Tonight is a little different. At Tribal Council, in what we trust is the last non-elimination episode, JLP makes his announcement. The castaways will be divided into two groups: Barren and Bounty. The Barren tribe will go to a new beach with no shelter, no fire, and no food. There will also be torrential rain, just to add to the torture. It will rain particularly hard on Paulie’s head, accompanied by his special sad theme music.
The Bounty tribe will return to their beach with brekkie in the morning and an advantage in the Immunity Challenge. But how do you divide this band of ten into two fives? Firstly, Kate wins Individual Immunity after a spider foils Logan, so naturally, she will be on Bounty. She also gets her pick of who will be there with her. Although Morgan tells her she doesn’t need to pick her, she is very relieved when Kate calls her name.
Now, to fill the first two spots on Barren. There will be a vote, and the vote will send the top two vote-getters into wretchedness. Paulie and Logan (after a tie-breaker between her and AJ) are heading to Barren.
How to allocate the rest of the places? A rock draw, of course. Zara, Karin and AJ join Kate and Morgan on Bounty, and Myles, Kaelan and Kristin join the miserable Paulie and Logan on Barren. Kaelan leaves Tribal Council with a huge smile. If you are heading for Hell, you better hope you have such a good-humoured, warm and steady presence as Kaelan along with you.
As non-eliminations go, it’s weirdly okay. The group division process seemed unnecessarily drawn out, but it did mean Kate had to declare her Significant Other (as if the tribe didn’t know). The vote required some strategic thinking. With Kate and Morgan being the agreed split targets before the Immunity Challenge, switching initially to Karin and Morgan, and landing on Logan and Morgan on the way to Tribal Council, it is essential that a target be put onto the Barren tribe in the very likely event that Bounty wins Immunity.
We are all immediately rooting for underdogs Barren to win. But with the chance at a night’s sleep, breakfast, and an advantage in the challenge, all signs point to a Bounty victory. In addition, we are due an endurance challenge, which historically gives the lighter women the edge.
Let’s rewind to Reward. The Auction That Is Not An Auction. The castaways arrive at what looks like the typical Auction set up: stepped seating opposite a bench with JLP presiding. But it is, in fact, a Do You Feel Lucky? The players must approach the bench one at a time to pick between two covered items. To make the odds better, they can call heads or tails on a comically large Survivor coin. A correct guess means they can ask for one item to be uncovered before making their choice.
Of note, Myles gets a whole loaf of white bread, Kate gets a scroll (after hesitating to choose it) which lets her steal Kristin’s lasagne and beer. And Paulie, calling the coin toss correctly and having a phone revealed for a call from home, chooses the covered item and is rewarded with a pickle.
Although this is a new mechanism, it would be reasonable to assume that there is a “good” item and a “bad” item in each covered pair. With the phone call from home being declared time and again by Survivor players to be better than any amount of food, how was the alternative to a phone call going to be good? But I don’t need to beat Paulie up on his choice. He did that very thoroughly to himself. Logan ends up getting the call home, which she takes in front of the tribe. It’s not just feeding your own soul but showing your humanity, your “real self,” to the rest of the tribe, which is the true advantage of the call home.
Kaelan, ever-cheerful, is happy with his bowl of rice. He’s also happy, as he tells us, to start an “avalanche” to get the vote where he wants it without appearing to drive it. We are finally getting strategy confessionals from Kaelan. We have confirmation of the game we guessed he was playing. He wants to “pull a Bradbury” (on his Olympic gold-winning play, not his Survivor outing). His ability to lower his threat level is stunning. Despite winning two Individual Immunities back-to-back, no one is saying his name. He is agreeable to every plan brought to him, leading everyone to think he is on their side, and he has voted in his own interest while appearing to be “a number” to others.
And finally, to our favourite NPC. At Tribal Council, before the shock and scurry of the twist, the Queen of the Jury, Laura, gets the “woohoo” she so richly deserves. The prospect of the lewks she will serve at future Tribal Councils is mouthwatering.
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