Warning: Here be series-wide spoilers!

PREVIOUSLY ON SURVIVOR: TOCANTINS…

LET’S GET THIS SHOW STARTED!

The Timbira tribe have just gotten back from Tribal Council, and Coach is still mighty pissed at Erinn.

It’s now Day 10! And Timbira are discussing once and for all who should be tribe leader. In a rare moment of humility, Coach is more than happy to concede leadership to Brendan, because iron sharpens iron or whatever.

Over at Jalapao, Spencer is concerned that all the time Taj is spending at Exile Island will wear her down. Coincidentally, she sets about trying to rope Stephen into her new Exile Alliance.

While Stephen is up for it, his confessional could be best summed up as “holy fuck what have I gotten myself into?!”

Back at Timbira, they’ve gotten some Tree Mail…

Realising that this means picking someone to send to Exile Island, they discuss sending Taj again. As it turns out, Brendan hasn’t gotten round to telling Sierra about the Exile Alliance yet.

Oops.

REWARD CHALLENGE!

It’s the weight challenge where three from each tribe have to carry a pole across their shoulders while the other tribe pile two 10 lb bags on them until they drop out one-by-one. Last one standing wins for their tribe, where the winners get to send two members to steal two items from the losing tribe. Exile Island is also in play.

As this only requires 5 people, Timbira have to sit out one player while Jalapao have to sit out two. Timbira choose Sierra, while Spencer and Stephen volunteer to sit out for Jalapao.

Carrying the weight for Jalapao, we have Joe, J.T. and Taj. For Timbira, we have Debbie, Brendan and Tyson. And off we go…

After a while, Brendan is at 180 lbs, J.T. is at 160 lbs, Tyson is at 120 lbs, Joe is at 140 lbs, and both Taj and Debbie are at 80 lbs. The tribes decide to pile more weight onto Brendan and J.T.

At 200 lbs, Brendan is really struggling to stay upright, and just before they add two more…

Man down!

With Brendan gone, Jalapao shift their suffering onto Tyson, while J.T. gets even more weight put on him. Tyson doesn’t last much longer however…

Only one Timbira left standing. Poor Debbie…

At 220 lbs, J.T. now ties the record with Mr. Tie Dye Shirt himself, Rupert Boneham in Pearl Islands. However, it proves too much for him to handle…

Those shoulders must be smarting right now.

Joe follows suit shortly afterwards, leaving both women to face off each other for the reward.

As the weight starts to pile up, pint-sized Debbie starts to crumble, while Taj has a lot of muscle underneath all that baby weight to keep her afloat. Eventually…

Jalapao wins reward!

After all that, Taj embraces Debbie and congratulates her on her hard work. Now they have to decide who goes to Exile Island. Taj picks Sierra, while Sierra (still in the dark about the whole Exile Alliance thing) picks Taj in return.

Brendan, now feeling like a total dumbass, is hoping that Taj will be able to explain everything to Sierra so their plans can go ahead.

As Timbira arrives back at camp, everyone is shit scared that Jalapao will raid their food supply. And not a moment too soon as Joe and J.T. arrive to grab some goodies.

As predicted, the two boys head straight for the beans, but luckily for Timbira, J.T. puts on the charm offensive and promises that they’ll only take one bag. They’re convinced to take one of the water canisters as their second item as they believe it will be more useful in the long-term.

The boys arrive back at Camp Jalapao and are greeted with open arms. However, Sandy isn’t totally satisfied and doesn’t understand why they would let Timbira keep some of their food.

As they start cooking beans, Sandy keeps cracking jokes, which starts to irritate the others.

Meanwhile, Sandy starts to get all green-eyed over Sydney, who is working hard to be in the guys’ good graces. And in doing so, she manages to do something that only a select group of women have managed to achieve: get into J.T.’s pants.

Lucky bitch.

Over at Exile Island, Taj gets a third clue which pretty much spells it out for her that the Idol is where Tree Mail is.

Afterwards, she and Sierra get talking about the Aliiance, and Taj is not impressed that Brendan didn’t get round to informing Sierra about the whole thing.

Once she finally gets all the information, Sierra is really excited about the fact that people actually want to work with her, and doesn’t hesitate in joining in.

Back at Timbira, and they decide to spend the day chillaxing and having fun. And you can’t have fun without Tyson being the class clown.

But not everyone is having fun. Erinn is still on the outs in the tribe, and opens up in her confessional about how she just had a nasty breakup and still gets teary-eyed over it.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE!

Each tribe has to run through a maze to collect eight giant prisms with letters on them. Together those prisms create a phrase. They then have to put those prisms in the right order to find the winning phrase. First tribe to get it right wins, losers get Tribal Council.

As they have an extra member, Jalapao has to sit someone out. Taj volunteers. Off we go…

Timbira are the first to get all of their pieces, mostly because of Sydney slowing down Jalapao by struggling to untie a knot. But they’ve tasted defeat in the jaws of victory before, can they stay ahead?

Timbira wins immunity!

After Jalapao get back to camp, they start fretting over who to vote off. Taj puts the idea out that Sydney is responsible for the challenge loss, but Stephen and J.T. are incredibly hesitant about voting her off as doing so would piss off Joe and Spencer.

However, Sydney puts her foot in her mouth by mentioning how she enjoys “the sneakiness” of the game, which immediately sets off Stephen’s alarm bells. He’s now not sure if she can be trusted.

TRIBAL COUNCIL!

As Jalapao take their seats, Jeff brings up how Sandy has managed to last 12 days in the game. She’s pretty confident that she managed to change their first impressions of her.

Jeff then brings up the age factor and whether that’s a disadvantage when you’re in a tribe full of hotties. Sandy straight away accuses Sydney of being a massive flirt who flits around in J.T.’s boxers. J.T. seems oddly proud that he has a pretty blonde model wearing his boxers.

Stephen then brings up that the real flirting going on in camp has been between Sydney and Joe, Sydney doesn’t deny it.

Taj then tries to deflect any suspicion of her Exile Alliance by claiming that the guys would prefer to align with Sydney over her because she’s younger and more pretty.

It’s time to vote!

Let’s read the votes, will they keep the strong old lady, or the eye candy?

Oh dear, well done Sandy for lasting this long.

See you guys for episode 5!