Remember how I praised last episode for how, despite the fact that the end result was a boring vote along alliance lines, it still managed to be interesting? Yeah, sad to say that streak lasts all of one episode. While this episode as a whole isn’t BAD per se, it is definitely on the weaker end for this season. Ah well, at least this will make this particular blog a fairly short one.
On night 29, things are fairly subdued for once. Neither major complaining nor major gloating, so it’s a bit hard to figure out what to do here. Fortunately, Tai saves us by providing his one good move of the evening. He, like most everyone else watching, has figured out that it’s in his best interest to use his extra vote at the upcoming Tribal Council (since it would make an odd number, helping prevent ties), and then his hidden immunity idol at the Tribal Council after that, thereby effectively guaranteeing him a spot in the final episode, making both the audience and the producers giddy with joy. After all, despite what we see this episode, Tai is still pretty well a fan favorite, so having him in the final episode is pretty much a win-win for all involved. To add to the intelligence of Tai’s move here, he actually doesn’t tell EVERYBODY. He tells Aubry and Joe, which is probably for the best. Were everyone to know, it would probably make him too big of a threat, and thus make him a potential target. By letting just Aubry and Joe know, he strengthens the bond with his current closest ally (Aubry), and makes it more likely that they’ll see HIS advantage as THEIR advantage, and thereby not want to vote Tai out.
Less successful in his ploy to stay in the game is Jason, who thankfully has learned something from his sabotage tactics. Once again, he doesn’t go into a raging storm about the whole situation, though he does waste no time in throwing Tai under the bus. That’s fine, it’s his prerogative, and he doesn’t do it in a malicious way. Nor does his plea fall on deaf ears. Michele is certainly receptive, once again citing Jason being beatable at Final Tribal as a reason to keep him around. The only thing I don’t get here is that Michele also highlights her willingness to build trust with her alliance by getting rid of her closest ally as a positive here. Um, Michele, what’s the point of building trust with your alliance IF YOU’RE PLANNING TO FLIP ON THEM ANYWAY! Plus, as we see in this episode, Michele now has very little leverage within the alliance due to that vote. Not that she could have done much to change it, but let’s be real, it’s only by the grace of Cydney that she’s spared tonight.
Ah, I see it’s time for the traditional “Gross Food Challenge” of the season. We start out with a classic: Giant, live grubs, which… Oh, sorry, Tai just found a random creepy-crawley in camp. Actually, that’s kind of a cool tidbit. Granted, there doesn’t seem to be a gross-food challenge this season (unless they’re saving it for the next episode), but when they do happen, you always hear the phrase “local delicacy” applied to the various food items. However, you never actually SEE said items locally. To have one come and invade the camp adds to the authenticity of the show, and is kind of nice to see. Sadly, this instead seaways into shenanigans with Mark the chicken, as they get him to eat the grub, and he goes berserk. A fun enough scene, but now the “Mark the Chicken” stuff is starting to feel a little forced. Put bluntly, this scene does not mesh well with the episode, and serves no purpose other than slight amusement. It’s like cute cat videos on the internet: Technically they’re harmless and there’s nothing wrong with them, but they can be annoying in large quantities, and there’s probably a better use of your time out there.
Sadly, what we cut to next is not one of them. Lest you think that “Jason is determined.” confessionals were confined to last episode, well, you’d be WRONG on that score! We get another one, and it’s about as generic as they come. Hmm, now what could we possibly add to spice this scene up a little bit? JOE! Of course! Because nothing adds to a reused confessional like the take of a guy who’s screen time tonight equals his total screen time in the first 12 episodes of this season. Joe offers us very little insight into Jason’s situation, beyond telling us that Jason is frustrated and lashing out. A fair enough assessment, but we could already have told you that, thanks Joe. Actually, Jason tries to sell Joe on the “Anti-Tai allegiance” thing, which goes about as well as you’d expect. Apart from Joe not being enough of a player to do anything about his status in the game, Jason really doesn’t sell this one well. For the most part, he’s been good about hiding his anger to the faces of his tribemates (or at least, hiding it better than Scot), but here he lets it leak through in a pretty big way, and that’s not good for him.
Getting on to the actual reward challenge this episode, we find that I should hate it because it’s largely a simple water obstacle course, and a team challenge after the merge. However, I don’t hate it, for one key reason: that maze! Now, mazes on “Survivor” are nothing new. They go all the way back to “Survivor The Australian Outback”. Even tilt mazes are nothing new for “Survivor”, appearing as early as “Survivor Marquesas”. But having one on the water has never really been seen before, and even seeing it as a team challenge is somewhat uncommon. But really, the water’s the big factor here. It’s usually pulleys that move the maze, and that’s all well and good, but this really adds a new teamwork dynamic to the challenge, and makes things more difficult. Now, to be fair, that difficult increase is offset by the decrease of not having holes for the balls to fall through in the maze, which is a change I’m not for. Not that I think the challenge was easy or anything, but having those holes made for come-from-behind victories, or at least near victories. With no real way to LOSE time on that portion of the challenge, it makes the results a lot more predictable, which is never a plus. Still, the awesomeness of a water maze is just too good to resist, so I’ll give this challenge a pass.
What I said about predictability holds true, though, as Jason, Tai, and Michele get an early lead and hold it throughout the challenge. Whoop-de-doo. They get to have themselves another picnic and go see an animal rescue habitat. Again, I refer you to my “cute cat videos” comment to get my opinion on scenes like this. Now, I’m being harsh, in that this one turns out to be more unique, and a bit more touching, but still, it feels a bit like time was spent poorly. Plus, we get Michele trying her best to win the “Amber Brkich Award” from “Survivor The Australian Outback” by uttering the most inane exclamations about her relative enjoyment of the reward.
Ok, ok, perhaps I’m being overly snarky because of my relative lack of enjoyment of this episode, since we DO get some strategy at the reward. Basically, Tai realizes that, due to being something of a challenge threat and a likable person, Michele is more dangerous in the end than Jason, and decides to get her out. Michele, for her part, now says she wants Jason out because… Well, I’m not really sure. Michele, didn’t you WANT to go the end with Jason earlier in this episode? Make up your mind! I get wanting to save your credit with your new alliance, but Jason is the only person left who might give you some POWER in this game. Ah, but don’t worry, this isn’t the ONLY inconsistency we’ll be seeing tonight.
As for Jason? Well, since it’s his death-knell episode, we just get a cute scene of him talking about how his autistic daughter loves animals, and will be so happy to see her dad asking for monkey hugs. And, of course, Michele has to talk about how Jason’s using these stories to wedge his way into people’s hearts. Which he is. But we don’t need it spelled out for us, Michele, and you look like kind of a jerk talking bad about a guy being nice for his autistic daughter.
Well, let’s go back to the camp. Both Tai and the previews for this week foreshadowed that the alliance would crumble from within, so lets get to the crumbling! No, instead we get Joe being a bit bossy and controlling over Cydney and Aubry. Ah, these types of scenes are always hard to blog about. On the one hand, you can’t help but sympathize a bit with the guy who seems to be actually trying to survive out there. On the other hand, that’s not really what this game’s all about, and there’s no contesting the fact that Joe is definitely handling these two people the wrong way. But we’ve seen it so many times before, and it just leads to nothing. Granted, this scene plus Joe’s increased screen time could indicate a boot for him, but since he’s never even brought up as a target outside of this scene, I really don’t count it as such.
Oh, and I take delight in the fact that what Joe’s being anal about is firewood. Evidently he should have been cast on “Survivor The Amazon”. Maybe then he could have taken Rob Cesternino’s place as “Junior Deputy Firewood Bitch”.
Off to our immunity challenge, and even though it’s reused, I still like it a lot. It’s the “Balance the platform of cards” challenge from “Survivor Blood vs. Water”, though it has its roots in the card-stacking challenge from “Survivor Gabon”. While technically a reused challenge, it’s a very difficult one, and since we haven’t seen it in a while, I’ll give it a pass. One nice change is that, instead of stacking generic blocks, the players are now trying to spell “Immunity” backwards one block at a time. It’s a small change, but it helps the challenge stand out somewhat. Plus, it’s hilarious to see Joe keep spelling it wrong.
Cydney takes a lot of flak early on for moving incredibly slowly, but a loud “boom” right after this tells us all we need to know, and sure enough, Cydney wins immunity. This means that no one person has had immunity twice this season. Not that it makes much of a difference overall, since rarely has the actual target of an episode had immunity, but it’s still a pretty uncommon occurrence. Only “Survivor Fiji” can boast the same record, and this season is INFINITELY better than that one! You could argue that “Survivor The Amazon” also had the same record at this point on that season (Final Six/Day 32), but Jenna Morass did technically win two immunities, she just gave one of them to Heidi.
In any case, we move on to our crowning moment of hypocrisy for the episode, as Tai, the guy who flipped on his alliance due to not being given a fair say and not discussing things democratically, marches down to the water, and tells everyone to just vote for Michele. No justification, he’s just going for Michele. Ok, so he does tell Aubry later on why he thinks Michele should go, but why couldn’t he do that earlier And besides that, his manner, while not as callous as Scot and Jason’s, is basically the same here. Ugh, I thought we were DONE with hypocrisy for a while in this game.
If you’ll recall, Cydney does not like to be bossed around, even by Tai. She lets Michele in on what’s going on, which for her is not a bad plan. Don’t get me wrong: Tai is correct when he says Michele is a big threat who needs to go at some point. But Michele is also a strong number for Cydney, in a game where strong numbers for her are rapidly dwindling. With Julia gone, Michele has no one to turn to, and pretty much every chat we’ve seen Michele have privately has been with Cydney. Safe to say, the two are pretty close allies at this point, especially since someone needs to counter the Aubry-Joe dynamic. Naturally, since Tai is their biggest threat, and they need to keep Jason around for numbers, their plan is to… Get rid of Jason? Not sure I follow the logic here. Granted, it’s better than one of the two of them going home, and it’d be harder to pitch getting rid of Tai to Joe and/or Aubry, but that still leaves you down 3-2 at the end of the day. Go for the power play!
Ah, but Tai is not the only passenger on the hypocrisy train today! No, there’s Aubry bringing up the caboose. After a fairly civilized talk between Aubry and Cydney about how the vote should go, Aubry breaks down and cries about how hard the game is. This, from the woman who criticized Jason and Scot for “playing emotionally”. How is this any different?
Man, I must really be grumpy tonight, making something out of very little. Yeah, Aubry does have a bit of a breakdown, and it’s kind of pointless, but it’s subdued as breakdowns go, and on Day 32, I think you’re entitled to be a little emotionally stressed. Though, I still must point out, this decision shouldn’t be that stressful to Aubry. Either way it goes out, the results are basically the same. She and Joe will have one person firmly on their side (either Tai or Cydney), giving them an advantage to ride to the end with, and they’ll have at least one enemy on the jury. Either way, Aubry comes out on top. If I had to favor one over the other, I’d say that getting rid of Jason is probably slightly better than getting rid of Michele. While Michele is a bigger jury threat, getting rid of her pisses off two people (Michele and Cydney), while getting rid of Jason only pisses off Tai. Plus, Tai has nowhere to go, even if he is pissed off. He’ll make it through next episode, sure, but he’d do that in either case. You think he’s going to ally himself with Michele and Cydney? The pair have admitted they don’t want him around! Plus, just explain to Tai how you’re voting before Tribal Council, and hope that he understands. It’s that simple. Again, I’m not sure there’s a “Wrong” decision here, but that one is slightly better.
For all the crap I’ve given this episode, I will say that it has a really good Tribal Council, mostly due to Tai repeatedly putting his foot in his mouth. Michele said she was going to air dirty laundry before Tribal Council, but she couldn’t have predicted as great a lead-in as Tai. Man, when he’s in power, he’s COCKY! And no, that’s not a reference to Mark the Chicken. Put away that hashtag! No, Tai talks about how democratic he’s being, which Michele rightly calls out, which leads to an aggressive back-and-forth between them, culminating in Tai telling Michele that he doesn’t consider her part of the alliance, and that she’s “temporary”. And all without one word said about Jason, the guy who should be the main topic on conversation tonight. Give Probst a lot of credit, he OWNED that moment of transferring over to Jason. And that’s why Jeff Probst is awesome. I give him a hard time, but really, the man’s a good guy (albeit with some favoritism issues) who really knows how to host this show. He deserves all of the awards.
Also in favor for this Tribal Council is that I’m not sure who’s going. As I said, this vote isn’t exactly crucial for Aubry, and both Jason and Michele have decent screentime, so I could see this one going both ways. In the end, though, the predictable result happens, and Jason is sent packing. He goes out with a lot of dignity, and deserves respect as such. That said, I can’t say I’m too sorry. While he seemed not as bad as Scot overall, he was an unpleasant figure a lot of the time, and just such a non-entity that his leaving doesn’t impact too much. Hell, due to how tight he and Aubry are, even JOE’S leaving would have had more of an impact on the game.
Perhaps I was a bit harsh on this episode in my intro. There’s nothing OFFENSIVE about it, and there are a lot of cute, enjoyable scenes. But for how exciting, how dynamic this season has been, this felt like a step backward, particularly with all the annoying hypocrisy from at least half the cast. Now, you have to work with what you’re given, but last episode showed that, even in just a standard “Survivor” episode, you can find good nuggets. Let’s hope that THIS trend isn’t a streak.
-Matt
Title Credit to Jean Storrs.
idolspeculation 