I’m going to do things off a bit differently this week, and head straight to the immunity challenge. It’s a nice, long, physical challenge, ending with a classic Survivor slide puzzle. It’s here we see something that I don’t think has ever happened before in Survivor history. Now I could certainly be wrong, but I cannot think of a comparable example to what happened at the end of this challenge. Wendell had been leading the entire challenge and appears to have finished his puzzle. He stops, double checks the work, and extends his arms out as if in celebration. But then we hear Laurel call out to Probst to check her puzzle. She was correct and Probst announces her as the winner.
“I guess I had to call your name,” we hear from Wendell.
“What? Did you call me?” Probst asked in response.
Wendell admits he, in fact, did not call Probst to check his puzzle.
“You have to call it. Wendell, you understand, right? Because a puzzle’s not done until you tell me.”
Wendell, to his credit, doesn’t push it any further. While he is certain he physically finished first, he admits to Laurel, “But you called it first, so the ruling is you got it.”
Incredible. Wendell, who has been on point all season, with a completely boneheaded mistake that cost him immunity. And I’m thankful he didn’t push the issue any more than he did. He finished, he didn’t call it, Laurel did, she’s the winner. And that’s the way it should be. Yes, they could have gone to the camera to see who did indeed finish the puzzle first. But that could set a terrible precedent for the show. With all the increased usage of instant replay across all sports these days, it’s refreshing to see a competition stick to its guns and avoid it.
I love that the onus is on the players. Don’t let them get away with a mistake on a technicality. Now if Laurel and Wendell had called Probst simultaneously, that might be different. Then they would have both been going by the book and you might need a replay at that point. But not here.
And what made it even more compelling was that Wendell was the vulnerable at the vote. But we’ll get to that later. Let’s rewind to the beginning of the episode and see what else went down.
We have our weekly viewing of the the Laurel and Donathan show. Honestly, they could just pick one of these conversations and drop it into any episode and I don’t know that we would be able to tell the difference. Donathan wants to make a move against Dom and Wendell. Laurel agrees that their time is running out. But she’s not sure if she can turn on her friends like that. Laurel even admits that she knows she can’t beat them in the end. Then vote them out! Even though Wendell was my episode 1 winner pick and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching him and Dom run this game, Laurel’s a fan. She knows the game. They have to go for her to win.
We go to the reward challenge and I loved this one. It was a variation on the individual challenge where contestants drop balls into the top of a chute and catch them at the bottom without dropping. Now it’s been expanded into a much larger, two person challenge, with large spools instead of balls. What made it work so well was that it seemed so simple in principle but in practice was much more complex and difficult.
The challenge is run with three teams of two: Wendell and Dom; Kellyn and Sea Bass; Donathan and Laurel. Angela draws the short stick and is left out of the challenge, which apparently extended to the rest of the episode. She was barely seen and heard from for the entire hour.
Dom and Wendell win and get to pick one person to join them on reward and choose Laurel. They send Sea Bass to Ghost Island, referring to him as The Pirate. Sea Bass celebrates, saying “I like how they call me The Pirate.” And that reaction says a lot more about Sea Bass than it should. But yet again, credit to Dom and Wendell. It was smart to choose Laurel in attempt to firm up that relationship. And it was a good move sending Sea Bass to Ghost Island. They didn’t want Kellyn to have a chance at gaining an advantage. And Sea Bass is probably the least threatening player when it comes to having, and correctly using, a game advantage.
At Ghost Island, Sea Bass smashes the yern? Or is it yurn? Either way, it wasn’t urn, a word so simple you never would have thought someone would butcher. But the English language is no match for my man Sea Bass. And this is a perfect example to show how likable he is. For any other player it would have been an opportunity for some cheap laughs at their expense. But with this guy? Who just laugh right along with him. Oh, that Sea Bass. Always acting like a kook. I love this man.
Anyway he smashes the urn and he gets to play the game. This time around the advantage is almost a sure thing, as three out of four bamboo chutes have an advantage. Sea Bass ends up with Sarah Lacina’s Kellyn’s steal-a-vote from Game Changers I mean, earlier this season. Except it’s no longer a steal-a-vote. It’s now a secret second vote. Let’s see if Sebastian can have some better luck than Kellyn with the advantage.
Back at camp, Donathan decides he wants to try to stir up some trouble. He tells Wendell he would vote for Dom if it’s Wendell vs. Dom at the end. Donathan says Dom knows this but Wendell just tells him it gives Dom incentive to put Donathan on the jury. I get what Donathan is trying to do and I like that he’s trying to mix it up out there and throw these guys off their game. But Wendell is 100% right. If Dom knows he has a vote in Donathan, why wouldn’t he want to put him on the jury? If he stops at telling Wendell that Dom would have is vote between those two, that might have been more effective. Even if Wendell brushes it off at first, small things like that can fester over time and really get into a person’s head. Further, Donathan may have moved the target from Kellyn to him. He’s now being seen as erratic and unpredictable. That’s not someone other players want to keep around.
We get to the aforementioned immunity challenge and it’s a good’n. Each player races to retrieve planks, which will be used to build a bridge. They cross the bridge and then build a ladder to climb a tower. At the top of the tower awaits the slide puzzle. Now we’re back to where we were at the beginning of this recap.
Afterwards, Laurel is discussing her options. She acknowledged she had been thinking now would be the time to go after Wendell, but she wants “to do it the right way…it almost doesn’t feel right to send him home.”
The part of me that has Wendell as his winner pick was jumping for joy at this. The fan in me who wants to see smart, strategic gameplay, was screaming in frustration. This is Survivor. Is there really a “wrong” way to vote somebody out? If you see a threat, and you have a chance to take them out, you take that chance. That being said, there might be something to Laurel’s decision. She’s a smart player. She knows the social dynamics of the tribe and the jury. While strictly speaking, or even “morally” thinking if you want to think of it that way, there is nothing at all wrong with Laurel voting out Wendell even given the circumstances.
Part of Survivor, a very important part, is jury management. Laurel might have felt that the jury would hold it against it her had she voted Wendell out after that goofy Immunity challenge. I’d like to think the jury members could see past that and view it as the smart strategic move that it would have been. But as any fan knows, you can’t always count on that. I believe she still should have gone after him, but there very well could be more to it that we just didn’t see play out on screen.
Donathan continues being paranoid and takes it with him to Tribal Council. It eventually led to this fantastic, albeit brief, exchange.
Dom: “Donathan, can I say something?”
Donathan: “No.”
The jury reactions were great. Michael just sat there shaking his head. Not a good look for Donathan here. You could feel the shift. Donathan is losing his tribemates and from the looks of it, he’s starting to lose the jury as well.
Then Dom drops a huge hammer back on Donathan. There’s a bit of last minute discussion and Donathan voices his desire to know what the plan is. Unfortunately for him, that won’t happen, as Dom tells him flat out, “Because we’re done talking, remember?” There aren’t always mic drop moments on Survivor, but this was a great one.
The vote ends up as a 3-3-1 split with Kellyn and Donathan tied. Kellyn is eliminated on the re-vote. I know I may have been a bit harsh on Kellyn over the last few weeks. But I liked her so much early on, it was a bit of a disappointment for me to see her have some (in my eyes) unnecessary temper tantrums. But overall she was a fun addition to the season and I hope she’ll be equally as fun on the jury.
And here we are. We have our Final 6 for next week’s finale. I’ll be putting out a finale preview post in the coming days, but here’s a little preview of the preview. Wendell and Dom are the clear 1A and 1B favorites. Angela has no chance. Sea Bass has a non-zero chance to pull it out. Donathan’s social showing this week had to have seriously hurt his chances. Laurel needs to get rid of Wendell and Dom, but that’s a tall task at this point in the game. It would be nothing short of shocking to see someone other than one of those two to win.
