Jeff Probst hates quitters. He typically plays a pretty empathetic role as the host of Survivor, but on the rare occasions people have quit, he’s more often than not been very unpleasant about it. Recently, he even vowed to no longer snuff the torch of anyone who quits the game, which is why many were surprised during last night’s Survivor 46 episode when he seemed unphased and non-judgmental about one player trying to quit the game. Well, apparently there’s a reason for that: he doesn’t think he was actually trying to quit.
Spoiler Alert: We are going to talk in-depth about some things that happened at tribal council during the most recent episode of Survivor. So, if you’re not caught up yet, call off work, go home, watch the episode before you get spoiled and then return to this article.
So, the wild moment happened during a particularly lively tribal council. There were competing plans to vote out either Tevin or Tiffany. Both would be a straight up blindside, but immediately prior to tribal council, Q told Tevin’s closest ally Hunter what the plan was. This set in motion a lot of wild scrambling and had Q admitting he screwed up. Everything seemed back to normal prior to the vote when Q dropped a bombshell, telling the other castaways they should all write his name down. Chaos and a live tribal ensued before Tevin was voted out.
Jeff Probst was very obviously loving all the scrambling and mass hysteria going on, but he didn’t really go after Q in the same way he normally does with people who try to quit the game. He was asked about it on his podcast “On Fire With Jeff Probst” and he told Season 45 winner Dee Valladares that he never saw it as a real quit. Here’s a portion of his quote…
I didn’t see it as a quit and maybe that’s my own naivety because I never got the sense that Q wanted out of the game or he’d had too much or that he was too hungry or too tired. I never got that sense, but I did get the sense that Q might see the world sometimes as ‘I’m the hero of this moment.’ But maybe I’m missing it?
There is both evidence for this viewpoint and evidence against this viewpoint. In the for column, you have the fact that Q has played the entire game very hard. I think most viewers who have a good sense of gameplay would say he’s played way too hard. He’s been at the center of almost every plot and scheme, and every one of his confessionals is like an erratic thesis detailing why the most random players should go home for seemingly innocuous reasons. He is not too apathetic or checked out to strategize, and his performances in the challenge, while perhaps not as dominant as you’d expect, have included some strong moments, apart from this week’s that, in full transparency, did not set up well for him at all.
In the against column, however, there’s the fact that Q has already said on multiple occasions that he wanted to quit the game. He asked his original Yanu tribe to vote him out when he felt he didn’t perform well enough at one of the challenges. He also told Kenzie that he might throw in the towel after a particularly devastating loss because he was “accepting” his fate. The first episode’s edit made it look like Jelinsky bailed on the sweat task, but he said in his exit interview that Q was actually the one who first brought up wanting to bail on the challenge, which isn't the only edit complaint this season. That’s a lot of talk about quitting for someone Jeff claims wasn’t actually trying to quit.
Now, some people are like this. There are absolutely people who talk about wanting to bail because that’s their mental process to get through it. Saying you’re going to quit doesn’t mean you’re actually going to quit, and in Q’s defense, he has bounced back and played hard every time this has happened in the past. That being said, how many times can you ask people to vote you out before they just do it?
Survivor 46 is down to 9 players, and given all the wild stuff we’ve seen so far, it has the chance to go down as one of the craziest seasons in the history of the show. You can catch the 90 minute episodes on Wednesday evenings before The Amazing Race.
