Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty became a thing of the past after last week’s swap on Survivor: Kaoh Rong. While some people are holding on to alliances from their original tribes, people on the bottom, like Scot and Tai, are forced to reconsider their options. Let’s see what happens as the merge looms ever closer.
Gondol After Anna
Tai is happy to live another day and since he’s adorable he gives everyone hugs to tell them thanks. He felt bad for Anna, but he’s glad that Scot told him not to play his idol and he feels like he can trust him.
Dr. Peter is feeling a little cocky for being on the right side of the vote for once. He thinks it might be time to split with the other Brains and start freelancing. He tells Tai that he was at the bottom of the Brains alliance so he has no loyalty to them and that they should target Joe if they go to Tribal Council again. Tai nods along with him but as we heard in the last episode, Tai isn’t necessarily the biggest fan of Dr. Peter. In fact, he was considering playing an idol to send him home.
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A Crush on Chan Loh
Nick is working hard at his tribe to make new bonds and relationships. He has a good read on Debbie, who he says just likes to be heard. He also guess that she has a crush on him, which she confirms in her confessional.
They get tree mail for the reward challenge and it’s going to involve basketball. They all know Scot’s going to be shooting for Gondol, so Nick tries to get some practice in.
Nothing But Net
Julia returns from Brawn beach only to see that her BFF Anna is gone. But she keeps up a brave face.
For the reward challenge this week, one member of each tribe has to dive down and release a bunch of buoys. Then, they have to work together to get all of the buoys back to the beach where one person will have to shoot ten buoys into a basket. Hmm, I wonder who they designed this part of the challenge for? Could it be the former NBA player? Subtle, Survivor. Anyway, the winning tribe gets meat, cheese and wine.
Michele dives for Chan Loh and Aubry goes for Gondol. And like the challenge beast she is, Aubrey finishes quick and gets a big lead for Gondol.
But Chan Loh catches up eventually and it’s up to Scot and Nick with the buoy basketball. It looks like Scot has it in the bag, but wait, here comes Nick! It’s tied at eight baskets apiece but Scot pulls ahead for the buzzer beater and the win for Gondol.
Another Beauty for Gondol
Julia’s happy to be coming to a tribe after a win. It’s good to join them on good vibes as opposed to losing ones. She and Dr. Peter connect right away and since she hasn’t learned anything about how he’s played the game thus far, he isolates himself with Julia right away. He feels like he can trust her and unlike Anna, she’s not conniving. He tells Julia that he wants to get rid of either Aubry or Joe. Preferably Aubry because she’s a bigger threat. Julia’s down for anyone that’s not her at this point.
But Joe and Aubry are onto Peter. They can see him scheming with everyone (he’s not even being subtle about it). Aubry wanted the next vote to be easy by sending Julia home, but it’s clear that they can’t trust Peter, so it might be time to get rid of him.
Joe decides that it’s time to find out if Dr. Peter is really being as sneaky as they think he’s being. Joe is a former FBI agent, so he decides to use one of his interrogation tactics on Peter. He corners him and asks him straight up if Peter’s gunning for him. Peter gets flustered and it’s hilarious to watch. Eventually he lands on a lie when he tells him, no, he hasn’t been plotting to get him out. Joe knows he’s lying because of the way he danced around a yes or no question. Now Joe’s officially done giving Peter chances.
Beauties Working at Chan Loh
Michele is being pouty because she taking responsibility for losing the challenge (when it definitely wasn’t all her fault) and her ally Anna went home.
Debbie lifts her spirits a bit though. She thinks Debbie is honest and she likes her, so she wouldn’t mind working with her going forward. Debbie tells Michele that she likes her too and she wants to play this game with the women and they should target Jason.
Michele reports back to her Beauty ally to tell him about her talk with Debbie. But Nick is dismissive and tells her not to trust anything anyone says because she’s the next target. Their opposing confessionals are actually quite funny. Michele says she’d never let a man speak to her like that in her real life, but she’s going to continue to let Nick think he’s babying her until they have to go to Tribal and she figures out her next step. And Nick says that Michele is someone who needs constant coaching because she has no idea what’s going on, but he’s glad to do it because she’s so easily manipulated. Good read there Nick!
Stacking Blocks
For the immunity challenge, both tribes have to work together through a series of obstacles. Then, two tribe members have to use poles to get blocks out of an overhanging net. From there they have to stack the blocks into a tall tower. First group to stack their tower wins.
Scot’s size is really helpful when it comes to helping his tribe mates get over obstacles, but it slows them down when he has to get himself over the obstacles.
Still, Gondol finishes the course first and starts stacking the blocks. Dr. Peter suggests they build up the smaller blocks and stack from the middle. It’s working fine, but in the meantime, Chan Loh has caught up and they’re stacking blocks with Debbie on Nick’s shoulders.
Peter’s strategy blows up when the block tower topples and it gives Debbie a chance to come in and win it for Chan Loh. Then of course, Dr. Peter has to be a big baby and shove the block tower over before they leave.
Dr. Peter the Snake
Aubry can’t stand Peter but she thinks that keeping him around to keep up the Brains number is the best idea. Especially since they don’t know when the merge is coming and if they have to stay in this tribe for another challenge, either she or Joe will be next after Peter. Her call is to make it Julia tonight.
Aubry tells Joe that part of getting Peter to fall back in line is having him apologize to him for interrogating him earlier. Joe really hates Peter but sucks it up and tells him they just need to keep their numbers up. Peter knows his spot has been blown up and he might have to wait until after the merge to flip, so he says he’ll vote for Julia tonight too.
Scot tries to talk to Peter about his plan to get out Aubry or Joe, but Peter tells him that it’s Julia tonight. Scot doesn’t like how Peter’s flipped back and forth and knows he can’t be trusted. The thing is that now he, Tai and Julia don’t have many options.
Julia says that Joe is loyal and he probably won’t flip, but they might have a chance if they approach Aubry. She tells Aubry that Peter wasn’t only gunning for Joe, but for her too. Aubry plays it cool and thanks them for the information, but doesn’t give them anything else. At this point, Tai and Scot are thinking of staying together and voting out Julia just because that’s where the numbers are.
Aubry goes back to Joe and thinks maybe now is the time to get rid of Peter. Of course Joe isn’t happy because when he was the target, she didn’t seem to mind as much, but now that she’s a target, she wants to flip things around and risk the numbers. She gives in and is back to voting off Julia again.
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Tribal Council
Julia admits that coming into the tribe was interesting because there are three Brains and three of everyone else. But three isn’t the majority they need it to be.
Aubry and Scot talk about the changing dynamics of the tribe and therefore the alliances. Scot says that they need to forge new alliances with new people and be confident with them going forward.
At least Peter takes responsibility for messing up the the challenge. Aubry says that’s enough of a mess up to vote him out, but there are other reasons to think about Peter as well, considering his behavior back at camp.
This is where things start to get a bit confusing. I think what happens here is that Scot picks up on Aubry suggesting that she’s voting for Peter. So he leans in to Tai and tells him to votef for “the original plan,” meaning Peter. He even says it out loud to Julia (I mean, who else was Julia going to vote for anyway?).
Then Aubry and Joe have a side conversation where Joe insists it’s Julia going home tonight. Everyone is completely confused and Dr. Peter is still oblivious to the fact that he’s on the chopping block. Because as far as he’s concerned, voting Julia was the “original plan.”
To the Vote!
So after that mess, we see Julia vote for Peter and Peter vote for Julia. Then Aubry takes a long time to write her vote down and finally writes “Julia.”
But psyche! She crossed it out and wrote “Peter” underneath! So the majority of the votes go to Dr. Peter and he’s sent home. The funniest part? In his final words he thought that he was voted out because he stacked the blocks wrong. Could he be any more clueless?
Next week: It’s mergin’ time!
(Image courtesy of CBS)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
