This Game Rips Your Heart Out (S45: Episode 11)

The action picks up right where we left off last week with Emily revealing that she’s the one who swayed Bruce not to play his idol at the last Tribal Council. Immediately this puts the target on her back - those strategic chops are becoming more and more evident to the rest of the tribe.

queen of s45

What else went down?!

• Austin and Dee's showmance is alive and WELL, even to the point where the editors threw a Rob and Ambuh montage recap in there!!!

• Katurah shares the story about her upbringing of being taken out of school to join a religious cult. What a resilient badass beast! 

• Emily gets sent on the Survivor Summit after the tribe pulls rocks. She's presented with the same puzzle from the Sweat vs Savvy challenge in Episode 1 and she decides not to play for a chance at Immunity because she doesn't want to risk losing her vote. It’s boring as a viewer to watch someone turn down that chance (especially considering how this episode shook out for Emily :/ ) but I understand her rationale, and that puzzle looks quiiiite confusing.

• Drew wins the Individual Immunity/Reward Challenge (I just saw something on twitter about Napoleon Dynamite being Drew’s doppelganger and now I can’t unsee it). 

also giving Michele Fitz vibes

• Since the girls all got to eat last episode, Drew decided to keep this week's reward another boyzz night:

🎶🎶 boy dinner 🎶🎶

• The tribe begins cooking up a plan to target Mama J. Everyone knows that in order for this to work, Dee can’t know about it, but Austin spills the beans to Dee (I guess it really is simp season, but hey maybe he’ll propose, she’ll win, and they can be millionaires together). Dee follows her gut and tells Julie that they’re all coming for her, and despite Julie wanting to then target Austin, Dee somehow convinces Julie to vote for Emily. All the while, Dee’s acting surprised at tribal and making it look like she was also gunning for Julie with the rest of the group. At this point, I’m feeling like Dee has subtly but surely controlled almost every single post-merge vote. 

• Emily is voted out by just one single vote from Julie who plays Austin's Immunity Idol that she never gave back

• How do we feel about Austin not asking for the idol back and Julie not even addressing the fact that she's keeping it? I wish we saw more of how this shook out. Maybe we will in the next episode!

• Last but not least, major props to Emily who had one of the greatest story arcs and villain to hero edits we've seen in the show's history. She managed to play all sides throughout the merge, and though her downfall was likely thinking that she could actually infiltrate the Reba 4, we give her lots of credit for how far she came and how well she maneuvered the social part of the game after initially seeming hopeless. She was the last and final member of the original Lulu Tribe, meaning this season’s winner will inevitably be an OG Reba or Belo. 

Drew is by far the biggest earner, bringing in 43 points this week for his tribes. Tribemaster Brian remains in the #1 position (we cannot believe it!). With the loss of Emily from his tribe, he’s now down to 3 remaining tribe members. Will they be enough to keep him in the top position? Katrina finally makes her way to 2nd place after 4 straight episodes of slowly climbing her way up through the top 10. She was the final person to have all 5 members left on her tribe, and with the departure of Emily, she is now down to 4 tribe members, alongside Peach. Big shout out to Katrina for making it this far with all 5 tribe members - you’ve set a Vukelulu record!

Since we all drastically underestimated Miss Emily, she was no one’s choice for Sole Survivor, but her departure does mean that both Amy and Connor are now down to one remaining tribe member each. 

We’ve got a close enough race in the top 10 that this next episode could really shake things up! 

Enjoy the penultimate episode!!!

-Tribemasters Liv + Brian