Coming off the heels of their successful Tribal Council performance, Evvie and Xander are riding high. But it’s short-lived, as Xander isn’t too thrilled about learning Evvie spilled the beans to Deshawn about his idol. And the Yase group of Tiffany, Xander, and Evvie seems to be all but over. And what follows is a fun, energetic sequence that’s usually reserved for pre-tribal scrambling.
Xander is operating as a free agent, so he’s talking to anyone and everyone. Evvie goes on a “relationship recover tour,” trying to get in with anyone who will listen. Tiffany, says she’s going to have to “use whoever, whenever, however, to get me as far as I can get.”
We don’t often get this type of scrambling in the episode’s opening moments. I don’t know that I would like this energy here all the time, but it was a nice change of pace for at least this episode.
Reward Challenge
Before the reward challenge, we get another fourth-wall-breaking moment from Probst, as he proceeds to hide an advtange at the sit-out bench. We’ll come back to that in a second.
The tribe is split into two teams of five, leaving one player as the odd one out. And wouldn’t you know it, Erika draws the gray rock, leaving her out of the challenge. Leaving her out, that is, until Xander selflessly (well…) offers up his spot in the challenge for her. All you need to do is look at Deshawn’s face while Xander makes his offer.
Deshawn’s face tells you everything you need to know in terms of if the other #Survivor players are buying this as an act of altruism by Xander. pic.twitter.com/1klOVchUbF
Xander later claims he wanted to sit out because he wanted to spend time with the losing group. And I like that mindset. Misery loves company and all that. But he’s still putting himself right in the spotlight when he doesn’t need to. It feels like a very high risk, low reward decision. Now, had Xander clocked the advantage, and this was also a ruse to secure that, I might feel differently. However, as we come to see, he did not know about the advantage while making his decision. We do see him searching the bench, but he doesn’t come away with it. And that’s odd. He was clearly looking for something around the bench. If he’s going to comb over any part of it, why in the world would he not search every inch of that thing?
But to the challenge itself. One by one, the players leap off top of ramp, dive down into the water to release puzzle pieces. Once all the pieces are released and put in their boat, they pull themselves to the finishing platform where two players solve a pyramid puzzle.
And really, it’s one player, in Evvie, who solves the puzzle in about 7 seconds, earning grilled cheese sandwiches for herself, Ricard, Danny, Deshawn, and Erika.
#PapayaEtiquette
Shan and Ricard just can’t seem to stay out of each other’s way. Naseer graciously picks a papaya for the losing team, much to their delight. But then Ricard, immediately upon returning from their reward, takes a piece of the papaya to try. He does this right in front of Shan, who is none too please about this. I get where both are coming from.
Ricard probably shouldn’t have done that. You need to read the room (remember, this is the hardest season of Survivor EVER, after all), and shown a tiny amount of self-restraint. These people haven’t eaten much, if anything the past however many days and you just finished what had to have felt like a massive feast. Let that papaya sit.
But Shan needs to know better than to make any size deal out of this. For two people who claim to be close, the sure do bicker a lot. While it makes for great TV, it may not bode well for their future prospects working together in the game.
Immunity Challenge
A classic Survivor “balance on this for as long as you can” challenge, the players are to stand on their toes on a small bar, with a block of wood balanced between their head and the top of a frame.
But before we get to the actual challenge, we have an eat or compete offer, but with a twist!
Jeff offers a single portion of rice, if one person chooses to sit out. Or, if “enough” people sit out, he will give the tribe enough rice for everyone for three days.
“Enough” is subjective, as Jeff loves a good negotiation. And at this point, you could hear the great Angelina Cardona’s Twitter notifications go OFF, as she was no doubt tagged by less than every single Survivor fan on Twitter. Did you know that she gave up her shot at immunity for rice for the tribe? (Btw, I LOVE Angelina, I say this in jest. The rice negotiation was a highlight in a season full of highlights.)
Jeff settles on five players to sit out of the challenge. Shan and Naseer offer up their spot, but nobody else does steps forward. Xander then negotiates down to four, saying if one more person sits out, he’ll be the fourth. Ricard then agrees, and we have our four sit-outs plus rice for the tribe.
The challenge comes down to Evvie and Heather and Evvie wins.
Pre-Tribal
The prevailing plan is to flush Xander’s idol but vote out Tiffany. It seems to be the easy plan, until it’s not. Danny suggests splitting the votes on Tiffany and Naseer instead. Deshawn likes this idea, but Shan is very hesitant. Danny and Deshawn know Naseer is a threat, and he’ll need to go eventually. He feels safe now, but likely will feel less and less safe the deeper into the game he gets. Why not take their shot at him now?
But Shan is adamant about Xander being a bigger threat, and that that makes him more of an immediate priority. Both sides make good points, but this is where Shan has struggled some recently. I think she got her way so easily during her time on Ua, she’s having a hard time adapting to working with other strong players who won’t just sit back and take instructions.
A rift could be forming between Shan and Deshawn, and this won’t be the only time we see that during this episode.
Tribal Council
Heather! She finally has her time to shine, and, well she blows it. Nothing having your coming out party eight episodes into the season and completely falling flat on your face. I honestly don’t know what Survivor is doing with Heather this season. Through seven episodes, she’s said, what, 20 words? Then she pulls this at Tribal Council?
Probst gives his little “And now it’s time to vote,” which Heather decides is the perfect time to speak up and say she needs more time to “whisper some things.” She tries to make a huge move and swing the vote to Naseer…and nobody goes for it.
Things go so poorly in fact, that Heather doesn’t even vote for Naseer. She reverts back to the original plan and votes for Tiffany! All this work just to get things back to where they started, except slightly more split? Xander casts the sole vote for Naseer, with Tiffany and Evvie even throwing their votes to Heather.
There have been countless jokes about how invisible Heather has been this season. And it’s not to make fun of her. It can’t be easy for her to watch every week, just to see her receive little to no screen time. Even this week, compared to the grand scheme of Survivor, this was still a quiet week for her. But the fact that it felt like we saw so much of her shows just how little we’ve actually seen.
And had we seen more, maybe this decision would have made more sense. Was there a conversation we missed that would have informed this seemingly out-of-nowhere decision by Heather? Or maybe she really has not been involved in the game, and that’s why we haven’t seen anything from her perspective yet. And given the haphazardness of this choice, and how poorly executed it was, that’s the sense I get. It doesn’t seem like she has much of a grasp on the strategic aspect of Survivor.
With Heather’s last-ditch effort failing, the original plan of Tiffany comes through, though without the flushing of any idol. And with that, Tiffany becomes the first member of the jury. Tiffany is going to make a great jury member, but this game needed her. She was so much fun. After losing Sydney and Tiffany in back to back weeks, we’re quickly saying goodbye to the big, boisterous personalities. There are still several great characters left, but not in the vein of those two. It’s a shame to see them go out back to back so early.
One important thing to note from the whisper nonsense is Deshawn and Shan butting heads once again. Deshawn did not want to switch the vote to Heather, which Shan proposed. He tells Shan as much, and says she is again telling him what to do, rather than collaborating with him to make a decision together. Shan making the same mistake twice in one episode isn’t a great look.
That being said, however, this is far from something that they can’t overcome. Shan has shown herself to be smart and empathetic, so she certainly has the capacity to mend this fence. But it’s at least something to monitor going forward. If she keeps having these kinds of struggles in her relationships, she’ll only make it harder for herself to win this game.
Speaking of winning the game, there are a number of players in a good position right now, and really only one (sorry, Heather) that I would say has no chance. With 9/10 players in a position to potentially win this game, we should be in for an exciting finishing stretch.
