On the second day of Second Chance, I visit Bayon Beach, the home of ten of the season’s returning players. I see Joe Anglim right away. He’s standing near the shelter, chatting up a storm with Jeremy Collins and Andrew Savage. He’s on the way down toward the water, pausing for a stop and chat with Monica Padilla. He’s sitting in the sand, hearing Kass McQuillen’s concerns about his place in the game, and then responding with his own self-assessment as well as his take on her odds. In almost every way, seeing Joe in his natural Survivor habitat is the exact opposite sensation of seeing Keith Nale, Ghost of Koh Rong — unless Joe is one of those overly friendly, way-too-excited ghosts, like Casper, and not the guy from True Detective. Joe is the life of the party at Bayon, somehow everywhere no matter where I look. He’s like the captain of sports throwing the biggest rager his small town has ever seen, and he’s going around from patron to patron making sure everyone’s having a blast. When I see him two days earlier at Ponderosa, on the eve of Survivor: Cambodia — Second Chance, Joe bounces and bubbles a little bit less, but he still looks cool, calm and collected. “It’s cool, calm and collective,” he corrects me. “There’s a V in there. It’s very important. Don’t forget the V.” Indeed, the Three Cs are not the only remnant from his season that have traveled with Joe from Nicaragua to Cambodia. The 26-year-old jewelry designer and No Collar heartthrob hails from Survivor: Worlds Apart, the show’s 30th season, and the one that wrapped up on the same night Joe and 19 other Survivors were selected to start a new million-dollar mission. Joe, like Spencer Bledsoe and Kelly Wiglesworth, did not have much to worry about in terms of the Second Chance vote; he was as locked and loaded as they come. “I was pretty confident going into it,” he tells me, grinning big, respecting my request to not be humble or cagey with his assessment of his chances. “Most of my cast was like, ‘Hey, you know you’re going back. You know you’re a shoo-in.’ But there’s still a part of you that’s like, ‘Don’t get your hopes up.'” But Joe knew. Everyone knew. Heck, several minutes of the Worlds Apart finale were dedicated to the impossibly amazing Joe, actually nicknamed Joey Amazing by his cast. The cast itself, of course, has a nickname of its own: The Dirty 30, one of the tightest groups of Survivors in the history of the show, and a group that Joe wanted to spend his final few days of freedom with ahead of his next adventure. “I was just trying to focus on 30,” he says. “I was trying to enjoy the moment with everybody. You’re already planning and plotting and thinking about the future, but at the same time, you want to be present with everybody and enjoy it. It’s only going to happen once.” Turns out, it’ll happen twice. “Yeah,” he says, laughing, “but only once with those people, and I love them all!” He certainly does; the Dirty 30’s internal love affair is the kind of thing you read about in great romantic epics, a quantum entanglement that causes nations to go to war with one another. But that was last week. Now, Joe says goodbye to the Dirty 30 — for now, at least — and looks toward starting a new fling with the Fun 31. (NOTE TO EVERYONE: WE ARE NOT ACTUALLY CALLING THEM THAT.) To that end, Joe looks out at his fellow Second Chancers on the beach of Ponderosa, and sees only one familiar face from his season — but he already feels right at home. The fan in my cabana buzzes in shirtless Joe’s face, whipping wind into the flowing hair his fans adore so much, as he smiles and declares: “I feel great. I feel like this is my season to lose.” ON THE NEXT PAGE: Why Joey Feels Amazing



Picture Joe Anglim before the beach, before the challenges, before — if you can manage it — the hair. He was once like you and me… okay, not exactly like you and me, but a mere mortal all the same. When he was a kid, Joe would plop down on his couch every Wednesday or Thursday night, depending on the era, to watch Survivor with his family. He was once the guy in his college dorm converting his friends to the Survivor cause, convincing them that the show “with that naked guy” is, yes, still on. Now, not only has that young Survivor nerd fulfilled his dream as one of the most widely adored participants on the show’s landmark 30th season, he’s also one of the rare contestants to compete in back-to-back seasons — going up against the woman who “that naked guy” won against all those seasons ago, for one thing. “This is still pretty surreal,” Joe tells me about playing on only the third full all-stars season in the show’s history. “It’s still pretty crazy. The first time, I thought to myself, ‘I cannot wait to play Survivor. I’m going to go out there, do my best, try to win, have the confidence to win.’ You can’t win unless you think you’re going to win. But then, you just…” He shakes his head in palpable disbelief, the goofy grin of a legitimate Survivor geek smushed up against his face. “I just didn’t realize it would be this much bigger and crazier. It’s pretty cool.” But speaking of pretty cool, that’s what Joe is trying to latch onto: Rodney Lavoie Jr.’s Three Cs. He’s calm, too, and he’s part of the collective of Second Chancers competing for the Sole Survivor title, all of them with chips on their shoulders of varying degrees of size and age. Joey Amazing is the new hotness, like Malcolm Freberg and Spencer before him, but he does not feel like he stands out in a sea of veterans — and that’s one of the big reasons why he feels so confident walking into the new game. “I feel like this is the scenario I needed the first time,” he says. “The vibes are good from people. I think I’m in a really good spot. I’m surrounded by other threats. There are some very strategic threats and some very big physical threats. I’m with an older crowd and a younger crowd. It’s a good mix.” Joe looks out at the field and does not see himself standing out too much from the rest of the pack — and he certainly hopes that people see him the same way. “I’m hoping these people don’t have any pre-game ideas about me, since I just came off of my season,” he says. “Hopefully no one is saying, ‘I don’t like Joe. I don’t trust Joe. We need to get rid of Joe.'” Already, Joe has designs on erasing any fears people have toward him, by correcting what he feels was one of his biggest mistakes the first time. “I need to tone everything down and listen more than speak,” he says. “I easily speak my mind. I call it how I see it. Last season, in pre-challenge situations, I was the one going, ‘We need to do this, this, and this. We need to attack that this way.’ It makes me look like I know what I’m doing, which puts a bigger target on my back. ‘Oh, he’s smarter than he needs to be.’ This time, I’ll listen more. I’ll take more of a backseat.” He’s not in the backseat when I see him at Bayon; no, he’s actively driving around the camp, going from corner to corner, checking in with each and every single person on the beach — and I am only there for about 40 minutes, all told. But it speaks to what Joe wants, which is to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, to a point. “It’s interesting watching who smiles at who, who is friendlier with who,” he says, referring to his observations of the people at Ponderosa. “It’s all pre-game stuff, but it’s interesting. You have to take things with a grain of salt.” Joe takes more then a grain of salt when it comes to Kass, the woman who told me she sees Joe leaving early due to his age difference with the rest of the cast, most of whom are 30 years or older — the same concern she expresses to him right there on Bayon beach, with all the nonchalance one would expect from the Cagayan Chaos Queen. And yet, Joe does not rule her out as a possible partner. “I have gotten the vibe from the past that Kass isn’t well liked or well-received, from her other cast mates,” he says. “But I’ve thought about everyone. Everyone’s a double-edged sword. You can work with anybody, if they want to work with you.” Joey Amazing and Chaos Kass would make for an unlikely partnership, but then again, the Worlds Apart fan-favorite is looking to make a little bit of unlikely mischief this time. ON THE NEXT PAGE: Joe Means Business

People call him Joey Amazing for a reason. A lot of reasons, really, and not just the movie star looks or his insane challenge performance skills. He’s also an affable guy, always wearing a friendly face, even when he has a little bit of a nasty streak in his heart. In fact, that nastiness might come out here in Cambodia more than ever before. Joe tells me that he’s considering taking a cue from the Dirty 30 nickname, rolling up his sleeves and presenting himself in a little bit of a darker light than we saw in Worlds Apart. “Do I change my strategy? Should I be the same kind of person?” he tells me about the kinds of questions he’s asked himself ahead of the new game. “Do I be mean? Should I be a little rough around the edges?” Joe paints a clearer picture of what “mean” means: “I feel like I was myself last time, and that’s really all you can be. You are who you are out there. You’re stripped of everything and your true colors come out. But I was still too nice, and I didn’t have to be too nice. It definitely hurt me.” As a for instance of what Joey Antagonistic might look like, he points to the early portion of his first season, and the early conflicts that arose between himself and Vince Sly, the truth-seeking people-hugger who wanted a louder voice in their No Collar tribe’s decision making process. “It was a battle between me and Vince in the beginning,” he recalls, “not for leadership in the tribe — but I did feel like every tribe needs a leader, whether you want to be or not, and I had the most survival skills. I felt I had that. I’ve played team sports all my life.” That was an instance of Joe sticking to his guns and making sure his voice was the one that was heard, not one that broke or bended for anyone else. And that’s the approach that Joe is considering taking right now. “This time, I’ll still be nice and still be myself,” he says, “but there will be a different level of having my walls up and not letting people in.” Except one person has already scaled the walls and infiltrated this plan: Shirin Oskooi, the only other person from Joe’s home season on the Second Chance cast. When I spoke with her an hour or two earlier, Shirin correctly called that Joe was considering playing a darker game than he played the first time. “I think Joe’s knee-jerk reaction to my season is that meanness prevailed, and he’s thinking, ‘I was too nice; now I’ll have to be mean,'” she said. “He’ll have a little bit of nastiness come out of him. He’ll try to be something he’s not.” Shirin’s words are cutting for a few reasons — one, because she’s right, not just that Joe is considering a heel turn, but that he’s not even sure he can pull off the act. “It’s a tricky one,” he sighs. “That’s where the game and the personal stuff becomes a fuzzy line.” The other piece is that Shirin knows Joe well enough to accurately predict where his head is at — and it’s this kind of ability, this closeness between the two Worlds Apart veterans, that makes Joe both excited and nervous at the same time. “It’s nice having Shirin here. She really enjoys the game. I hope I get to work with her, but it’s a two-way street,” he says. “She won’t take me to the end. She might say so, but…” He shakes his head and makes a face that all but screams: “NOPE.” “She’s smart,” he continues. “She can argue a good case. It’s just a different season. I’m hoping she’s in my boat. I’m hoping we can work together. But you really don’t know. If everyone’s voting me out, she’ll join the majority and vote me out.” Shirin represents one aspect of Joe’s past that made the journey from Worlds Apart to Second Chance, but there’s other kinds of history here as well — and it’s the kind of history he knows he can’t erase. ON THE FINAL PAGE: The Not-So-Amazing News