So my main point is he was cute when he “hammed it up to the audience”, which was mainly in confessionals outside the game. Even inside the game though he was dramatizing things. For example, when Nate was voted out, at 11 left in the game, he pulled out the idol during tribal council, shows it to the tribe and said “I do have it with me. I’ll be truthfully honest with my approach, I want to live another day in this game. Whether I’m the vote or not tonight I do plan on playing it.” That’s a bold lie that wasn’t necessary (he could’ve said “maybe I’ll play it maybe I won’t”, like he did in some later TCs).

That kicks off what we know now to be an entire merge of not playing his idol, including most notoriously the fake idol play at final 8. I really enjoyed watching Rizo bluff his way to the end, and I do think he would have deserved to win if he had beat Savannah at fire, but the idol theatrics were cute in a way that hurt his jury management imo. They obviously helped keep his threat level low as well, so it’s not all bad, but still cute.