Emily's Unruly Game Could Save This Era of Survivor

Emily Flippen's fate on Survivor 45 was sealed within the first five minutes of the season, when she rounded on returning-player Bruce and gave him the Dakota Johnson "That's not true, Ellen" when he tried to downplay his level of experience with the show. This was during Jeff Probst's getting-to-know-you opening remarks! The game hadn't even begun!

Honestly, Emily's path may have been set even sooner than that, when she was in the speedboat to the bigger boat in the season's cold open, and she declared in an interview that she'd rather be voted out first if she's not going to win the game. "It's a complete waste of time if you're not the sole survivor," she said. It wasn't so much tempting fate as it was waving a giant red cape in front of a bull named Fate.

Emily managed to survive that first vote, though it was through nothing short of an unprecedented first-episode quit by Hannah. We know from Hannah's exit press that Emily was meant to be the Lulu tribe's vote-out. It wouldn't exactly have been a surprise. Emily hit that beach with an energy we haven't seen in years on Survivor: hyper-confrontational, completely un-savvy about social interactions, unnecessarily hostile towards even the most benign social circumstances. When Kaleb and Sabiyah were sent to compete in the "Savvy or Sweat" competition, Emily was back on Lulu beach already preparing for the both of them to return and lie to the tribe about the outcome.

Emily's lack of chill and irrepressibly confrontational personality have marked her as a bad player in these first few weeks. It's a completely fair assessment of her game. Through three episodes, she made herself a target by misplaying dozens of the kind social interactions that have become crucial to late-stage Survivor. This modern era of the show — generally accepted to be from Season 41 to present — has streamlined itself in terms of the sensibility of contestants. While greatly (and beneficially) diversifying the casts in recent years, the show now overwhelmingly casts longtime fans of the show who are highly studied in the "right" and "wrong" ways to play the game. This is good for the players, but for the viewers it's resulted in a narrowing sameness to the new seasons. Everyone plays the same game: hunting for big moves, building advantageous short-term alliances and padding their resumes as the endgame approaches.

Very few players have run counter to this generally accepted Right Way to Play Survivor, but when they do, they make the action all the more thrilling. Carolyn Wiger served that function last year, playing an often-erratic, highly emotional game that was hugely watchable and actually served her well en route to the final three. This season, our great hope is Emily, who isn't really anything like Carolyn except for one key component: she just can't help herself.

This has been apparent constantly across the first three episodes. In the season premiere, when the Lulu tribe bonded over their — admittedly cracked — fascination over the wild theories about the pyramids of Egypt having been built by aliens, the right way to play would be to nod along, have a laugh, and use this time to get to know the other tribemates on a personal level, so you can use those bonds strategically. Not Emily, though, whose mask of horrified incredulity was utterly unmistakable. (This was also, incidentally, Emily's most relatable moment all season.)

The pyramids incident wasn't nearly the worst of it. Emily opened up at that first tribal council about her mistrust of Sabiyah and Kaleb as an alliance, essentially calling them out and marking herself as their enemy. Later on, when Sabiyah tried (self-servingly) to reach out to Emily and hunt for the immunity idol together, Emily said she'd rather look on her own, since she knows Sabiyah would just be monitoring her. Astutely observed by Emily, but she played the social interaction wrong.

Episode 2 featured a kind of redemption for Emily, as she was receptive to Kaleb's overtures to work together. She managed to build some trust without alienating him. In an interview clip, Emily spoke of her realization that she can't bring too much of her professional experience as an investment banker into the game. "People," she observed, as if she'd just realized it at that moment, "aren't stocks."

That trust she built with person-not-a-stock Kaleb paid off in the October 11 episode “No Man Left Behind,” as Emily was able to flip the tribe to her own advantage, selling out Sabiyah and Sean and saving her ally Kaleb from getting voted out. This was a defensible move: keep Kaleb as her number-one ally rather than remain at the bottom of a triptych with Sabiyah and Sean. But the real Emily is not too far away. In this same episode, she'd noticed the number of votes Jeff Probst had read in the Brandon vote and surmised that not everyone cast a vote, after which she directly accused Sabiyah of not having a vote. As Sean noted, there was Emily, "immediately picking a fight with the one person she's not supposed to pick a fight with."

To put it more succinctly, when it comes to Survivor Game Brain versus Authentic Personality, Emily's authentic personality wins out every time. This is ultimately bad for her prospects for success in the game, but it's a godsend when it comes to the show’s watchability. This week's tribal council was the season's most suspenseful yet, in no small part because Emily has proved to be such a wild card.

As former Survivor champion Sophie Clarke put it in a recent interview with Rob Cesternino and Taran Armstrong, "Emily is exactly the kind of person I want to see cast" more often on this new version of Survivor. It's the players who can't help but be themselves that make this game come alive. "I want to see people who are bad at the game," Sophie said. "I want to see villains. I want to see people who are very emotional."

One of Emily's best qualities is her self-awareness. She's fully aware when she's rubbing people the wrong way, even as she seems helpless to avoid doing it again and again. But she's trying! And that struggle to overcome a personality that resists being good at a game of social strategy is genuinely thrilling to watch. Emily may be as much of a superfan of Survivor as everybody else who's been cast over the last five seasons. But she's not naturally suited for it. That gives her room to grow… or to flame out wildly. Either way, it's the kind of good television that Survivor should be trying to deliver every season.

Survivor airs Wednesday nights at 8:00 PM ET on CBS. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.