Kenzie is starting to worry about Bhanu as an alliance member. She doesn’t trust that he can lie effectively or keep secrets. She wants either Bhanu or Jess gone next. But like we speculated last week, she might be playing too hard, too well, too fast. Q and Tiffany are clocking all the social work she’s putting int, and are at least keeping an eye on it.
Even currently thinking Bhanu or Jess should go next, Kenzie is keeping all her options open. She recognizes Q and Tiffany as strong players, and is toying with the idea of teaming up with Bhanu and Jess to go after those two. Jess immediately goes to Q and tells him about Kenzie’s pitch to her and Bhanu. Q isn’t entirely sold, but he smartly doesn’t completely brush it off either.
Nami
Tevin and Soda are in agreement that Venus is the least trustworthy member of the tribe. And that seems to be the general feeling with everyone else as well. Soda especially feels like she needs to distance herself from Venus. To her credit, Venus realizes she’s on the outs. Knowing Tevin has real connections with everyone but her, she views that as a big red flag for where her game is at right now.
Knowing she’s solidly on the bottom of the tribe, Venus started idol hunting. Randen does the same, believing he would be first to go ahead of Venus. And Hunter also gets in on the fun, using his status as “the firewood guy” as cover to go look.
Randen beats them to it, finding the Beware Advantage. He finds a similar box to what Tiffany found at the Yanu camp. The instructions are the exact same, in that his tribe has to lose an immunity challenge to get the next set of instructions to retrieve the idol.
Randen feels like he has to find one person he can put his trust in on his tribe. After initially viewing Venus as the most untrustworthy person, he decides to go to her. And it’s honestly not the worst idea. By all accounts, they’re the #5 and #6 people on the tribe (take your pick on who is each number) so they might have no other other outlet besides working together.
Siga
Maria and her extra vote are the hot topic at Siga camp. Whether or not they’re wanting to work with her, she’s on everyone’s radar to some degree. Charlie feels particularly close to her. And they discuss their larger position in the tribe. The three women and Charlie formed an early alliance, but Charlie and Maria feel like they might need more physical and challenge strength, and feel they can decide which other group of two to side with.
Immunity Challenge
One player releases a machete, and uses it to chop a rope to drop two wheels. They put the wheels and a cart, and then dig up two chests, which they then put on the cart. They maneuver the cart through an obstacle course. When they get to the end of the course, they use the pieces in the chests to form a large arch puzzle.
Reward of fishing kit for the first tribe to finish, and a smaller kit for the second tribe.
I have not been a fan of this episode up until immunity, but this challenge is sick. Well, the puzzle is at least. The word isn’t the difficult part, but getting all the pieces in place so that they hold their position on their own is really tough, made even tougher with the blocks’ weight. Survivor hasn’t been killing it with challenges lately, but this is a great one.
The puzzle continues to be incredibly challenging, with all three tribes getting just a piece away several times, only to see their blocks fall. Nami finally gets their puzzle, winning again. And *sarcastic gasp* Siga takes second, sending Yanu to back-to-back tribal councils.
Pre-Tribal
Kenzie and Tiffany make a fake idol, hoping Jess will find it and try to play it so she won’t play her Shot in the Dark. Tiffany talks to Jess, saying she even feels scared. Tiffany suggests looking for idols, but Jess needs convincing. Eventually, with Jess not finding the fake idol, they have Q give Jess the fake idol. He presents it as a peace offering, that he’ll give it to her as long as she votes for who he tells her to.
Q is going to tell her to vote Kenzie, allowing him to dictate the vote between Kenzie and Jess. He knows Tiffany and Kenzie are voting Jess, and he thinks he has Bhanu’s vote. Assuming that’s true, the two of them will determine which of the two goes home.
Q knows if he keeps Jess around, she’ll remain a loyal alliance partner, but it comes with some weaknesses and more massaging of the relationship. If he sticks with Kenzie, he doesn’t have to do much extra work to keep that partnership strong. But while he’s confident she would be able to bring in new numbers come either a swap or merge, he can’t be sure those numbers would ultimately benefit him. BUT.
If he goes with the Kenzie vote, he’ll have to explain the fake idol to Jess. He could play it off as he was going along with Kenzie’s plan to placate her, but then he would still have Tiffany to deal with. It wouldn’t be an impossible situation to work through, but it seems like it would be putting himself in an unnecessarily difficult position.
Tribal Council
The fake idol plan worked, as Jess tries to play that versus her Shot in the Dark, and she’s unanimously voted out.
Wasn’t really a fan of this episode. Lots of filler to stretch it to two hours. I didn’t even get into the Charlie and Ben’s song-off competition naming Taylor Swift and Metallica songs! Sure, include it for a bit, it was kind of fun. But the show spent waaaaaay too much time on it. Then we had Nami being weirdly aggressive towards Venus. The poor girl got her toe run over during the immunity challenge, with her pleas and instructions being ignored, resulting in that happening. Nobody cared, but rather were just annoyed at her for being upset about that? I don’t know, I feel like that’s a fair thing to be pissed off about? A bit of a dud, but hopefully it will tighten up as we move into the normal 90 minute episodes next week.
