Operation: Italy. Get it out of your system.

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We have to go to Italy this week, although before we do, let’s take a quick layover in systems thinking.

Systems thinking is the idea that most things are interconnected and that when one part of a system changes, it affects the entire thing. It makes sense of the world by looking at it as a whole, instead of its component parts.

Take the butterfly effect, for example, where a butterfly flapping its wings is theorized to have an effect on a tornado’s path weeks later. Or more presently, how a viral Hawk Tua video could lead to an alleged cryptocurrency racket where fans of a TikTok somehow ended up losing millions of dollars.

Systems thinking often invokes stocks and flows. Stocks are things that increase or decrease, like the water in a bathtub, and flows indicate the moving of that water in or out.

I bring this up because the season’s biggest move, Operation: Italy (O:I), has been analyzed from front to back with some even comparing it to the biggest moves in Survivor history. While I’m a sucker for a plurality vote (where a minority achieves the majority by manipulating the majority, like this week’s 3-2-2), I’m not going to rank the move or talk about its obvious merits. What I will do is jump into a systems thinking type analysis of O:I and see where it leads.

Ready to nerd out? You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.

Systems are interconnected and overlap (e.g. without Tony’s disastrous Game Changers performance, there is no way he wins Winners at War), so for the sake of this discussion let’s create a closed system. Let’s block off this season of Survivor, and more specifically, who is going to win in the system of Survivor 47. It’s about whose stock/winner’s equity is flowing upwards and whose is flowing downwards.

Andy is first on the list. It wasn’t a big move for the sake of making a big move; it was a move where he recognized his low stock at the bottom of the Underdogs alliance, and took action to change the structure of the game. When you’re making a BiG MoVe, you’ve got to consider how it will echo throughout the next rounds and change everyone else’s positions.

For Andy, he’ll have to utilize Sam and Genevieve as shields in order to make it to Final Tribal Council (FTC), either with them or without them. At the same time, he is playing for the win, not second or third place.

He understood his place in the system and took action to reshuffle the deck. He recognized that he needed a resume-building move to earn the jury’s respect. While Andy likely reduced his chances of making FTC by increasing his perceived threat level, he increased his chances of winning a jury vote should he make it. That’s the way everyone should play: go for the win, even if you reduce your chances of placing higher.

It’s actually harder to determine Andy’s place in the game because he changed it so much in one move. We saw Sol notice that “Andy flipped again” from the jury bench. There seemed to be a slightly negative connotation to this. Looking at the jury as a monolith where everyone has the same opinion would also be a mistake. That system has people who might see Andy’s move as impressive and others who might not respect the lack of loyalty. As their perceptions change, different players’ stocks rise and fall.

Inside the game, Andy will have to manage the double-edged sword of changing the tribal dynamics while also being aware of other players being wary of working with him when they recognize the potential for him to flip.

Andy brings some fascinating approaches to navigating the Survivor system here: he understands how he is perceived and adjusts accordingly; he balances risk and reward and is willing to embrace uncertainty with his moves; finally, he is also self-aware enough to know that he wants to leave an impact, or a legacy, on the season. In almost a full season, he never gave up and finds himself going into the finale (or the pre-finale), with a shot at winning the game.

Genevieve and Sam’s places in the game are less complicated. They were ostensibly on the bottom and they had no choice but to make a move. Now, as they go into the round of six, they pulled off an epic move and have nowhere to hide. If I’m Teeny or Sue, Genevieve and Sam are still my top targets because they only added to their perceived threat level. They had no choice - O:I kept them in the game - although they’re left in a precarious position at F6. There is a concept in systems thinking about feedback loops: where actions cause other flows. Genevieve and Sam had to take the action of O:I and it also continued to increase their threat level.

They actually have to do the opposite of Andy now: figure out a way to either reduce their own threat levels or figure out a way to increase everyone else’s threat levels. If they can pin O:I on Andy, maybe they can shift the flow of threat onto him. Things change so fast in this game that although Genevieve and Sam appear to be in danger, surviving a round can change the course of the game.

O:I didn’t just change the game for its orchestrators in Andy, Genevieve, and Sam, but for the entire rest of the cast and the season. Caroline is the biggest loser here as she ends up going from a reasonably insulated position in the core four of her, Rachel, Sue, and Teeny, to sitting on the jury.

While Caroline might advocate for Sue’s game at Ponderosa, Sue is probably drawing dead and is the least affected by O:I because her stock was already relatively low. Still, Sue is going to play a key role. From what we’ve seen, she has the slimmest chance of winning a jury vote. She could be another good target for Andy, where if he can take her out at six, more people might want to sit with him at the end because he’ll take away one of the lesser threats who could be aiming for his spot. Sue could also be a key ally to whomever ends up as Sole Survivor…

That brings me to our next player, someone who might be the real winner of the system changes post O:I. Rachel winning immunity forced Team O:I to settle for taking out Caroline as a back-up. While O:I was originally designed to take out Rachel, she ends up as one the biggest beneficiaries, without getting any blood on her hands.

First off, Caroline was occupying a similar space as Rachel in the system: a strategic player with decent insulation. If Andy has raised his jury threat level to that of Genevieve and Sam, he might have accelerated his own exit. If Rachel takes out the O:I squad, in any order, she has a good chance of winning the game beside Sue and Teeny, whereas Caroline still being there might have complicated things. Caroline and Sue were the closest duo in the game, and now Sue is an ally for Rachel to pull in even closer. Plus, Rachel still has her block-a-vote and her idol with only two rounds left to play advantages.

Team O:I also thought that Rachel was the biggest threat outside of their group. Now that she has been left out of another vote, her threat level might be diminished in their eyes and she might be able to break up that group for her own self-preservation and find her way to an FTC where she has a chance of winning. It doesn’t matter if others’ stocks are rising if you get them out of the game before the end. It just matters that you have a better flow of momentum/jury credit/gameplay than the people who are beside you for the jury’s decision.

Teeny’s role in the system is going to be fascinating to see unfold. They probably don’t have a ton of winning combinations at FTC but we’ve also seen that Teeny has great relationships with members of the jury like Sierra and Sol. Similar to Sue, Teeny’s allegiance in the next couple of rounds will determine the endgame. They’ll likely have to pull off an O:I level move to get the respect of the jury by increasing their stock and decreasing others’ stocks enough. Given the twinkle in Teeny’s eye after they realized what Andy had done, I wouldn’t count them totally out just yet. Teeny is a superfan who knows what epic gameplay looks like. It would take a BiG MoVe, but this is one case where a big move is actually necessary if Teeny wants to go for the win instead of second or third place.

In Survivor, timing is everything. A move that looks genius one week can be your downfall the next. Whatever happens and however Operation: Italy affects the larger Survivor system and whoever ultimately wins, Andy, Genevieve, and Sam should be proud of their iconic play. It’s better to make a move than not to make a move at all, especially because it’s so incredibly difficult to predict the results of a game-changing move on a system as complex as a game of Survivor.

When the opportunity to change the system arises, you take it, and you hope that the ebbs and flows of that move leave your stock as the most valuable at the end of the game.

-Kevin Jacobs

Kevin is the winner of Big Brother Canada 10. Find him on all platforms @kevintedjacobs where he talks about competitive reality TV and good movies.

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