I was all in for this episode as soon as I saw the title. I don’t know how it started, or when, but I say “Risk it for the biscuit” a lot. Maybe not a lot, depending what that actually means, but I’m quit certain it’s more than the average person. It’s just a goofy, nonsensical, fun phrase. So suffice it to say I had some high hopes for this week’s episode. And boy did it deliver. I thought this was a great episode, one of the strongest of the season. So let’s not waste any time and get right into it.
We start at Malolo the morning after Tribal Council. Michael, feeling the heat, goes idol hunting. He’s not worried about getting caught, and he shouldn’t be at this point. Kellyn, Des, and Angela know he’s on the bottom, Michael knows he’s on the bottom, and the other three know he knows he’s on the bottom. It’s kind of the opposite of one of my favorite Friends episodes.
Des is talking about their 3-1 advantage and how easy of a vote it would be. Yet nobody makes any effort to police him. Obviously we only know what we’re shown, so it’s quite possible that they did follow him and monitor him and those moments ended on the cutting room floor. But we’re left to think he was searching all by himself. So of course Michael finds Ozzy’s fake idol from Micronesia, which led to one my all-time favorite Survivor moments.
“It’s a f*cking stick.” An iconic Survivor line. But this time it’s different. This time the idol is real. The only three people to touch that stick (Liza, Jason, Ozzy) were all voted out. Can Michael reverse the curse?
On to the reward challenge. We have a challenge we’ve seen a few times before. Each person pulls on rope suspending a disk, and then everyone works together to stack cubes on the disk, spelling out “Reward”. First place wins steak, chicken kabobs, grill for cooking while second place wins chicken kabobs. The winning tribe sends one person from either tribe to Ghost Island. Thank goodness the Ghost Island absence was just a one-week thing.
This is a great challenge as it’s almost a guarantee that at least one tribe will see their stack topple as they get oh so close to finishing. And we weren’t disappointed. Every tribe has a chance to win, and every tribe falls.
Eventually Naviti closes it out, and Malolo falls again. Yanuya finishes in 2nd, meaning Malolo loses yet another challenge. Naviti sends Kellyn to Ghost Island, as she had already gone and they wanted to keep it as much of a mystery as possible..
At Ghost Island, Kellyn gets another chance to play the game. This time she has a 2-in-3 chance as there are now three bamboo tubes. Her first time around she was very focused on the here and now, ultimately deciding not to play the game. This time, however, she has more of a focus on the future and she decides to play the game, “Gotta risk it for the biscuit.” The odds were in her favor this time and she finds an advantage that gives her an extra vote at a future Tribal Council.
At the Naviti camp, Bradley’s douchiness comes out again in full force as he tries to hustle everyone through the food preparation. He’s snapping his fingers at the others, he’s getting snippy with Domenick, trying to start the fire on the grill before the base for the grill is even set. To his credit, Bradley is at least somewhat self-aware here, as he tells us in a confessional, “For me, the hardest test out here is to not be a total dick.” I mean, good for him for realizing that. But he’s just not doing much (anything?) to curb his dickness.
The other four tribe members are on the beach bonding over their mutual dislike of Bradley. Donathan hopes Bradley would be the target if they were to lose the next immunity challenge. Domenick is a little less certain as he’s not sure yet if he wants to cut an ally, regardless of how annoying he is.
Wendell gets a nice emotional edit as he talks about missing his girlfriend on her birthday. This seems ripe for another idol reveal! And Survivor hits us again. Everyone else on the tribe goes into a food coma and he uses it as an opportunity to go on an idol search. He finds a map clue to a Hidden Immunity Idol. Maybe it was just the edit, but it sure seemed like the idol’s placement was just within a few feet of where Wendell found the clue. If that was indeed the case, what was even the point of the clue? But I digress. The idol he finds is the necklace Erik gave away to Natalie, in yet another iconic moment in Survivor history.
We now have players coming into possession of two idols and an advantage within just 10-20 minutes of air time. This is the kind of season I was anticipating when the Ghost Island theme was announced. And after going on a bit of an idol/advantage hiatus, we’re right back into the thick of it. How it plays out remains to be seen, but I’m here for it. With this specific theme, this is a great direction for the season to be headed.
We got a great immunity challenge. Two people from each tribe take turns swimming to a floating platform, where they jump off and each have to recover a sets of floating rings. Those rings are brought back to the starting platform, and then the entire tribe swims the rings out to another platform where they will untie the rings and toss them onto a floating target. Wendell and Chris run through the ring toss pretty easily. But second place comes down to the wire and Michael closes it out for 2nd place, finally wining one for Malolo, sending Naviti to Tribal Council. This challenge just looked like pure fun. Those are some of the challenges I enjoy best. The ones that I watch and immediately want to go out and do it myself with a group of friends. That was this one to a T. Plus we got to see Domenick show the world he has no idea how to dive, or simply jump, into water.
At Naviti, Domenick tries to shoulder the blame, but the rest of the tribe gives him the “We win as a tribe, we lose as a tribe” pep talk. And by “rest of the tribe” that obviously means everyone except Bradley, who chimes in with his extremely helpful “I think maybe you had too much coffee” comment. Come on man. Bradley tries to get the others to target Libby. Domenick and Chelsea can’t stand Bradley, but voting him out would mean betraying original tribe lines and they’re not sure if they want to make that kind of statement just yet. But Domenick is worried about being tied to Bradley given how unlikable he comes off to others.
Bradley ends up being voted out unanimously and I’ll go on record as saying that was a mistake. Yes, Bradley was annoying, cocky, and a self-described total dick. But that’s a great person to take with you into the merge! Take him to the end and crush him at FTC. Plus Libby has already betrayed Dom once, what would keep her from doing it again? And Dom has already referred to Libby as “Parvati 2.0.” Regardless of whether or not you agree with that, the fact remains that Dom sees her as a threat. Even though they don’t know exactly when, they know the merge is coming up soon, why keep around someone who is threatening to your game that you know you can’t fully trust going forward? Even if you want to keep Libby, what about switching things up and voting off Donathan? He may not be a strong strategic or physical/challenge threat, but socially? Big time threat. Everyone loves that guy. That can be a hard person to beat if you find yourself sitting next him at FTC.
The preview for next week’s episode reveals we’ll see the merge. I’ll be putting out a merge preview in the coming days so be on the lookout for that. I’m excited as the merge episode is usually one of the best of the season. And with the cast we have left, they should give us a great one. The preview scenes make it seem like the vote will be a decision between Chris and Dom, so the safe bet is probably that neither of them will go home. Especially when you consider Dom still has the Legacy Advantage, which can be used next week, as there will be 13 players remaining. We’re hitting the home stretch and it should be a wild ride the rest of the way. I can’t wait.
