Survivor China: Season 15, Eps 6/7
All I have to say to PG: Trust the Process! You could have been Hinkie before Hinkie. Instead, you’re like on of the countless NBA teams thinking its one Jimmy Butler away form contending (Minnesota, Philadelphia, Miami), when in fact you need to hang on to your draft capital (Jamie, Frosti, Erik, Sherea) and KEEP TANKING.
Instead, they wake up episode 6 and everybody suddenly decides “this isn’t the way to game is meant to be played.” You’ve already become a villain, just go for it girl! What’s even crazier is that PG seems to think that James would start voting with Zhan Hu after he Wily-E.-Coyote eye-bugged at discovering the members of Zhan Hu threw immunity to vote off Aaron.
Now — given developments at Fei Long, who knows if Zhan Hu would have even been able to throw the immunity challenge, but I would have enjoyed watching two tribes pushing their bug larvae around their plates at the immunity challenge while Probst is yelling things like “it doesn’t seem like EITHER tribe wants this!”
Before all of this though, you have both tribes competing in the reward challenge which is basically run through some houses, collect some stuff, win a spa day. I do understand PG being concerned as she basically got the cold shoulder from Frosti and Sherea during this challenge. But the options are either A) throw another challenge and vote off James, merge, and pitch Frosti and Sherea and coming back home given how much work PG and co. put into keeping them safe or B) let Sherea get voted off while hoping James will turn (seems VERY unlikely), while also having a worse pitch to Frosti about Zhan Hu solidarity. PG is definitely in between “a rock and a hard place”, but maybe that rock is made of talc (rock facts!).
What certainly does not help the cause of Zhan Hu is that they lose the reward challenge, and Fei Long gets to steal James for the spa day — bless James’ heart, I am happy he got his reward — and Todd and co. get to start scheming.
And it really does seem like Todd is playing Dungeons and Dragons and everybody is playing Go Fish — he immediately takes advantage of James coming over to get the clue from James and figure out the hidden immunity idol. We also are treated to some Three Stooges-level physical comedy as Todd and Amanda are like “oh us? No we just wanted to climb this structure and uh, yeah, something got stuck up there and — NO FROSTI, WE DON’T NEED HELP.” I’m not sure why they didn’t wait until a point in time when the entire tribe wasn’t feet away, but most of the players are so out-of-the loop that it didn’t seem to hurt.
Ultimately, Todd concocts the following plan: James goes back to Zhan Hu with the immunity idol, throws the next immunity challenge, and then plays the idol and votes off Jamie using his vote. In the course of James returning to Zhan Hu, he is to also grab the second immunity idol. Cool. So here’s the thing…
I don’t really get Todd’s plan? I feel like unless there’s an EXTREMELY compelling reason, one should always hold on to one’s immunity idol. Secondly, put Jake in Todd’s shoes and tell me who’s plan sounds better:
- Tell James about the immunity idol and that there is likely another idol in the exact same spot at Zhan Hu
- KEEP MY IDOL
- Plan to lose (feels like its easier to lose on purpose than “win on purpose”) and just vote off Sherea. Even if you don’t lose, that means likely A) James finds the idol on his island and enacts the same plan to vote off Jamie or B) James doesn’t find the idol and is voted off. I then go into the merge 5–5, but you still have a better chance of flipping Frosti AND I still have my idol. In all liklihood though, my tribe DOES lose and:
- we merge still up 6–4 with one idol in your possession, and knowing James has the other idol
Anyway, Todd accidentally falls into part of this plan when Zhan Hu decides to NOT throw the immunity challenge — it’s interesting how an eating challenge was at play, where somebody like Denise just couldn’t get that chicken brain down and James had to shrug his shoulders and take the W.
With Todd’s “botched” plan, Fei Long has to go to tribal council, and it’s here where I realize the Todd/Amanda duo may not be as strong as I initially thought. Ultimately, they are torn between voting for JR (to appease Courtney and potentially swing Frosti and Sherea), or Sherea, to simply get out a physical threat who is also a threat to stick with her Zhan Hu tribe. Ultimately, I think voting Sherea off makes sense — they are choosing between two wild cards in JR and Courtney, and at this point, nobody in the game has that strong of a group. Well, at least Todd has those immunity…oh, right.
Episode 7 is where PG and Jamie reap what they sow for winning that last immunity challenge, but not before Jamie falls flat on her face.
On James’ return to camp, he does manage to obtain the second immunity idol — not a bad spot! — and hides them both in his sack. He also accidentally leaves out a fake immunity idol, which Jamie and Erik pick up — essentially they pick up an etched piece of wood that mirrors the immunity idols but gives no actual indication that it is an immunity idol. Being the smart players they are, Erik and Jamie sneak into James’ bag, find TWO cloth-wrapped slabs of something and proceed to..not unwrap them an compare them to what they have??
I am not sure what happened here, but somehow Jamie and Erik convince themselves that the piece of wood that James left on the ground is actually the valuable piece, not what is wrapped up in his bag. The amount of times this episode showed somebody laughing at Jamie and her saying things like “well, they’ll all see..” — I was sure she had switched the fake idol for a real one, but nope! She just rolled the dice with that hunk of wood without any confirmation.
I’m going to finish writing this article now so I can publish it and move on to episode 8, 4 weeks in the making — the next article will be better!
