If you’ve been watching Survivor: Cambodia, you already know that there have been an unprecedented amount of tribe swaps leading to game relationships in every which way. And not only that, but this is a season of All Stars, which means some players have relationships that pre-date this current game. All of that gets mixed up even more tonight for what’s sure to be a simply chaotic merge. Let’s get to it!
Survivor: Cambodia Recap: One Survivor is Pulled From the Game >>>
Singing the Ta Keo Blues
Andrew Savage is feeling especially salty after being on the wrong side of the vote last week. He has some colorful language for his fellow tribe members along the lines of “f*** those pieces of sh**.” He calls them “professional liars,” failing to recall that he told some pretty egregious lies to Spencer when he was attempting to blindside him. Self-awareness has never really been Savage’s thing.
Spencer thinks that Savage is feeling foolish because he got caught trying to pull off a blindside above his player level. He’s surprised that he’s working with Kass after their history together, but he thinks they both made the right decision and it shows their evolution as players.
Keeping Bayon Strong
The survivors get Tree Mail that indicates a possible merge. Tasha is a fan of the show and knows that merges don’t usually happen until around nine or ten people are left playing, and right now they are at 13. She’s excited about meeting up with her fellow Brains tribe members, Spencer and Kass, but she also knows that other relationships in the game have complicated things and that makes her nervous.
Drop your Buffs
The two tribes meet at Bayon beach for a merge feast! They’re wearing red buffs now and are named Orkun. Stephen is ready to hit the ground running. He knows that this is the most important vote to be with the majority on.
Kass airs out what happened at the last Tribal Council, which is an interesting strategy. She gave away that she was working with Spencer. (Why would she do that?!) She also tells everyone how Savage and Kelly Wiglesworth were on the wrong side of the vote. Information is power after the merge and Kass is giving it away for free.
Savage is of course happy to be back with his original Bayon bros, especially Jeremy. He warns him that Kass and Ciera are no longer apart of the original Bayon alliance, but he’s pulled in Kelly Wiglesworth. Jeremy says that he’s still tight with Kimmi and Stephen, so now the only question mark to get that majority is Joe.
Kass checks in with Kelley, the two alphas on the opposite alliance. Kass says that she has Ciera and Abi. Kelley says that she’s close with Keith. The only question marks are Spencer, and once again, Joe.
Savage knows it’s critical to re-connect with Joe to “confirm how strong their bond is.” He tells Joe that he wants to keep Bayon strong, but now that means including Kelly Wiglesworth instead of Kass and Ciera. Joe thinks that he can trust Savage, but he had his own thing going on Ta Keo with the other alliance, so he’s not sure where he’s going to vote yet. Spencer and Joe are aware of the position they’re in so they sit down to compare notes. Spencer draws up a diagram for Joe to try and make sense of everyone’s relationships. It’s interesting because Spencer doesn’t have any allies and Joe hasn’t had to go to Tribal Council yet so he’s not sure where people stand.
They spend some time stuck in the shelter because it’s raining. Stephen tells a poem, which is awkward, because that’s what Stephen does best, bless his nerdy little heart.
Kass tries to get some information from Tasha about the Bayon situation. Tasha doesn’t trust Kass as far as she can throw her, so she feeds her some garbage. In this case, it might have just been better for Tasha to say, “I’m not talking to you Kass,” because her lies fuel Kass’s chaotic fire. Kass tries to stir things up by telling the rest of the tribe what Tasha said about no longer being “Bayon strong,” which were clearly lies.
The blow-up at camp gets even worse when Ciera backs Kass up and says that Savage said he wanted to align with Woo to get the big physical threats out of the game: Jeremy and Joe. Savage is indignant that Ciera would make up such fallacies. How soon he’s forgotten that she’s a “professional liar.”
Kass says that she’s drawn a line in the sand and tells the tribe she’s voting for Tasha at the next Tribal. Now, that’s not even “Chaos Kass,” but “Unnecessarily Aggressive Kass.” It’s cocky and reckless, and while she claims she’s not letting Tasha get in the way of her second chance, she certainly does seem to be playing a little too emotionally.
Lives in the Balance
For the first individual immunity, we have a rerun of a challenge from Cagayan, that Tasha won. The survivors have to stand on a narrow beam balancing a ball on a platform. At ten minute intervals they have to move down to narrower portions of the beam and move their hands lower on the pole. Last man (or woman) left standing, wins immunity.
Stephen is the first one out. No shocker there. Keith, Ciera and Kimmi fall out before moving down the beam. Kass and Abi are next leaving Jeremy, Joe, Savage, Tasha and Spencer (aka all of the challenge beasts left in the game) to battle it out.
It comes down to Joe and Spencer in the end and Spencer comes up short once again. Joey amazingly wins his first individual immunity. So he’s safe this week, but will probably be a target next week (unless he just keeps winning).
Chaos Spreading
Savage is salty once again because he wanted to be the one who won. (This guy is really a piece of work and his arrogance will never cease to amaze me.)
He’s also being difficult to work with because everyone in his alliance want Kass gone (because she’s so disruptive) but he wants Ciera to be the one to go because of his personal vendetta against her for lying about him. Stephen thinks that’s a bad move for Savage. He thinks it’s best to go with the majority at this point in the game.
Keith also seems to be down to vote for Kass, even though he was on an alliance with her for a while at Ta Keo. It didn’t take long for him to not “stick to the plan.”
The only problem is that they’re worried one of them could have an idol. So they’re going to do a 5-4 split between Kass and Ciera just to be safe.
But splitting the votes opens up a crack for Kass. She thinks she can pull in Spencer to vote with her, Ciera, Abi, and Kelley to vote off Tasha.
She makes her pitch to him, pointing out how she saved his ass last week. Spencer listens to her thoroughly and says he’ll consider it. I don’t think Kass is considering the fact that Spencer and Tasha are very close in real life though. Spencer knows that he owes Kass a favor, but now that he’s making the decision going forward, he has to make a decision about who he can trust in the future. Either way, he feels good about tonight. He’s never felt like he’s been in the position to influence the game so much.
2016 People’s Choice Award Nominees: Empire, Shonda Rhimes Shows and More >>>
Tribal Council
Jeff starts things out by telling them that at 13, this is the largest Tribal Council ever. It is kind of insane to see so many torches there, with Keith and Joe’s freshly lit since it’s their first Tribal.
Ciera says life at camp has been chaotic, to put it mildly. The game is being played fast and it’s being played hard.
Kass claims that she’s not playing the “chaos” game, but Tasha is. Tasha does not like being called out by Kass. She gets riled up, which is exactly what Kass wanted. She says Kass is the one who thrives in chaos, not her.
Ciera knows that she’s guilty by association tonight because she’s so tight with Kass, and that’s just part of the reality. But she says if tonight is an easy vote for you, then you’re not really playing the game. It’s time to look out for yourself, and if you look at yourself and you can properly assess your situation and see that you’re on the bottom, it’s time to make a move.
Spencer says making big moves mean different things to different people. He says tonight’s vote is tonight’s vote and he doesn’t necessarily know where he’ll stand at the next vote. This leads Jeff to bring up an interesting point: Do you even need alliances in this game or do you just need voting blocks from vote-to-vote? It’s an interesting thing to consider, especially this far along in the evolution of Survivor. So far, it seems to have been working all right for Spencer, but is he playing a winning game?
To the vote!
The votes are all over the place. There’s one for Savage, two for Tasha, four for Ciera, and six for Kass. Chaos Kass has gotten herself booted from Second Chances but earned the first spot on the jury.
That is going to be one enormous jury. Which makes you think that there will be a Final Three instead of a Final Two. But hey, it’s Survivor. You never really know what’s around the next corner. Now that Kass is out of the way, it looks like it’s time to start targeting some physical threats.
Survivor airs on Wednesdays at 8pm on CBS.
(Image courtesy of CBS)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
