Survivor 51 B&B Ep 2 Recap with Rizo “Rizgod” Velovic

RHAP: We Know Survivor

This episode of RHAP B&B features hosts Mike Luman and Leona joined by Survivor 49/50 alum Rizo Velovic to break down Episode 2 of Survivor 51. The trio dissects the chaotic

Key takeaways

• Rob attempted an unorthodox plan to vote himself out by instructing Eric to play a Shot in the Dark idol, only for production rules to block the self-vote mechanic.
• Brady chopped off a quarter of his thumb on an axe but displayed wrestling-level pain tolerance, continuing to compete and even lift heavy objects despite medevac denial.

Main topics

• Survivor 51 Episode 2 recap
• Rob's self-vote strategy

Notable quotes

"I think this is so good for Survivor."

Conclusion

The episode delivers a comprehensive strategic breakdown of Survivor 51's early dynamics while

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Mike and Leona gather playing some games. You better pray to your mama that they're not super lame. And if that all sounds cool, Speaker 3 (0:09) I can tell you the name. It's the- H A P B and E like a Speaker 1 (0:26) I can tell you that Speaker 3 (0:33) Hi, everybody, and welcome to the RHAP B &B for week two of Survivor 51. My name is Mike Luman. I actually can write my own name down. Rob will not stop me, unlike another Rob, which was stopped during an incredible gambit during an incredible episode. I would give it one and three quarter thumbs up. This was a ridiculous time. 51 is off to a wild start so far, and I cannot wait to break this down with two. Absolutely wonderful people. First and foremost, Liana Boris. Liana, how are you doing? Speaker 2 (1:07) I'm doing well. I've removed all sharp objects, so we don't need to worry about that. And I got plenty of plants that I can throw on in a moment's notice. Well, Speaker 3 (1:16) I am ecstatic to be joined by this person making his B &B debut. We spoke about him for the past year. And, you know, he is coming up on what, like the second episode since the spring of 2025 that we have not seen this man. In our lives. It is the one, the only R I Z G O D Riz God, baby Speaker 1 (1:37) Riz Ovelevich. Mike, thank you so much for having me. I was going to say Rob was somebody that would love to spell out their name or write their name down. And I might've never wrote my name down, but I've always spelt it. I think like 40 times in the past year on television. So I'm super excited to talk survivor 51. It's kind of weird now that I'm on these forums because I've been watching you guys and. everybody out in all these outlets talking about me. And now the roles kind of feel reversed. And I'm talking about these people on Survivor 51. So it's pretty cool. At some points, it's like, whoa, I was on that beach. But now I get to talk about people playing on that beach after I played on that beach. So it's kind of like Inception. And here we are. Yeah, Speaker 3 (2:17) I want to ask you about that first and foremost, because I mean, not only do you have the experience of going through your first season that you haven't been on the show since playing, but also. again, you went through a massive returning player season as well that certainly, I don't know if you realized in the moment, I don't know if production realized, served as this end of an era. And so now things are at least presented to be starting incredibly fresh, even if you do get a name drop in the first episode. So what's been your take on it to get to watch, again, a format that you're familiar with and now live through, but also blatantly repackaged as something completely different than what you even played a year ago? Speaker 1 (2:58) Yeah, I think this is so good for Survivor. And, you know, I always tend to look at the glass half full. I'm a very optimistic person. So looking at the trailer of 51 from the 50 finale, I was like the open era. I don't even know if they called it the open era on the trailer, right? Yeah. So I was like, oh, what could that mean? But ultimately, I think of what. the meaning is and what we've seen so far, I think is a home run. And I know there's some speculation or some negativity around the open era and people are just like, oh, they're just using it as a label. What do you mean? Like, this is something that they've always done on Survivor. But I feel like people aren't really understanding what the open era truly is. And what I feel like, from my understanding, is that. Every season essentially is different. You could have one season that has beware idols and has one world or the next season could just be the edge of extinction. And you, you know, doing 10 coin flips. I don't know. Like there's so many twists that can happen. And I think this is so good for survivor because as someone that played in the new era, if you study the format, you literally know the game like the back of your hand. And there really isn't a lot of unpredictability. And what Survivor 50 really did was have so much unpredictability that it kind of influenced what we're calling now the open era. So I think 51 is off to a great start because of it. And I think a lot of it is because of the cast as well. But, you know, there's a couple of changes already. The marooning, two tribes, normal idols, like all normal things. But they're fresh because we haven't seen them in a long time. Speaker 2 (4:30) Are there any mechanics that you wish you had gotten the opportunity to play with? Speaker 1 (4:36) So far, the only one where I'm like, oh gosh darn it, was probably just the marooning, to be honest. Oh, really? Yeah, I think the two tribes, I played two tribes on 49. Granted, it wasn't in 10 people. And then in 50, there was a one world component. you know, how they started off the game with 21 people. We kind of had that with 17 people on the 50 merge. So there's not a lot that I've seen so far, even with the idols. I played with idols both my seasons. Yes, I had a beware in 49, but like my beware was super fucking easy. So I didn't really feel like I had so much pressure. And then 50, I was given an idol. So there isn't anything in the first two episodes, at least that I've seen where I'm like, oh, I wish I can do that. Besides like jumping off the boat with Jeff. Speaker 1 (5:21) Yeah, I mean, I Speaker 3 (5:22) think it seems like that's one of those like once in a lifetime. It's weird to say like whenever you picture a survivor, because the last time we did it was so long ago. And it felt so long ago, considering that so much has gone down over these past five days. You know, I think Kilby wondered out loud and some of us did as well. We were always on disaster tribe watch over the past five. And so we're like, oh, my God, yellow is going down. But no, this purple tribe has proven that not only are they as messy as yellow, I would wager they're even messier. Because, Liana, we have a wild series of misunderstandings that only William Shakespeare could write, bringing about an Akakamani 11th hour plan of a guy trying to, as far as I can ascertain, idle himself out of the game with his own vote for himself. only to be left in the dark anyway, as it was a sixth overvote getting out one of his allies. I Speaker 2 (6:19) think it's so easy to overlook the fact that this whole thing, at least based on the edit, the catalyst was talking about crabs. Like, that's what I just keep going back to because there were so many wackadoo moments that happened as a consequence of that. Sure, you could go back to, you know, Alexis and Anna and that popcorn misunderstanding, which I'm sure we'll talk through. But really, it was Carter and the crab. Like if we really had to pinpoint the moment where all of this chaos started, that's exactly where it happened. Speaker 3 (6:46) Yeah. Rizzo, did you have any sort of ironic conversations about crabs on the beach that got misattributed for any sort of plotting against any person? Speaker 1 (6:56) Yeah. You know, I never felt like I came to a situation where. I had a conversation like a popcorn or like a crabs that was anybody's downfall in either season. So seeing it come into fruition is funny. I will say, I think the crab situation was the excuse that a Sharonda and Alexis needed to confirm their target for Anna. So I wouldn't necessarily say, well, honestly, yeah, it probably did play a big part of it, but I do think that Sharonda and Alexis were just waiting for the. we need something to go after them. And once Liana heard that, it was kind of the surefire, like, let's get them out of here. Yeah, Speaker 3 (7:32) I think it very much was confirmation bias because obviously we'd gotten early on that Anna's attempts to throw seemingly everyone under the bus had her thrown under the bus in exchange. And so when Linnea seems to pick up on some sort of vibe of, hey, listen, Carter said this exact same thing to me down on the beach, and that was about sea life. But. I see my life flashing before everyone else's eyes. They're plotting against us. Let's do this. I wonder if it was we want to get the ball rolling anyway, and we're just looking for a reason to do so. But this vote shocked me for multiple reasons. I mean, we'll get into, obviously, Rob's attempted big move, but even like a six to four vote like this is what we talked about this last week, Liana, right? Like this is another advantage of these 10 person tribes is like you can cobble together enough numbers and we don't know. why and how you had someone like Christian or Kristen, which I realized in retrospect, incredibly confusing on the producer's part to put the two of them on one tribe together. But they voted together to get the two of them in a group of six to take over the Rob Carter and Alliance at that point. Like it's very cool to do and obviously gave them a lot more freedom to do so as opposed to we have three. We're just going to stay locked in and good luck to the other three. Speaker 2 (8:49) Well, and I think the benefit, too, is that people can be voting for different motivating factors. Right. One, you can vote because you want to keep Eric. You can vote because you want to get rid of Anna. You can vote because, you know, you want to like. I feel like there are just more reasons why you might choose a particular avenue than when you're in such a small group. Like it really is about numbers, survival, numbers, survival. Like that's really most of what's going through your head. I would imagine Rizzo can probably correct me on this. But it just it gives more flexibility, more freedom, more ways to navigate. And while Rob ended up being kind of the headline of all this, like it really is actually the non-Eric, the Anna flip that I think is what's most interesting and I think is what's going to govern the tribe dynamics moving forward. Speaker 1 (9:31) Yeah, I kind of want to just piggyback off that. I think what the new era issue was and why two tribes of 10 or whatever it is is so refreshing is because in the new era, like Jeff always says, there's nowhere to hide. But the reality is it was just a rush to get a four-person majority. That's all it was. It was like off to the races. Whereas in the new era, as long as you had your majority, like I was a proponent of this. It didn't really happen to me, but like. I was okay with losing. Like I would go to tribal council. If I had my four person locked, like, I don't care. I'll be the disaster tribe because at the end of the day, like at least I'm playing the game and I'm building my core foundation and you're kind of like safe in a sense, whereas 10 people, okay. You might have the majority for one vote, but like you said, Liana, you might just be aligned because a, you just want to get rid of Eric or B, you just want to get rid of Anna or like. I'm going to use Ori for an example. If this was a tribe of six, there is no way Ori would have been so foot down. It needs to be Eric. Let's take the layup. But because there's 10 people, there's more room to voice your opinion because there's more people to play with. So I think that makes it more fresh because just because you're the majority for one vote in a 10-person tribe, you can get blindsided in the next one. It's less likely to see that in a smaller tribe. Speaker 3 (10:49) Let's talk about Eric for a second here, because certainly has been the big character in episode one. Seemed to, as Jenna said, like had her his survivor life flash before his eyes, but he was able to emerge unscathed. Rizzo, in your very biased opinion, who has the better Mickey Mouse impression between the two of you? I Speaker 1 (11:06) got to go with myself. I want to give Eric his flowers for. You know, I saw a tweet before the premiere of 50 and it was or 51 rather. It was like, we haven't seen or maybe it was you, Mike. You know, this is gonna be the first time Rizzo hasn't been on Survivor since whatever. I was like, actually, that's episode two because I was mentioned in episode one of 51. So big kudos to him. But I do think I have the best Mickey Mouse impression. Speaker 3 (11:29) There we go. Well, listen, he's not exactly having his best Disney happy ending right now, considering that. I mean, listen, it was it was a good episode for him in that he at least had. Well, it's interesting, really, because he's like, and this is why I made the relationships I did, because they came to me and told me that I was endangered. It's like. I think it's more so in any port in a store, we need your vote. You're more so a vote than you are a person at this point. Speaker 2 (11:55) This always fascinates me to no end. And when somebody has a very clear perception of what they think is going on and the exact opposite is actually the reality, that would be my fear of watching me back on Survivor as I'm Eric in that moment. I just had a complete misread on the situation. But this is something that happens all the time where the most annoying person that can sense vote, you know, oh, it's obviously going to be Eric. It's obviously going to be Eric. It's obviously going to be Eric. It's like, guess what? It's not Eric because, you know, I guess maybe if it was the very, very first vote, it could have ended up being Eric. But more often than not, I always feel like this ends up pivoting because people just don't want to take out the person that's the most annoying. They want to have some strategic reason for why they're targeting the person that they're targeting instead of just getting on the consensus vote unless they're playing super scared. Speaker 3 (12:46) Yeah. So let's talk about, obviously, I would say the biggest catalyst of everything, which is weird because this is a complete sideshow to everything going on, which makes this even funnier than you could possibly imagine, which is Rob has something stewing in his brain. First off, he's stewing in general because both Blainea didn't do well in the reward challenge, but also they didn't do well enough in the challenge they won. And that's going to lead, but he's also feeling a bit sullen. And that's going to lead him to do this entire plan, which, as we mentioned before, doesn't even matter because there are always going to be six votes against Anna anyway. But he tries to pull off something that, to his credit, has never been done before in the history of Survivor. And I'm going to try to walk through what I think it is, because I've seen some people be a little confused as to what Rob's plan is. As far as I'm aware, and he can contest this at any point, he told Eric, play your shot in the dark. and he assumed it was going to be a unanimous vote against Eric. Everyone was like, all right, easy peasy. Let's get rid of him. Your session's over here. And then if Eric plays a shot in the dark and it hits, then that wipes out all the votes against him. Great. If the shot doesn't hit, then he's going to pull essentially a Rachel Lamont on Eric and be like, oh, I'm going to play my idol on you, nullifying all those votes. So that wipes out basically every vote except for Rob's. in which case the vote would be for himself. So he would vote himself out of the game. To which I say, Liana, in the words of one of Rizzo's tightest allies, if the man's going to quit, just quit. Speaker 2 (14:32) I mean, also Christian Hubicki did it first. Am I right? It is funny to me. It didn't make me question for a moment. I was like, why can't you vote yourself out? Should we should we change the rules? Like, should we have allowed this to happen? Because honestly, gag, that would have been amazing. Speaker 1 (14:50) Yeah, I you know, it's so funny because I have two takes to this, I think. We need people like Rob on Survivor. You can't have 20 Rizzos on the show that are hyper-metting the game and figuring out all the ins and outs. I think, this is my read. Mike, I'm on the same exact page. I think he wanted to basically go out in style. Speaker 3 (15:10) Because Speaker 1 (15:10) I think, you know, you never want to quit, right? Because if you quit, then that's such a negative connotation. It's like, oh, you're a quitter, you're a loser, you took a spot from someone. But hey, it's very cool to say, I played an idol on someone that sent myself home. Like I sent myself home. You know what I mean? So I think this is my read. I met Rob. Such a Speaker 3 (15:31) thin line of I'm quitting versus I sent myself home. Speaker 1 (15:36) Yeah. It's, you know, and this is, like I said, I don't know where Rob's thinking, but I met Rob at the American dream thing and he's a personality for sure. Yeah. Speaker 2 (15:46) So Speaker 1 (15:46) this is like my read. It's not like I know if this to be true, but my read is that Rob wasn't a fan of survivor. and saw the show and was like, oh, I would be a great personality. Thought the show was going to be easy and got on the show. And it's like, shit, this thing is kind of hard. You know what I mean? It's not as easy as it is. And I don't want to quit to be a bad example. I rather go out in flames and be memorable. And to be honest, this is kind of memorable. Like even if he does quit after this or whatever, like at least he kind of had a moment. And if I was like being a. super fan right i'd be pissed because it's like oh dude like you wasted someone's spot like what the fuck but like as a tv viewer it's like dude yeah listen if you went in to make reality tv you brought on the tv so good for you Speaker 2 (16:31) that moment where he writes his own name down in like the biggest block lettering anyone could ever write in and seeing that and the producers being like uh you can't do that iconic like if you're gonna clip one moment from that episode like that's the moment you clip I do think that it was interesting with Rob's confessional leading into his big plan where he's talking about missing his family and missing back home and I do wonder if there was a certain element of Eric being the other contestant from Rhode Island where he was like oh it comes all the way back there's Speaker 3 (17:02) only he did say there's only gonna be there's only one from Rhode Island and it's gonna be Eric and Speaker 2 (17:08) it's gonna be yeah it's I mean what is so interesting is that it Speaker 3 (17:12) feels like he did not tell the producers ahead of time what he was doing. I was going to say that Speaker 1 (17:17) too. We have that Speaker 3 (17:18) confessional. I mean, listen, the fourth wall was shattered at this point, sliced up like Brady's thumb with the amount of times people were stepping in over the course of this episode. And so the producer asked, what are you going to do? He's like, I don't know. We'll see what happens. I wonder, do you think Rizzo, especially knowing these producers, if he had informed them what his plan was going to be, they would have stopped him there? Or would they have let him actually go through with it like they did in the episode? Speaker 1 (17:40) That's a good question because I will only speak from my experience. I like, they don't tell you what to do, what to say. Like they just let you speak and then you kind of just go and do it. I, I do however think because this is against the rules, they would have said like, Hey, that's not allowed, but I don't think they would afford, like they wouldn't have said, don't do it. You know what I mean? I think it would have just been a clarifying, like, Hey, just so you know, you can't vote yourself out. Um, because. if he knew that that couldn't happen, we would have never gotten that whole segment where his face drops and the producer says what he says at the voting booth. And the reason why you can't vote somebody, you can't vote yourself out is for this very reason. You know what I mean? Like the reason that this has never happened in survivor is because they don't want this to happen in survivor. You're telling me like, I, I like just thinking back, like all the people that have tried to quit, like what's her name from. Sanwal, little sir, John Rocker's wife, Julie. Oh yeah, Julie. Yeah. Like if Julie could have just quit and gone to tribal council and get that iconic moment with Jeff snuffing her torch, I'm pretty sure she would have done that. But because you can't vote yourself out, you have to take the walk of shame where Jeff is like skedaddle. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think Rob wanted to have his moment because if you're not going to win survivor, the most iconic thing about every person's boot is getting your torch snuffed by Jeff. And I think when he told you Speaker 3 (19:04) Riz God twice. Speaker 1 (19:05) That is true. That is true. And for Rob to realize in real time, probably like, hey, I'm not going to win this game. I at least want my torch snuffed. That's why he might have kept it under wraps. I don't know. But like, yeah, it felt very much so like he wasn't even telling the producers what he was doing because he's like, yeah, Speaker 2 (19:22) shit's about to go down with this tribal. Speaker 1 (19:24) Like, OK. Speaker 2 (19:26) I'm about to do something no one's ever seen