‘Survivor: Kaoh Rong’ episode 2 review: The lady doth protest too much
There are very few examples we can think of over the years of someone who went into tribal council on “Survivor” completely safe, only to then figure out a way to completely mess it up once they got there. With just one sentence, we saw this happen on Wednesday night’s new episode as Jennifer Lanzetti successfully talked her way out of the game.
What was so curious about this said move was that it was ultimately one disaster after the other for the Brawn tribe. Let’s start with a clear point: It was actually smart for Jennifer to consider getting rid of Jason tonight, given that he would be a threat down the line, and to be frank he is being a total jerk to Alecia with some of the things that he’s saying. Is she the best player of all time? No, and we’ll get to that more later. However, what she happens to be is a potentially more loyal number. Neither she nor Jenn nor Cydney would be an obvious threat after a tribe swap, so if they could just make it for a few more tribal councils, they could have a real shot later in the game as a strong, unified group. Meanwhile, who would want to work with a physical threat like Scot Pollard?
Jennifer’s first mistake was not giving Alecia some instructions for how to act at tribal. She could’ve told her that they needed to completely blindside Jason, and to not bring anything up before the votes were read. The second mistake was not just doubling down with the girls the moment that she started to be questioned and it was clear that Jason and Scot were already burned. Now, let’s turn to Alecia’s move in throwing Jennifer under the bus. In the short-term, maybe it worked, but was it really work it to last another three days? If you supported her, maybe you could have made it clear you were the better option and really put the guys on the ropes for a change. Obviously we’ll ask Jenn about this more tomorrow, since maybe Cydney didn’t want to budge on getting rid of Alecia and she had no other choice. It is interesting that Scot was the one person other than Jennifer to vote for Alecia to go.
Also, Jennifer really didn’t need to get up on a platform and speak. There’s making a case, and then there’s being so defensive that nobody really starts to buy what you’re selling anymore. Still, we feel for her given that she went from the ear creature last week to this.
Anyhow, Cydney’s really the only person on this tribe not playing badly at the moment, with Scot maybe in second place just because Jason’s being the bigger heel.
For the time being, the other two tribes are a little more likable / interesting. The crew at the Beauty camp is actually a lot of fun, with Tai Trang and Caleb’s bromance being something for the ages. This Caleb is certainly easier to root for than the person he was at times on “Big Brother,” though the whole Beast Mode Cowboy gimmick is still too much. Meanwhile we have a showdown brewing between Joe and Liz over on the Brains tribe, and right now we’re Team Joe just because we’re starting to worry a little bit about Liz and Aubry in particular after they’ve had so many problems within six days. (We do think Liz is probably a much better strategic player when the chips are down.)
This episode is a weird one, and that much is for certain. We’re really not sure there was a lot of great gameplay, but we’ll take a shock tribal council any day of the week.
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