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Previously on Survivor, “everyone was trying to change their history in the game,” which caused various disappointments and breakdowns. There were more ball-balancing competitions (complete with Probst commentary on the state of Joe’s balls) and more use of the middle finger.

At Tribal Council, Ciera called out the core four of “Jeremy, Savage, Tasha and Stephen or Joe,” and Kelley correctly tipped that the other alliance would be voting for her, and her resulting idol play sent Savage home and made a bunch of other players very relieved that they wouldn’t have to cut his throat later in the game.

And so Survivor’s answer to Mitt Romney is gone. Savage’s farewell speech is all about how awesome he is and how great his strategy was, in spite of his obvious alienation of half the players left in the game, which nicely sums up why I won’t miss him.

Here are the power rankings for this week:

1. Joe

Joe tries to play nice by slapping everyone’s butts at the reward challenge, but his social game is getting antsy. As soon as he hears that Fishbach is trying to get him out, he decides to put together a group to possibly blindside Fishbach instead. Maybe that’s a good precaution, but Joe already knows that everyone is going to want to vote him out at some point, but stirring stuff up within his own alliance will just divide it sooner. Better to play it cool with players like Jeremy “hey, Fishbach’s trying to get rid of me. But I’m still voting for Ciera” rather than saying “we need to get rid of your informant.”

After winning immunity and deciding that he didn’t need to get rid of Fishbach after all, he and Wiglesworth went back to Ciera and Kelly and essentially said, “sorry guys, it will be one of you.” This is a huge Survivor sin, though I suppose that if you’ve been conspiring with some players and then decide not to go through with it but want to work with them again, it’s what you have to do.

Anyway, everyone still wants to get rid of Joe at some point, so he’s #1.

2. Jeremy

Jeremy is not on board with breaking up the group to get rid of Fishbach, but wants to keep Joe around to minimize the attention he gets. He smoothly stick-handled things so that both Fishbach and Joe are kept around just like he wants, but that’s not sustainable over the long-term.

3. Tasha

Tasha’s chances have taken a hit with her closest ally, Savage, eliminated from the game. Of course, I think Savage felt that his closest allies were Joe and Jeremy, so maybe it won’t make much difference.

4. Fishbach

Fishbach was the one we saw reach out to Ciera after she was on the wrong side of the vote, so he is obviously keeping his options open. Fishbach has ambitions and is very concerned “not to be run over by a bunch of bros,” which is why he was able to convince himself that last week was the right time to make a move, but like Joe, I think he could benefit from some patience. There were still 12 players left, so it’s too early to stir things up within your alliance, and if Joe keeps on winning challenges, soon everyone will want to be rid of him without Fishbach's nagging.

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