As I mentioned in last week’s recap, I was out of town for a week and wasn’t able to watch this week’s episode live. So since it’s been a few days, I’m just going to run through a quick recap along with some general thoughts on the episode.
Back at Naviti after Tribal, Dom and Wendell are feeling the heat, surmising that they are now the bottom two. Dom reveals to Wendell that he had an idol. Wendell did something small during this conversation that I think was a great move. He asks Dom what he thinks they should do. Everyone wants to feel valued and this simple gesture at least gives the impression that Wendell values Dom’s input. In this case I think he actually does, but it’s a good move to keep in mind at all times. Not every player would do that.
At the reward challenge, they’re playing for Reward only; whoever goes to Ghost Island will return for the next immunity challenge. Malolo needs to sit one person and they decide on Chelsea. We get a quick shot of Chelsea saying “I’m sitting.” I only mention that because, and this is a serious question: Were those her first on-screen words? Seriously, she has been invisible. She gets a little bit of air time in this episode, but her early edit is not a favorable one. Naviti wins reward and decides to have Malolo draw rocks for Ghost Island. Kellyn draws the white rock.
At Ghost Island, Kellyn gets the option of playing a game. She has the same decision to make as Jacob did: play the game and risk her vote, or don’t play the game and lose out on a chance for an advantage. She decides to not play the game as she elects to keep her vote. While not as fun from an audience standpoint, this was a smart strategic move. Her alliance has a 5-4 advantage, so should they go to the next tribal, every vote would likely count.
In regards to Ghost Island as a whole, CBS really lucked out with having such a great cast for this season. Ghost Island gives viewers an intimate look at one castaway each week and so far it has not disappointed. It will be interesting to see how it’s edited should someone like Angela or Chelsea ever end up on Ghost Island. Neither has been given much air time so far, and they haven’t done much with the little we have seen of them.
Back at Naviti Chris gets the details of the previous tribal from Angela. In a (what I can only assume is a) classic Chris move, as soon as Angela tells him she was targeted, his reaction is “Well they must be targeting me if they’re trying to take you out.” Just zero self-awareness. He’s shown a bit more savvy than I would have thought, but it’s moments like this that point to how difficult it might be for him to win the game. Which makes the next conversation we see a little puzzling. Laurel and Donathan are talking and both say they like Wendell and Dom more than Chris and don’t love the idea of continuing to work with Chris. Listen, I get it. It has to be hard to work with people you don’t like, or people who are annoying or hard to be around. But those are the people who should try to work with. Laurel talks to Dom about the possibility of working together and Dom makes the questionable decision of revealing his idol to Laurel. I would have given the relationship more time to solidify itself before doing that.
And we get to the immunity challenge already knowing Naviti will win. And how do we know that? Because exactly zero seconds were spent showing us what was happening with the Malolo tribe. The time after the immunity challenge is typically spent entirely with the losing tribe, and there’s no way we would go an entire episode without seeing anything from one of the tribes. It was an unfortunate bit of editing as Naviti needed an epic comeback to pull out the win. It would have been much more exciting had the edit not effectively given away the result.
At Tribal, Michael pulls out his idol and says it actually has double power in that it can grant immunity to not one, but two people. He tells the majority of five that their four votes are going to Bradley. It ultimately does not work, as Michael incorrectly plays his idol for Stephanie, while the five stay strong and put their votes on Brendan, sending one of pre-game favorites home early.
Even though it didn’t work, I liked Michael’s play a lot. He was able to play on the Ghost Island theme in a very believable way. James had and went home with two idols. With this theme, it’s well within the realm of possibility for one idol, particularly this one, to have some kind of extra power.
A side note regarding idols. Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly tweeted out a screenshot from his weekly recap, discussing a suggestion he has for getting rid of idol notes. It’s worth a look and it’s definitely an intriguing idea. We saw Jacob’s plan falter earlier this season by not having a note. And this week Michael put his plan at risk by mentioning and showing the note. The more mystery and uncertainty, especially surrounding idols, the better.
I’ll end with some brief thoughts on Angela and Bradley. In my cast preview, I mentioned Angela as a serious threat to win the game. Looks like I was way off on that one. Unless she becomes a challenge beast after the merge, I don’t really see a realistic path for her to win the game.
As for Bradley, he’s given us some entertaining moments, but he’s not getting a favorable edit so far. In this episode alone, he has two outrageous comments. In one, he says he’s trying to play like Boston Rob or Kim Spradlin. Pretty bold to compare yourself to the two winners who put together two of the best social (and overall) games Survivor has ever seen. Yes, Rob’s was a cakewalk, but he still had to do the work. Bradley’s other notable comment came at Tribal. In referring to the other four, he says “I have tried talking to a number of them…as a babysitter.” It’s comments like that that do you no favors. In a game where people will look for any reason to vote you out, or not give you votes at FTC, you need to be incredibly careful with what you say. Unless he ends up just running the game post-merge, or is being set up for a nice in-game redemption arc, I don’t see an easy path to victory to Bradley either.
Okay, so I guess that wasn’t that short after all. But what can you do. I love this show. It’s hard to keep it brief. We’ll see you next week.
