‘Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X’ episode 10 review: Zeke the middleman makes his choice
Tonight’s “Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X” episode brought you a little bit of everything that you could possibly want. At one point, you had hardcore strategy; at another, you had people tearing up for a variety of different reasons.
The first tears tonight came from David, as almost everyone seemed to applaud him over his personal growth and refused to let him sit out of the first Reward Challenge earlier. There was a lot of sad irony that was present here. David didn’t want to take part because he was afraid that he’d lose the challenge for them because of his swimming skills; instead, he and Chris lost it doing a puzzle, something that they should be good at. We love David, though, and want to see him go far because we feel like he stands the most to gain from this, and not just in terms of the prize money.
The second round of tears came from Adam. After his team won the Reward Challenge they received letters from home, and we had verification from him that nobody knew that truth about his mother having cancer. Adam’s been a manic player, but at the same time this reminded us more of why we like him so much; he cares about people, and he was so raw and real in that moment, being afraid that something could happen to her.
Now, onto strategy – In the early moments of this episode, it became clear that Taylor’s blow-ups had not cost Jay significantly in the game, given that the other factions were all after each other. First, we learned that the contingent of Chris, Bret, and Sunday all wanted to get rid of Jessica; meanwhile, David made it clear that he didn’t want the Chris crew to move forward and that Chris needed to go home. Both seemed to think that they could get Zeke on board, which put him firmly in the swing-vote position.
Oh, and Zeke told everyone that Jay had the hidden immunity after Will spilled the beans. This was hilarious, and easily the best moment of the first half of the episode. Somehow, it even topped the idea of the floating pizza restaurant, as we saw during the reward.
Immunity challenge – Sure, this was a generic “balance something using a pole” challenge, but we really think the significance of David winning made it something special. We just talked about cruel irony earlier this episode, but this was the fun sort of irony of a guy who routinely calls himself the worst challenge performer managing to tough it out in what was effectively a challenge mostly about endurance to the point where he came through with the win. In the moment, we also thought that it could potentially buy him some further options and opportunities in the game. If he wanted to ensure that Chris left this week, this would mark a chance to play his immunity idol on someone. We certainly know that he’s willing to do that…
The Gen X Civil War is here – The immunity win was really all about one person and one person only: Zeke. He is the one who, along with Hannah and Adam, controlling who they wanted to get rid of this week. Chris had an elaborate plan in order to ensure that Jay played his idol and he also got rid of Jess. However, we thought going into Tribal Council that Zeke was going to side with David. We saw him warning David that Chris was coming after Jess, but we didn’t see him telling Chris that David was coming after him. Seemed to be a pretty easy tell, no? Either way, it certainly looked like Jay was safe, even if it was only for one week since nobody was really altogether interested in telling anyone anything.
At Tribal Council, we got temporarily distracted from the vote to hear the term “trust cluster” thrown out there thanks to Hannah, as if there is a difference between alliances and voting blocks and this. Aren’t they all the same thing?
Elimination – Chris was sent home. It may have been a shock to him, but it wasn’t a shock to us. The only shocker here was that Jay didn’t play his idol! The first part of tonight’s episode was pretty strong, but we gotta admonish the CBS editors a little bit here in giving us the scene of Zeke tipping off Team David to Chris’ plan. It basically gave away the end result tonight. Grade: B.
We’re going to have a review for the second episode tonight coming up shortly over at the link here.
Update: You can check out our part 2 review now here — it’s a good one! (Photo: CBS.)