If at first you do not succeed, try, try, try again. Rob Antonson hilariously attempted to quit Survivor 51 last week by voting himself out of the game. When that didn’t work, he moved on to plan B.

Rob began this week’s episode by explaining that, “I didn’t want to just quit. I feel like just quitting is ruining the game. If you’re going out for a medical reason, that’s totally different.”

Which explains why Rob suddenly started complaining about a pain in his foot. He asked to see the Survivor medical team to have it assessed. But when Dr. Barry cleared Rob to continue, only finding evidence of a “tiny cut,” the player decided to remove himself from the game — citing a fear of infection… even though multiple players (like Lewis with his mangled hands from Exile Island, or Patt with her abrasion-filled shoulder) have far worse all over their bodies.

Jeff Probst showed little emotion onscreen when he informed Rob’s Savu tribemates that the Rhode Islander was taking himself out of the game, but what does he himself make of the situation? The host sheds a little light on his thinking, courtesy of his weekly Field Notes post on Instagram.

“Rob’s decision to voluntarily leave the game caught me off guard,” Probst says in the post. “He had said in an interview that he stepped on something in the ocean, but never once asked for medical to check him out. That’s unusual as we check in on the players quite frequently.”

The host and showrunner then gets into the meeting between player, doctor, and host back at camp.

“When we finally had Dr. Barry give him an examination at camp, Dr. Barry couldn’t find anything wrong with Rob. To be clear, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t in pain. It only means we couldn’t find any medical evidence of anything wrong.”

“Rob looked and sounded emotionally exhausted, which can happen to the strongest of humans. Survivor humbles you very quickly and can get you in a variety of ways. Days four, five and six are often VERY tough for players. This is a threshold point that you have to get past. If you can find a way through the desire to give up, you almost always find that second wind.”

The host then connects the same dots that all the viewers also connected: “Can’t help but also piece this together with the previous Tribal Council where it appeared Rob wanted to vote himself out. Is there a connection?”

Rob’s Savu tribemates sure believe so. Every single one of them interviewed on camera during the episode questioned the legitimacy of Rob’s foot injury.

Said one player: “My mom named me Ori, not Stupid. You’ve been fine for the past 48 hours, but the day things don’t go your way, now, all of a sudden it’s a medical issue. My opinion is Rob is looking for an easy way out.”

Sums up Probst: “Speculation from Rob’s tribemates was very clear — they believe he engineered a quit.”

Rob’s quit also put his teammates in an immediate hole.

“This is a MASSIVE LOSS for the Savu tribe,” Probst writes. “Because anytime you lose a tribemember, you increase your odds of being voted out because you have one less tribemember. And in this case, they didn’t do anything wrong.”

Savu’s downsizing was not over, as Carter Krull would later choose to mutiny over to the Toka tribe, after finding himself suddenly on the wrong side of the numbers. It was another move that surprised the host.

“We didn’t really think a mutiny was likely,” Probst explains. “We just put it in the game as a bookend to the initial marooning, where they spent time together. It was also there as a reminder that in the Open Era we really do mean anything, including a small little moment from the past, is possible.”

Probst also says he and producers would have been fine no matter what Carter and fellow possible mutineer Devin Way decided.

“We never care what a player does with any twist or advantage. All we want to do is pose the opportunity. When I got the call that Carter had mutinied I was shocked. The last time this happened was in 2006 during season 13 when Jonathan Penner and Candice Woodcock-Cody mutinied. Even back then I thought this is a once in a series moment. Wrong again.”

Hey, at least Carter didn’t quit!

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