A new season of Survivor debuted on Wednesday night, and with it came a new villain.
Jelinsky, who decided to start talking in the third person, became the first person voted out on Survivor 46.
After several people quit on Survivor 45, the narrative that Jelinsky was quitting on challenges during Survivor 46 rubbed fans the wrong way.
Early in the episode, the Yanu Tribe lost the first challenge, forcing two members to complete a Sweat Challenge to earn their camp supplies.
David “Jelinsky” Jelinsky and Q Burdette volunteered for the task. They had to transport water from the ocean to two urns in a limited period.
The buckets had holes in them, making the challenge much more difficult, and the result was Jelinsky and Q quitting before they came close to finishing.
Jelinsky shown quitting, blames Q for the decision
The episode’s editing showed Jelinsky as the reason the duo quit the challenge. But is that what happened in Fiji?
“In fact, it wasn’t even an idea in my mind because Q and I both bonded over being from Memphis.” Jelinsky told TV Line about quitting the challenge.
“So it was especially not an idea in my mind to quit because I knew Q would look at me a sort of way. So when Q presented that idea to me, I was like, ‘Bro, not only do we get to quit and I think we’re gonna fail, and this is Q’s idea? Let’s do it, man,'” Jelinsky added.
That’s an entirely different narrative than what Survivor fans saw on the show. It could also explain why Jelinsky kept saying “we” quit the challenge when it was brought up at Tribal Council.
Jelinsky explains the rules of the Sweat Challenge
After Jelinsky and Q failed at the Sweat Challenge, many Survivor fans posted on social media. There were various ideas about what they felt could have been done. But Jelinsky said many rules didn’t get mentioned in the episode.
He mentioned that they could not use their shirts to block the holes and that they couldn’t put anything inside the buckets to block those holes.
“Yeah, we were not allowed to do that. We tried, trust us. They told us it had to be your fingers and only your fingers. You can’t put anything in the bucket, you can’t put anything outside of the bucket, so it was just meant to be hard,” Jelinsky said.
Below are some of those suggestions fans had for Jelinsky and Q on the bucket challenge.
“Who’s watching #Survivor? They should have taken the buffs from all the players, covered the holes in the bucket then started to fill them!” wrote one upset fan.
Previous episodes of Survivor are available for streaming on Paramount+.
Host Jeff Probst also teased info about Survivor 47 and Survivor 48.
Survivor airs Wednesday at 8/7c on CBS.