Episode 32.5

How will they do the tribe swap in this episode? There’s an extra person. I know that they have done stuff like that before in previous seasons. Vanuatu comes to mind as one of the more stranger tribe swaps. This season is full of weird stuff already. Like the elimination in last episode was pretty weird. Has there ever been a vote out like that before? They didn’t even try to hide the fact that it wasn’t Alecia getting voted out. It was sad that she was.

There is one thing that I’d like to note before the tribe swap happens: the name of the twist of this season is brain versus brawn versus beauty. It’s not something like brain versus beauty versus brawn. There are people who don’t get the order right. Although, I don’t actually care that much if people get the order wrong. I only find it slightly annoying.

Since Caleb was medically evacuated, I might as well get to my next list of groupings of medically evacuated players like what they did in Philippines. The players in the mix right now for me are Bruce from Panama, Gary from Fiji, Joe from Tocantins, Mike Borrassi from Samoa, Kourtney from One World, Dana from Philippines, Shamar from Caramoan, Erik from Caramoan, Terry from Cambodia, and now Caleb from this season. I’d put Caleb with Mike and Shamar as one group. Erik, Bruce, and Joe still fit best as their own group. This leaves Kourtney and Dana as one group with Terry and Gary as the other group. These will be my groups for now until the next medical evacuation or until any of those players return for a future season. That’s why you won’t see some players on my list anymore.

One wonders if they’ll do that twist again, bringing back medically evacuated players at the start of the game like in Philippines. It has a connection to Michael Skupin who is now controversial due to an arrest for something he might not have actually done. But that could be all the more reason for them to do that twist again to give us a new season with players that hopefully won’t have any sudden change of perspective of them over time. We’ll see if they go with any of the lists of mine or not. Plus, I don’t know who of them are available or who all would want to return. There are probably some that production doesn’t want back for various reasons. They probably want Caleb back, although you’d think that they’d want most players back, even those that we didn’t like.

There are different things that I’m wondering about going into this episode. For one, I found it ironic that the brains tribe was dumb in Cagayan. Now we have a weak tribe labeled as the brawn one. Let’s just hope they never get the beauty tribe wrong. They tend to get tribes wrong more often than they should. That’s not to say that miscast seasons can’t be good, but it will always be something against those seasons.

Another thing that I’m wondering relates to what will happen with the tribes in this episode. At first I thought that it might be a tribe swap. Now I’m thinking that it could be a merge. They merged at thirteen players last season, which everyone found unusual. I don’t see how it was the producers playing favorites when you’d think that that, like nearly every twist, would be planned before the game starts. You do see sometimes when things don’t go as planned. Now this season was filmed before the last one and could have affected it in ways that we don’t know yet. One of them could have been a merge and thirteen. It could happen this season. It would be the first time that we go from three tribes to one instead of from three to two to one. That’s only if that happens. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Joseph has an injured finger. Will this come up later? Peter helps treat the finger. Peter feels that he is at the bottom. Neal looks for the idol. He finds all he needs to get the idol and he is the only one on his tribe to know it. The tribes than arrive at the drop your buffs moment. Good time for a commercial.

In the second segment of the show, we learn that whoever draws the brawn buff will be the odd person out until after the next tribal council. The other people will split into two tribes of six. There will be a blue tribe and a yellow tribe. Julia might finally get some airtime since she will be on a tribe by herself. The blue tribe has Cydney, Jason, Neal, Michele, Debbie, and Nick. The yellow tribe has Joseph, Scot, Tai, Peter, Aubry, and Anna. That’s who I think is on the new tribes, at least. Julia is the first person since Stephenie LaGrossa to be on a tribe by just herself. This is an interesting twist when you think about it. Makes you wonder if Exile Island was considered at all. It makes sense that it wasn’t. The yellow tribe talks about who they should vote out considering how a beauty would replace them. Debbie sends off a motherly vibe, but that could be a bad thing since most moms don’t win. She works on forming a new alliance on this tribe.

In the third segment of the show, Tai and Scot bond with each other. It seems like both tribes want to get rid of a beauty member since they know one will replace whoever is voted off. It’s hard for me to summarize some of what is happening. We then see Julia by herself on her tribe. She is not fending well by herself. She doesn’t know what’s going on and I’m wondering which tribe she will join.

In the fourth segment of the show, we get to the immunity challenge. The yellow tribe loses the challenge. Tai considers playing his idol, although he’s not sure if he has to. People on the tribe consider keeping Tai as part of the tribe and voting out Anna. Tai tells people about his idol and they consider using it to vote out Peter. Scot thinks that he’d be the only person who knows where two idols are. He tells Tai that Tai is safe, but Tai thinks otherwise. Anna and Tai go to their first tribal council. Will a bunch of drama unfold as usual? It is interesting, although maybe not as dramatic as usual. I don’t know how the votes will fall. When it comes time to play an idol, nobody plays one. Anna gets voted out.

On the next Survivor, Debbie looks for a new ally while Joseph is on the war path. I guess that things aren’t all happy among the former brain tribe members. But it was interesting seeing more dynamics of the former beauty tribe.

Total confessional count: Aubry- 4, Joseph- 4, Michele- 5, Cydney- 8, Neal- 7, Jason- 12, Anna- 7, Nick- 5, Scot- 13, Julia- 3, Tai- 15, Debbie- 13, Peter- 12.

New confessionals this episode: Peter- 3, Aubry- 0, Joseph- 0, Michele- 2, Cydney- 1, Neal- 1, Jason- 1, Anna- 2, Nick- 1, Scot- 4, Julia- 1, Tai- 4, Debbie- 2.

Anna had two confessionals this episode, the same number as Debbie and Michele. Aubry and Joseph had no confessionals this episode. Nick, Julia, Cydney, Neal, and Jason had just one confessional this episode while everyone else had more than two this episode. Scot and Tai had the highest this episode with four each. Julia still has the lowest total confessionals with three. Tai has the highest now with fifteen. Anna had seven confessionals, the same number as Neal. In addition to Julia, everyone with a lower confessional count than Anna is Aubry, Joseph, Michele, and Nick.

Well, with the last Wednesday Lenten service yesterday, I will be returning this blog to its regular Wednesday posts instead of Thursdays. It will probably remain on Wednesdays until Advent, but things could change during the summer hiatus. I don’t know yet if there will be any skips of Wednesdays just yet during random blog posts during the summer, but we’ll see what happens. So this blog is returning to Wednesdays, sometime after the episode airs in Central Standard Time. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.