Welcome to Give Me Five! Each week, Brent Sullivan will look at the top five impactful moments from the latest episode that could influence the rest of the season.
This was more of a straight-forward vote, but somehow the producers still made this a compelling episode to watch. I discuss it below, so read on to find out how:
1. Michael has social skills. News Flash! Michael Yerger is really good at this game. We have already seen what he is capable of over the last few episodes with both his idol play and lying ability, but this week we got a peek at how good his social game can be as well. Immediately after they returned from Tribal Council, he started to lay the charm on. Talking about how he only made a move to save his group, and wouldn’t do anything like that again. It continued later in the episode when we saw the original Naviti tribe trying to figure out who to vote for; Michael pleaded his case to Bradley, who in return threw out a different name to vote for. Finally, at the very end of Tribal, Michael looked at Bradley and said, “Thank You.” That was another great move in his social game. His actions this week not only saved him for this vote, but they may end up pulling him into the Naviti alliance if they need the numbers later as well. Oh, and by the way, in case you didn’t know yet, the dude is only 18 years old!
2. Donathan gets emotional. When you are out on Survivor, sometimes it doesn’t take much to trigger an emotional reaction. For Donathan, that item was obviously a cup of coffee. Whether or not he had intentions of this playing in his favor never came up, but he really couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. First of all, Laurel came over to him and he told her all about what he has going on in his life back home. Even though they were already working together, this moment seemed to bond them a little closer. But the bigger part happened after. Chris noticed their conversation and he used that as a tool to get Donathan on his side. He has a similar story about taking care of his mom, and it worked out well for him as Donathan now sees himself in the middle of the alliances. This will all surely come to a head some point soon as Donathan will have to choose sides when the inevitable clash between Domenick and Chris happens.
3. Is love in the air? I think that we can all agree that this is a bit of a long shot. The previews tried to convince us that their might be a showmance brewing this week. In reality, it was more Jenna making a good move and getting close to Sebastian so that she wouldn’t be voted off. In the short-term, it worked. In the long-term, I still think that she is in trouble, but she could easily continue playing up the romance card to Sebastian because something tells me that he would be fairly easy to fool. I am curious to see how she plays this if they end up together at the next tribe swap.
4. Kellyn’s emotions show. Kellyn is not your typical Survivor player. In the first five episodes, we have seen plenty of tears shed, but more tears have come from Kellyn than anyone else. This week we saw her get upset after the Immunity Challenge loss. Both her and Bradley were working on the puzzle, and she was distraught over the loss because she thought that she let her team down. Then later during Tribal Council, we saw her wiping away tears when Stephanie was answering the question about why she wants to stay in the game. Now, I am not suggesting that this is going to wreck her game, but someone who is that emotional over everything can eventually wear on people’s nerves, or perhaps they break down and start playing poorly and making bad decisions. I mean, if she is crying over voting out someone who isn’t even in her alliance, what in the world is she going to do if she has to back-stab someone close to her to further herself in the game? Post-merge for Kellyn will be especially tough.
5. Stephanie’s edit. Okay, this is what I was referencing at the start of this article. Going into this, we knew that it was a five to three numbers advantage for the original Naviti tribe. We also knew what was going to happen as soon as they lost the Immunity Challenge. They didn’t show any of the three ex-Malolos looking for idols, which meant that they most likely didn’t have one. Other than Desiree looking through Stephanie’s bag, they didn’t focus a whole lot of her time on Ghost Island either, of course, we already knew that she didn’t have an advantage anyway. Despite all of that and the mostly predictable vote, this episode was produced and edited in a way that was still super entertaining and even a little sad. I can not remember a time when the fifth person voted out of the game had such a positive spin on their edit. Now, I know that this doesn’t have an impact on the game this season, but if Stephanie were ever to come back and play again, I think that we would have an instant fan favorite on our hands. That is just my humble opinion on the matter.
There you go. What moments from this week’s episode do you think made an impact?
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I want to comment on the last one. I agree about Stephanie’s edit. I might not have been a fan of hers but I could tell the editors were protecting her. And it is because of edits like hers and Brandon, and in a different way Jacob and to a lesser extent Morgan. That I think there might be an outcast twist this season. Ive had that feeling all season