‘Survivor: Ghost Island’ Recap: “The Finish Line Is In Sight”

The episode begins with Wendell singing the praises of his ally Laurel, apparently one of the best kept secrets on the island. He knows his best strategy is keeping this secret alliance just that – a secret. As far as he (and we) can tell, nobody knows about the Wendell/Dom/Laurel/Donathan alliance. That’s an impressive feat, especially this late in the game.  And I’m inclined to believe the edit we’re seeing, that they have been able to keep it on the down low. You would think someone, somewhere would have had a confessional about it if there was reason to suspect. But there hasn’t been so far, so kudos to them.

Wendell and Dom are talking about nothing, really, just that they need to keep working together. As if you would talk about anything else at this point. Dom says he is willing to cut Wendell if and when necessary. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t happen yet, just to get that out of the way. But in thinking about the long game, Dom goes looking for an idol, knowing there’s a good chance there’s a new one since Michael played one recently. Since we see him searching, he of course finds an idol. Except it’s not a real idol. It’s David’s fake idol from Millennials v. Gen X. Unfortunately for Dom, there’s no note with it, so it might be a little harder to play off as a fake without that key piece of information. It will be interesting to see how he plays this.

We head to the reward immunity challenge. That’s right, no reward challenge this week, as we will have not one, but two castaways voted off this week. The 10 players will draw for random spots to be split into two groups of five. These groups will be their temporary tribes, competing in separate immunity challenges and having separate Tribal Councils. Whoever is the last person standing gives their tribe the right to have their Tribal Council second. Not sure how much of an advantage that would be, but it had to be decided somehow, so whatever. I’ll get into my thoughts on the twist at the end of the recap. The two tribes ended up being:

Orange: Michael, Laurel, Dom, Wendell, Kellyn

Purple: Chelsea, Sea Bass, Angela, Jenna, Donathan

Each person had to push up on a bar, holding a ball between two sets of jaws. There was a surprisingly low number of classic Probst ball comments, maybe even zero if my memory is correct. Real disappoint, Jeff.

Chelsea wins for Purple, her second in a row. It’s impressive and all but it sucks when such boring players win immunity. There’s no engagement when a player you don’t care about at all, whether you like them or hate them, wins. And to back up my point, I came across this tweet. I’m absolutely not going to take the time to fact check this, but it seems right so I choose to blindly trust it.

After she didn't get a confessional, it's official: through ten episodes, Chelsea is statistically the most invisible contestant in the history of #Survivor

— Dom Harvey (@domhrv) May 3, 2018

Anyway, Chelsea drops almost as soon as she wins, meaning Purple has to go to the first Tribal. Dom and Wendell are the last two for Orange, and have an epic showdown full of trash talk that may not have been the best strategy. The trash talk was very clearly trash talk among friends. If anyone on the beach didn’t know how close those two were before, they definitely know now.

(I know, I know, I’ve used this clip before, but come on. It’s just so good)

Yes, it’s quite possible that everybody already does know, and Wendell and Dom know they know so why try to hide it? After a lengthy, 30+ minute battle, Wendell drops his ball, giving Dom the win.

Back at camp, Dom wants to put votes on Michael. He’s been a problem from the beginning and Dom has had enough. The only wrinkle could be if Michael has an idol, and he knows it. And since he doesn’t have one, he comes up with an alternative plan. He asks Donathan if he can borrow his idol just to show people he has one. Donathan, with no hesitation, says no. He doesn’t want it to risk it getting back to him and blowing up his game. I like the creativity, but he couldn’t have been surprised by Donathan’s decision. But hey, shooters shoot, you know?

But have no worries, Michael has a Plan B. He goes to Kellyn and tells her he has an idol and that he’s playing it no matter what. But as he has no fake idol, when Kellyn asks him to show it her, he can’t cover well enough and she sees right through it. What’s that? That’s not how it happened? You’re telling me she simply takes his word for it and straight up believes him? The guy who clearly should be the target who would do anything to get said target off his back? That can’t be true. Hang on, I need to go rewatch that scene.

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Well I’ll be damned, she believed him. WHY, KELLYN, WHY?! All you had to do was ask him to see the idol, but no. So she goes to Dom with her worries about Michael’s “idol” and what’s Dom’s immediate response? Michael should show her the idol. But yet again, Kellyn chooses to trust her gut, and yet again she’s wrong.  Kellyn is legit worried Michael will pull out an idol so she is thinking of switching her vote to Laurel. Kellyn makes the mistake of telling Wendell about the Laurel plan, who of course immediately tells Laurel. This sequence of events helps support the thought that the strength of Laurel and Wendell’s bond really is as secret as they think it is.  Wendell tells Laurel he wants Michael out, but has no issues voting out Kellyn if it means keeping Laurel safe.

We got all of that from the Orange Tribe. The Purple Tribe, they didn’t give us quite as much. But that had to be expected, given which players ended up on which team. Sea Bass, Chelsea, and Angela have a straightforward plan. They are going to vote out Jenna, while telling Jenna they are voting Donathan.

Donathan tells Jenna he will play his idol on her, and that she should vote Sebastian. Jenna is all aboard as she is still planning on voting out Donathan. If nothing else, this just gives her an extra feeling of safety, assuming Donathan can be believed.

We head to Tribal and Jenna makes a very interesting decision. She’s trying to pretend that she knows she’s going home, so after just a few minutes, she tells Probst she’s ready to vote. Excuse me? Has she never seen the show before? When somebody knows they’re the target, they fight, and scratch, and claw, and do everything they can to change their standing. They don’t just give up. But then again, Jenna never really showed us anything that would make us think she had much, if any, strategic chops. Her poor acting may have played a direct part in what happened next.

After Probst gathers the votes, Donathan stands up to play his idol…for himself. Jenna’s actions may have seemed a bit off to him, causing him to worry and want to play it safe rather than go for the perceive big move. The votes shake out as one vote for Donathan, one for Sea Bass, three for Jenna. Not only is Jenna out of the game, but she goes straight to the jury. That has to be BRUTAL. No time to compose herself or collect her thoughts. Again, just brutal. She also gets no last words, not now, not even at the end of the episode. Which is unfortunate for her, but honestly, it’s very fitting of her edit on the season.

At the second tribal council, Dom doesn’t believe Michael has the idol. There’s more Naviti vs. Malolo talk, as Laurel and Michael would seemingly be the two possible targets. Kellyn uses her extra vote advantage to vote twice for Laurel. The extra vote results in  a tie between Laurel and Michael, triggering a revote. Michael goes home, meaning the extra vote was completely wasted. Kellyn’s gut leads her astray for the second week in a row. My advice to Kellyn? Pull a George Costanza and just do the opposite.

Man, this was second rough week in a row for Kellyn. And after such a strong start, too. This could be a couple of things. One could be her story now is that of her downfall. The other could be that of her downfall and redemption. Whether you completely buy into the idea of a Winner’s Edit or not, there is something to be said for paying attention to the kind of edit a player gets, especially late into the season. CBS wants the viewers to think the winner was deserving. A positive edit goes a long way in shaping that belief. And on the obvious reverse side of that, if an eventual winner has been shown making blunders and having consistent errors in judgement, the viewers will react negatively to that. If Kellyn doesn’t start receiving some more positive airtime in the next week or two, I’ll be real worried about her chances.

Okay, so back to the big twist of the night. If you had been paying attention to the numbers, you had to know something like this was coming. With only a few weeks left, there was bound to be a double vote at some point soon. And while this wasn’t my favorite way to have it happen, I’m okay with it. Yes, Survivor is a game of skill, but there are definitely elements of chance and luck ever-present in each and every season. The difference here was that it happened so late into the game. I would have hated to see someone like Dom, Kellyn, Laurel, or Wendell end up in a huge minority and be voted off as a result (yes, Dom and Wendell each would have had an idol to play in this particular case, but the point still stands).

But what I do like is that it was an unexpected twist. The Survivor producers could have done a double vote pre-merge, but that’s been done before. It wouldn’t be such a shock. This was dropped on the players out of nowhere and that’s always a good thing. Adapting and thinking and adjusting your gameplay on the fly has become a staple of Survivor. So in that regard you have to give props to the production team. One thing they’re not afraid to do is take chances and try new things. Thirty five plus seasons in and they’re still surprising us. Credit where credit is due.

And that brings this episode to a close. We’ll be getting the always-emotional family visit next week, along with the possible beginning of the end of the Naviti power alliance. Hang on tight, folks, the game’s about to get serious.

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Matt Hambidge