‘Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites’ review: What did Malcolm pull off this time?

What a weird, entertaining episode of “Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites” this was: there were countless twists and turns along the way, and also some genuine strategy talk. Of course, much of this was overshadowed in the first half-hour of the episode courtesy of Dawn Meehan having a complete and utter mental breakdown.

There’s so much to go on here, but let’s basically say this: Dawn may be a good person to take to the end now. She’s a nice woman, but she’s also someone who seems to be in constant need of coddling. Brenda basically saved her entire game (and had a confessional!) this week by finding her retainer, and we could not possibly imagine how her game can be looked at that positively. She did get it together before the immunity challenge, but who knows what will happen next?

We’re not really going to criticize Phillip for his decision to not play in the immunity challenge, mostly because we know very well that he wasn’t going to win a strenuous physical contest like this to begin with. However, it does make him a bigger target of the “why is he here?” variety, even if he has a fear. We can’t really judge him based off of that. Granted, the fact that he went home in one of the craziest tribal councils ever has to throw some light on the situation.

We give some credit to Stealth R Us for making the extremely ballsy move of actually still voting for Malcolm and Eddie at tribal council, even though Malcolm showed off both of the idols he had at the time of it happening (as he found another one earlier in the day). The hope obviously was that one of them would get greedy, and they didn’t; instead, Phillip’s gamble turned out to be his demise, as they (and also seemingly Erik, who was just tired of him) all threw votes in his direction.

With the Specialist gone, we have a feeling that the game will get a little bit more intense … and who knows? There could be more airtime for the likes of Brenda and Erik.

What do you think about this episode of “Survivor”? Be sure to share some of your thoughts below, and you can check out our full contestant rankings prior to this episode over at the link here.

Photo: CBS