Survivor Recap: Six on the Beach

We’re barely back at camp with Venus yelling at Soda for writing her name down (even though she didn’t) before we’re at the challenge. It’s a challenge we’ve all seen before, where everyone has to stand on a pyramid in the water and progress to smaller and smaller footholds. I’ve never been a huge fan of Survivor challenges. There is a point when there is someone on the show you really hate and you just hope they don’t win so that they can go home, but other than that I often fast forward to them. What I love about the show is watching the people interact, and their dynamics, and the only thing that affects that is who wins, not how they got there.

I’m glad I didn’t zip through this one because it managed something that Survivor doesn’t do that often: It was funny. First, Q tries to get the whole gang to play the “Alphabet Game,” where apparently someone says a city that starts with A, and the next person has to say that city, and then a new city that starts with B, and so on. No one could figure out how to play and kept getting it wrong until Charlie eventually got it wrong on purpose. Solid work. Then Tim asks Jeff what was up and Q said, “That’s how Black people ask what time it is.” When Tim asks again, Jeff knows just what to say. Speaking of timing in the challenge, when they get to seven minutes, Jeff says, in honor of Jelinsky not knowing that “seven” and “several” are two different words said that “several minutes have passed.” This is also titled “Episode Several,” so they get that joke in their twice.

What I don’t like about the challenge is that the 12 remaining players are randomly divided into two groups of six. Whoever lasts the longest in their group wins immunity, and whoever lasts the longest overall wins a reward for their tribe. They also go to tribal council second, providing the jury with its first member. My problem with this is the same as dividing the tribes last week, nothing in Survivor should be left to chance. Also, we already selected two teams of six in the last episode; why not divide them in the same way again and give Tiff the spot vacated by Moriah when she got voted out in the last episode? But, again, everything on the show should be determined by someone’s action or inaction so drawing rocks just seems so arbitrary.

Also, one of my favorite parts of Survivor is right after the merge when there are a great number of players working to get one person out. That’s when anything can really happen because there are extra numbers to work with. We’re well past the half-way point here and we’ve only had one tribal council with more than six people. Jeff says that with six people there’s “nowhere to hide,” but I would argue the opposite. Depending on how the numbers fall (again by chance) one could end up as, say, the only Nami on a tribe of six and then are easy to pick off.

The first tribe to lose is the orange tribe, with Kenzie taking immunity, leaving Hunter, Tiff, Q, Tim, and Ben vulnerable. They go to the old Siga camp, which Q says looks like a hurricane hit it, but I think that hurricane is Q. He initially talks to Tim about who he wants out, but Tim wants to get rid of Hunter because he’s a Nami number. Tim is staying “Siga Strong” (ugh) rather than sticking with the Plus One Alliance that Q established. When he talks to Tiff and Kenzie, they want Ben gone because they think that he is a more dangerous and sneaky player than Tim is. However, Q convinces them differently.

When Q goes off for a walk with Ben, he learns that Ben is willing to be the name they tell Hunter and risk going home if Hunter plays an idol (which he has unbeknownst to anyone). Because of that, Q goes back and tells the girls it has to be Ben, which they were thinking about in the first place. Now, if Q were savvier, he would have gone back and not say that he decided that Ben should go home, but he thought about what they had to say and agreed with them. Then, he gives them agency in the decision-making process and gets what he wants. Instead, Tiff and Kenzie (the power duo that I am officially rooting for to go all the way) are like, “We are not playing Q’s game, and we’re going to cut him eventually.”

There’s lots of going back and forth between Ben and Tim, Tim and Ben, Ben and Tim (which is also how I would describe my first MMM threeway) but when they get to tribal and vote, it’s Tim who gets all the votes. Wait? What? Now, I get that they want to be unclear about who is going home before tribal, but the case to get rid of Ben was clear because the girls made it to Q. How did he eventually get everyone to switch back to Tim? What did we miss?

The Purple group’s vote is a bit more exciting. After a showdown with a crafty Tevin who saved himself several times, Maria wins immunity leaving Tevin, Charlie, Venus, Soda, and Liz vulnerable for the vote. It initially seems like it’s four Nami versus two Siga and since Maria has immunity then it would be a little obvious that everyone else would vote for Charlie. But Nami is such a mess (as Hunter pointed out at his tribal) that they’re all at each other’s throats. Soda wants to get rid of Venus, whom she hates, but Tevin has a better idea in mind. He says that everyone knows that Venus is a snake and is playing a snakey game, but they don’t know what to expect from Soda. That means he wants to get rid of her.

Venus is playing a snakey game, and she approaches Charlie and Maria with several plans, including getting rid of Tevin and Soda. Even though Charlie and Maria seem on board with getting rid of Soda with Tevin, when Venus approaches them with the same idea they’re like, “Um, we need to talk about it.” Just tell the girl yes, get her on your side, and get what you want. It’s the same trick that Q missed on the other beach.

It’s a relatively short tribal for this group, but we know that Venus or Soda is going home. All that’s clear is that somehow Charlie and Maria wrested the power to align however they want and send someone home. When the votes are read, there are four for Soda and two for Venus. Soda gets up, shocked and saddened, and says, “It was you, wasn’t it?” to Venus. She says that it was, but Tevin is just over there on the other side of the fire mouthing, “No.” He’s right. It was his Plus One alliance with Maria that got her and Charlie seriously thinking about Soda and eventually sent her home.

But why didn’t Tevin vote for Soda? Even if Soda had an idol and cleared herself, there still would have been her vote for Venus, which Tevin was in on that would have sent Venus home. Did he just want that much insurance? But with six, as Jeff says, there is no way to hide, and it seems like a strange stray vote.

Both of these scrambles to get someone out were about keeping tribal lines intact or destroying them. Tim wanted to keep his tribe nice and strong, and the Yanu three sent him home because of it. On the other tribe, Nami easily could have picked off Charlie but decided to go for one of their own. Hopefully next week, with all of this being exposed and even Tiff and Kenzie skeptical of Q, it looks like the tribes are finally smashed to bits and I couldn’t be happier.