Survivor S38E

I thought I for sure was going to miss this week’s episode when it aired. I went to see Shazam! after work and had to rush home to watch Survivor. Luckily, I made it home JUST in time to catch the episode! Which for purposes of this article don’t really matter because I usually don’t write until Saturday, but whatever, I like following along on Twitter and hate spoilers!



The tribe gets back from Tribal Council last week where Devens turned everything upside down. Everyone is reeling and already politicking the next morning. We see what looks to be the next strong majority alliance when Wardog proposes Lesu3 (Wardog, Kelley, and Lauren) combine forces with Gavin, Julie, and Ron. Gavin already made it clear he is on board to work with Lesu3 so Wardog is planning on making pitches to Julie and Ron since they announced last week they were free agents.



Aurora gets a little dragged to start this episode, and rightfully so. Aurora acknowledges in a confessional how badly she messed up, saying she put her foot in her mouth and ruined the whole plan. She said she feels all alone now and after growing up in the foster system, she is good being alone. My ears perked up when she mentioned being a foster child. There is a common misconception in Survivor that making big moves is how you win. Making random haphazard big moves doesn’t hand you a win in this game, it’s the story you build. Your backstory helps you a lot if it’s something sad or brave, like being a foster child or a veteran (Hello, Ben Driebergen). Mix this with being in an alliance and it all falling apart, followed by being alone and making the right game moves to get to the end. Aurora is following a similar path to Driebergen and it gives me similar winner vibes.



Immunity Challenge



Yeah…10 minutes into the episode, we get an Immunity Challenge. Felt very similar to last week with the long ass Tribal Council. Apparently Survivor now hates Reward Challenges, which is cool with me, because so do I. I’d rather watch someone competing to stay in the game than people running and solving puzzles to win coffee and pastries. Unless it’s one of the comps where you have to eliminate players from the challenge, those are fun and essential in shaking up the security of majority alliances, developing a pecking order.



In this Immunity Challenge everyone has to crouch and balance long handles on their shoulders which are balancing a pot full of water. If you move too much it falls and you’re out. Jeff brings out a bunch of pizza and says if anyone feels safe they can sit out and eat a mountain of pizza. Kelley, Victoria, Lauren, and Ron all sit out. 3 of these guys are in the newly formed 6 person alliance (no name yet…), so them sitting out makes sense. Victoria sitting out is a little surprising to me but she is floating so far under the radar that I didn’t think it would hurt her much to get some energy from the food. If you’ve been reading my posts, I’m sure you’ll notice that I can’t write about the competitions themselves. It doesn’t make for interesting writing to go: this person fell, then so did this one! Anyway, Aurora wins, which puts my favorites, Devens, David, and Victoria in danger.



Back at the beach, it’s that good ol’ politicking and plotting time. The new big group wants to target David. David wants to go after Wardog. Devens recruits Victoria to work with them, which made me a happy camper, since I love them both so much. David knows they need to get Julie and Ron on their side to get the numbers. David approaches Julie with Devens and does almost that same speech he did with Devens a couple weeks ago about “this being one of those conversations you think about long after the game is over” blah blah blah. Love David, hate canned speeches. I mean if they work, all the power to ya. For viewers, it’s not interesting. Julie brings David’s pitch to Ron and he doesn’t know know what to do. He doesn’t want to work with David or Wardog. They leave his decision in the air for that Tribal drama!



Tribal Council



At this point it was pretty obvious we were getting a double elimination, because there is far too much time left in the episode. I don’t remember seeing any advertisement that it was one, so it was a pretty nice surprise! We get a Tribal about 20 minutes into the episode.



Devens, this season’s king of Tribal Council, comes right out of the gate talking about how important loyalty and trust is. He says that he started the game being disloyal, owns himself backstabbing Chris, and then the following week getting voted out. He ends with saying that now that he is back in the game, he’s playing a loyal game.



Wardog tries really hard to take Aurora’s “Foot in Mouth” award from last week’s tribal council. Wardog says Devens may talk about loyalty, but who has more loyalty than Wardog, Lauren, and Kelley? He reminds everyone that they have voted together every time for every tribal and and that nothing demonstrates loyalty more than that. Devens chimes in with, “Does that seem like a group that will be easy to infiltrate?” His point is that as the game gets closer to the end, when people outside the majority alliance can make deals to break up them up, this will be impossible because the Lesu3 are tight. Kelley looks horrified by what Wardog just said and tries backtracking it by saying that no one knows the dynamic in the group, which is ridiculous and clearly trying to imply weaknesses in order to keep them around. No one else is buying this.



David tries using his line, “My brand is loyalty,” and everyone groans. Wardog and Lauren go after him about how David said he would never write down Lauren’s name, but then immediately wrote her name down. Wardog calls David a squirmer, that he goes person to person trying to stay in, and he’s good at it, and that is why he has to go. Wardog’s target is backed by everyone else and David is gone.



Edge of Extinction



I don’t usually write much on EOE because it’s relatively boring and nothing really happens game wise, EXCEPT THIS WEEK! Everyone gets a message in a bottle with a clue for the next advantage. Everyone goes scrambling, looking in different areas. Chris initially goes with David to look over by the rocks, but gives up in that area to go look with Joe by the white flag mast. It’s a good thing David didn’t leave the area, because he found the advantage. We get a bull shit confessional about how he can send the advantage to someone and make them feel good about him if he comes back in the game…David is without a doubt sending that advantage to Devens.



Immunity Challenge



We cut from EOE to the tribe walking onto the challenge grounds. There was still a small chance this was some out-of-order Immunity then Reward challenge. Jeff ends that by asking for the immunity necklace, which means we are getting our 3rd straight immunity challenge. Shocker coming…Devens reveals he was given an advantage for the challenge. Something I’m curious about is that other advantages typically aren’t revealed in terms of who sent them to the person, but Devens knew that David sent him this.



All the players have a long paddle that they need to use to roll a ball down the handle and then balance the balls in the little dimples. Everyone needs to get 5 balls, except Devens’ advantage means he only needs 4, which is actually huge. With this advantage, Devens wins!.



Politicking twice this episode! Huge twist this time, though…right after we see Wardog preaching the loyalty of himself, Lauren, and Kelley…Wardog is going after Kelley. He has quick 30 second conversations with Victoria, Devens, and Aurora individually because he can’t be seen talking to them alone. I’m on record saying I don’t like Wardog…but do I…do I possibly like Wardog!? Probably not, but I live for chaos and he is a walking chaos machine. I had completely forgotten that Aurora had an extra vote, but she reminds us of it and then immediately makes a stupid decision with it by giving it to Ron. She wants to earn trust with him, and if she survives this elimination, then they can share the extra vote and have it be a team decision when using it.



Tribal Council



Jeff talks mostly about blindsides in this episode because there have been so many this season. Ron talks about how some people are obsessed with the blindside *Cough Wardog Cough*. Jeff points out how only 1 idol and 1 advantage have been played this season; usually a lot more have been in play so far. Devens talks about how the group consensus is that all the advantages come from EOE. This is obviously wrong since Lauren and Kelley both have idols that haven’t been played. This Tribal was pretty short and sweet. For the double Tribal episode, we got both the remaining returning players out of the game. Kelley is gone with an idol in her pocket! Aubrey sums it up well over on the jury: “Holy shit, Wardog”



I don’t normally write about the Next Week On segments. I don’t understand the need to tease and spoil things by TV shows that you’re clearly already invested in if you’re watching episode 9 of a show. This week’s had something that we may not see on next week’s episode, or maybe we will. Either way I want to touch on it just incase. We see Kelley arrive at EOE and immediately spill the beans that she had an idol, and Lauren has the other. She must think that Lauren conspired against her with Wardog to spoil it to a possible returning player that her closest ally has an idol. Still working on a sign off so this is going to end abruptly….BYE!

