Good Things Come in Twos

   Have you ever heard the saying bad things come in threes? I’ve been hearing that a lot lately, and it is frankly depressing. So I thought I’d come up with an alternative. Good Things Come In Twos. Why? Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that I am about to take my second final in two days and this might be wishful thinking. Or it could do with the fact that Survivor aired a double elimination episode last night, where two episodes of Survivor were squashed into one hour. Which is it?  Read on to find out.

  As a double elimination episode not too much happens outside of brief strategy and competitions, so hopefully this blog will be quicker than usual. In less than three minutes, we jump on in to the first immunity challenge of the episode. Jay is feeling the pressure because if he loses, he is going home. The contestants had to carry pucks on a pole through a set of obstacles and then roll the pucks into a goal. Jay ultimately wins. I am thrilled because the final 8-7 is always when my favorites tend to be voted out. Buck the trend Jay!

  So the players get back to camp and everyone is scrambling since the easy vote won immunity. Will decides that last week’s “big move” wasn’t enough and he wants to take charge and get out David. Adam sees this and gets worried. He now wants to target Will. I take back the good things I said about Adam last week because his game this episode sucked. Let’s put the choice for him in his own words: he can keep Will who is “kinda loyal” to him and go after “the biggest threat to win the game” David, or he can save David and vote out Will who I guess “kinda” skeeved him out. This was a perfect chance to take out David, but Adam and Hannah dropped the ball. Well okay Adam did. Hannah has probably never gotten close to a ball in her life. 

   So Will is voted out, solidifying that Jay is on the outs and that David is a force to be reckoned with. Surely, the cast will realize that now and target him over Jay who has absolutely no one left? Nope. This cast still continues to play who do I like more instead of who can I beat. We go to the second immunity challenge where the players must assemble a puzzle. However, while doing so, they must roll a ball up a pinball machine and make sure to continuously catch that ball before it drops. Dear Survivor, I see you copying challenges from Big Brother. That is an honor code violation. Speaking of cheating, Adam decides that since he can not win, he is going to help Ken and tell him when he needs to catch his ball so he can fully focus on the puzzle. He does this right in front of Jay, who has to win immunity to stay. I find that to be a low class move, and I don’t think helping should ever be allowed in a challenge. It should be considered cheating, if someone is going to be safe they need to earn it on their own. 

  So Ken wins and Jay is pissed. Adam immediately goes into scramble mode and tells Jay that he helped Ken to prevent David from winning, not to prevent Jay. While this may be partially true, that is something Adam should have told Jay during the challenge. He could have easily whispered it to him as they were right next to each other. But, to make up for it, Adam reveals to Jay that his mother has stage 4 cancer. In a really touching moment, Jay has to pull his bandanna over his eyes to hide his crying so that the other tribe does not see what is going on. Jay’s mother has brain aneurysms and so the boys bond over their shared reasons for being on Survivor. If only these two boys could get over their differences and align! But, alas fortune never favors my favorites.

  In a plot to flush out Jay’s idol, Adam wants to split the votes between Jay and then have the second most votes go to David. Hannah makes a big blunder by trying to get Sunday out instead. She thinks Sunday is too tempting of a goat to take to the end. The issue is that Hannah has to be against two goats to have a shot of winning. She loses against anyone else. So by convincing everyone to vote out Sunday, she voted out the only chance she has of winning. Bye Felicia.

  The last note of importance is that at tribal, Jay did play his idol. This was unfortunate because as expected, he did not actually need to. The majority of the votes were thrown at Sunday. I could tell this was going to happen based off of what was being said, but I can understand why Jay played his idol anyway. Smarter players would have cast the majority of votes on him, and then second votes on Sunday. Its not his fault for hoping to have been playing with better people.

Best Player: 

None. I can’t award this because I think both of the moves made tonight were underwhelming.

Worst Player:

Hannah. She voted out her only chances of winning. Adam could have done better by getting out David, but at least he still stands a chance to win.

Favorite Player:

Jay. I doubt this changes by the finale next week. I hope he pulls out the win even if the odds are stacked against him.

Stay tuned sometime before the finale for a special finale prediction blog post!