Will Katurah’s Vote Come Back to Haunt Her?

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Survivor Season 45 Episode 7, “The Thorn in My Thumb.”]

When watching Survivor, nothing drives me crazier than hearing a player say, “I don’t know who I can trust!” The answers are there if you’re analyzing the game well enough. I know, I know, evaluating Survivor strategy is easier to do while watching at home than it is when you’re actually in the game. But Survivor Season 45 Episode 7’s elimination really grinds my gears for this exact reason.

Kaleb was the obvious target in “The Thorn in My Thumb” following his history-making successful Shot in the Dark in Episode 6. The twist justified its existence for the very first time when saving him from elimination by canceling out every single vote against him, of which there were 11 (Austin extended his idol to the final five by sacrificing his vote, but no one knows that yet).

Seemingly to avoid every player voting for Kaleb two Tribal Councils in a row, Jeff Probst revealed at the first individual immunity challenge that they’d compete in two teams, established by the random drawing of rocks. One person from each team would win individual immunity, and one team would win a trip to the sanctuary. Both teams would go to Tribal, but the winning team goes second. The first eliminated player of the night would not make it into the jury, the second would.

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Sifu, Bruce, Kellie, Kendra, Emily, and Drew played for Team Red, and Kellie won immunity. Katurah, Jake, Kaleb, Dee, Julie, and Austin played for Team Blue, with Dee winning immunity and the team’s sanctuary trip. Both teams had the opportunity to make impressive moves with their votes, but both went with an obvious choice. How they got to those conclusions is where alliances were made and broken.

Sifu was voted out by Team Red, making him the final player eliminated before the jury formed. Bruce was the other name on the chopping block. His elimination in this episode would have made for more interesting television. It would have meant he was betrayed by his closest ally, Kellie, who spent the whole installment wishing that Bruce wasn’t so hard to work with, as did Jake, Kendra, and of course, Katurah. Sifu, on the other hand, didn’t have any close allies, so he had no one to defend him from being voted out. (It’s still not clear why so many players are convinced he had an idol, but that’s irrelevant now.)

I yelled at my screen over the next elimination. In a four-two vote, Kaleb became the first member of the jury, and it was Katurah who sealed his fate. My reaction wasn’t just because I wanted Kaleb to win. More than anything else, it was because Katurah made a bogus move, because of the “I don’t know who to trust” conundrum.

When in doubt, always trust people who are showing their trustworthiness through their actions. In Episode 6, Bruce told practically everyone in the merged tribe that he found the Lulu idol except for Katurah, his biggest enemy. Why should Bruce trust her with that information? She’s made her dislike for him obvious since Day One. It’s completely fine for Katurah not to like Bruce, but she’s not doing herself any favors by making it so obvious. Jake made a smart split-vote plan to disarm Dee by eliminating Julie. He, Kaleb, and Katurah would vote for Dee, the other three would vote for Kaleb. And in the chaos of a re-vote, they would try and convince Austin (who they believe was playing scared) to join their side. It was a plausible plan, and the guys rightly knew that they’d have to offer Katurah accurate intel to lock in her trust.

They told Katurah about Bruce’s idol, which was found just the day before, to do this. Not being told this information immediately broke Katurah’s trust in them, but their offer of an alliance was still better than the big bag of nothing being offered by Dee, Julie, and Austin. Katurah seeing these options before her and deciding against the offer of an alliance is my least favorite strategic move of Survivor 45 so far.

CBS

Kaleb said it perfectly in confessional: “The big thing that I learned over the last 24 hours here on Survivor is that the quantity of options is not nearly as important as the quality. When you really think about how serious a word trust is, it means having a strong alliance in multiple people that you would do anything for. If you show that type of loyalty, then you will get it in return.”

This should have been true in Tribal, and my heart broke for Kaleb when Katurah’s vote revealed her betrayal. In a confessional before the vote, Katurah said she was upset that Kaleb and Jake waited so long to tell her about Bruce’s idol, but everyone else had ample time to inform her as well and didn’t. Her upset feelings should have been directed inward, but instead she shot the messengers. It was a shocking decision, but not an impressive one.

Emotions don’t impress this cast; strategy and transparency do. We’ve already seen how Bruce’s emotional game has been a detriment to his alliances. Kaleb knew how to appeal to every player and succeeded at doing so, which is why he was targeted in Episode 6. Katurah hasn’t shown a drive to analyze each individual player’s game, and she just betrayed two players who actually wanted to work with her, not just use her for numbers like everyone else.

Since Katurah has chosen a side (the one of the weaker group strategists), she needs to tell Dee, Julie, and Austin what Kaleb and Jake proposed and why she betrayed the plan next week. Otherwise, players could argue that when the pressure is on, Katurah forgoes strategy and alliances for the sake of her feelings. Since they all wanted Kaleb out, they might not care that she made an emotional decision on Day 15. But that perception may not last for long.

She’ll have to try to take strategic control from this point on if she has any chance of impressing a jury in the final three, should she make it to the end. With his strong understanding of the game and its nuances, Kaleb will go down as one of Survivor‘s best strategists. What’s worse: having a player like this with you in the final three, or having them as an enemy in the jury? The first option lets you have more control of your fate — there was still time to build a more impressive resume than Kaleb’s down the line. In the second, your fate is in the hands of someone you betrayed for a reason that’s not a shining addition to a resume. Add another enemy to the jury like Bruce, and you’re not filling this group up with friends.

Everyone left in Survivor 45 is either going to end the season as a member of the jury or part of the final three. It’s a mistake not to carefully select who you send into the former.

Survivor, Wednesdays, 8/7c, CBS