‘Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites’ review: Phillip vs. Corinne, part one billion

We feel for the Bikal tribe on “Survivor Caramoan.” It’s not their fault that they were put together, and it’s also not their fault that they have Phillip Sheppard attempting to run the show. On a certain level, we can see him being an asset if you are on a tribe that wins challenges: he’s fiercely loyal, he will work hard around camp, and he’s also the perfect person to take to the end since he’s not likely to win. (Don’t worry: we’re going to get to the THROWING THE CHALLENGE bit later.)

However, it’s a little different when there are no other alpha males to challenge him. He instead becomes commandeering, thinks beyond his strengths, and just becomes such a liability in how he fractures the tribe. While Corinne was not exactly the most cordial person in the world this week, we have a feeling that she would have at least been someone who was easy to deal with if he was gone. However, for whatever reason it seemed early on like Cochran and Dawn may go along with getting rid of her. Why? The only reason that we can think of is that they didn’t want her and Michael to have a chance to run the show later on in the game.

In going back to the reward challenge, though, wasn’t this the most pathetic thing that you’ve seen? This challenge typically is a little bit more entertaining, just because there really is a struggle for one team to catch the other. Bikal was really just doomed from the start, but Phillip’s reluctance to run made it even worse. This was really just a sign of things to come; very, very bad things. We don’t really even have to go too in-depth about the immunity challenge, mostly because the ending of it at this point seems very obvious: Gota wins, and Bikal is back at tribal. (At least Phillip did have a pretty good showing here; the problem was that Reynold may be the best tosser of random things in the history of this show.)

The only real targets to be kicked off here were Julia, Corinne, and Phillip, and we understood some reasons for all of them. However, why wouldn’t you take out Julia first? If we were the Favorites, we’d just go ahead and cut out a Fan who would probably not stay loyal to you if she had a choice. Heck, even Corinne is more reliable than that.

Ultimately, Phillip decided at first to target Julia because she lied and started to talk about him to other people, and even (no joke) claimed that he “threw the challenge” in order to get rid of her. Then, he changed his mind to get rid of Michael, just because Corinne wanted to have an extra ally on her side. Wait … what? This was all completely insane, even if it was entertaining. Why wouldn’t you want extra allies in the game?

At tribal council, Corinne was ruled out of the equation as a target, and it came down to the Fans. The vote was tied between the two in a deliberate attempt to flush out the immunity idol (Phillip’s plan), but Corinne got her wish. Michael stays, and now things are going to get interesting moving forward.

What did you think about this week’s episode? Be sure to share your thoughts below, and you can also visit the link here to see where we ranked the contestants leading up to this week’s event.

Photo: Fox