Survivor: Caramoan

Brenda Lowe, Dawn Meehan and the Caramoan teeth request

At the Survivor: Caramoan Final Tribal Council, broadcast 12 May 2013, juror Brenda Lowe asked Dawn Meehan to take out her false teeth in front of the jury. Meehan did. Earlier in the season Lowe had gone into the water to recover the retainer holding those teeth. Lowe did not vote for her.

Confirmed The Final Tribal Council exchange and the rescue that set it up are both documented and were broadcast. What Meehan has said about her own state after the season rests on secondary reporting, and nothing in the record connects the two.

Brenda Lowe Brenda Lowe Dawn Meehan Dawn Meehan

What the record shows

  • Confirmed Meehan lost the retainer holding her false teeth in the water during Survivor: Caramoan and talked about quitting over it. Lowe went in after the retainer and brought it back.
  • Confirmed At the Final Tribal Council, Lowe returned to that rescue and asked Meehan to take out her false teeth in front of the jury. Meehan did so.
  • Confirmed Lowe framed the request around how she would vote. The jury then gave John Cochran all eight votes. Meehan finished as runner-up with zero.
  • Confirmed In a Hollywood Reporter interview published three days before the finale aired, Lowe said recovering the retainer had made her close to Meehan.
  • Confirmed A contemporaneous True Dork Times finale recap wrote that Lowe "exacted her vengeance at the final Tribal Council in the most demeaning manner possible."
  • Unverified TheThings reported that Meehan told Entertainment Weekly in 2020 she had a breakdown after the season and was taken to a hospital in Manila. The Entertainment Weekly original was not located, so that quote rests on secondary reporting.
  • Unverified No source connects the Final Tribal Council request to that hospital account. The breakdown is described as following the season, and nothing establishes a cause.

What happened at the Final Tribal Council

The Survivor: Caramoan finale aired on 12 May 2013. Brenda Lowe, voted out on day 36 and sitting on the jury, used her turn to go back to something that had happened weeks earlier in the game. She asked Dawn Meehan to take out her false teeth in front of the jury, and she tied the request to how she was going to vote. Meehan took them out.

Meehan complied. That word matters, because it is the difference between what the broadcast shows and what people remember. Nobody physically compelled her, and no producer intervened. A juror asked, a finalist answered, and eight people watched.

The retainer in the water

Earlier in the season Meehan lost the retainer holding her false teeth while in the water. She talked about quitting the game over it. Lowe went in after it and recovered it, and for a while that was the story: the moment two players from opposite ends of the tribe got close.

Lowe said as much herself. In a Hollywood Reporter interview published on 9 May 2013, three days before the finale aired and after her own vote-out had already broadcast, she described the rescue as the thing that made her close to Meehan. Read in order, that interview lands strangely. She said it publicly before viewers had seen what she did with the same memory at Tribal Council.

Lowe still did not vote for her

This is the part that gets dropped from most retellings. The request did not change the vote. John Cochran took all eight jury votes in the Caramoan final. Meehan finished second with zero, and Sherri Biethman finished third with zero.

A contemporaneous recap at True Dork Times put it plainly, writing that Lowe "exacted her vengeance at the final Tribal Council in the most demeaning manner possible." That is a recapper's characterisation, written the night it aired, not a finding by anyone. It is quoted here because it shows the reaction was immediate and not a later reinterpretation by fans.

What is not established

Meehan has been quoted describing a breakdown after season 26 and a trip to a hospital in Manila. The quote is credited to a 2020 Entertainment Weekly interview, and it was read here only in secondary reporting at TheThings. The Entertainment Weekly original was not located, so treat the wording as second-hand.

More importantly, nothing links that account to the teeth request. The description is of the season, not of one exchange, and no source draws a line between them. Anyone connecting the two is guessing.

There was also no aftermath in any formal sense. No complaint, no network finding, no disciplinary action and no legal proceeding followed. This was a broadcast moment on a competition show, and it has stayed exactly that in the record.

People in this story

Questions people ask

What did Brenda Lowe ask Dawn Meehan to do at the Final Tribal Council?
She asked Meehan to take out her false teeth in front of the Caramoan jury, tying the request to how she would vote. Meehan did so. The finale aired on 12 May 2013.
Why did Dawn Meehan have false teeth on Survivor?
She wore a retainer that held false teeth. She lost it in the water during Survivor: Caramoan and talked about quitting the game over it before Brenda Lowe recovered it.
Did Brenda Lowe vote for Dawn Meehan after that?
No. John Cochran took all eight jury votes in the Caramoan final. Meehan finished as runner-up with zero votes, and so did third-place finisher Sherri Biethman.
Had Brenda Lowe and Dawn Meehan been close?
Lowe said so. In a Hollywood Reporter interview published on 9 May 2013, she described recovering the retainer as the thing that made her close to Meehan. Meehan later voted her out.
Did the Final Tribal Council moment cause Dawn Meehan's breakdown?
No source establishes that. Meehan has been quoted describing a breakdown after the season and a hospital trip in Manila, and the account refers to the season rather than to any single exchange.

Sources

Checked on 2026-07-26. If something here is wrong or out of date, we want to know: get in touch.