Episode 31.6

As promised, I will now talk about how tribes have gone from more than two to just two. I will not focus on the four tribe seasons, which was basically just a switch from four to two very early in the game. Now Cagayan and Worlds Apart had tribes divided in a certain way at the beginning so it made sense to just randomly divide the three tribes into two tribes. With All-Stars, the first season to have three tribes (well, since the outcasts were not a tribe at the beginning of Pearl Islands) had it so that the loser of a reward challenge would be dissolved right afterwards. With Philippines, it worked so well that Matsing had just two members left so they were dissolved in a way that one of them left for one tribe and the other one left for the other leaving their old tribe behind. A lot of people criticized that, but I found it to work perfectly. It was the best choice.

Joe Anglim Worlds Apart Vytas Baskauskas Blood vs. Water Spencer Bledsoe Cagayan Jeremy Collins San Juan del Sur Teresa "T-Bird" Cooper Africa Max Dawson Worlds Apart Terry Deitz Panama Ciera Eastin Blood vs. Water Stephen Fishbach Tocantins Latasha "Tasha" Fox Cagayan Abi-Maria Gomes Philippines Mike Holloway Worlds Apart Yung "Woo" Hwang Cagayan Kimmi Kappenberg The Australian Outback Peih-Gee Law China Kassandra "Kass" McQuillen Cagayan Keith Nale San Juan del Sur Shirin Oskooi Worlds Apart Monica Padilla Samoa Shane Powers Panama Troy "Troyzan" Robertson One World Andrew Savage Pearl Islands Natalie Tenerelli Redemption Island Jeff Varner The Australian Outback Kelley Wentworth San Juan del Sur Kelly Wiglesworth Borneo Mikayla Wingle South Pacific

A lot of the long term readers of this blog know that I support the idea of medically evacuated players returning to play again. Philippines brought us the way that others could potentially return. Only if there is a medical evacuation in the future (whether it be this episode or not) will I mention my idea of how some should return. I would do groups of either three or two, using two only when groups of three don’t work in the long term.

I’m really hoping that some of the promos for this episode reveal more of the weird situation that will be going on. Is it a quit? Is it a medical evacuation? Is it a near miss? They had what could be considered a near miss in Heroes versus Villains with Boston Rob. Is it some other weird thing? Or, are they just messing with us and nothing weird is going on? They are making it seem like it happens to a person on Ta’Keo. But will it? Who will it be? And why? I just know that I’m not looking up spoilers. I can wait until it airs like everyone else. Or, like others at least hoped to be before getting spoiled.

Should I even bother speculating what might happen? I’m not sure that I will. It almost seems pointless when I know that I could easily be wrong about things. I’ll find out what happens, if anything, when I watch the episode. Meanwhile, it would just make sense in a sad way if there were a medical evacuation this season. I mean, the French Survivor tried to film a season in Cambodia, but then a contestant died. So it makes me wonder if someone is destined to get medically evacuated from not just this season, but from the next one as well that was filmed in the same place. To date, the only back to back seasons to have medical evacuations are Tocantins and Samoa.

Also, we finally have Christmas commercials. That’s unfortunate if you ask me. But, this happened over a month after it has the first two years. Also, it is a different company that aired the first Christmas commercial of the year. And, it’s one that I can boycott without affecting gifts that I would buy for Christmas. Of course, you can read my TV blog to see the number of Christmas commercials when I finally get caught up on them. It might be because of that long time between the end of Christmas and when I was able to post it that information in May that nobody read my post about those commercials from the previous year. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, we begin at the Ta’Keo camp, practically proving that whole Bayon tribe worthless. Jeff Probst, hence force to be referred to as Jeff, tells Terry about the news of his son having a bad enough problem that he has to leave the game immediately. Is this considered a quit? You would think that this is something new to the game that’s not a quit somehow. But maybe it is. It would also explain why Terry’s facebook account was active during the filming of the season. Maybe he lied when he said on facebook that someone else was using his account during this time. But, it looks like he’s out of the game now.

In the second segment of the show, at the reward challenge, it seems as if Terry was respectfully removed from the game. Jeff isn’t calling it a quit. Maybe he knows that it wasn’t like that. Maybe they knew that since Jenna Moresca in All-Stars, they knew that something like this would be best to tell players in the game. The players have an emotional moment talking about Terry before there is a tribe swap back to two tribes. The new Ta’Keo is Kass, Spencer, Andrew, Abi, Kelly Wiglesworth, Woo, and Ciera. The new Bayon is Kelley Wentworth, Joe, Keith, Tasha, Stephen, Jeremy, and Kimmi. We get to the challenge. Ta’Keo ends up winning it. If only I could remember what players haven’t been to tribal council yet. That would help.

In the third segment of the show, Spencer tries to bury the hatchet with Kass, or, at the very least, tries to ignore her. Andrew is happy about his new tribe for now. Also, before I forget to mention it Panama has been eliminated from the game. Kass is rallying her tribe to vote out Spencer. Meanwhile, various chaos is unraveling at the Bayon tribe as they all try to quickly turn on each other. Stephen gets emotional when talking about the game. He talks about what would be the best move for him.

In the fourth segment of the show, we get to the immunity challenge. This is the gross food eating challenge. For the first time, we get pairs competing instead of one on one. Well, it starts that way and then goes individually. Kimmi doesn’t eat pig’s brain again. Ciera twice fails at the challenge. Kass also twice fails at the challenge. It is Bayon that ultimately wins the challenge. So it will be Ta’Keo heading back to tribal council. Kass is still trying to get rid of Spencer, but things could easily turn on her or someone else.

In the fifth segment of the show, it seems like everyone is on the idea that Spencer will get voted out and they are saying that Ciera will get voted out as a cover. Of course, this leads to Ciera deciding to go out her own way. Kass tells Spencer of the secret plan. Will he believe her? Enough people are thinking about voting out Woo that he might be leaving. We get to tribal council next which reveals nothing about the planned change in vote. I love Spencer’s voting confessional. In the end, the person voted out of the game is Woo. This surprises Woo and Andrew, of course. We get Woo’s exit confessional before the credits for some odd reason. Maybe this is to include an update about Terry.

On the next Survivor, the merge happens at thirteen for some odd reason. We then see more about Terry who talks about his son. And they use this to get a CBS cares update about organ donation. So I don’t think that anyone died except the former owner of the heart.

Total confessional count: Kimmi- 4, Joe- 6, Kelly Wiglesworth- 3, Spencer- 19, Kass- 10, Jeremy- 8, Keith- 3, Terry- 5, Ciera- 5, Stephen- 9, Andrew- 15, Tasha- 10, Abi- 14, Woo- 8, Kelley Wentworth- 10.

New confessionals this episode: Stephen- 3, Andrew- 4, Tasha- 0, Abi- 0, Woo- 2, Kelley Wentworth- 1, Kimmi- 0, Joe- 1, Kelly Wiglesworth- 0, Spencer- 4, Kass- 5, Jeremy- 1, Keith- 0, Terry- 0, Ciera- 2.

It looks like Spencer is on the top for a change, in terms of confessionals in the game at least with 19. Kass and Kelley Wentworth now have 10 confessionals and Andrew is above 13 with 15. The lowest remain Keith and Kelly Wiglesworth with 3. Those with no confessionals in this episode were Kimmi, Kelly Wiglesworth, Tasha, Abi, Keith, and even Terry, unless you count his special thing at the end. Terry had 5 confessionals total and Woo had 8. In this episode, Woo had 2 confessionals. He is the first finalist to be eliminated from the game.

The whole Terry situation is more than incredibly weird. This type of thing has never happened before. You wouldn’t think that it would be a type of thing that should happen. I mean, they have never told contestants about things that happened outside the game except for that one time back in the first season when Gervase’s son was born. You wouldn’t think that they would have wanted this to happen so it does seem very strange again that this happened. Now it isn’t a quit. It doesn’t seem to have a classification of what is previously known at least. I just don’t get how weird it is.

It seems way too early for a merge to happen in the next episode. I wonder if they aired the wrong promo somehow my mistake. And I guess that voting would have to have the last names of either Kelly or Kelley or the wrong person would get voted out. Too many people are forgetting the second e in Kelley Wentworth. Plus, I can’t remember who, if anyone, has not gone to tribal council yet. This would be the first time since Philippines that some contestants made the merge without having previously attended tribal council. Anyways, I should save some of my ramblings for the next post so I have something to talk about. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.