‘Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X’ episode 9 review: Jay and Taylor’s ‘Survivor bomb’
Let’s start this “Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X” review off with what is, at least in our mind, the eternal question: Was Taylor really being that secret when it comes to hiding the food stash, or did anyone else really care that much? We’re not too sure, but this guy seems to think that this is the second coming of Tony’s spy-shack.
From here, we proceeded into a lot of eggshell-walking and apologizing when it came to getting rid of Michelle, and everyone put on their best “it’s okay” face. Taylor did his part to look not-angry with Adam, while Hannah explained herself fairly well to Jay. Other than Taylor and the jars, nothing was really all too terrible here.
Reward Challenge – Then we get to the reward. We should start by saying that we loathe group rewards with captains and picking team members. Also, if you’re going to tell us we’re choosing teams and make a big deal out of them, why not shows us the order? Chris chose Bret, David, Taylor, Sunday, and Ken and that was enough for her to win. Hannah apparently wanted to make Jay and Will feel good so she snatched them up, and this entire challenge was a disaster. We don’t actually think she chose terribly, given there was that part of this that involved crawling under a net and Chris and Bret are BIG guys. It just didn’t work out well for them.
After the reward, the winning team (quick reminder: We hate group rewards) got to go visit a resort to have some food and drinks. In Bret’s case, he decided to have about a billion of them. Drunk people on “Survivor” are amazing. It’s like someone who’s never had a drink before suddenly going all-out and acting like a crazy person. The big surprise of all of this was getting a confession from Sunday of all people saying that she wanted to make a big move soon, and that while the Gen X tribe voted together last time, there was a fracture between the Sunday / Chris / Bret side and the David / Ken / Jessica tribe. This is something that came up later before the immunity challenge, where Sunday told Jay she wanted to target Jessica, thinking that she’d want to target her soon because of voting against her in the past.
Why Adam, why? – Adam loves to play this game; in turn, we love that someone who loves this game as much as Adam is getting to play the game! Unfortunately, loving to play the game doesn’t necessarily equal making the right moves. We think Jay was blowing it a little out of control saying that Adam was “gloating” to him about his position in the game, but perception equals reality. What Adam did was give Jay fuel to feel disenfranchised, and that may be a way for him to work his way into better numbers. Time will tell…
The immunity challenge and a decision – This was an interesting one, since Jeff Probst brought out the food for the whole “play or compete” debate. Sure, we were a little shocked to see Will eat given that he’s in some relative danger, but he’s got a good point: If you know you’re not going to win, why play? Maybe some people will be annoyed with you, but if you’re a good enough player, you can convince people to not go after you. Plus, Will and Zeke didn’t get to eat at the reward. (Random thought: Is Jeff obsessed with reminding us that Will is too young to have beer?)
The challenge eventually came down to Ken vs. Taylor, and Ken won without really saying anything or showing emotion at all. We’re starting to think that Ken is some vinyl-loving robot with a strong, sensitive side. This meant that the Jay – Taylor – Will group was in even more trouble.
Jay tries to figure it out – After the challenge, it was superficially clear that the vote was going to be between either Jay or Taylor, so they had a hard time figuring out what to do. Sunday told Jay she wanted to keep him and target Jessica, but she didn’t have the votes in order to make it happen. We saw debates aplenty about Jay’s idol, and then also Taylor hoping to use Adam’s advantage as a way to get some more votes on his side.
Tribal Council today was all sorts of entertaining — but also ripe with terrible gameplay. Adam got extremely defensive, Taylor openly admitted to everyone to basically eating two full jars full of food, Jay basically called his #1 ally in the game a “dumb surfer.” Jeff Probst called this a “Survivor bomb,” which is a lot better than when he started to bring up the whole Millennials vs. Gen X nonsense.
Given that votes will rarely change at Tribal Council unless there’s an immunity idol out there (remember, Mari was going home earlier this season before the Hannah thing), Taylor and Jay’s pleas did not help anything. Taylor is gone. What was interesting is that apparently, even Jay voted for him! The guy’s got some smarts for doing that, and also keeping his immunity idol in the process.
This episode was, in the end, supremely entertaining — even if it was a comedy of errors. Grade: B+.
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