On “Survivor”, there are a couple of what we might call non-standard ejections, meaning somebody leaves in a manner other than being voted out. It can be a quit, it can be being pulled for medical reasons, it can even be kissing Jeff Probst (I’m looking at you, Sarah Dawson of “Survivor Philippines”). And yet, 31 seasons into a show’s run, we have a new method of non-standard ejections.
Not too surprisingly, our non-standard ejection begins in a non-standard way. We get our usual nature-based establishing shot, but rather than being a cute baby monkey, we get a velociraptor. Yes, “Jurassic Park” is evidently located in Cambodia, as a velociraptor is what brings us to Ta Keo. The preview for this episode indicated this would be another medical evacuation (hence my belief that Keith would be gone, since he’s the one most likely to have a medical emergency) but the light of the S.S. Probst appearing without any screams of anguish most likely means something different. Sure enough, Probst wakes up Terry and gives him some devastating news: Terry’s son has been hospitalized with a heard condition, and both the doctor and Terry’s wife think Terry needs to come home immediately. Terry agrees, has a tearful goodbye with the rest of Ta Keo, and sails off. Kass gets emotional over the whole thing, and Keith tries to use the whole thing to bond the new Ta Keo alliance together, in a “Win it for Terry” sort of thing. Can’t really fault him the logic.
This was a really unexpected twist on the game, and therefore exciting to watch. Don’t get me wrong: I feel terrible for Terry. To hear that your child is hurt, and to be so far from home, is just devastating. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, even for my own entertainment. Even so, there is a certain amount of entertainment value here, if only for the “We’ve Never Seen This Before” value. I like it in the sense of good tv, but I really would much rather it hadn’t happened. I am glad that Terry’s son is ok, and I certainly understand why Terry left. I don’t think there was any other decision he could have made. I’m certainly saddened at the way Terry left, but as to his actual leaving? Not so much. I am a fan of Terry’s from way back, and he’d obviously developed a little, since he made at least ONE social play this time around. That said, his number was coming up, and it would have gotten annoying for the “Oblivious Terry” storyline to be dragged out. Also, while I still think Terry is a nice guy, and would love to hang out with him, I’ll admit that without the “Underdog” story he had on “Survivor Exile Island”, he wasn’t nearly as engaging. Engaging or not, though, he didn’t deserve to go out the way he did. He’d earned the right to be voted out properly. I really, really wish this hadn’t happened to him.
And that was all before the opening credits, folks. You KNOW we’re in for a crazy episode this time around.
Our tribes meet up the next day, and there’s more appropriate mourning for the loss of Terry. We’re then told that it’s time for another tribe swap, once again going back to Bayon vs. Ta Keo. It’s random, though this time pulling from round boxes instead of square ones. SO different, right? There’s less to talk about this time, as the tribe division is fairly even, in terms of challenge ability. Ta Keo consists of Kass, Abi-Maria, Ciera, Kelly, Savage, Woo, and Spencer, while Bayon consists of Stephen, Jeremy, Kimmi, Kelley, Joe, Keith, and Tasha. One could argue that the old tribe division is worth noting as old bacon has an advantage on Bayon, and old Ta Keo have an advantage at Ta Keo, but I stand by what I said before about the old Ta Keo being too fractured to pull anything together at this point. The old Ta Keo really has an advantage nowhere. Our “New Tribe” banter does give us one interesting note, as Kass reverses her character development a bit. She’s been really good this season about playing nice and low key, yet the first thing she does is bring up her anti-Spencer vendetta this time around. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand that the two have animosity, but you don’t need to bring it up, Kass! Geez, you were doing so well!
Our reward challenge comes to us from “Survivor One World”, though the concept comes from “Survivor Fiji”. One member of each tribe goes down a slip-and-slide, retrieving a ring along the way. Once at the end, those members must try and land the ring on a pole, scoring a point. The first tribe to three points wins a picnic lunch and a better chance to bond. Well worth playing for, I just wish the playing for happened at a better challenge. I’ve said before and will say again that this challenge has always felt underwhelming to me, just too simple a contest for the pre-merge.
Savage takes on Jeremy, and Jeremy wins. Not too exciting a match. Then Stephen takes on Kass, and my heart breaks. My two favorite players this season, squaring off against each other! It’s so horrible! As one might expect, Stephen fails at anything challenge-related, tying the score at one-one. Jeremy gives Stephen a hard time, telling him he needs to give his all in challenges. The goober-edit for Stephen continues. Next up, we have the battle of the obnoxious people, as Kimmi takes on Abi-Maria. Now, since Abi-Maria ALSO sucks at anything challenge-related, you’d think this would be an easy win for Kimmi, but Kimmi is about to get her heart broken. In what I can only imagine is a devastating moment, her ring bounces on and then off of her pole, and Abi-Maria of all people wins the round. You know you’ve got problems when it’s Abi-Maria who beats you. Bayon needs a win here to tie the score, so of course they send in St. Joe. Ta Keo puts up Woo against him, which is a decent matchup, but nobody beats St. Joe. We end with a battle of the Kell(e)y’s, as Wiglesworth takes on Wentworth. It’s tight, but Kelly pulls it out, giving Ta Keo victory.
The victory celebration at Ta Keo is short-lived, though, as now Spencer must talk with Kass. To say it comes across as a little stilted may be the understatement of the millennium. Not content with undoing her character development once, Kass has to go on a rant about how much she can’t stand Spencer. She’s able to bond with most everyone else, but Spencer just seems to be a block with her. As it is so painfully obvious that the two don’t get along, it gets exploited by Savage. Kass is original Bayon, so Savage wants to work with her, and knows she’s a pretty sure bet if the vote is Spencer, so he wants to blindside Spencer. I’ll be damned, Savage actually changed up his game! Praise your respective deities, the man can blindside! Also, FINALLY someone acknowledges that Spencer is a threat who needs to be taken out, even if we do get the requisite “Spencer is such a great guy” confessional as well. There’s one flaw in Savage’s plan, though. There needs to be a fall person for this plan. Naturally, since Kelly is the other person outside the alliance, the lie to Spencer is that Kelly goes, right? Nope, for some reason Savage thinks it’s a good idea to say that Ciera is the one to go. Not a HORRIBLE plan, but still with the big drawback of potentially offending one of your closest allies.
Shock of all shocks, the plan offends one of Savages closest allies. For some strange, inexplicable reason, Ciera is not at all happy with the idea of being the fall vote. Granted she doesn’t think she’s going home, but she rightly points out that Savage going for her rather than a more obvious target (Kelly) shows what Savage thinks of her and her game. Great job there, Savage!
All this is not to say that peace and love prevail at Bayon, of course. No, Kelley would seem to be the obvious target, as the only original Ta Keo to end up there, but Joe of course is none too happy, having just made an alliance with this lady. Determined to save his new alliance, Joe decides that the only option to save Kelley is to get the tribe to vote out Kimmi based on strength. Of course, Kelley could just be saved by that idol she has in her pocket, but nope! Joe has to stick his neck out on the line.
Joe pulls aside Stephen and Tasha, and says those infamous words “I love Kimmi, but…” Those words never herald anything good, and your more genre-savvy contestants realize this. So, naturally, Stephen calls foul on Joe, correctly deducing that Joe is no longer a part of the whole “Bayon Strong” thing. Stephen tries to convince Jeremy that Joe has flipped, and therefore needs to be blindsided, but Jeremy is having none of it. I get Jeremy’s viewpoint in this case, since he wants to prevent himself being seen as the biggest threat this time around, but here, he’s blinding himself to the truth. There’s other physical threats still in the game, and getting rid of Joe now prevents his alliance coming together. Again, I get Jeremy’s argument, but he needs to at least CONSIDER other options. Being inflexible in this game is never a good thing.
Plus, Jeremy’s inflexibility has reduced poor Stephen to tears. While maybe not as emotionally impactful as some other breakdowns we’ve seen this season, especially given that he had the misfortune to break down the same episode as Terry’s son getting hospitalized, it still gets to you. Given that Stephen’s been playing his heart out this time around, yet is still getting the goober edit, you can understand why he’d be upset. Poor guy.
Well, enough about that, onto the challenge! As this season honors seasons past, it’s only fitting that we get staple challenges coming back, in this case the gross food challenge! Nothing much to say beyond that, it’s a gross food challenge. There are two things I really like about this one, though. First of all, there are two people competing for each tribe in the early rounds. I can’t say that it adds much, but it’s at least a change from the usual gross food challenge format. It also puts more pressure on each individual, if one person succeeds in finishing their food, but the other does not. The other thing I like? History repeating. Yes, much like the magic of Gervase having to eat Butod again on “Survivor Blood vs. Water”, Kimmi is once again faced with eating a brain, though in this case a pig brain rather than a cow brain. Needless to say, Woo wins the round.
In the end, Ta Keo loses, largely due to the questionable decision to put Kass on the last round, when she’d lost her previous round. Sure enough, she can’t swallow a Balut, and Ta Keo must face Tribal Council, meaning Keith is the only person left in the game never to attend thus far. On our way to commercial, we get Kass throwing Spencer’s famous words back at him, saying “Spencer: Zero Chance of Winning the Game”. I’m sure Spencer is DEFINITELY going tonight!
Wait, did we just hit rewind on the episode? I’m sure we’ve seen the “Savage targets Spencer, but throws Ciera out as a distractor.” bit before. No, evidently the episode thought we’d forgotten that already, so we see it again, though this time with more Woo advocating for the move. Remember that. It’s important.
Ciera, however, is more miffed than before, especially when Savage encourages people not to be seen talking to Ciera. Accordingly, Ciera pulls Kass and Abi-Maria aside, and talks about pulling in Spencer to blindside Woo. After getting over my heart-attack that Spencer not going home meant Kass going home, I’m able to see that Kass is fighting against in, on the argument that Spencer needs to go before the merge. Now, while there’s probably some emotion in it as well, Kass does make a logical point here. Spencer is a threat. You need him gone. I’m also not entirely sure why Abi-Maria is considering it, since we haven’t heard from her “Woo-Vendetta” recently, but evidently the “Angkor” bonds don’t run as deep as Savage would like to think.
So, it seems like Ciera will only be able to pull in three people at most, but then that pesky character development comes back for Kass. Putting aside her feelings towards Spencer, she considers her options, and goes and has a calm, non-stilted talk with him, wherein she says he’s being targeted, and needs to vote Woo. I certainly applaud Kass’ willingness to put aside feelings for strategy, especially since this means we get to see the strategic mastermind that I wanted more of, but I must object to her “Maybe there’s a better use for Spencer.” comment. This time, the emotional decision is the CORRECT one! Woo is an idiot! Spencer is a threat! Get rid of Spencer!
That’s not what the editing says as we head off to Tribal, which may have the most obvious outcome yet. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun watch. Kass’ character development is brought into the spotlight, and there’s some good subtle motions between alliances, but between Woo’s naive edit and Spencer’s “Wonder-Boy” edit, it’s pretty clear that Woo was going home. Like Terry, a fun guy to have around, but in terms of the game, not much of a loss. Like I’ve been saying, though, definitely the wrong move for everyone in general, and Kass in particular. Most everyone loses Savage’s trust as an ally, and the lesser threat goes home. Props to Ciera, though, for convincing people to make a move counter to their best interests. Granted, it’s somewhat counter to Ciera’s OWN interests, I would say (due to the whole Savage-ally thing), but it’s an impressive bit of persuasion nonetheless.
While it’s still a bad move, at least no one can say that Kass’ emotions fueled her vote this time. So, why did she vote the way she did? My best guess is that she valued Ciera a lot. As Ciera noted, she and Kass have always been on the same tribe this season, and there’s been some indication that the two were close allies. I gather that Kass basically couldn’t convince Ciera to vote out Spencer, and so had to choose between offending Savage or offending Ciera. In that scenario, I guess I COULD see why Kass would swing that way. Ciara’s more valuable an ally than Savage, as she’s easier to beat in the end, and Woo did have to go at some point. Still, I maintain that a unified Spencer vote would have been the best move.
You’d think an obvious boot would mean a lackluster episode, but no, this season’s streak continues! While the last third of the episode was predictable, it did have great strategizing, and I can’t compliment Ciera’s powers of persuasion here enough. Lady did a fantastic job, and deserves much praise. And the first two thirds of the episode were REALLY good, with some nice strategizing on both ends, and powerful, but not painful, emotional moments. Yep, this season seems to be on the fast-track to greatness. Plus, for those of you complaining that Kass was boring now, you got your wish. She was a lot more interesting this episode.
As to the next episode, the merge is coming, and I’m not happy. We didn’t really have a chance to see the new tribe paradigm play out, so the whole “Back to two tribes” thing felt pointless. Plus, a merge now means a merge with 13 people, the most ever, and I’m not happy. I’ve always said that anything over 10 people at a merge is a bit too many, and makes things too chaotic to really follow, so I wish they’d waited a few more rounds. Still, this merge does give us a first, with one original tribe having the greatest merge majority ever at 9. Yes, even the uber-successful Koror Tribe only had 8 people come the “merge” on their season. On the plus side, the merge color this season will be orange, which last appeared as a merge color on “Survivor Vanuatu”, 11 years ago. Good to see it again.
One more thing to dread next week? Kass falls back into her old patterns. Chaos Kass is back. God help us all.
-Matt
Title Credit to Jean Storrs.
idolspeculation 
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