After a week off, I’m back and raring to go for more Survivor SA. I was out of town for a wedding last weekend, and couldn’t find time to get a recap out once I got back. Hopefully you didn’t miss me too much.
Camp raid
We’ll start off at Zamba, as Dino reads Tree Mail, alerting them to the fact that two members from Vuna will be arriving to raid the Zamba camp.
Trying to save face a little bit, Amy says she “found a warning” at Immunity that the other tribe is coming to raid their camp. She said she won the challenge and the advantage was that she was given the heads up about the raid. Yikes. After learning this, the tribe starts hiding their most-valued items.
Dino and Anesu arrive for the raid, and they brought their Tree Mail message with. Shaun reads it aloud, revealing Amy’s lie about the situation. This is just one reason why her decision to lie was so short-sighted. While also being a weak story, it was also incredibly easy to disprove.
Dino asks for the machete, but Shaun says they can’t find it. This brings up an interesting point. The Tree Mail said that Vuna could take whatever they wanted, no questions asked. Production obviously knew Shaun and the rest of the tribe was hiding several of their items. Can they step in here? It doesn’t appear they did, but it’s interesting to think about. Dino and Anesu end up settling for comfort items.
I really like the camp raid idea. It adds a fun little twist to the Immunity Island decision. As we saw with Amy, directly effecting the whole tribe rather than just the individual, it forces the player to reckon with their decision almost immediately. I think it bodes well for the future of Immunity Island that the coming rewards/consequences will be a mixture of individual and tribe aspects.
Back at Zamba, Santoni reams Amy out for her lie. Elsewhere, Paul’s eating habits are getting on the nerves of some of his tribemates. They think he’s eating more than his share. Just something to keep in mind…
Reward Challenge
The tribes receive Tree Mail, telling them to send their strongest guy and girl to compete in the reward challenge. Zamba sends Chappies and Wardah, Marisha and Dino compete for Vuna. I love when these types of challenges are mixed in. They’re definitely not something I want to see too much of in a given season. But they add a nice touch of additional intrigue to their given episodes. When the tribes are separated for a challenge, you know there is going to be some sort of twist or moral dilemma for the participating contestants to deal with.
This is a confusing challenge to describe, so I’ll do my best and hopefully the picture below will help.
Each player pushes against a log, working against your opponent’s opposing force, pushing it towards a pole, with the objective to knock the other tribe’s side down. First to two wins. Winning tribe gets to pick fresh supplies from a Survivor pop-up market.
Chappies defeats Dino easily, as does Marisha against Wardah. The rubber match with all four players competing is won easily by Vuna, behind Marisha’s strength.
And at the Survivor market is where the twist comes in. Dino and Marisha can either pick 10 items for the tribe or 5 items for the tribe and 2 each just for them. They decide to take the 10 items for the tribe. They also (wisely) take the parchment back with them to hopefully prove everything is above board.
It’s a smart decision, as this type of scenario is often when the other tribe members begin to doubt their stories.
Zamba
The tribe is understanding of Chappies and Wardah’s lost, except for Paul, who stays in the shelter sleeping. Along with the food issue, he seems to be further digging his own grave.
Medical comes in to see Shaun, as he is covered in blisters and for a brief time, was struggling to breathe. They give him some medicine and there doesn’t seem to be any lingering concern about his status in the game.
Immunity Challenge
Each tribe has to collect six large wooden crates. Two members race out to collect one at a time. Once they have all six, they stack the blocks to build a staircase puzzle. Medical says Shaun cannot compete in the challenge while the medicine they gave him takes effect.
While both tribes begin the puzzle around the same time, Vuna wins in a landslide. Vuna sends Carla to Immunity Island, who is ecstatic.
Immunity Island
Carla’s joy is short-lived, however, once she reads the Immunity Island note. She assumed going to Immunity Island guaranteed her immunity. She ultimately decides to save her vote for the benefit of her alliance, becoming the first player to Give Up and Go.
Pre-Tribal
Anela knows Paul is the target, and while he isn’t fighting against it, he doesn’t want to actually write his name down, out of loyalty. I get the mindset here, but it’s a tricky line to walk. You don’t want to give your alliance any reason to doubt you, and telling them you’re putting down a different name than your true target isn’t exactly a great way to instill confidence. Plus, you’re then throwing a meaningless vote to someone else, who then might come after you if they can determine who made the vote. But, at least from what we see, it doesn’t seem to cause too much of a problem within the alliance.
Upon returning to camp, Carla says she is still immune, and that her choice was to either stay and eat, giving up her vote, or return to camp, keeping her vote. But Chappies and Santoni both know this is wrong. Chappies even has the piece of paper Santoni brought back from her time in Immunity Island. You can’t fault her for the attempt, but it’s risky given the fact she knows Santoni, and likely Chappies, know it’s a lie.
Tribal Council
Unfortunately, Nico blows up Carla’s spot, revealing for certain that she does not have immunity. Carla ultimately decides not to bequeath the idol to anyone, not even her closest ally, Wardah. I really wish Nico would keep more to himself with some of this stuff. It could be a product of how the game mechanics work that he feels he has to. Given that the immune players don’t need to actually play the idol, it would effectively make the player immune, given the rest of the tribe would assume it to be the case. I just wish it could have been set up differently, to avoid Nico having to reveal this type of information. It cuts the players’ legs out from under them, and can negate lots of hard work done prior to tribal.
But, now that more and more players are learning how Immunity Island works, they can hopefully adapt their gameplay and strategy to that fact.
The Paul plan goes through and is voted out, with Anela and Paul voting Wardah and Chappies voting Carla. It was an unfortunate end for Chappies, as he had otherwise had a very strong episode.
Final Thoughts
Santoni has really shined these last two weeks. But the preview for next weeks hints at her maybe overplaying her hand. Hopefully she can rein it in, though, because it’s been tons of fun watching her come into her own. It was another quiet week from my main guy and gal, Renier and Anesu. But it makes sense when your tribe keeps winning. Thankfully they both still got a little bit of screen time, once again all positive. I really hope we see more of them next week, just so we can get a better feel for how they’re actually doing in the game. Without seeing anything all that in depth from them in episodes 3 & 4, it’s more of a guessing game how good of a position they’re in. But at least from what we’ve seen, they both appear to be in fairly comfortable positions right now.
Tags: Survivor, Survivor SA, Survivor South Africa
