Survivor S38E6

After I wrote my intro last week I was excited for a new episode to air. The episode opened with an overhead shot of the challenge grounds and no “previously on,” so I knew something big had to be happening. I was a little surprised by how quickly they yada yada’d through the tribe merge that finally would give the poor old Lesu tribe members a fighting chance. Little did I know that we were about to witness THE MOST ICONIC REALITY COMP MOMENT OF THE DECADE!

Jeff  begins explaining to the newly formed Vata tribe that certain moments in Survivor become iconic. Some take years (still trying to think of an example of this…let me know if you have any…) and some become iconic the moment they happen. Now while this shpeal is going on I’m thinking to myself, “HOW PERFECT IS THIS!?”  considering I had just talked about how much I love iconic moments. Then Jeff is throwing this soft ball right over the plate ready for me to knock it out of the park.

This moment, however, fell flat after Jeff  had just tried hyping it up. Jeff gives a shout to “come on out!” and all the previously eliminated Survivors come marching out of the woods.What we got was a Big Brother Buyback that we have been seeing for years. The eliminated players are going to get a chance to compete against one another to get back into the game. Now, the competition itself was a pretty good one : lots of different old comps put together, ending in a really neat curved dragon vertical ball maze. The challenge was pretty close between Chris, Devens, and Wendy.  I was hoping it wouldn’t be Wendy, because I still can’t get over the ridiculous hypocritical sudden vegetarianism. Both Chris and Wendy almost pulled it out, but much to my excitement my guy Devens pulled out the W!

Jeff gets a little savage at this moment and went through the rest of the Edge of Extinction (EoE) tribe, giving each of them their big moment to say why Survivor is  important to them. It absolutely felt like he was going to send all of them home with a big thanks for playing. Suddenly, BAM, he reveals they get to go back to EoE and everyone goes nuts screaming. Keith’s reaction of dropping to the ground is especially humorous coming up later in the episode, where he and Wendy almost immediately raise the white flag and leave the game. Wendy wasn’t particularly enthused when she was given the news, which is highlighted by standing next to Audrey who looked like she was ready to go through a fucking wall to get back in the game.

The most exciting part of this merge was that we are bound to FINALLY get some screentime with other contestants who we know almost nothing about. The new tribe is all getting to know each other when we get the first glimpse of Kelley’s concern that Devens is back. Which doesn’t really make sense since he was the only person who left Lesu on good terms. Almost everyone back on extinction hates her and would be gunning for her, so Devens was best case scenario for her. From here, we get to see some other “new” faces. Julie is making strong connections with Devens, which he desperately needs with the returning member target on this back. During this, she says in a confessional about there being  no way she would want to send him back to EoE.

Now it’s the time for the politicking and getting votes, one of the best parts of a Survivor episode. This is the real game time: making deals, and getting your hands dirty. The first we see is Kelley working on Joe and the old Kama (majority alliance) to go after Devens. Merge episodes are a bit chaotic with the politics. Everyone is sending out feelers and the editing is jumpy, trying to fit it all in. We immediately follow up Kelley and Joe’s talk with an All Girls meeting. The connection Devens made with Julie is almost instantly paying dividends when Kelley and Lauren are pitching him as an easy vote for the merge, which Julie is not on board with whatsoever and eventually makes moves to derail this.

Devens gets a little help though when he is going through his bag and finds a secret advantage. It’s an immunity idol, but with a twist! He needs to give half of it to someone else, and survive this elimination, then if he does, the two halves will become one idol which can be used after this week. He of course  gives the other half to his closest ally, David.

Immunity challenge time. I won’t go on too much about this one, partially for length of this unnecessarily long post, but also because nothing wild happens. It’s an endurance comp where they have to balance a statue on a pole while standing on a balance beam. People start dropping fairly quickly and we get down to Julie, Joe, and Lauren. Surprising I think everyone, Julie pulls out the win!

The politicking takes a turn after the immunity challenge when Julie lets Victoria know she wants to go after Kelley and get one of the returnees out. Julie also exposes everyone else’s idea to Devens: they want to go after him, but she isn’t going to let that happen. Basically everything is blowing up.

A majority of the group decides to try to capture the chickens that Wendy released. Joe, of course, couldn’t be bothered to do anything, so he was staying back working on the damn flag instead of being in strategic conversation. Ron asked him what the plan was and Joe decided to be vague and dismissive. No matter what, when someone asks you about a plan, if you don’t have some sort of confident answer, you’re immediately making them nervous and they are going to put a target on your back. Ron realizes that Joe is valuable since he is known to win many comps, so he brings the idea to go after him to one of my budding favorites, Victoria. Victoria brings the Joe idea to the Kama6 and everything still seems up in the air.

Tribal council was a bit aggressive this week. Ron was incredibly open about the Kama6 alliance, rubbing it in the face of the other tribe members that they have a majority. It was not tactful. Victoria makes a vague comment about going after a bigger target than Devens, and Captain Jack Sparrow…er…Joe, took immediate offense. Victoria tried to talk her way out of it, but the cards had already been shown. The votes seem scattershot as they are being read between Devens, Kelley, and David. Then the turn happens and Joe is given the boot! All the Kama6 members have big smiles on their faces while everyone else, including the EoE members who are sitting in the jury spot, are completely stunned. The funniest reaction is Reem over on the jury saying, “Lame”. Could be because she hates Kelley so much, she wanted her gone over everyone, or now she knows she needs to compete against Joey Amazing to get back in the show. Joe is quite angry about being voted out and makes the easy choice to go to EoE.

There has been a lot of criticism of voting out Joe and giving him a chance to come back into the game. I disagree with this. Yes, I’m aware it is highly unlikely that Joe wins every immunity from here on out. However, the longer he is in the game, the more chances he has to make a “Meat Shield” alliance with others. We saw it last season where Nick made it to a point where he could win multiple immunities back to back and he was nowhere near the comp beast that Joe is. It is a much safer idea to get him out now and risk only a chance that he can win his way back in.