Survivor 46 star David Jelinsky — who simply went by “Jelinsky” on the beloved competition series — had a rather short stint in Fiji, becoming the first boot of the Emmy Award-winning show’s newest season after failing not once, not twice, but three times. Yikes!
After the Yanu tribe — consisting of Jelinsky, Q Burdette, Bhanu Gopal, Jess Chong, Kenzie Petty, and Tiffany Nicole Ervin — lost the marooning challenge, they were required to complete the “Sweat” portion of the “Savvy or Sweat” challenge, all in an attempt to earn their supplies for the season: A pot, a flint, a machete, and more. Jelinsky and Q volunteered to complete the task on behalf of the tribe, but after a few hours, Jelinsky decided to call it quits.
Giving up on the “Savvy or Sweat” challenge — where he and Q were required to fill massive barrels to the brim with water, scooping it up from the ocean in relatively small buckets with holes in them — this was the beginning of the end for the 22-year-old. Losing a challenge to Tevin Davis and Maria Shrime Gonzalez shortly afterwards — where he ultimately lost his vote once and for all — as well as failing to complete the puzzle during the immunity challenge, Jelinsky was deemed the weakest link of his tribe, ultimately getting voted out unanimously at the first Tribal Council of Survivor 46.
Longtime Survivor writer and reporter Mike Bloom was actually on-site for the first few days of the competition, and although Jelinsky’s journey sounds as horrible as could be, Bloom confirmed that the Las Vegas, Nevada native experienced even more trials and tribulations than what made it onto our television screens.
What were these additional struggles exactly? Keep scrolling to see for yourself…
In a post shared via X — formerly known as Twitter — Bloom revealed that Jelinsky endured far more on the shores of Fiji than the show gave him credit for:
“#Survivor Believe it or not, even MORE stuff happened to Jelinsky that didn’t make the edit. He explained at [Tribal Council] that he cut his feet up on the ‘Sweat’ task, discovered he was allergic to coconut, lost his water bottle, and got pinched by a crab. As he put it, ‘It seems to be a theme for Jelinsky for everything to go the wrong way.’”
Despite going out first, Jelinsky was a “legendary” first boot nonetheless, sure making a splash on Survivor 46. Could we see him return for a Second Chance or Game Changers season? Only time will tell…
While we are devastated that we will not see the slot machine salesman try his luck at the title of “Sole Survivor” and the million-dollar cash prize anymore, to see who is ultimately crowned the champion, catch brand new episodes of Survivor 46 every Wednesday evening at 8pm ET/PT on CBS.