The chicken or the egg: ‘Survivor 47’ players try to negotiate with Jeff Probst, but at what cost?
After 47 seasons, “Survivor” players continue to find ways to surprise the viewers … and the host! During the fifth episode of “Survivor 47,” Gata tribe members Andy Rueda, Anika Dhar, Rachel LaMont, Sam Phalen and Sierra Wright arrived at the immunity challenge with the three chickens they had won in the previous week’s reward. As it turned out, the egg-laying hens weren’t living up to their full potential, and so the contestants were hoping they could negotiate with Jeff Probst for some eggs instead.
“Let’s just start with the obvious,” Jeff announced when Gata showed up with their three little cluckers. “Are they family members that travel with you now? Or is this about something else?”
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“You know, Jeff, we as a tribe would like to propose a negotiation with you,” Sierra declared.
“I love a negotiation,” the host replied. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Sierra recalled how the second place tribe “got the six eggs initially,” which seemed to be a better reward than the first place team, since “[The chickens] popped out, in two and a half days, three eggs. Two of them shattered before we could even get to ’em because they just pop out.”
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Jeff then asked Sam why the tribe hadn’t bothered to butcher the birds, to which he responded, “Not everybody was comfortable with the idea of eating the chickens, so you want to make sure everybody is comfortable on our tribe. Eating the chickens is not really an option for us, and they kinda suck at making eggs.”
“So you’re saying you want to trade the chickens for eggs? Okay. What’s the offer?”
Sam didn’t even hesitate when he said, “I think two dozen sounds pretty good, Jeff.”
Jeff then explained, “On ‘Survivor,’ we see the chicken as a dilemma in this sense: you can eat the chicken or you can use the eggs from the chicken. Those eggs are gonna be hatched over 16 days, so that’s a little bit like winning the lottery and you get paid a little every year. You want to put all your eggs in one basket. You want to get paid right now. That comes at a reduced price. So you’re asking for 24 eggs, which is eight per chicken. I’ll counter at five per chicken, that’s 15 total eggs.”
“Twenty,” Sam fired back.
The host suggested “meeting in the middle, which is never great negotiating,” and offered up 18 eggs. That’s when the Gata tribe started shouting, “Let’s do it! Deal!”
“All right, 18 eggs will be waiting for you back at camp,” Jeff proclaimed. “The chickens will stay with me.”
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The irony of all ironies is that the Gata tribe ended up losing the impending immunity challenge, which meant their punishment (in addition to voting someone out) was to give up their flint. In other words, when they returned to camp, they could not start a fire to cook their eggs. Cluck no!
This is hardly the first time a negotiation took place on CBS’s reality TV show. Many of the “New Era” seasons have featured moments where Jeff bartered with the players to sit out of an immunity challenge in exchange for rice. In “Survivor: David vs. Goliath,” Angelina Keeley offered up all her tribe’s fishing gear and most of the cookware and comfort items for more rice, which Jeff only agreed to after she also gave up her shot at immunity. And the first negotiation ever took place in “Survivor: The Australian Outback,” when Jeff visited the depleted camp on Day 30 (out of 42) and offered more rice in exchange for their tarps and Colby Donaldson‘s giant Texas flag.
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