Suite Dreams (Surviving Barstool Behind The Scenes & Episode 4 Recap)
Eight Barstool Sports employees living in the office for one week. Only one person can walk away with the $10,000 grand prize. The sole winner will be voted on by the five that were voted out. Surviving Barstool Season 2 Presented by Mattress Firm continued last night with Episode 4, but let me give you a behind the scenes look on what happened and why.
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EPISODE 4 SPOILERS BELOW
The episode starts with Caroline saying her goodbyes. I want to reiterate that this is an uncomfortable game. There is a lot of lying and manipulating people that you actually work with. It's hard not to take it personal, but at the end of the day, it's just a game. This is an emotional episode from start to finish but I can say that all participants are on good terms now. You just need to get out of that mode, because it is mental warfare in there. Now onto the behind the scenes/recap:
It finally happened. I found the immunity ring. Today was the last day to play the immunity ring and none of us had found it. We're all kind of embarrassed. And you can point to I destroyed clue #3, but at this point, I'm not sure it fully mattered. We all turned the office upside down several times. Every picture/painting taken off the wall probably 20+ times, people's desks/drawers gone through and looked under. So it was a relief to find it.
I can be criticized for telling everyone for sure, but from my perspective, I thought about a few things: It was the last night to use it, so revealing it not only gives me more power than the safety necklace as I can swing the whole vote. Revealing it builds trust with everyone and reinforces my 'honest game' approach. It also eliminates any talk of voting me as I say I'll use it on myself. I was feeling very comfortable even without it, so maybe I could leverage it into a deal. And that's exactly what I did. Additionally, everyone looked so dang hard for it, we all checked with each multiple times throughout the night as we passed each other in the hall. "find anything?", "do you have it?". So we almost had an understanding that we'd say when someone found it
The challenge was really cool. It was downstairs in our studio we film stuff in sometimes and they crew did an amazing job building it out.
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As far as experience, it was probably the funnest one to do. It was completely dark in there and we had blacklights to identify letters on the back of mattresses and then needed to solve a puzzle. Turns out there were 11 letters. But remembering those letters while hurrying through a maze in the dark is difficult.
We took what felt like forever to finish and Rudy nearly had it, but Eddie did a tremendous job on it and took home the W.
Grace was emotional and understandably so. She knew the numbers weren't in her favor and she needed that one. But she was chosen to go to the Mattress Firm suite by Eddie who definitely needed a good bed after sleeping on the concrete floor for days.
Grace did what she needed to do and talk to me about another move. Unfortunately, she didn't come with much of a plan. Had she maybe talked with Jackie or Eddie beforehand and gotten her on board and come with numbers, it could have potentially changed the conversation, but that's not something I could suggest. Rocking the boat in my alliance in order to suggest to a player on their way out was not something I was going to volunteer.
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But the alliance was worried. Jackie and Rudy were both sweating, but I gave them every assurance they'd be fine. Looking at this back, Eddie's answers do indicate the gears are turning.
That's when I figured I should leverage the immunity ring to guarantee my safety for the next day. After shaking hands with Rudy and Jackie, I felt good about my chances of going to the finals.
Grace then had a nice showing with a call from her best friend and fellow Surviving Barstool veteran, Brianna Chickenfry to get her mind right going into the vote.
Tribal council was a formality as a better solution was never presented to me to use the immunity ring. Though we do find out a bunch of people were very close to the ring, including Grace which is tough to hear. It would have been iconic if Grace had an immunity ring and pulled it out right there to save herself.
O'Malley takes her exit Gracefully in my opinion. Again, going back to the beginning of the blog, it's a very tough position to be in and emotions can run high, but I thought she handled it with class. I gained A TON of respect for Grace throughout this game. Nobody worked harder to try and make it to the next day. Being on the outside of our alliance must've sucked as we really stayed true to our words and made it to the final four. But every step of the way Grace was scratching and clawing just to make it to another sunrise. Looking for the clues/immunity ring later than everyone else showed a great competitive instinct and she has nothing but my highest respect as a competitor after that week.
If you're interested in more Surviving Barstool talk - KFC, Feits, and Survivor fan Glenny Balls discuss the happenings from Episode 4 on Surviving Surviving Barstool. Check it out here.