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.
What a fantastic episode, from the Chris and Domenick duel, to the secret trip to Ghost Island, to Wendell’s wonderful voting confessional for Chris. This was definitely the pinnacle of the season so far, the biggest issue that I am going to have is which five moments to discuss!
1. The Merge. This is the point in the season where I would break down everything that happened during the merge. But unfortunately, almost everything that took place in the entire episode centered around the two dueling giants. Since Chris was voted out, I can’t really use anything about him for my impactful moments. So, just a quick note to say that Domenick won that battle and we will continue to see him for a bit longer. I don’t understand why Chris didn’t play his idol after Domenick played his advantage. He only had two tribals to play it at, and he should have known something was up when Domenick obviously voted for him. Some truly crazy play going on here. Now that Chris is gone, I can’t wait to see how Domenick plays the game.
2. Four-way alliance. Early on, Domenick mentioned that he had a four-way alliance between himself, Wendell, Laurel, and Donathan. At first, I didn’t really think much of it, but it ended up coming back later after the group of eleven returned from “getting water.” Both Laurel and Donathan told Domenick and Wendell about Chris’ plans to vote out one of them. At that point, they had no reason to tell unless they planned on staying with Dom and Wendell. This also puts them into sort of a power position moving forward. Now, I know that four isn’t a majority when there are 12 people left in the game but having a solid four at this point is still a good thing – especially if they can keep a couple more on their side for a vote or two. I am not sure if they will be the final four people in the game, but I bet they have the ability to last for a bit with some big names still out there to be picked off.
3. Naviti girls hatch a plan. I have two separate ideas around what this was all about. The first one is that this was an editing stunt to throw us off track and make us think that Libby had a shot at going home. I think that it was fairly obvious that Domenick was going to play his legacy advantage and the show wanted it to be a surprise at the end. Secondly, the fact is, that conversation did indeed happen. At some point after the merge, Chelsea, Kellyn, Angela, and Desiree were plotting to take out Libby. Now, this is where it gets a little confusing to me. It ended up being a landslide vote off for Chris with only two votes for Libby. Those votes came from Angela and Desiree. Did those two not know what was going down that night, or was this some sort of backup plan in case Chris had played an idol? The audience was not included in any conversation that may have taken place around this idea. I am curious to see what will happen when they get back to camp after Libby received the votes.
4. Wendell is a good friend. A few weeks ago, I brought up the Wendell and Chris relationship after the swap. It appears that Wendell was just trying to play along while they were on the same tribe together. Wendell is all in with Domenick! During the episode, he tried really hard to get Chris and Domenick to talk through their differences, which Chris handled poorly. What was he thinking? You always agree to a plan regardless of if you are planning on sticking with it or not. Later, both Wendell and Domenick were left behind when Chris took the whole group to discuss strategy and voting options. Finally, he even went to bat for Dom during tribal council. This seems like an entertaining pair, and I can see them doing a lot of great things this season. The fact that they both still have an idol will help too.
5. Tribal council takeaways. Alright, now down to the tribal council stuff. Here are some things of note from this week’s tribal:
a. Domenick put on his fake idol and wore it throughout tribal. At this point, I am not even sure who thinks it is real, who thinks it is fake, or who knows that it is fake but that he has a real one as well?
b. Domenick (wisely) played the legacy advantage. He does still have a real immunity idol, but he is now down one piece that can keep him safe.
c. Chris didn’t vote. Is anyone going to realize that Domenick didn’t get a vote cast towards him? If they do notice, are they going to assume that Chris voted for Libby? That may work since with thirteen people voting it would be easy to assume that Probst just didn’t reveal all the votes. Let’s hope that someone notices.
There you go. What moments from this week’s episode do you think made an impact?
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