We’ve reached the merge of Survivor 50 and we’ve merged with a whole bunch of people left. 17 to be exact but we did lose three tonight in an episode full of twists.
Tonight’s episode opened up with Day 12 at Cila with Jonathan reacting to being blindsided with the Charlie vote. Despite being blindsided, he tells Dee that he still wants to work with her and Kamilla. While this talk is all going on, a boat arrives and here….comes…..the….merge. The boat arrives at all three camps with mail being delivered to them that they are all set to meet up together. 17 people. That’s right. 17 people are in the merge which is a whole lot of people on a beach. However, we aren’t going to get all of those on one beach just yet. With the merge happening, Ozzy decides he needs to tell Emily about his idol to which Emily says she won’t tell anyone. Oh boy. LOL. Your track record isn’t good on this Emily. LOL. Ozzy also tells Christian about the idol. Devens and Christian reunite and talk game. Cirie talks to Genevieve telling her that she hears that Aubry has an idol. Genevieve tells…..everyone that info as the Genevieve and Aubry rivalry continues. LOL. Genevieve tells Ozzy that she’s the one that sent him his idol. Ozzy then realizes that everyone knows about his idol. Yeah, this part of the episode is basically just everyone sharing way too much info. Here comes another twist as a boat arrives with a message that there is something to find in the jungle with everyone racing to find it. Ozzy finds it and it’s a ticket to exile island with news that he has to take someone with him who won’t be able to say no. He decides to take Rizo with him saying that no one knows anything about him so he’ll take him. They are not a part of the tribe for the rest of the episode including the tribal councils so it will be interesting to see how they are put back into the game.
Immunity challenge time but a twist and another twist and another twist. Everybody gets a twist. Jeff announces a twist based off of rare events such as a lunar eclipse and blood moon. This is the blood moon twist of a rare Survivor first where there will be three people going home tonight. They will be split up into three tribes of five competing in this challenge which is the balancing on foot holes challenge. More twists. The winner of each team will get immunity. So, we have three immunity winners. Another twist. All three teams will go to tribal council to vote someone out in separate tribal councils. Another twist. The person who lasts the longest overall helps their team win Applebee’s which is back as a sponsor. Somewhere poor Liz is screaming. We then go into a long Applebee’s informercial from Jeff of what they offer on their menu and how awesome the food is. Another twist. Jury begins tonight AFTER the tribal council vote outs. The challenge gets underway and the teams are split by one group of Jonathan, Tiffany, Stephenie, Kamilla, and Chrissy. Another group of Genevieve, Aubry, Christian, Devens, and Joe. The last group is Cirie, Emily, Colby, Coach, and Emily. The transitions trip up several right off the bat when they make their transitions down to the next step with Emily going out first. Devens and Jonathan go out on the next transition. Colby is struggling with his foot again and it makes him go down hard when he drops out. Remember I said last week that there had to be a reason that they just randomly dropped this Colby injury talk into that episode. With one group, Dee and Coach are the final two and then Coach drops out. Dee wins immunity for that tribe but she bails immediately not being able to last any longer to compete for Applebee’s. So that whole group is finished with the challenge. Christian wins for his group but he also bails out of Applebee’s. That means that the final three of the last group who are Stephenie, Kamilla, and Chrissy are automatically in contention for Applebee’s. It comes down to Stephenie and Chrissy for immunity. Stephenie pulls out the immunity win and also wins Applebee’s for her team. Again, the three that won immunity are Stephenie, Christian, and Dee.
We get a short visit to Exile Island next with Ozzy and Rizo talking. Rizo tells him about his idol which Ozzy already knew about but he was happy that Rizo shared the info which built some trust between the two of them. All three groups go to different camps. Well, one went for Applebee’s obviously but they later go to a camp. Aubry talks to Christian and Devens telling her that she is absolutely going to use her idol and wants to target Genevieve. Genevieve talks to Christian and is pitching a Devens vote to which Christian fully agrees cause he’s wanting to keep Genevieve from using her idol allowing her to feel safe. Christian and Devens talk and say they’re good with Joe going if Genevieve does happen to use her idol. At the other group, Colby is talking about his injury and how it happened in a challenge. He said he thought he hyperextended it but is afraid it must be worse. Dee and Coach talk and Coach messes up telling Dee that Emily had told him she wanted Dee to go first. Dee was responding with a why didn’t you tell me this already? Coach in his confessional says he full messed up here and he said this was just dumb game play on his part. Dee tells Emily that Coach had revealed to her what Emily had said. Emily’s plan is that she wants to vote out Coach and her thinking is that Colby might go out after that being pulled from the game due to injury. Cirie talks to Dee and says that you have to get the head of the snake and not the tail saying that she doesn’t think Colby would go out with injury anyway. She wants Colby out as number one option. Colby talks to Dee pitching his own alliance members to Dee saying he can pull Dee into the group and will do it in front of everyone saying she’s safe to work with. On to the next group where Kamilla and Jonathan talk about doing a Chrissy vote. Chrissy talks to Kamilla saying she knows they are going to vote for herself to go and she won’t take it personal. Chrissy plays that side to them but to the ones she’s working with, she goes a different route telling Stephenie that she’d like to target Kamilla. She also tells the same to Jonathan with Jonathan saying in the confessional that he is in the middle here with what he can do with the vote.
On to tribal council. The first group of Jonathan, Tiffany, Stephenie, Kamilla, and Chrissy are up. With the way the edit has been of Chrissy this season, I really expected her to go cause we haven’t gotten a ton of her on the show. I really felt like this was going to be a Chrissy vote so it was a big surprise to see Kamilla go out on a 3-2 vote. Tiffany and Kamilla voted Chrissy. Stephenie, Chrissy, and Jonathan voted Kamilla. Kamilla gets up and says “drag that man through the mud” in reference to the blindside from Jonathan. She hugs Tiffany who is shocked. I really liked Kamilla’s exit interview with her saying how fun it was to get to play and lie and how fun it was to be lied to and played as well. She didn’t get to play like that in her previous season so it looks like she had fun. Next group is up with Genevieve, Aubry, Christian, Devens, and Joe. Genevieve plays her shot in the dark but is not safe. Aubry does not play her idol. Genevieve is voted out 4-1. Not surprised there as it felt like this was where the vote would probably go. The last group goes up of Dee, Colby, Coach, Cirie, and Emily. This was an emotional tribal council here with Jeff asking Colby and Coach how many years it had been since they had been to a tribal council and they both said 15 and 13 if I remember right. Colby talks of it being 25 years for him on Survivor. Jeff asks Dee how old she was when Colby first played and she replies 3. Jeff mentioned the moment of having Colby, Coach, and Cirie there as the ones who paved the way for players like Dee and Emily. Colby is super reflective and says he’s had more fun this time than all the other seasons cause he’s just had joy in it. Colby of course has no vote in this tribal cause of the twist that got him early in the game. He is voted out 4-0. A lot of emotion on it from everyone including a tearful Cirie and Dee. One of the all time Survivor legends getting the sendoff.
Thoughts on the episode. That was a lot happening in that episode. It felt like too much for me especially sending three people home in one episode. Big Brother Canada did triple evictions back in the day and it was too much. I felt like we could have gotten more out of these players instead of just rushing three out. I realize they have 17 people and we’re halfway through the game so they’ve got to start eliminating people but it just felt like such a rush. I found myself emotional and super reflective with that last tribal council too. It really was quite the moment. I’ve watched Survivor for 25 years myself and to just have this group there representing the old school and then the emotions of someone like Dee who you could see the tears of that she knew and felt this emotional moment too of Colby going home. I was teary too at times during that tribal with just the reflective feel of it looking back on the ride of this show. Bummed to see Kamilla go home. I would have really liked to have seen what else she had ready to go. I also wanted to see more interaction with her and Rizo to see how she plays that Kyle fake story that was told to her. Awesome to see Stephenie get an immunity win. Such a throwback of how good she is at challenges. How will Ozzy and Rizo be put back into the game? I assume with them avoiding all the tribal councils that this is the “advantage” to where they were on exile but they had safety. I assume they just get inserted back in and get caught up on the happenings with no other twist to it.
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