Karla breaks down the James vote, saying she was informed last minute that James was the plan. She’s taking serious note of this, as it was the first time she was left out of the vote. From the other Tribal, Cassidy is thrilled to finally get rid Ryan, who had been gunning for her multiple times. While there’s a fair amount of potential distrust sowing after the split Tribals, Jesse feels great about his position. He, Cody, and Gabler are kind of in the middle, with relationships all around.
Reward Challenge
A double challenge week! We don’t get many of these anymore. The players spin around inside a metal frame, which will wind a buoy towards them. Once the buoy crosses the line, they race through obstacles to collect a sand bag. The final stage is throwing and landing the sand bag on top of a tall tower.
They’re playing for a night away at the Survivor Sanctuary.
Noelle completes a massive comeback. She was the last one to finish the balance beam, by a long, long time. But nobody can land the bag, and she manages it fairly easily.
Before sending Noelle off on the reward, he tells her the reward includes their letters from home. She makes Sami her first choice to join her, followed by Jesse. She gets to take one more person and chooses Owen.
Reward
After the letters, the talking inevitably turns back to the game. The foursome seems to settle on a Cassidy/Karla vote split.
Back at camp, Cody takes the same opportunity to figure out the game with his group. Sami, Noelle, and Owen all get mentioned as favorable next votes. Cassidy is unsure where Gabler stands, but realizes he could be a critical part of her endgame plans. She talks to Gabler and Karla at the well. And without saying specific names, she just says she wants to vote with him, which he seems amenable to.
Immunity Challenge
With one hand, they steady a balancing board, while building a house of cards with the other. After a great montage of falling cards after falling cards after falling cards…Cassidy pulls out the victory.
Pre-Tribal
With Cassidy’s win, the Reward 4’s split vote plan is thrown out the window. But she still feels confident they can take out Karla, with the relationships she’s been able to build. But Noelle’s number could be up, as Cody and Jesse discuss a plan to vote Noelle. Jesse feels a little conflicted, as Noelle had given him the opportunity to read his letter at home, which was a huge emotional boost for him. But, Jesse realizes that he can’t play with emotion, at least not that emotion. He’s playing for his family, so if voting out Noelle helps him achieve that, you have to do it, regardless of what she’s done for him.
To cover his bases, Jesse pitches a Karla/Sami vote split, which she seems to be on board with. But Jesse talks to Karla, and if the numbers fall the way they should, they can get four votes on Noelle, with 3 and 1 going elsewhere. But Karla is nervous, as that would only take one vote to screw everything up.
So Jesse talks to Gabler about coming on board to vote for Noelle with them, to give them five votes on Noelle. Gabler tells Jesse he’s fully on board, but goes straight to Karla, because he’s worried about how powerful Jesse and Cody are right now.
Tribal Council
The Noelle plan comes to fruition and she’s sent packing to the jury.
This was a pretty so-so episode. It was fine, I suppose, but there was no real conflict or too much back and forth on the vote. The double challenge obviously took away several minutes of valuable camp life and potentially strategy talk. But, that being said, I’m not worried about this season’s stretch run. A semi-dud episode here is better than one of the final two or three episodes. But hopefully we’ll see real fireworks start go go off before too long.
