In the spirit of this episode, I’m going to be skipping over any fancy, clever introductory paragraphs. I’m even going to be skipping over my usual banal, humorless introductory paragraphs, and instead get straight to the action. We pick up… right where we left off. No, literally, we see the boat with Neal on it going off into the sunset, and everyone reacts to the dramatic turn of events. Everyone, particularly the old Chan Loh, are all a bit cut up about it, so Scot tries to brighten everyone’s mood with a pretty spot on impression of the “Previous On..” narration we get at the top of each episode. Damn, the man’s actually pretty funny. Still, at this point with one ally gone and most everyone else defecting to the old To Tang, we need to pile on the “royally screwed” confessionals from the old Chan Loh. Joe, surprisingly, is the first one to speak up, acknowledging that they’re on the outs, and that he’ll do what he needs to to stay as long as possible. That doesn’t seem likely, though, as not long after, our solid seven talk about how this changes things. Jason sums it up nicely, saying that Neal is who they mainly wanted out anyway, and he probably took his idol with him. Just to be safe, though, they’re going to split the votes, the four old Gondol going for Debbie, the three old To Tang going for Aubry. Bog-standard at this point, but still good strategy. If sticking together is a good idea (which it is for all the old To Tang), then you want to quash any intelligent dissenters. Joe is pretty obviously not the mover and shaker of the alliance, and is unlikely to win immunities due to his age, so Debbie and Aubry are the clearer choices, and given that Debbie is the one causing more ruckus than anyone else (plus the fact that, as we’ll see, Aubry has friends on the inside of the alliance), she’s the better choice to leave at this point. While Aubry was going to be the safety target last episode, never forget that she was chosen because she WAS an unlikely choice, and thus less likely to win immunity. If you’ve got a majority to the extent that this alliance does, and are afraid of an idol play, you may as well use that to your advantage. Some might argue, given what happens later on, that the flip risk is too great, but that argument doesn’t hold up even in this particular instance. If you look at the total number of votes tonight, the result would have been the same regardless of a split vote or not. So yeah, I stand behind my assertion there. Rounding off our opening is an actual instance of people on this show doing a spot check. Crazy, I know! Nick spots Aubry coming up the beach, and talk of the alliance is immediately quelled. Still, Aubry is not a moron, and realizes what’s going on. She too piles on the “royally screwed”, using the cliched metaphor comparing “Survivor” to High School. Somewhat unusually, though, she takes it a step further, noting that in the long term, it’s the “nerds” on the edge who have a better success rate. This leads into her noting that eventually the alliance will crack, and she hopes to find an opening. Pretty standard determination quote, but nice to hear nonetheless.
This, my friends, is how you open an episode. True, as I said, a lot of the confessionals are bog-standard, but it quickly and in some cases humorously gives us everything we need to know, and gets us excited to see where the episode goes. Nothing feels unlikeable or unnecessary, but neither does any confessional feel overused. We get a bit of humor to offset the darkness of last episode, and we get our setup for the two competing storylines this episode. Nice and quick, but still entertaining.
As if all that wasn’t enough, we kick off the next day with the humanizing of our contestants. Specifically, Jason gets to talking about his daughters, starting out pretty soft with anecdotes about how one will put makeup on him when he’s sleeping, before segwaying into a serious discussion about autism, due to one of his daughters being autistic. Since this is bullying, relatively cutthroat Jason, you’d think that he’s doing this at least in part to gain him jury votes in the end, and it very well may be that it’s part of it. If it is, though, he hides it well. If he were using the story of his daughter, at least on some level, to manipulate, that he’d tell us all about it in confessional. Instead, he uses that time to open up to the audience about his home life, and to raise awareness about an important issue. Very classy, good sir. It’s also a good reminder that no matter how despicable a person, no matter how awful they may seen on screen, pretty much everyone has some redeeming quality. It may be incredibly difficult to find (Russell Hantz of “Survivor Samoa”, I’m looking at you!), but it is, presumably, there. Not that Jason is on a deep level of horribleness, by any stretch, he’s just a good case study of such phenomena. Even if you find Jason to be a horrible bully, you have to at least like him a little bit for this scene.
Humanizing comes at a price, though. The balancing act of “Survivor” is making yourself likable enough to win, but not so likable that you become a threat. Case in point, while Cydney acknowledges the warm fuzzies that scene produces, she also admits that it makes Jason harder to beat, and that she’ll need to watch out for him down the line. That’s about the best reaction one can have to a scene like that. Noting the niceness of such a scene makes you a decent human being. Unfortunately, decent human beings do not win “Survivor”, so you also need to acknowledge that you need to put said feelings aside for the game. Being able to do so doesn’t make you a bad human being, it just means you’re able to adapt to the situation. In many ways, that’s what “Survivor” is all about.
But enough heartwarming, we’re off to our reward challenge, which is, of course, both a team one and a rehash. This is the “Transport people across the water on small platforms and then all get up on a tower” challenge, last seen in some form on “Survivor Caramoan”. If you’re going to reuse challenges, this one is not a bad one to do, since it’s fairly exciting, difficult, and can lead to some good strategy. That said, no one seemed to think to just use one pole and carry it across this time, when it probably would have been easier for everyone involved. Don’t know if it was banned offscreen, or just that these people didn’t think of it, but shame either way. Plus, it’s a team challenge, which with rare exception, SHOULD NOT BE DONE AFTER THE MERGE! I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but there’s little point to merging from a challenge perspective if you’re just going to keep on with the same sort of challenges!
Julia and Aubry are chosen as captains, meaning they get to pick our teams for this challenge. Our yellow team ends up consisting of Julia, Debbie, Scot, Nick, and Tai, while our blue team consists of Aubry, Michele, Cydney, Jason, and Joe. Right away, you can see that yellow’s probably going to win this thing. For all that Probst tries to tell us it’s just different strategies coming into play, Aubry made some poor choices here. You want strong people carrying the poles, but those people tend to be big. Therefore, you also want them to be on the taller side, since then the widest part of them (the shoulders) are above everybody else, helping everyone stay on the tower. Thus, Nick and Scot are going to be more valuable than Jason and Cydney. Sure enough, despite repeatedly switching out players as to who’s crossing the balance beams, yellow wins in a landslide. Aubry is pretty upset about this, blaming herself for the loss and feeling pretty hopeless with regards to her situation. An understandable reaction, but Aubry needs to pull herself together. Since she kept the tears for confessional, and she did eventually come back from this, no harm done, but something to watch.
Rubbing salt in the woulds of the losers, the reward for this challenge was ice cream. Or rather, ice cream delivered to the Dara camp. Usually, on rewards, one at least doesn’t have to WATCH everyone else enjoying themselves, as well as get a chance to strategize while others are away. Those upside are not here for this particular reward. Very cruel, but very delicious, in a schadenfreude sort of way. Oh, and since I mentioned the tribe’s name, it’s since come out that the name “Dara” was Joe’s idea, as it’s apparently the K’hmer word for “star”. That makes it slightly better than it was, but it’s just not as impressive as “Orkun”, and if you don’t want your audience confused by a name, put it on the show, CBS!
Just in case we didn’t get enough heartwarming from Jason talking about his daughters, it’s time to start humanizing Scot as well. He gets to talking about his family bonds, and what he had to give up to play in the NBA. Not quite as heartwarming as Jason’s stories, but it does the job well, and Jason was a tough acto to follow. Julia in particular is smitten with Scot, calling him “Someone she can work with” down the road. Um, Julia, while that totally makes you a decent human being, you need to take a leaf out of Cydney’s book. The correct response here is to admit that the story is nice, but acknowledge the threat it poses later on. No wonder you’ve largely been ignored this game.
Back from our break, Cydney, Julia, Michele, and tai all go off in a boat for some fish, Cydney having fashioned herself a pretty effective if somewhat silly-looking hat from the top of a jar. Remembering once again to do a spot check, after figuring out that a nearby Joe can’t hear their conversation without hearing aids, Jason, Scot, and Nick once again reaffirm their plan of splitting the vote. However, Jason acknowledges that the women might talk of an alliance against the men, which both Scot and Nick outwardly agree to. Privately, though, Nick admits that he thinks there’s no real chance of the women coming together. If you don’t see this confessional as setting Nick up as a proverbial bowling pin to be knocked down, then clearly you haven’t watched enough of this show. Still, Nick is not a moron in this instance, and takes his time to interrogate Julia about the possibility of a women’s alliance just to be safe. Well, I say “interrogate”, but in reality he basically asks Julia “Is there talk of a women’s alliance?” She says “No.”, and we move on with our lives.
Or, rather, we would, but it seems Nick failed to do a third spot check. Sydney was close enough, if not to hear what they were saying, than to at least guess, and it rubs her the wrong way. She sees this as her allies Jason and Scot not having faith, and she seems to get disproportionately mad at this. Not that she blows her top or anything. Indeed, apart from a raised voice a couple of times, Cydney actually keeps relatively cool. The trouble is that this really is nothing. Julia is only a loose ally at this point; you need to keep her in check. The alliance didn’t feel the need to check on Cydney, and that should be good enough, since at this point she’s well placed to make top three. Granted, the threesome were behaving a bit arrogantly, but that alone is no reason to break ties with them. Had Cydney said “I can’t beat them, time to stir up some trouble.”, I’d understand her reaction a bit more. As it stands, though, I think her ire was misplaced.
In a nice move, Jason suggests taking a walk to the well with Cydney, and uses this time to calm her down away from camp. Sydney’s still a little riled up, but Jason’s move works, and is very much the right thing to do here. The last thing you need is allies going off the handle, particularly in front of the outsiders, so you want to make those discussions private. Plus, by playing the “Yes, I understand.” method of apologizing to Cydney, Jason handles the whole thing incredibly well. Kudos.
So, we head off to our immunity challenge. You going to make THAT ONE a team challenge as well? No? Well, you at least made it a rehash, I see. It’s from “Survivor San Juan del Sur”, and involves people standing on a perch with their arms behind their head, last one standing wins. Like with the ball immunity challenge last episode, it’s certainly a difficult one, but very uninteresting to watch. This one is dragged down further due to the fact that we’ve seen it on pretty much EVERY SINGLE SEASON since it was first introduced. “Survivor Worlds Apart” may have been skipped, but that’s it! Fortunately, things are brought back up to level by the usual “Food Offer.” from Probst. This time, though, there’s a twist. Instead of a bunch of little food rewards, there will only be one BIG food reward, so everyone who feels safe has to drop immediately. I both like, and don’t like this twist. On the bad side, I feel like it gets all the excitement out in one go, and gives us less tantalizing Probst food description, which is often a highlight of such challenges. On the good side, it is changing things up, and does make such drops rely more on confidence than on tiredness. Ultimately, a pretty good idea, but I wouldn’t want to see it become the new norm for such challenges.
After a funny moment where Julia drops mere SECONDS before the food comes out, we find out who’s confident. Jason, Scot, Joe, and Michele all drop for food. Jason and Scot are no surprise. They’re in the majority, and given their size, they probably weren’t winning this particular challenge anyway. Joe might seem odd, since he’s potentially on the chopping block, but I also get where he’s coming from. He probably doesn’t want to seem a target, so dropping for food is a good idea, and given that Aubry and Debbie are the targets tonight, it’s probably in his best interest. Truthfully, I find Michele’s drop to be the most perplexing, since of those four, she seemed best placed to win it all, but since she’s also in the majority, I can’t fault her too much. Debbie and Aubry drop out soon afterward, which leads Nick to just step off of his perch. When questioned about it, he admits that the just stood up to avoid one of the old Chan Loh winning immunity, and now that that’s off the table there was no need to keep going, and dude the target on your back cannot get any bigger, stop painting new circles! Seriously, if there was evidence this show’s faked, it’s just how often people set up their own downfall! HUBRIS!
It comes down to a pretty touching showdown between Tai and Cydney. Tai’s been struggling this whole time, while Cydney remains rock-solid. Tai starts praying to Buddha, and it evidently works, since Cydney collapses not long after. It’s a nice little scene, and even though I’m still in the Aubry-camp, it’s nice to see Tai win something.
So we head back to camp, and Jason and Nick talk about how they have the plan locked down, which naturally means they DON’T actually have the plan locked down. And the source of their downfall is, unsurprisingly, Nick’s arrogance. For all that the guy talks about being a “robot on the inside”, and always making the smartest move, he really seems to have a soft spot for Aubry. Not that I blame the guy, but he wants to keep her around, informs Aubry of the split vote, and urges her to vote for Debbie instead. I get what he’s going for here: save a number for himself down the road should things get rocky. However, revealing your plan to the enemy is always risky, and it backfires big time here.
Case in point, Cydney is now tired of Nick’s arrogance, as well as his loose lips. She pulls Aubry and Debbie aside, getting them on board with voting out Nick. We clearly see that Nick’s desire to work with Aubry is not reciprocated, as both she and Debbie immediately agree to the plan. As well they should, since they’re on the outs. Hell, it’s DEBBIE who seems the most cut up about voting out Nick, presumably because having her eye candy on the jury isn’t good enough. Still, she does the sensible thing and go along with it. What is NOT sensible is who is suggesting this. Jumping ahead a bit, this new “women’s alliance” ultimately consists of Debbie, Aubry, Cydney, Julia, Michele, and Joe (evidently grandfathered in somehow). Of these people, the only one for whom it DOESN’T make sense to vote out Nick is Cydney. Debbie, Aubry, and Joe are on the outs, so of course any foothold they can get, they need to take. While it’s a bit hard to gauge the totem pole dynamics of the old merge alliance, given how tight Tai was with the old To Tang, as well as To Tang being fire-forged allies, those four were probably going to the end, meaning Michele and Julia were likely on the bottom of the alliance. Barring an old Gondol coalition, they didn’t really have any power, and now that Jason and Scot are making themselves look nicer, one of the main incentives to stick with that alliance (that they’d be easier to beat) is now gone. Cydney, however, had a pretty much guaranteed finale spot, and loses that and becomes a flipper by targeting Nick. Point being, there’s very little upside to this for Cydney. It shows you, though, how one’s social prowess matters in this game. Nick was so arrogant, so annoying, that people would put themselves in a disadvantageous position just to get him out. Take note, future players.
I’ve already effectively spoiled the outcome, but for the sake of argument, let me admit that the misdirection here was pretty good. Granted, after all of that built up arrogance, there was no way anyone other than Nick was going tonight, but Michele does a good bit of waffling here (Julia waffles by proxy). Michele, while she doesn’t trust Nick, thinks he might be good to hang onto for a while, so we head off to Tribal Council with about as much uncertainty about the vote as you’d expect.
Note for note, this is basically a repeat of the Chan Loh Tribal Council back in episode 3, but that hardly makes it boring. We get a lot of good sound-bytes, the two notable ones being Aubry referring to herself as “John Cochran’s dream girl.”, and Debbie paraphrasing “Star Wars” when voting for Nick. Credit where credit is due, Debbie, Aubry, and Joe play their parts well, acting very down about being outnumbered, but not so much that they’ve given up hope. Just what you’d expect from people in their situation. Following in the footsteps of Peter, though we get some major slip-ups at Tribal Council. Two, actually. The first, as you’d expect, comes from Nick, Jason, and Scot talking about how they’re in control, and that there will be no blindside at all tonight. Look, guys, even if you think you’re in control, telling those out of the loop that they’re being targeted is not a good thing. At best, it engenders ill will towards you, and at worst, it reveals your hand and lets people flip the script on you. Our second mistake, oddly, comes from Tai, who usually carries himself very well at these Tribal Council. Prost gets him talking about the idol, which is fine, but tai then slips up and reveals the “super idol” twist for the season, currently known only to himself, Scot, Jason, and juror Neal. That, Tai, is a pretty big secret you’ve kept from everyone. Revealing it now only makes people mistrust you, and be afraid of your power. Sure enough, Julia and Michele look askance at that bit of information. Tai does his best to backtrack, making up a fairly convincing lie about how that information might have been a lie in and of itself, but the damage is done.
I can’t say that Tai’s lie was a factor in the ultimate flip of Michele and Julia, since that decision could easily have been made Pre-Tribal Council, but it certainly didn’t help matters. As I’ve made no pains to hide, Nick leaves, and I am THRILLED! Sure, we could see it coming, but it’s always nice to watch a well-paid-off switch of alliance. Plus, while Nick did have more strategic moments than I thought he would, he was just so arrogant most of the time that it’s a pretty satisfying exit. Especially with how it was built up. While the bulk of the strategizing happened after the immunity challenge, as you’d expect, the editors did an excellent job sprinkling bits of info to help us see both sides of the decision. Cydney commenting on Jason’s likeability, Julia commenting on Scot’s endearing qualities, Michele talking about not liking Nick. Point being, while subtle, we were being led in this direction from the very beginning, and that makes for a great episode! Predictable, yes, but fun to watch and well-edited. Sometimes, that’s all you need.
Before leaving, though, there’s one other point of chaos that needs to be addressed. The votes ultimately came down six for Nick (hence why splitting the votes made no difference), two for Aubry, courtesy of Scot and Jason, one for Debbie, courtesy of Nick, and a vote for Jason. That Jason vote seemed out of left field to me, and I questioned who it was that cast that particular vote. In the end, it turned out to be Tai, which seemed odd to me. I get that it was a chaotic Tribal Council to a certain degree, and Tai may have sensed the way the wind was blowing, but if you think your alliance is on the bottom, why vote for the guy who can help with the super idol? Seems strange to me. My guess is that Tai jumped ship, but badly. He guessed that Jason would be the target, and rather than end up in the minority, he chose to save himself by trying to get in good with the new dominant alliance. Still, I’m not committed to the idea. Other options include Tai simply being confused (an unlikely scenario, from what we’ve seen of Tai), and Tai being crazy like a fox, and throwing out a mystery vote just to shake things up, and hopefully save himself down the road. None of these makes it the smart move for Tai, but it should make next episode very interesting.
-Matt
Title credit to Jean Storrs.
idolspeculation 
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