loop.

Losing Venus would have been a TV viewing tragedy of epic proportions —kind of like having a tribe immunity idol given to you and then immediately ripped out of your hands and given to someone else instead. But losing Soda is a bummer as well. I knew when I met Soda pre-game that she had a huge personality because it was impossible to not know that after spending five minutes around her. But I didn’t recognize that she would be seen as such a social force in the game —to the point where her own allies would want to get rid of her. There was no blending in for Soda, not even on the jury, judging by her reaction shot in the preview for next week's episode.

But you have not heard the last from either Soda or Tim. That’s because you'll definitely want to hear what Soda has to to say about her 'complicated' relationship with Venus, and find out if Tim actually ever pooped on the island. That’s in addition to an exclusive deleted scene. Also make sure to check out all the merge tribe nominations from the entire cast, including an actually great one from… Jelinsky??? And see what Hostmaster General Jeff Probst has to say about this week’s episode as well. Okay, that’s it, but Venus says I’ll be back next week with another scoop of the crispy!

Sign up forEntertainment Weekly's free daily newsletterto get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• Soda Thompson explains 'complicated'Survivorrelationship with Venus
• Tim Spicer 'surprised, shocked, and hurt' by Survivor 46 blindside
• Survivor 46 exclusive deleted scene shows Kenzie worried about the upcoming challenge
• Jeff Probst says psychologists were contacted afterSurvivorpanic attack
• Survivor 46 players reveal their merge tribe name nominations
• Moriah Gaynor reveals what we did not see at thatSurvivor 46Tribal Council
• Hunter shares unseen Nami tribe dynamics in exclusive mid-gameSurvivor 46interview