Brilliant and Boneheaded 'Survivor' Plays of the Week: Wobble This Way
Warning: This recap of the “Play or Go Home” episode of Survivor contains spoilers.
Survivor is essentially one long trust exercise, and this week was the textbook example of how players can leverage trust — or lack thereof — to shift the lines of power.
Gondol loses the immunity challenge again, so it sets up three vs. three again: the Brains trio vs. two Beauties and a Brawn. Will Tai use his hidden idol to blindside a Brain this time? Nope! He wants to hold onto that puppy as long as possible.
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The key difference this week is that Anna has been swapped out for Julia. She joins Gondol from her solitary confinement to immediately wade into tribe politics. She charms Peter. She allies with Scot and Tai. And she makes a brilliant move (see below) that ends up with Peter voted out instead of herself.
Brilliant Play of the Week: Julia
After enduring solitude at the Brawn camp, Julia is rarin’ to go. She’s approached by Peter, who’s unhappy with his fellow Brainiacs at Gondol. He really dislikes Joe, but he suggests they vote out Aubry, because she’s a strategic player.
Gondol loses immunity, and a good deal of the blame has to be put on Peter’s shoulders, since he came up with a disastrous plan for stacking the tower of blocks. Still, Aubry and Joe feel like they need to keep the Brain numbers. And then Scot and Tai start to talk about voting for Julia, too, to keep tribe unity and to prevent a tie (which would target them).
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Julia comes up with another scheme, instead: Vote out Peter. She hits up Aubry, telling her that Peter was previously targeting her. That unnerves Aubry, and Jeff Probst’s tribal council questions cause some confusion and uneasiness in her and Joe. In the end, when she votes, she crosses out Julia’s name and writes down Peter.
Boneheaded Play of the Week: Peter
For a Brain tribe member, Peter has been acting pretty stupidly. Despite having the numbers in Gondol, he’s dead-set on taking out his fellow Brainiacs, because they voted out his ally. Well, let the past stay there, Peter. Live in the now!
He doesn’t even bother hiding the fact that he’s talking to the other side, and worse, when Joe confronts him about it, Peter lies. Badly. It’s hilarious to watch him stammer and open his eyes wide open, like a scared little kid who has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Then, instead of owning up to it and getting even cozier with Julia, Tai, and Scot, Peter flops back to the Brains. But now, they don’t trust him. And the others don’t trust him either. He’s stuck between a rock and a hard place, and that place is called elimination.
Power rankings:
Chan Loh: Neal and Jason - Both have hidden immunity idols.
Gondol: Tai - He’s still got the idol and his alliance with Scot is steady.
Survivor airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on CBS.
