I'm not sure how many people on Survivor (Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET) have ever been traded in their lives. You have doctors, ex-FBI agents, gardeners, poker players and ice cream entrepreneurs on the show, but do those professions ever deal with being acquired for other players? That's essentially what happened when Jeff Probst called the three tribes to meet him and let them know that the three tribes would be randomly mixed into two.
Scot Pollard was the only one totally prepared for being traded, realigned or however you want to characterize it. The three tribes were essentially consolidated into a random expansion draft for two new tribes. Scot's been through this before. He was traded twice in his NBA career. Two years into his career he was traded from Detroit to Atlanta. Four years later, Sacramento moved him to Indiana. Both times, Pollard learned a lot from the experience, which coincidentally prepared him for this adjustment.
"It’s a familiar feeling for me," Pollard said after the shakeup. "I played for five different teams in the NBA and each time, you’re playing against people you used to play against, to fight against. I can handle. I just have to figure out if I can trust anybody, who it is, and if it's going to do me any good."
At first glance, Pollard's team looks to be at a disadvantage. He went from having the former military man and the female bodybuilder -- two very strong players he could trust -- to being teamed with the poker player, doctor, former FBI agent, gardener and social media marketer. He ended up next to a three-person alliance from the Brains tribe and two people from the Beauty tribe.
The other tribe, the one he didn't get to join, looked to be the strongest mix of players, and Pollard had to be thinking it was going to be tough to match their abilities. In the first challenge since the realignment, Pollard helped his team get out to an early, impressive lead. But it wasn't enough and even with a new squad, he was unable to win yet another Immunity Challenge.
It's almost impressive how bad his tribes have been at coming through on challenges. They get out to a good start and then choke under pressure. There have been dozens of good NBA teams over the years that have had so much talent and so much early success, only to find the success fleeting and slip away in the clutch moments. Puzzles have mostly done his team in, but this time he had members of the former Brains tribe helping out. So what could be the explanation?
As he says in this video below, it might just be bad luck, or frankly no luck at all.
Losing the Immunity Challenge means you have to go to Tribal Council. And in order for Scot to stay on the show, he has to do exactly what his strategy has been: blend in as much as a 6-foot-11 professional athlete is able to do and get others to do his dirty work for him. That's what he told me he always wanted to have done on this show: hide his personality and get others to do the strategic heavy lifting.
He managed that perfectly in this episode. He befriended Tai as soon as the tribes were realigned. And he proved his worth in the challenge to the former Brains tribe members. It came down to the Brains' three-person alignment and the other three members. Anna, Tai, and Scot had devised a plan using the immunity idol Tai found to save himself and essentially send Peter out by default.
Then when they got to Tribal Council, they'd play dumb about the immunity idol until Tai could spring it on the three-person alliance from Brains. That's where Scot became dastardly. When the Brains alliance told him they were getting rid of Anna, he realized he could play everybody without them knowing. He knows where Tai's immunity idol is (in his shoe), and he knows his former tribe member Jason has the other half. Put those together and you get a super immunity idol, which is like having every golden ticket issued for Willy Wonka's factory.
He convinced Tai not to play the idol, which hides it from the Brains alliance. They don't know he has it. Now Scot can continue scheming against the rest as he grabs that potential super idol. And Anna was sent packing in the process, completely unaware of the betrayal that hit her until it was too late.
Scot was the only one prepared for figuring out the next step in joining a new team. Now he's the only one prepared for putting together the super immunity idol and controlling the entire game from here on out.
