Episode 7
The episode opens with Nina talking about how much she likes her tribe, how she feels good about her place in the game. So even if the preview at the end of episode 6 didn’t give it away, it’s a classic opening leading up to a tribe swap. The new tribes end up as:
Blood: Amy, Dave, Jordan, Jordie, Josh, Mel, Nina, Sandra, Shay
Water: Ben, Chrissy, Croc, Jesse, Khanh, KJ, Michelle, Sam, Sophie
Mark draws no buff. But instead of sending him to Exile Island or something similar, he gets the choice of which tribe to join. He joins the Blood tribe, keeping him and Sam separated. I like it. It’s a logical choice that is smart for the game.
Reward Challenge
Four members of each tribe go against each other in a boat tug of war, trying to get to their tribe flag. First to get their flag three times wins a hot dog lunch reward.
The new Water tribe handily wins the challenge.
Reward
Sam tries to reconcile the fact that Mark chose to be on a different tribe. She obviously would have enjoyed playing with Mark, but she’s able to see past the emotional aspect and recognize the strategy behind it. There would have been good and bad either way, but I think in this case, if Mark joined with Sam the bad would have outweighed the good.
The other piece is that Sam and Sophie are reunited. Sophie tries to play nice with Sam, but Sam doesn’t buy it, and she shouldn’t.
During their meal, Chrissy spots a clue under the table. She manages to grab it, and from what we saw, nobody noticed her do it. She reads the clue with Croc at the water well, and they get to planning how they’re going to get the search done. They do find the idol, with Croc taking official possession. Croc (smartly) wants to keep it a secret, but is a little worried how Chrissy will handle that part of things.
Blood
Sandra is in trouble. She was dominating on her original tribe, but she has some serious work to do to get back to her position of power. If Blood loses the next immunity challenge, she could be in legit danger. Even the Queen has her limits.
Nina is also in a bit of a tough spot, though much better than Sandra. She could easily, and soon, face the decision of voting out her mom or possibly blowing up some established relationships if she decides to save her mom. I think if she needs to, Nina will be able to vote her mom out, and I think Sandra would understand and accept it.
Immunity Challenge
One player chops through a rope to release a cargo net, to climb up a platform. Once the first person is up, the rest of the tribe follows. They go down the other side and over a series of balance beams, collecting boxes along the way. Once they have all their boxes, they climb up a tower, where they drop the boxes off the edge, to find a ball. After they find it, they maneuver it through a giant table maze. Two players are on the maze with a caller up top in another tower.
Water wins a tight challenge.
Pre-Tribal
Sandra knows she’s a likely target, but all hope is not lost. The guys want to focus on challenge strength, and Mel has also been a weak link in that aspect. Even with Sandra there, the initial vote settles on Mel. But Jordie doesn’t like how easy it is, you can only let Sandra get so far in the game. The one thing potentially holding him back is their relationship with Nina. He doesn’t want to break that trust if it can be avoided. But he sounds like he would still vote for Sandra even it means losing Nina.
Tribal Council
Sandra pulls out all the stops. She puts on a great performance, talking about how the weak will always outnumber the strong, physical strength can only take you so far, that you need to have people you can rely on to have your back. But Sandra’s no dummy (oversimplification of the century, I know), and she starts to feel the heat. And when JLP asks her about Nina, she says, “That’s my baby, she has to what she has to do.” Unless Shay goes rogue and plays her idol for Sandra (which would be a horrible decision), this felt like final confirmation that Sandra’s time was done. And that is confirmed when we see Nina’s vote: Sandra. She says in her voting confessional, “You always told me to stick with the majority. And unfortunately it looks like the majority is coming after you.”
But Shay does play her idol! Except, she plays it for herself? I can only assume she just wanted to get rid of it? But that doesn’t stand up to reason. From what we saw, there was *zero* chance of her being the target. If you want to play your idol just to play it, to remove that perceived threat, at least use it when there’s not an obvious other vote.
And when it gets to the vote, Sandra is sent home in a 9-1 vote (getting one last vote in against Dave).
What a privilege it was to get another season of Sandra. Every moment we had with her was great, we got to see her dominate strategically. It was awesome, nothing less. And I hope with her elimination, we can finally put to bed the theory that production manipulates the non-elimination episodes. If there was ever a player to do it for, it’s Sandra, the Queen of Survivor.
Episode 8
Blood
The tribe decompresses after voting out Sandra. Nina is sad about having to vote her mom out, but knows she did what she had to do. She hopes that in doing so, even though her vote didn’t sway anything, she’ll prove her loyalty. Jordie confirms exactly this in a confessional. I don’t know how much it actually proves, though. It was a unanimous vote. Nina really had no choice. Sure, she could have thrown a random vote towards someone else, maybe Dave along with Sandra. But that can only have a negative or neutral result. She made the right choice, but it should have been an easy one, even being her mom.
Water
Sam is liking her tribe, but there’s that lingering unease with Sophie still around. But then Sophie floats a possible idea of working with Sam. As nobody would expect the two to work together, it could provide an opportunity to do some serious damage. It could make sense, but I don’t know that I buy it, and I doubt Sam does either.
Immunity Challenge
Before the challenge, Nina says she doesn’t feel too bad about Sandra being voted out. She came out to play her own game, and she meant it. So this doesn’t affect her or her tribe too much. Cold blooded. I love it.
It’s a pretty simple challenge. The tribes line up side by side, with each person holding a disc between themselves and the tribemate next to them. Last tribe standing wins immunity.
Mark and Sam each did this challenge in their first season, and we get a little insight into the two of them talking strategy with their respective tribes. It’s short and simple, but it’s still something that rarely get to see in U.S. Survivor. Blood eventually pulls out the win.
Pre-Tribal
Sam wants Sophie gone. She knows Sophie can create havoc, not just for her game, but for everyone else as well. The majority – which starts out as everyone except Sophie and KJ – plans a split vote with Sophie and KJ.
To Sophie’s credit, she realizes she could never sway the numbers to target Sam, so she sets her eyes on Khanh instead. Vote out a threat or at least flush an idol.
Tribal Council
After some emotional moments from KJ, reflecting on the tough position she’s in, being torn between loyalty to her sister and loyalty to her tribe, KJ follows Nina in voting for her loved one. No idols are played, and Sophie is voted out. Sophie was really the only toxic energy in the game. There was a little between Sandra and Dave, but that wasn’t all that bad, plus Sandra is gone. At least from what we’ve seen, it’s been a pretty positive cast so far. Let’s see if that continues or if someone else will pick up Sophie’s mantle.
Episode 9
Water
With Sophie now gone, Sam can finally focus fully on furthering her game without this looming shadow. For her more than anyone, this move had to be made before the focus could shift to the bigger threats left in the game.
Khanh is one of those big threats, especially that he still has his idol. Sam enjoys playing with him, and likes the idea of possibly having a potential “group idol” if they can make through to the merge with Khanh’s idol. But there’s two sides to everything. She knows the idol could be a benefit, but could just as likely, if not more likely, be a a threat to her game.
Blood
Amy feels a bit on the outs. She formed a close relationship with Jordan on their original tribe, but with Jordan now reunited with his cousin, Josh, she’s not so as sure about her place in the tribe. Even with Jordan, she’s at a numbers advantage if she can’t work her way into their group.
With Jordan and Josh a sort of power couple on the tribe, Nina knows there’s safety positioning herself with them. She’s content playing second fiddle to Josh…for now.
Reward Challenge
It’s a series of one on one battles on a pontoon. One player from each tribe face off, trying to pull a pole through to their side, far enough to knock another player from the other tribe off a perch into the water. They’re playing for fish and chips.
Blood wins reward.
Water
The vibes around the Water tribe are not great. Khanh’s trying to take notice of who’s maybe a bit worse off, maybe using that as a way to see who should go next. Chrissy is starting to miss her family. Ben is really intense, and is quite hard on himself if he loses in challenges. As of now, his sights seem to be set on Ben.
Immunity Challenge
One at a a time, the tribe carries spools on a long pole across a trip obstacle. Unless I’m forgetting something, this is the first time this has been done as a team challenge. The team aspect, along with the added obstacle, is a fun twist on something we’ve seen several times before.
After Jordan causes the stack to fall, Water takes the time advantage and wins immunity.
Pre-Tribal
Jordan’s worried his performance at the challenge might do him in. He has Josh on his side, but Jordan doesn’t feel like he’s fully in the majority. He’s in by association. But Josh knows Jordan could be the target, and he wants to target Mel. She hasn’t done great in the challenges, and has been kind of floating in the middle. Nobody seems to really know where she stands on anything. It’s hard to get people to stump for you if they don’t know anything about your game plan. Her only hope seems to be someone else deciding they want another player out more than her. And that hope just might come in the form of Amy.
Amy hasn’t felt as close to Jordan since the tribe swap. And with Jordan and Josh taking control of the tribe, she thinks now could be the time to go after Jordan. Shay is shaping up as the swing vote, so Amy goes to work on her. But unfortunately for Amy, Shay tells Josh about her plan. So of course Josh goes to Jordan and Jordie to try to switch the vote from Mel to Amy.
Once they clue in Nina on the Amy plan, Nina goes to Amy to talk through their plans. Nina knows she can’t be Josh’s number one ally if Jordan is still hanging around. But Amy isn’t certain that she has the numbers, though if she’s right on everyone else, Nina would make it so they have enough.
Tribal Council
Amy’s eagerness to break up the Josh/Jordan power couple ends up being her downfall, sending her out of the game.
Wrap-Up
Another week, another great three episodes. I think more than anything I’m surprised and thrilled and how steady this season has been. There haven’t been any super high highs, but there haven’t been any lows to speak of just yet. Australian Survivor is nailing it.
