Courtney Yates entered the game of Survivor in a blaze of glory, showcasing the New York City snark and sarcasm that we would come to love and appreciate in every way possible.

As an audience we were fortunate to watch Courtney play the game twice, once in China and again in Heroes Vs. Villains. We saw her in China where she made it all the way to the final tribal council, and again in Heroes Vs. Villains where she made up half of my favorite alliance of all time.

“This is what we get for being bitchesssssssss.”

I reached out to Courtney regarding her favorite moments from the history of Survivor. She replied with five moments, ones that made her laugh and moment that made her smile and moments that made her roll her eyes. Here they are in all their glory yet in no particular order.

Stephen Fishbach’s Mathematical Immunity

It’s the 12th episode of Survivor Tocantins, and the Forza tribe is down to six members. We move onto the immunity challenge, which is an obstacle course consisting of digging under a log, crossing a balance beam, and going under a rope crawl. As if that wasn’t enough, the players then had to run across a field to a spinning series of math symbols. They would have to memorize the symbols, traverse back across the obstacle course and then use those symbols in the correct order to solve a math equation. First one to memorize the symbols and solve the equation correctly would win immunity.

Simple right?

As the challenge goes on, it is apparent that Stephen is struggling with the physical aspect of the obstacle course. But being Survivor, it doesn’t take just physical muscle to pull out a victory.

First, Stephen struggles with digging under the log, nearly being the last one under.

Secondly he fails to cross the balance beam three times.

“SHHHHH”

Stephen then stands at the end of the course for minutes and studies the various numbers.

People are racing back and forth, but Stephen stands and memorizes.

He then makes his way back to the beginning and starts to complete the board, all in one go.

It comes down to Stephen vs. JT in the last seconds of the challenge but ultimately it is Stephen, winning immunity for himself and guaranteeing himself safety at tribal council.

Before Jeff gives the necklace to Stephen, he asks how he managed to win and this is one of Courtney’s favorite moments.

“Stephen, I gotta ask you. You memorized all 10 symbols in one pass….”

“Well, I divided; I made each symbol be a number. So I had + is 1 and ÷ is four, X is 3. And I know the brain can remember a 7 digit number, cause that’s why phone numbers are 7 digits. So I divided it into two numbers…and I uhh just remembered those two numbers.”

As he is explaining his brilliant rationale, Erinn and Taj can only look on with bewildered amusement.

“Who is this jackass?”

Due to his mathematical thinking, Stephen wins himself immunity. Impressing us all in the process.

The Departure of Aaron & James

Another one of Courtney’s favorite moments happened on the 5th episode of Survivor China. In the beginning of the episode, the Fei Long and Zhan Hu tribes were visited by locals, who brought with them a private note. Both tribes were expecting treemail for the upcoming reward challenge.

Instead however, we saw one of the worst twists that the game had every introduced. Both tribes were given the ability to select and kidnap two tribe members from the opposing team. It was effectively a tribe switch, only except this time two players were selected and put immediately into the minority on the opposite tribe.

[Zhan Hu didn’t recognize this and instead thought they were going to be gaining two and losing none, but that’s another story.]

Anyway, using common sense both tribes selected two players that they knew they would be able to vote out whenever they want to. Zhan Hu would go on to do just that in the same episode with Aaron. Zhan Hu had figured that the best way to gain the advantage over Fei Long was to capture their two strongest athletes, which was an obvious decision.

Fei Long decides to capture Sherea and Frosti, and the two of them exchange their yellow buffs for red.

But to Courtney, the funniest thing is not the twist, nor the selection of James and Aaron to go to Zhan Hu. To her the funniest thing was the reaction of Jean-Robert once he understood the twist.

“I can’t stand it! We’re losing our two strongest warriors!”

Courtney and James jump right into mocking him.

“I thought you were our strongest warrior.” – Courtney

“Yeah, you Jean-Robert” – James

To which, he has no come back.

The American Immunity Idol

Another amazing moment brought to us by Courtney happened in episode 8 of Survivor China. The tribe is down to 9 members, and a very special reward challenge is about take place. Split into two teams, the players battle it out with the goal of sinking the other tribe’s boat, one of which so happens to contain Courtney.

Courtney is not on the winning side of the challenge, but the challenge itself is not the funny part, instead it’s what happens at the reward itself that makes her smile. Todd, Amanda, James and Jean-Robert head off to a feast and eat and drink all night. As part of the reward, they receive a clue about the location of the hidden immunity idol. James already has both of them in his possession and pretty much everyone except Jean-Robert knows this.

While discussing the clue and how to get rid of it, we are privileged to see one of Jean-Robert’s finest moments. By the way, Jean-Robert is pretty much slurring his words at this point, having had a lot of wine to drink.

“I did not know that there was an American Immunity Idol..” – Jean-Robert

Todd cuts him off right away with a perfect deadpan.

“American.Immunity.Idol. Cool……, that’s great. American Immunity Idol.” – Todd

In the words of Courtney, it’s just “very Todd”.

Sandra Vs. The Morgan Tribe’s Shelter

This is a truly classic moment in Survivor history, and I’ve found that it is nearly impossible to watch this scene without laughing.

It’s episode two of the Pearl Islands and Drake has just won the first reward challenge. A recurring reward during the tribal stage of the game was that the winning tribe would send one member to loot one item from the losing tribe’s camp. Winning the challenge, Drake sends their nicest and most diplomatic member to steal something from Morgan’s camp.

Enter: our hero.

Sandra initially wants to take Morgan’s water jug, but cannot find it.

Unable to find it, and much to the dismay of the Morgan tribe, Sandra tells them that she is going to take the tarp off of their shelter.

Not happy, the Morgan’s tell her that if she wants the tarp, she will have to take it down herself. So what does Sandra do? Does she say forget it and goes to look for another item to take? Nope. She takes the tarp and destroys their whole shelter during the process.

“All right you guys sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite and no hard feelings. See you tomorrow at the challenge.”

Boston Rob’s Colon Cleanse

It’s the fourth episode of Survivor Redemption Island and Boston Rob is very wary of one of his tribe members and of their intentions.

No, not you

Her

See, Kristina was outside of the main alliance and was therefore by default against Boston Rob. Kristina had played a hidden immunity idol at the second tribal council thinking she was going home. But instead Matt was sent to Redemption Island for the third time. This means that the idol was to be re-hidden into the game, at their beach.

With Kristina and Phillip gone to watch the Redemption Island Duel and with a clue to the idol’s relocation, Rob comes up with a brilliant strategy in order to get some alone time on Ometepe’s beach to search.

What’s that brilliant strategy you say?

“I am not really employing any strategy. I’m voting for Colleen today. I love her, she’s cute, adorable and nice to look at and fun to have around, but she’s the first in a long list of alphabetical order and she won’t get another vote from me unless she pisses me off or something. But it’s her turn today, being the first… alphabetical order.”

Nice try, but no. Knowing that he needs his tribe mates to leave camp so he can search, Boston Rob decides to organize a leisure activity to distract everyone. He calls it their “Royal Treatment” He plans on setting up the game down on the beach, away from camp so as to give him the space he needs.

But then he questions, how is he supposed to then leave this game that he’s organized so that he can go back to camp and search?

Well, prior to the beach game being played he starts to lay the groundwork that he’s having some “stomach issues”

Boston Rob sets up their day of leisure far down on the beach.

Once they are comfortable and Grant is in the water, Rob uses his bowels as an excuse to sprint back to camp to search for the idol.

“This poop is gonna be outta me like a freakin’ 747 man.”

After 15 minutes of being gone his tribe starts to question his disappearance.

But his ploy has worked out and Boston Rob finally finds the hidden immunity idol.

He returns to his tribe’s “leisure activity” and continues along with his ploy about his bowel distress.

“How did it go?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

The tribe goes on to play their beach games, none the wiser that Boston Rob just fooled them with his colon.

Later on in the game when Rob finds another clue to the idol which he already has, what does he do? He throws it in the volcano, cause why not?

Thank you Courtney for sharing your favorite moments from the show! It was a lot of fun to revisit and laugh along.

@Survivorquotesx

12/09/18