Survivor: Cambodia has already been full of twists and turns. Immunity idols hidden at the challenges? Check. A tribe swap that expanded the two tribes to three? Check. Making the third new tribe start from scratch? Check. While the members of the Angkor tribe may seem at a disadvantage for having to start over, there’s still an immunity idol to be found for one of the members. Let’s see if a Jeff Varner or a Weasel Woo can get his hands on it.
Survivor: Cambodia Recap: Two Tribes Become Three >>>
Angkor
Jeff Varner cannot believe he’s still here, and escaped even getting a single vote after his meltdown after the last immunity challenge. He knows he’s indebted to Andrew Savage and Tasha now, which makes him sick, but he’s going to do what he has to do to stick around.
After Tribal Council, Tasha pulls Woo aside and tells him it shouldn’t have been Peih-Gee who went home, but Jeff Varner. She says he’s the source of the contention and the drama and she wants him to be next.
But Abi hears the whole conversation, and once again, she’s not pleased. She tells Tasha that she doesn’t like her having talks with someone who voted for her. Woo tries to apologize for voting her, but Abi can’t help but take it personally. She wants Woo gone next. Now Tasha and Andrew are starting to get a whiff of her paranoia.
Besides the fact that they’ve already had to vote a person off their small tribe, Angkor is also suffering facing the elements. The beach isn’t as nice as the other two tribes and there are no resources. Andrew Savage says they’re stuck in “Survivor Hell.”
Reward Challenge
For the first reward challenge of the season, each tribe will send a person out to race in the water and grab sandbags. At the beach, they’ll then have to launch their sandbags by jumping onto a plank into a basket overhead. The first tribe to get three sandbags in their basket wins a Survivor barbeque set complete with meat, cookery and spices. The second team to finish gets less, but still a pan and some spices.
The twist? It’s what Jeff calls a Hero Challenge, which means each tribe will select one person to run the entire thing.
Jeremy is running the challenge for Bayon, Terry for Ta Keo, and Andrew for Angkor.
Terry “The Challenge Beast” Deitz is off to a fast start, getting back to the beach first and landing his first sandbag on his first try. But all three dudes are pretty evenly matched.
It’s Andrew Savage who finishes the challenge first, which is nice considering the state of Angkor. He’s also all-too-pleased to play the part of the hero, not surprisingly. There’ll be no living with his inflated ego now.
So it’s a race between Terry and Jeremy for second place. And Terry lives up to his nickname by finishing just before Jeremy.
Bayon
Jeremy’s excited to have found his idol at the last immunity challenge. But he’s decided not to tell anyone about it. Not only that, but he’s going to tell Stephen that they need to keep looking. He says in his confessional that he’d love to be Stephen’s new JT. He’d be happy to be life long friends with him and let Stephen have second place. (How nice of you, Jeremy!)
Later on, Jeremy asks Spencer what’s the deal with him and Kelly Wiglesworth, since they were both on the former Ta Keo tribe together. Spencer has no problem talking some smack about Kelly since he knows she voted for him and that she was part of the alliance that wanted him out. He tells Jeremy that there are other people in this game on the other tribes that own her vote and that she should probably be next to go.
When he tries to give this same pitch to Monica, she’s less eager. She smiles and agrees to Spencer’s face, but she knows he’s sneaky. She’d rather keep Kelly around than Spencer to keep the women strong and eliminate the real threat.
Ta Keo
Kass knows that the winner of Survivor Second Chances will be a person who really took the opportunity to let their game evolve. So she did read “How to Win Friends and Influence People” before coming on so she could improve her social game. And the fact that everyone out here expected her to be a “complete turd” coming back gives her a chance to pleasantly surprise people.
She wakes up early on Day 11 and Kelley Wentworth sees her cutting beads off of her bag. Kelley’s immediately suspicious, knowing Kass for being sneaky on her season. She even tries to see what she’s doing, but Kass waves her away.
But it’s nothing sneaky at all! In fact, I bet Kelley feels real salty when Kass hands her a birthday present; a handmade beaded bracelet. Aw! Chaos Kass is being really sweet and making it really easy to root for her.
Immunity Challenge
For the immunity challenge, each tribe selects a caller to lead the other blindfolded members of the tribe around a course to collect 16 puzzle pieces. The first two tribes to collect the pieces and then solve the puzzle win immunity.
The callers are Jeff Varner for Angkor, Kimmi from Bayon and Kass from Ta Keo. The struggle is real for the blindfolded survivors, who keep running into one another and dropping the pieces on flailing body parts.
Ta Keo is the first tribe to get all of their pieces followed shortly by Angkor. While doing the puzzle, Jeff Varner drops a puzzle piece on his toe and thinks he broke it. Even though they’re the last tribe done with the pieces, Bayon is the first tribe to solve the puzzle. Ta Keo slowly but surely finishes their puzzle but Angkor pretty much gives up and just waits for the challenge to be over. Angkor is heading back to Tribal Council.
Loser Camp
Jeff Varner has his broken toe wrapped up as he hobbles back to camp. He tells the tribe the good news which is that he’s “not a physical threat.” I’m not sure if Varner understands that this is the part of the game where tribes need to keep physical threats around to win challenges and get rid of weak players.
Tasha and Andrew agree that Jeff Varner needs to go because he’s not only a liability, but too cunning to keep around. But Abi is unpredictable and they’re not sure if they can count on her to vote for Varner.
Woo tries to convince Abi to keep him around for his physical strength. He says she shouldn’t feel too comfortable with Tasha and Andrew because right now they’re only keeping her around because they need her, but when they get back to their original tribe she’ll be out. But all Abi can think of when she looks at Woo is the fact that he voted for her twice.
Jeff is counting on the fact that he’s been loyal to Abi to get him through another vote. He tries to tell Abi that he misses hanging out with her and working with her because they’re so good together. You can tell that this is exactly the kind of thing Abi likes to hear. This game is very personal to her and Jeff is good at giving her a personal pitch.
Why Abi has What it Takes to Win Survivor: Cambodia >>>
Tribal Council
It comes out pretty quickly that the vote is between Jeff Varner and Woo tonight, and Abi claims that she hasn’t made up her mind quite yet. Varner says he’s been loyal to Abi, he’s never voted for her once and he never will vote for her. He tells Tasha that he trusts her and he’s a loyal person and he tells Andrew Savage that they’re both old school players and they need to stick together.
But Woo isn’t just going to lay over and die. He says Angkor needs to stay strong and they have to keep him around if they want any chance of winning a challenge before the merge. He also points out that Varner has allegiances with other people on other tribes, but he’s willing to commit 100 percent to this alliance. He’s just as passionate about staying as Jeff Varner, which is surprising because even in his final Tribal Council in Cagayan, he didn’t seem to have this much fight.
Just before it’s time to vote, Woo makes one final plea directed at Abi. He says if she keeps him around, he will never vote for her and he’ll stay loyal.
To the Vote!
Woo and Jeff Varner vote for each other. And the rest of the votes are for Varner. It’s not surprising to see Jeff’s torch snuffed this early given the fact that he was scheming ridiculously hard since day one. Although I am a little sad for him that once again, he’s missed the merge.
Next week: Let’s see if the Angkor tribe can rally! It would be interesting to see another group at Tribal Council finally.
Survivor airs on Wednesdays at 8pm on CBS
(Image courtesy of CBS)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
