The theme of this episode could well be have one of Lafontaine’s fables: The Lions and the Hyenas. The words came from Tony and if we go by his story then we have four Lions and the rest are Hyenas. However, he only named four of them: Wendell, Nick, Adam and Michelle. Where does that leave Kim, Sarah, Denise and Sophie? On a side note: How fair is it to have 7 men battling out for one necklace while only 5 women are in competition for the other. We had a challenge in which women did just as well as men in the past so why not put them all against each other?
Entering the merger, we had two tribes of 4 and a tribe of 3 plus Tyson so it was strange to see the two tribes of four ganging up on the tribe of three. Like many others, I don’t like the three tribe formulae because losing becomes a good strategy. The “Intentional Matsing”, as it was called, has often been discussed as a viable strategy because being from a tribe of two (or three) players entering the merger against two tribes of 5 players can be extremely advantageous. The two big tribes will try to recruit the two lone members, not seeing them as threats but as useful votes against the other large group. That’s how Denise won her season. That has been the usual pattern used to decimate the group that had won most of the Tribal Immunity Challenges because it still gives one group a clear majority at seven. Of course, familiarity, inherent in seasons with returning players, was a big factor in the tribal dynamics this time.
I’ll also post an image of the Menu that showed the cost, in Fire Tokens, of different items. Thankfully, no Immunity Idols are on the menu:
And, before we get into our look at the characters, does anyone know what the name Koru means and who had the idea? The Merged Tribe’s name used to be a big deal but now we only learned about it when a graphic appeared at the start of a rainy day 21. But that’s Survivor Probst Style for you!
The Lions: In a season with so many Leaders (Lions) a Follower is more likely to win. It is noteworthy that all four Lions had a big presence before the challenge but weren’t roaring as loudly after it. In fact, they all became sheeps!
Tyson: The talk with Probst before the challenge showed emotions we had never really seen from Tyson except at the moment when his girlfriend was voted out of Blood versus Water. He acknowledged that his jokes were often a facade to hide his feelings and that he was thinking of his family back home. It humanized him in a nice way. He led throughout most of the challenge. After winning it, he told us it was a boost of confidence. At the feast, he realized he was the only old timer there, having played three times before most of them “put their Survivor diapers on”. He wondered if the game had changed so much that he couldn’t adapt. His initial reaction was that he didn’t think so. His silent advice to them was to vote him out immediately because if he got his footing in the game, he’d build a home there.
A bad sign for Tyson was that he was chosen to be on screen when Adam mentioned some people couldn’t handle the rainy weather. He survived this vote but does he really have an alliance?
Ben: He had the confessional right after the announcement that the tribes had merged. For him, this was the start of the real game. “This is when the battle starts and it’s time to find out who is the champion of champions.” Talking to Tyson at the water well, Ben counted all the big names that were gone: Tyson, Rob, Parvati and Sandra. He didn’t want that trend to continue. For him, the battle was going to be “Big Threats versus little threats”. For him, Nick had a good social game but he kept popping in everyone’s conversations.
It’s weird that the Wendell vote looked like a defeat for Ben when the ex-marine was gunning for the carpenter from the start. The problem is that he had clearly settled first on Nick then on Adam before being brought back to the Wendell vote. Going with the flow was a theme of this episode but, for Ben, it looked more like being tossed to one side and the other by waves and undercurrents.
Tony: He had the interview that came just as the tribe arrived to their new residence. It was only to tell us that the new Menu was up but that the prices had risen so he couldn’t buy a thing with his lone token. (Tony seems to miss the fact that a group of players could pool their money together and buy an item for their own use. Let say a group of five takes over at Final 9 and they buy a tarp or a bag of rice and keep it to themselves! It would be a nice way to solidify an alliance.) At least the feast was free and Tony loved that! We then saw Ben giving Tony a big hug (How significant will that be? It was the first hug shown.) After hearing Ben’s opinion of the game, Tony felt it was music to his ears. For him, people like Nick, Wendell, Adam and Michelle, all good players, he conceded, but with low profiles, the sleepers Ben called them, these players had to be taken out first. After the challenge, Tony had a talk with Ben and Jeremy. They wanted to take out Nick. Tony called him a scavenger.
Tony was only used to narrate the new situation. Tony the Lion (shouldn’t he have chosen the Tiger instead!) was turned into a scavenger himself.
Jeremy: After connecting with Wendell, Jeremy showed a devious side we had rarely seen: Nick was Wendell’s right hand man but Jeremy wanted to be that guy so he wanted Nick gone. After winning Immunity, Jeremy noted that the necklace meant power and he’d be going after Nick. His plan was to be the boss: ‘”I want to drive this thing but I don’t want people to know I’m driving this thing.” However, when he heard that the vote had shifted against Wendell, Jeremy drove hard to get Adam voted out. He went to everyone, even Denise, Adam’s ally, trying to organize the vote. He had very little success.
Jeremy may have held the wheel for a while but he was neatly ejected from the driver’s seat by Sophie.
The Hyenas – It seems the Genus is divided into three different Species: Hyaenidae Delator, Hyaenidae Tacitus and Hyaenidae Habilis. The Delator species, the laughing-at-others Hyena if you will, is on the edge of Extinction. Wendell represents its last living member. Hyaenidae Habilis has two representatives with very strong, potentially winning edits.
Nick (Hyaenidae Tacitus): This silent Hyena was forced into action when he learned his name was being mentioned as a candidate for extinction. That’s when we saw a funny montage of Nick butting into every conversation. So Nick threw Adam’s name out as a target.
Nick never had a big role this season so we can expect to see him dispatched soon to join his friend Wendell.
Michelle (Hyaenidae Habilis): Besides comforting Sophie before the challenge and then needing comfort herself after falling off first, Michelle didn’t play a role in this episode. She was going to outlast Wendell but she received absolutely no credit for doing so. At the end of Tribal Council, the cameras clearly showed us that she had been left out of the loop.
A quiet showing in the merger episode is rarely a good sign for a player’s future but Michelle is certainly in a better situation with Wendell out of the game.
Adam (Hyaenidae Habilis): Adam’s first interview came during the storm and it was to tell us that this was nothing for him because he had previously been through a cyclone. The others were miserable but he was having fun. I instantly flashed back to prior winners who had said they weren’t affected by difficult conditions while their competition was suffering; Earl in Fiji and Natalie in Samoa come to mind. Once more, Adam had the last interview before Tribal Council: He was nervous because he didn’t know the plan: Was it Nick? was it Wendell? could it be him? He them mocked Ben who said he didn’t know what it was either. He couldn’t understand why Ben was upset. Adam was scared. He needed to stay in the game. His voting confessional was very telling. Holding up the parchment with Wendell written on it, he said: “It’s either you or me tonight. I know that but do you?”
Adam did survive a very touchy situation. When the story casts doubt on a player’s chances that’s often a great omen for their future so we have to keep Adam as one of our Top Contenders.
The Unnamed Menace – If the Lions and the Hyenas go at war then the winner could come from this group:
Kim: The rain put Kim in Survival mode. We saw her talking to Jeremy but that was about it for her participation in the discussion about the vote.
Unfortunately, Kim remains an extra in the season’s story. She cannot really be considered a contender.
Sarah: She gave us an interview just as the group sat down to the feast. She told us it felt good being one of the 12 greats. She then asked what happened with Sandra so Denise explained the whole deal.
We still see that Sarah has a role to play in the outcome of the season but she still too much in the background for becoming the focus of that story.
Denise: She received the Title of “Queen Slayer” from the group after she told them about her exploit. However, Denise’s exploits put an immediate target on her back. She was the talk of the group before she won immunity. When Jeremy brought up Adam’s name, Denise had very little reaction; she’d do it, she told Jeremy. To us, she said her alliance with Adam was a day 1 alliance but maybe not a Day 39 alliance.
Despite all that talk of being good to cut Adam, in the end she voted against Wendell. Presented like this, the editors showed that she didn’t deserve credit for Wendell’s elimination. Wendell said she was playing a winner’s game much like Russell Swann had said in the Philippines. People missed their chance to vote her out back then, will the same happen here? It is a bit early though to need to win your way to the end. The target won’t diminish but the necklace will not always be as easy to win.
Sophie: Her interview was the one chosen to explain how the group felt about Denise’s “war story” on how she beat the Queen. Sophie didn’t seem impressed; for her, Denise had just shown her cards too early. On a less positive note, Sophie arrived at the immunity challenge crying because she was cold. Her tears at the Final Five Tribal Council in South Pacific earned her the title of Sole Survivor but these tears didn’t have the same impact. At least, Sophie wasn’t the first to fall from the pole. When she heard the vote was between Nick and Wendell, “Sophie’s Choice” was clear: It had to be Wendell because: “Wendell and Jeremy are constantly bro’ing out.” She then went on with a very astute read of the situation: “A bunch of the “big guys”, Jeremy, Tyson, Tony and Ben all got together and said: “Maybe Wendell, maybe Nick but a lot of power in this tribe is coming from Jeremy and I think Wendell is Jeremy’s man.” Before Tribal Council, she reassured Adam, telling him that he’d get votes from Nick and Wendell but she was voting against Wendell.
Sophie’s read of the situation was simply remarkable. To me, that was a clear indication that this is her season. Also, note that while Sophie was giving us this great insight into the game, we saw an image of Jeremy looking down at everyone in camp but that image was partly obscured by the smoke from the camp fire.
That is the classical “Fogs of War” image and, when it comes during a crucial conversation, it is designed to show us which person is out of touch with the current events. Sophie had a choice to make: Let the Lions choose which Hyena should go home or make the decision for them. She chose to make the decision so now she’s in the driver’s seat, having stolen it from Jeremy, but no one really sees her as the driver. That is a magnificent position to hold.
Email this topic to a friend
Printer-friendly version of this topic
Bookmark this topic (Registered users only)
