'Survivor' 46 Recap: Dumbest (And Most Confusing) Tribal Council Ever

It needs to be said up top: Episode eight of season 46 of Survivor is bonkers and fully a wild ride. Keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle, because this is about to be a wild rollercoaster ride.

Before we get into that, just a reminder that all season long I'll be recapping every episode of Survivor 46. Make sure you subscribe to the Parting Shot podcast and my newsletter For the Culture for all things Survivor-related. (And everything else entertainment-related.)

First things first, let's catch you up to speed with what happened last week on Survivor. (Check out my detailed recap of last week's episode.) In a nutshell, we had two eliminations. Siga's Tim was the first one to go—he was playing a little too hard—and Nami's Soda was the second one to go in a surprise blindside. (Her old tribe mate, Venus, was the target on the hot seat, but Maria, Charlie, Liz and Tevin had a plan to get Soda out.) But don't worry. Soda isn't going home yet, no, no, she's the first member of the jury. The game is picking up now, so it's an exciting time to tune in.

We meet them this episode on night 14 and half the tribe returns to their beach after Tribal Council. (The tribe was split into two Tribal Councils.) Ben is bummed about Tim's departure because he and Tim were close. Kenzie, Tiffany and others come to support him, but Q isn't having it. He wants to get down to business. (He literally says—slash—pouts to himself, "Let's get down to business.") He's antsy because half the tribe is gone and it's a great time to talk strategy without everyone around. But the rest of his tribe mates there are more concerned with taking care of Ben. If I were Q, I'd be worried about Ben's social game if everyone was surrounding him and not Q.

Then the rest of the tribe comes back to the beach, and they're all surprised that Venus is there and not Soda. But not Venus, she's happy and ready to spill all the tea. She straight out says she knows Soda and Tevin were the two votes against her, and then proceeds to drag Tevin.

"I'm just gonna say, I can see through bulls***, and let's just say a man who claims his entire identity in this game is surrounded by honesty and being an honest person straight up lied to my face the entire day. Wrote my name down. And I saw through that and karma bit them in the ass. It was four against two," Venus said.

Little does she know it was Tevin's plan to take Soda out. (Insert evil laugh here. Wait! Never mind, because producers cut to Tevin doing his evil laugh. God, I love this show.) Tevin isn't bothered at all, fully ok with letting Venus think she was the mastermind behind that plan.

"I don't need credit. I'll explain my game when I get to the final three. So right now, I'm letting Venus be cocky because Venus may not understand right now, but [she] will very soon when your torch is snuffed and you're going home," said Tevin.

Day 15

We start day 15 off with a product idea from Q. It's called the "Q skirt," and essentially, it's a backwards hoodie tied around your waist. The hoodie part serves as both a purse and a fanny pack of sorts. Considering the back is mostly open, I feel like it might need to be worn with tights or something. (This whole segment just goes to show you that midway through their time out on the island, ya gotta do some weird things to pass the time.)

But this whole Q product pitch is more of a warning then a launch. In a confessional from Charlie, we learn that he's aware of the game Q is playing. He's setting up alliances and groups. The two of them have a conversation at sunrise while the rest of the players are asleep.

Q, Charlie and Hunter all talk about forming an alliance. (How many alliances is Q going to be in?! This is now his third!) Well, it turns out Q is actually just trying to give Charlie the spot in the alliance vacated by Tim's departure. He says Maria is going to chat with him.

Maria, who Charlie already has a soft alliance with, approaches Charlie and tells him exactly what Q said she would. So now this alliance of six is made up of Yanu's Q and Tiffany, Nami's Tevin and Hunter, and Siga's Maria and Charlie. But just as Charlie enters the alliance, he already has doubts. He sees that it's a shaky alliance—they did just lose one of their alliance members—and knows he needs to be ready to get out of it for his own game.

"We're not the first group in Survivor history to say, 'Let's get to the final six together and then duke it out,'" Charlie says. "Something always goes awry. And I have to decide, am I what goes awry?"

But before any of that drama happens, they decide to play a game of hide-and-seek. Yes, a game of hide-and-seek. That's all.

Well, actually it's not. Because they're so in the game right now, even a silly game of hide-and-seek gets turned into a metaphor for how they're playing the game. From Q to Venus to Charlie, they all talk about what their hide-and-seek strategy says about their larger game play. Listen, I love a good metaphor, but I also know when to shut up and have fun, and I think in this moment, you should probably just see Hunter hiding in a tree as just Hunter hiding in a tree, not an overall statement of his game. But who knows, he might go home tonight, in which case I'm an idiot and Q is a genius. (And honestly, I wouldn't be mad about this.)

But one person focused on legitimate game play is Tiffany. She sees all this talk about Venus and getting rid of her and realizes it's kind of pointless. There's strategy in letting Venus think she's playing a strong game, because she's not a threat to anyone, nobody trusts her.

"I think I'd rather deal with a nuisance than a threat. So I'm trying to shift my focus now because the point of the game where you're just getting out obvious targets is done," she said.

But Tevin, who Tiffany talked to about this, isn't on board. He wants Venus out, and so does the rest of the alliance of six. It casts doubt on whether Tiffany is playing with the alliance or her own game.

"She's playing old Survivor. Take a goat to the end. This is not the game I want to play. In this game, you have to play a Q game. If you don't play my game, and you wanna go off and do your own thing, then you're probably not going to last in this game a lot longer" Q says confidently. (A little too confidently, in my opinion.)

This just speaks to what Charlie said earlier. Q's direction of the alliance of six is weak, and he's seemingly fine with voting off members of his own alliance. So it begs the question, is it really an alliance or just Q using others to advance his own game? (I mean, it is Survivor, so that's smart and it's really the fault of other plays who fall for it. Out of all of them, it's looking like only Charlie is seeing through Q's shaky alliance direction.)

But now Q is all in on project vote out Tiffany, telling Maria that Tiffany has an idol. He's ready to blindside Tiffany and is rallying the others to do just that. But something tells me this is going to backfire. Let's find out.

Day 16: The Immunity Challenge

It's a classic Survivor Immunity Challenge today folks. They gotta climb a tall pole and hold on to it for as long as they can. When they drop, they're out. The last person holding on wins Individual Immunity. But Jeff Probst throws something else into the mix, because why not, right?

He takes out a big bag of rice that is enough to last them until the end of the season. But if they want the rice, they'll need to collectively choose four players to sit out the challenge and thus give up their potential immunity. Clearly not satisfied with this, they ask if he's willing to negotiate. He then offers them another option: Two players can offer to give up their vote at Tribal Council and still compete.

They opt to go with the four-person option. Q offers himself up, then Liz, followed by... nobody. They forfeit the rice.

The challenge begins and already people start sliding. Q is first out, followed by Liz seconds into the challenge. Not long after, Kenzie is out. A short while later, Ben slowly slides down, then Maria.

After the five remaining players are holding strong, Jeff reminds them that the longest this challenge has lasted in Survivor history is two hours. Ozzy Lusth won that one.

"I'm ready to beat Ozzy today, baby," Tevin says, confidently holding on to the pole after seven minutes. Just then he begins to slide but recovers. (The spirit of Ozzy has clearly entered Tevin's soul.)

Then Tiffany drops out, followed by Tevin. (Sorry, Ozzy.)

After 15 minutes on the pole, Hunter and Charlie start to slide but are able to stay holding on to the pole. Meanwhile Venus is sitting pretty on that pole.

Actually, never mind, Venus fell. She's out.

This leaves it as a battle between Taylor Swift's number one Survivor fan, Charlie, and Hunter. (It's unclear what pop star Hunter enjoys. I have a feeling he's more of a Fleetwood Mac man.)

After 20 minutes, Charlie slides off, giving Hunter the win. He so confidently held on to the pole that he decided to show off a little, holding on to the pole with just his legs to celebrate his win. In fact, he looked a little like a... well, I'm not going to say what he actually looked like, but let's just say he did a move often only seen in establishments that require you to be 18 or older to enter.

Pre-Tribal

Back at their beach after the challenge, Q isn't feeling Hunter. (How many people is he going to be annoyed with in this episode?!) He's upset about them giving up the rice, especially when it was clear Hunter was going to do well in that challenge. (During the game of hide-and-seek, Hunter was the last found because he was able to climb up a really big tree.) That said, Q is still focused on blindsiding Tiffany at Tribal Council.

As Q, Tevin and Hunter agree on the Tiffany blindside, Liz is feeling like she needs to make a big move. She's been bothered by Tevin taking all the credit for the Soda blindside, when she was also a part of that strategy. So she turns to Maria, Charlie, Ben and Venus to formulate a counterattack plan. She wants to blindside Tevin. They're shocked, except for Venus. It's an exciting plan. Ben brings Kenzie into the mix, who then brings Tiffany in on it. This is where things get weird.

Even though Tiffany is on board, she feels like she needs to inform Q about this. This only sets Q off on Liz. (Literally, he's playing this game like each tribe mate is a Russian Doll, when he gets sick of one, he moves on to the next.) He talks to Liz about it and isn't happy, only because he isn't the leader of this plan. This is key to Q's game play, he doesn't care about the actual target, only that he's leading the attack on the target. This attitude has been the downfall of countless Survivor players in the past. He's either playing a brilliant game or a thoroughly stupid game and he's just been very lucky.

Well, Q tells Hunter about this Tevin plan, which only means Hunter is going to tell Tevin about this. (Remember their Andy Griffith alliance? It's a long story but they originally bonded over liking The Andy Griffith Show.) Hunter storms off and Q storms off after Hunter, causing a big commotion on the beach. Hunter, Liz, Charlie and Q talk about this Tevin vote while the rest of the tribe watches on. It's heated and it's all in disarray.

I'm just going to say it: Charlie called it early in the episode. It's officially gone awry, and things are about to blow up. Let's go to Tribal Council.

Tribal Council

Jeff starts things off with the forfeit of the rice at the Immunity Challenge. They all talk about how the game play is so intense they'd rather give up food than not play the game. And Liz really needed that food. (She reveals she hasn't been eating because she's allergic to most things on the island. She also said she hasn't used the restroom the entire time she's been out there. That's a full 16 days! This is the most shocking thing I've ever heard on Survivor. But also, when I started Ozempic I had the same problem. Maybe that could be my secret to surviving Survivor? Just stay on Ozempic.)

Then Q does what Q does and spins Tribal Council into a tizzy.

"The only person going home tonight is me," Q says, shocking Jeff and everyone else. He asks everybody to vote for him. Literally everybody is confused.

He's setting it up like he's a martyr. He's doing it for "somebody else's dream." But it's clear he's doing it because he thinks he either made a mistake—likely in that Hunter situation—or he's just over it. Everyone sees that and is trying to convince him otherwise.

While this is going on, Maria and Charlie are whispering to each other. I wonder what's going on there?!

While they're doing that, everyone is looking at each other trying to figure out what to do. They proceed to huddle and talk. We officially have a live Tribal Council.

Every side conversation ends with, "Who are we voting for?" There is no strategy at this point, meaning anybody could be going home: Tevin, Tiffany or Q.

But the best whisper of the Tribal Council is between Charlie and Tiffany. He tells her that the plan was to vote her out, and that Q told everybody she has an Idol. She's shocked.

It's rare on Survivor to see someone blow up their game in such a spectacular way, but we got that tonight with Q. He will always be attributed to the "dumbest Tribal ever," as player after player said as they voted.

In a surprise move, Tiffany doesn't play her Idol before Jeff reads the votes, despite having just learned Q betrayed her. This makes me like her even more.

Well, it turns out her instinct was right, because she wasn't voted out. Neither was the person who blew up the Tribal Council, Q. In the end, the person voted out was the one Liz decided to blindside, Tevin.

If one thing is clear from this Tribal Council, Q isn't running anything in this game. Liz wanted credit for her big moves and well, despite the chaos caused by Q, she successfully made a big move. But watch, Q is going to say this was his plan all along and somehow take credit for Tevin's blindside.

And now I officially have a headache. Goodbye.

Who Needs to Get Snuffed?

Q. He needs to go. Not only is his game a mess, but he's also a wildcard in a not fun way.

Who Should be the Sole Survivor?

I'm fully on Team Charlie at this point. He's understanding the game in a way it seems like other players aren't. I also just love the journey I've gone on with Charlie. From being lukewarm about him in the beginning to fully being the Charlie Stan train midway through the season, that's just fun!

Watch Survivor every Wednesday on CBS or anytime on Paramount+ to follow along as I react to every episode this season.