Welcome back 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.
It is really tough to show a fair amount of screen time on a regular season, let alone a season that now has three tribes and Extinction Island. We don’t get a whole lot of one tribe… except for the tribe that loses of course. However, I think that Survivor is doing a pretty good job this season of showing just enough of the important stuff so that we are not left in the dark about anything. Also, as a quick side note: I loved watching that obstacle course challenge in the rain. Having the tribes work together to get over the wet ramp was fascinating. Okay, enough small talk, let’s see what happened this episode.
1. Extinction Island update. I should probably reserve the first spot for this topic every week. This episode Chris showed up on Extinction Island and was met with an icy reception. Even Keith seemed annoyed with his presence there. Reem and Keith are sort of a team at this point, so this was the first time this season that we got to see people on opposite sides of a vote interact post-vote-off. At first, it was a little rough for Chris who was rightfully upset about getting blindsided and then had to hear it from the other two how they didn’t feel a bit sorry for him. But, it amazed me how he decided to catch fish and feed them anyway in hopes that it would pay off for him in the end and possibly help his chances of getting back into the real game. I know that we only see a tiny fraction of what goes on on Extinction, but everyone seemed to be getting along by the end of the episode. So, that brings up the question, how will they treat Rick? Rick and Chris voted together for the first two tribal councils, but then Rick had his hand in getting Chris voted off. I am curious to see how things progress here as the castaways start to pile up. At this point, there are just as many people here as there is on Lesu!
2. Unique tribe swap. There are a few other swaps where similar lopsided tribe shakeups happened, but this is the first time that it has happened with a tribe expansion! What are the chances that everyone would end up staying with their original tribes except the one person who was the obvious next vote out? Well, just ask Wardog, since he did the math in his head, he knows. But it was amazing to see that they didn’t have to make new alliances or (in the case of Kama) even need a tour of a new camp. Wendy was the only mix-up here, and she at least got to stay with the chickens. The impact here is obvious, the original Manu is still way down in numbers, and the original Kama still haven’t been to a tribal council, so even though we know a little about their makeup, we still don’t know exactly where lines are drawn because no one has had to prove themselves in a vote yet.
3. Ron tricks Joe. I think that it’s safe to say Ron is the breakout star of the Kama tribe. Manu has a couple of great characters, but we have mostly just seen Joe and Aubry from the other side. Not only does Ron always seem like he is in a good mood, but he has some real game skills when it comes to Survivor. We already saw him find a game advantage even though he didn’t get a chance to use it. Now we have this beautifully edited piece that showed a flashback of Ron having Julia look through Joe’s bag for an idol while he kept the returning player busy at the well. Ron knew that this would be the only time that Joe would have it in his bag since the tribe swap just happened. So, he grabbed him and took him to the water well before he had a chance to hide it (if he indeed had one). This is a real heads up play on Ron’s part and shows that he knows how to play this game above a level of standard first-time players. Let’s see how he handles his first tribal council… if he ever goes to one!
4. Wendy… again. It seems that I should also just reserve a spot for Wendy here every week. Like I mentioned last time, Wendy had another less than stellar Survivor episode. Let me explain. She is fantastic to watch and is a great character for the show. She can be frustrating at times, but also endearing as well. The players seem to get along with her yet are constantly upset at her antics. I have no idea how she hasn’t been voted out yet and at this point, why would anyone want to? If I were there, she could be an easy person to drag to the end and I think it would be tough for anyone to vote for her to win. This episode, she actually let the chickens go!!! Messing with food on Survivor is one of the worst things that you can do, and yet, it doesn’t seem to bother her at all. Wendy is almost cocky about her behavior. She is definitely great to watch, and I can’t wait to see what she does next!
5. Is David all alone? That was a hard tribal council to watch. I’m so surprised that Rick got the votes. He probably should have been number four or five on the vote out list. The three new players could have easily targeted either Kelley or David, that would have been an easy vote. Also, I kept thinking that the two groups of two could get together and vote off Wardog as the swing vote. That might have given them a pretty tight group of four to move forward. Instead, they went for Rick. David looked shocked at the outcome, so it is highly possible that he had no clue that it was about to happen. Now, with Wardog siding with Kelley and Lauren, David seems like the easy next target if they lose. The one hope that he has is that if this tribe can somehow win (or get second) in the next immunity challenge and he can make it to the merge, he had a good relationship with Wendy that he can re-kindle. The two of them could join up with Aubry, Joe, and/or Aurora to form a cross-tribe alliance. But, with the recent track record of old Manu/new Lesu, things don’t look good for David.
There you go. What moments from this week’s episode do you think made an impact?
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“I kept thinking that the two groups of two could get together and vote off Wardog as the swing vote.” Kelley/Lauren were thinking more than one vote ahead after considering that their tribe would continue losing. If they voted off Wardog, they might be picking rocks on their next tribal with two solid alliances. Voting off Rick protects Kelley/Lauren for the next two tribal councils. If this tribe continues to lose, the next obvious vote is David (3-1 vote). If they lost again, the next vote would be Wardog (2-1). If they don’t go into the merge at this point, Kelley would likely win the fire challenge against Lauren.