I’m really not a fan of Survivor.  But I caught the tail end of tonight’s episode and saw something truly ridiculous.

There were ten people at tribal council, the ending segment of each episode in which someone gets voted off the island.  Or continent.  Or wherever they are.

Anyway, there were 10 castaways at council, and through an odd coincidence, the vote ended in a 5-5 tie.  For those who are waiting to watch the episode later, there’s a partial spoiler after the jump. You’d think the producers would have a clever way of handling this.  Apparently, you’d think wrong.

Host Jeff Probst announces that in the event of a tie, everyone votes again, except for the castaways involved in the tie.  In this case, those two castaways were Laura and Natalie.

Wait a second, I think to myself: you’ve got ten people, five of whom voted for Laura and five of whom voted for Natalie.  We already know that Laura and Natalie didn’t vote for themselves.  (I don’t think you’re even allowed to vote for yourself.)

So unless someone suddenly changes their mind, you’d expect the results of the remaining eight votes to be the same.

In this case, oddly enough, one castaway actually voted differently the second time around, causing the result to be 5-3.  Basically, the producers got lucky.

What would have happened if there was a second tie?  Clearly the producers knew going in (since they see who’s getting voted for) that it wasn’t going to happen.

But you always need to have a good Plan B, and theirs should have been a lot better than that.