‘Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X’ review: Another idol found, a tribe swap, and a David’s debate
Sometimes, the tribe swaps on “Survivor” are a disaster. They can tilt the game in an unfair advantage thanks largely to the show working to pair people up at random. Luckily that didn’t happen on Wednesday, and we were left with three very interesting tribes that had some flexibility for strategy.
Take, for example, the new Takali (purple) tribe, where Adam suddenly found himself in the middle of two different pairs: Taylor and Figgy and Ken and Jessica. Meanwhile, over on the new “green” tribe (we’re still figuring out the name there and how to spell it!), we saw Jay lead the charge for the whole tribe to start from scratch. This episode had one of the more meaningful moments of the entire season, as Michaela worked to start a fire when everyone else gave up.
Meanwhile, Vanua was the odd duck tribe if there ever was one: There was David, fresh off of finding another hidden immunity idol, and then you had Michelle (who was a great player), Chris, Chris’ surprising new alliance-mate Zeke (they’re both from Oklahoma, and then CeCe, arguably one of the worst challenge performers we’ve seen this season.
Immunity Challenge – Wait, David may be worse than CeCe after watching this play out. He was like a one-man “America’s Funniest Home Videos” highlight reel: He struggled swimming, got hit in the face with the buoy, and then lost said buoy that he meant to drop in the basket. Overall the irony here was that they probably could’ve beaten Takali without a couple of these blunders, given that apparently there was no basketball where Ken was living “off the grid” for five years. This was closer than it really should have been all things considered. It’s just interesting that the green tribe had to go and make a new camp, but at the same time they were able to dominate this! This tribe is clearly no Angkor from “Survivor: Cambodia.”
Preparing for the Vote – Where things get interesting this week is that everyone had an interesting agenda that made sense for them. For Chris, it made sense to not go with David and CeCe, especially since he now had Zeke for sure on his side. Meanwhile, David had a reason to be nervous, but recognized that he needed to go along with it.
For Michelle, we understand her need for control, since she doesn’t want to stay in the minority on a tribe. Therefore, it made a little bit of sense for her to consider making a move against David and working with CeCe, who seemed to be the obvious boot target. David heard later from CeCe that Michelle wanted to get rid of him, and that made him pose an interesting question: Should he use another immunity idol, his second in two weeks, in order to ensure that Michelle went home? It was a thought, and he clearly knows how to find the thing. The problem is that with Adam already having the idol from the Millennial beach, we don’t know if another one will be hidden. Knowing David, all of this was in his head.
The vote – Alas, it was CeCe who went home, as David opted to keep the idol. The reason we think he should have played it here was because CeCe, unlike Jessica last week, is a known ally. Keeping her may have caused David to make an enemy out of Chris, but at the same time he would have eliminated someone who wanted him gone. The boot was rather predictable in the end, but from a social standpoint, this episode proved to be entertaining nonetheless. Grade: B.
Next week – Head over here to get a preview for what lies ahead and so much more!