Recap: ‘Survivor: One World’ – ‘Just Annihilate Them’

Pre-credit sequence. It’s Day 21 in Tikiano. Troyzan and Jay are commiserating about losing Jonas, while also reaffirming that they made the right decision to cast off their Male bonds to align with Chelsea, Kim, Kat and Sabrina. “I just hope we didn’t make a mistake,” Troyzan says. “They could easily hook up and they could do damage. I don’t want to be overpowered by these girls,” Jay adds. Both men agree that a woman has to go next. Nobody’s even make an effort to keep the foreshadowing subtle, are they? Welcome to “Survivor: One World: Post-Colton Edition.”
Putting the Un in Fun. Out in the jungle, Troyzan and Jare are still wandering. Tree-mail arrives in the form of a 7Up bottle. Everybody is very excited by the soda bottle and Troyzan keeps repeating “The uncola” as if he were being paid by the slogan. The clue tells them they’re going to “win the crisp, clear taste of victory.” Sabrina’s excited, calling 7Up “like a necessity.” Oy. 
Sometimes a bottle’s just a bottle. Jeff Probst greets the teams for a Reward Challenge that starts with a giant waterslide and then involves the collecting of crates from the water and using those crates to solve a puzzle. Want to know what they’re playing for? The winning tribe gets to go to a 7Up Oasis for burgers, steaks, pie and all of the 7Up you can drink. Jeff, the Pusher Man, cracks open one bottle of 7Up for the entire tribe to share. This is unbearably “Subliminal Seduction.” Are we going to watch Kat fellate the bottle? “Oh my God, it’s so good!” Kat giggles, effervescent bubbles wrinkling her button-nose. There’s a schoolyard pick for teams and poor Poopy Pants isn’t selected at all. The slide looks like a lot of fun. The crates look annoyingly heavy. “Huge reward on the line! Everyone wants this,” Probst cheers. I mean… It’s 7Up. How could everybody not want it? The Yellow Tribe, featuring Christina, Sabrrina, Mike, Kim and Leif wins. Leif is very excited by the idea of a BBQ. Poor Poopy Pants. He was screwed out of any shot at this Reward at all. He didn’t even get to pick a team. 
I’m a Sprite Man. The winning tribe arrives at the 7Up Oasis. They’re very excited. There’s potato salad and pretzels and cole slaw. The food actually looks good and before eating, they all say grace. Sabrina adds a prayer for all of the people in the world who are starving. I’m not a fan of people equating actual starvation with minor inconvenience in order to win a million dollars but… what do I know? Kim is relieved that her brain is working again. But very soon, everybody is in a food coma, or at least the women are. But even in their comatose state, Sabrina and Kim are conspiring and the nature of their conspiracy is this: They both agree that a woman has to win. Kim decides that they can get Mike out of the game by telling Troyzan that Mike is gunning for him. At that point, it’ll be 6-4 for the women, followed by a full annihilation of the men from there. And Mike’s just sitting there, munching on his food. That’s cold. And refreshing. Just like 7Up.
A bottle is not just a bottle. Back at Tikiano, Poopy Pants is eating a log and everybody’s agreeing that they didn’t really want steak anyway, because it would be hard to digest. Yup. Somebody’s gotta think about their colons, darnit! They may be the losers, but they’re strategizing who should go home next. The guys agree that Christina should go next, but Kat thinks Mike is the biggest threat. Jay’s worried and needs to hold onto his alliance. Just as things are getting tense, the Reward winners return to camp with a big cooler full of cold, refreshing 7Up. Troyzan is cautious and wants to keep Sabrina, Kim and Chelsea in line. Cut to Kat fellating the glistening 7Up bottle. Superliminal Seduction!
Wait. Who has problems with Chelsea’s boob job? It’s windy. Clouds are rolling in. Their shelter is falling apart. It’s time to rebuild. For some reason, Poopy Pants is removing parts of the shelter wall to burn for firewood. Poopy Pants insists that it wasn’t a load-bearing bamboo stick. He decides to pick a fight with Chelsea, who has being “subliminally harassing” him. “If I believe I’ve been unfairly maligned, I can’t just take it. I have to say something,” Poopy Pants says. He pulls Chelsea aside and offers his theory on their discord: He’s a plastic surgeon and he believes that she was unhappy with her plastic surgeon. Or something. “I can’t believe he’s talking about my boob job. He’s crazy,” Chelsea says. She wants Poopy Pants out, but she also knows this is a game and they have to take stronger people out first. Double rainbow!

Troyzan swings through the jungle. Kim begins her scheming. Without an ounce of subtlety she tells Troyzan that Mike has been plotting against him. “That pisses me off,” Troyzan says, instantly turned. “I hate that guy,” Troyzan now determines. He’s irate, suddenly sick of his former chum. Tree-mail says something about balance. “That guy should have been gone on Day One,” Troyzan says of Mike, before the tribe heads to Immunity.
The tortoise and the her. Immunity is back up for grabs. The challenge involves racing across a ladder bridge with bags of puzzle pieces. The first four players to finish the bridge get to attempt to solve the puzzle. Jay, Kim, Troyzan and Alicia’s Pixelated Boobs advance to the puzzle-solving. Through my TV screen, it looks like an impressively complicated puzzle. “I hate puzzles,” Jay announces, working methodically. Kim seems to be one piece away from finishing, but she has something wrong. Alicia’s down to her last piece, but she has something wrong. As everybody around him keeps making mistakes, Jay just plugs along… and wins Immunity. 
Kim possible Chelsea handler. Everybody’s impressed with Jay’s slow-and-steady approach to victory. He thinks it’s a safe vote to knock out a girl next and he’s targeting Christina. BATS! COLD, WET BATS! Kim is balancing her two different alliances, an All-Women Alliance that’s self-explanatory and a Let’s Pretend I’m Still All About New Salani Alliance that includes Troyzan. “I’m using Troy to send Mike home tonight,” Kim gloats, though she’s cautious about what would happen if Jay gets wind. For some reason, Chelsea decides to float voting Mike out by Jay, who admits to being gynophobic, suggesting he’d be out after Mike. “That’s not necessarily true,” Chelsea tells him, doing nothing to quiet his fears. Jay’s wary. Kim is not pleased with Chelsea’s handling of the situation. That’s an interesting crack in what had appeared to be our strongest two-person alliance. Kim tries to keep her alliance cool and rushes off to cut off Jay’s conversation with Mike. Just as Jay begins to recount what happened, Kim’s all, “Let’s do Christina.” Jay appears not to get out his warning to Mike, who’s all for voting Christina out, since it’ll blindside her and he loves a good blindside as long as it isn’t him being blindsided. Nice. Kim goes back to the women and  suddenly there’s a big question as to how they’re going to approach the vote, which could change the whole game.
Tribal Council. Jonas takes his seat on the Jury. Probst asks who’s worried about leaving and nobody raises their hand. Poopy Pants says this means that somebody’s been very good at deceiving. Troyzan didn’t bring his bags, so he’d be shocked. Everybody else agrees that they would be blown away. “I think that there are people who think they’re part of an alliance they’re not actually a part of and that’s where the confusion’s setting in,” Kim says. Chelsea says there’s an advantage to being aligned with two or three groups. Alicia admits that nobody knows who’s on whose side. “The game is afoot and that’s why we remain ambiguous,” Poopy Pants tells Jeff, telling him that he’s being played. Kat’s awesome neologism for Poopy Pants’ behavior: “Rantics.” That’s a little brilliant. 
The vote. I’m not quite sure what’s coming here. We don’t see a single vote. Nobody plays a Hidden Immunity Idol. Probst reads the votes: Christina. Christina. Poopy Pants. Poopy Pants. Mike. Mike. Mike. Mike. Mike. “Wow,” says Jonas. Mike makes a confused face. Jay has no close what occurred. “I came out of the gates too hot and I’ve had to backpedal ever since,” Mike says.
Bottom Line. Well, the bottom line is that Troyzan isn’t very good at this game. As several people said at Tribal Council, with three or four potential alliances bouncing around, it’s your responsibility to always keep an eye on more than one alliance at a time, just in case. Troyzan became so monomaniacally obsessed with his Salani alliance and his own hide that he didn’t even pause for a second when Kim poured poison in his ear. Last week I was hesitant when a bunch of you posited the “Kim is the mastermind” theory and obviously you were correct, but she’s only as much of a mastermind as Troyzan let her be in this case. Chelsea made a huge error of judgment, but the men were so discombobulated that they couldn’t take advantage. Troyzan got distracted. Jay got distracted. And Mike was on a different planet, one where he never stopped to think that as a strong male, he might be a threat. Troyzan was so easily duped that Kim didn’t even need to activate the backups in her Women’s Alliance. Alicia and Christina both voted Poopy Pants. It seemed like they were aware of the Anti-Mike Campaign, so do we think Kim had them throw their votes away for plausible deniability of some sort? Like “Who us, with our All Women’s Alliance? Heavens no!” Theoretically, that’s brilliant. Do we assume that that was in case Mike somehow got his hands on a Idol? Anyway, we’ll see how things progress in the weeks to come, if Kat proves to be a peculiar swing vote to save the Men, or if Kim can keep her alliance together and complete the annihilation. 
What’d you think?
 
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