Recap:
The most recent Survivor was a fantastic episode. Drama, suspense, creativity, and great moves. Here's the important details.
Reward Challenge:
Split into teams of 4 by schoolyard pick, each team must cross a court using barrels and boards in a classic team-building-style exercise. If a person or a board touches the ground, the whole team has to return to the previously completed segment (the court is divided into 3 sections).
Mike, Shirin, Sierra, and Rodney (I'll call this Team Mike) take on Carolyn, Dan, Will, and Tyler (I'll call this Team Carolyn). Team Mike rolls their barrels out on their sides. Three of them stand on one upright barrel while Mike moves the other 3 barrels into position while trying not to roll off. This technique amazingly seems to be working, but Mike is doing most of the work and is tiring. Team Carolyn take the typical approach of using all barrels upright. Dan is the last across, getting pulled the final bit while having his trailing foot drag behind to tip the last barrel toward them so they can roll it ahead. Eventually Team Carolyn take the lead as Mike tires too much. Mike finally loses his mental control and sets a board down, causing his team to start over at the 2/3 mark. In a last ditch effort, Team Mike each stand on a tipped barrel (a few of them carrying boards) and tries to roll them individually while standing on them in order to get to the finishing line. This is amazing, but very risky. A few of them fall and they start over again as Team Carolyn win reward.
Reward:
Rodney, again, misses out on a reward and he's not happy about it. The winning team gets a lunch cruise. They enjoy it and use the time to plot against Mike and Shirin.
Immunity Challenge:
Mike knows he's in trouble this week. The twist at this challenge is that there will be one male winner and one female winner, for a total of 2 people winning immunity. Each contestant must grip a rod with a rope looped around it connected to a bag with 25% of their initial starting weight. This is another classic Survivor challenge which guarantees to rip some skin off of some hands. The first outcome is that Carolyn wins immunity, outlasting Sierra, then Shirin. Then we watch a showdown between Rodney and Mike. Rodney wants this one bad because he wants to get rid of Mike. Rodney's physique makes it look like he should handle this well, especially since he's smaller than Mike so is holding less weight. Mike, on the other hand, has two things on his side - his immense need for the protection (which tends to win out over standard desire), and his faith is God to get him through tough circumstances. Mike wins and is immune at the vote tonight.
Tribal:
Since voting for Mike is not an option, Shirin is the only odd person out. But both Shirin and Mike have had chances to plead to others that keeping Shirin is a no brainer because nobody left likes her, she's unlikely to win even if she somehow made it to the end, and she's no good at challenges, so you can vote her out later. The thought is that they could take out a bigger threat now while they have 2 extra votes to work with them. All they need is someone to feel as though they're in the bottom 2 of the 6-person alliance. The problem is, nobody seems to think they're at the bottom.
But Mike has a grand plan. He reveals his hidden immunity idol. He tells everyone that he plans to play the idol for Shirin, making her immune and causing one of the 6 others to be voted out. He tells Shirin to vote for Tyler - the biggest threat of the 6. Mike says he will choose one random person from the others. If the others want to guarantee that they'll stay in the game, they would need to switch their vote from Shirin to Tyler or risk being voted out themselves due to Mike's random vote.
Genius!
The voting commences. Jeff tallies the votes. Mike stands up, but only tells Shirin that he likes her and keeps the idol for himself for a future tribal council. The votes are read. Shirin, Tyler, Dan, Shirin, Tyler, Dan, Shirin, Shirin. With that, Shirin is voted out 4-2-2. But the take home message, of course, is that Dan received 2 votes. Dan looks shocked and relieved. Mike looks like the cat who caught the canary. Shirin, despite being voted out, looks happy too. I believe she loved the play that just happened even if it did mean her demise.
Best Moves:
1) Mike "plays" his hidden immunity idol. I usually advocate for keeping those things a secret, but in this instance, Mike made better use of the hidden idol than I think anyone ever has before - be it by playing it, sharing it, keeping it, or leveraging it. Mike exposed exactly where a crack exists in the larger alliance, and is now guaranteed to stick around through their initial turning on each other since he still has his idol.
2) Shirin attempts to convince everyone that she's not a threat so they
should vote out someone else and save her for later. It didn't work,
but it was honestly the best move. Whether you thought you're on the
bottom of that group or not, turning on your people now made sense since
it would be a big move and would leave Shirin as an easy target for
later, as she argued.
3) Carolyn doesn't get fooled by Mike, keeps her vote on Shirin, and doesn't play her idol to save Tyler, thus having it as a weapon to combat a potential move by Mike next week.
Worst Moves:
1) Will votes for Dan. What the hell? Tyler was the one in trouble. Your only reason for voting for Dan would be if you truly believed that Shirin was going to be immune and that your alliance was going to turn on you instead of Tyler. But if that were the case, you would get at least 3 votes and would be toast, so a vote for Dan would not have helped. Maybe you didn't have much time to think about this vote, but I have to say that Phillip Sheppard (Redemption Island, Caramoan) was wise enough to stay the course and vote for the original intended target. Dan, the person you voted for, said it earlier - flippers never win. Although I don't agree 100% with Dan, he may be right about it with respect to Will's move here.
2) Tyler votes for Dan. Again, if your tribe was going to turn on you, your one vote for Dan wouldn't save you anyway. It would have been smarter to send the vote towards someone who wholly trusts you (although Carolyn was immune), or to someone who would flip out and make themselves the next easy target. A vote towards Rodney was the safe bet for Tyler if he felt he needed to have a vote to displace the one already coming to him.
3) Mike does all the work in the barrel reward challenge. It was a risk that would have paid off nicely if it worked, but the strategy should have changed for the 3rd segment when he was already tired.
Top 3 players:
Last week, Carolyn was my top pick. I only chose one since I was short on time.
1) Carolyn. Still at the top. Still has an immunity idol. Kept her cool at the last tribal. Unlikely to be the biggest target going forward even if things get messy on Wednesday.
2) Mike. What can I say. The man was pure genius last week. Plus he's got an idol that everyone knows he has and will expect him to play so we're stuck with him at least another week.
3) Sierra. Almost put her in the middle, but I suspect she'll be a key vote in this next tribal council. It is all too likely that her final 3 would have involved Dan, so if Dan was targeted then that means she would be next, so she'll probably side with Dan & Mike, and either way, she won't be the target.
Bottom 3 players:
Last week, Dan was my bottom pick. Not bad, considering 2 of his alliance members turned on him when the going got tough. I only chose one since I was short on time. Shirin was voted out (believe me, she would have been in my bottom 3-4 if I had done a full post).
7) Dan. His alliance targeted him, and despite what went down, they still have the numbers unless Sierra was alienated. As long as Sierra thinks she's got a final 3 with the others, Dan is doomed. Of course, there is the problem of that extra vote he has. It seems highly likely that it gets played this week, but will it be enough?
6) Rodney. I almost put Will here, but Will is probably the best bet left for a goat to bring to the finals. Rodney is way more volatile and it may bite him. Look out for votes heading his way to guard against an idol ruining someone else's plans.
5) Tyler. Used to be near my top. After his vote for Dan and because of his potential to win a late immunity, he's going to be a target again. Maybe his gig will be up sooner than I originally thought. His best hope may be to get saved by Carolyn's idol, but she might be wise to keep it for herself, unless using it could result in Mike being voted out.
No comments:
Post a Comment