Tiki Man (S46: Episode 5)

With Bhanu out of the picture, this felt like the first episode where we got a pretty well rounded look at all three tribes and their ongoing dynamics. Siga is salsa dancing, Hunter finds the Beware Advantage at the Nami camp, and over at Yanu, Kenzie is wondering “What are ya’ll talking about”. 

At the immunity challenge, Yanu narrowly beats out Siga, marking their FIRST immunity win since the start of the game and Siga’sfirst trip to tribal council. (Yanu also finally gets their flint after breaking the record for being the tribe to go the longest in the game without flint). 

Hunter, Tim, and Q go on the journey where they form a meat shield alliance for the merge with the agreement that they’d each bring along an ally from their tribes (Tevin, Maria, and Tiffany). It’s never this simple, but I’m excited to see this play out come the merge. Hunter ends up nominating himself to take on the challenge on the journey. It was SO exciting to see this challenge since it’s been quite a long time since we’ve seen any Survivor knowledge/trivia related challenges. Despite his superfandom, he really struggled to put those season logos in chronological order, which cost him his vote at the next tribal. (For the record, Tribemaster Brian would have absolutely crushed it in this challenge). 

Back at Siga's camp, the Vibe Tribe has to deal with the actual game of Survivor for the first time this season. The dynamics seemed to point toward either Ben or Tim being voted out, with Charlie and Maria debating whether to side with Jem/Moriah or Ben/Tim. Jem put the target on herself by overtly looking for the idol, having a machete/hammer face-off with Ben, and just overall showing signs of paranoia. 

Ultimately at tribal council, Jem, who started this episode as seemingly the most powerful person at the Siga camp, is voted out in a blindside and sent home with the idol in her pocket. Ben was unable to vote but Maria used her extra vote to vote twice for Jem. Unfortunately, we didn’t really see insights into what swayed Maria’s decision to flip against Jem and team up with Ben and Tim instead. Had they all been truly suspicious about her finding the idol, I imagine they would have tried to split the votes somehow. Hopefully, we learn more in this next episode! 

Oh, and last but not least, let’s not forget that at tribal council, Jeff inadvertently confirmed that he’s immortal and/or never quitting the show.

Now let’s check out the league!

We had a couple of big shake ups and notable moments this week. Amanda S. made a massive jump from 18th place to 4th place. Mirette on the other hand fell from 6th place to 24th. Currently, there’s only a 15 point gap between players spanning from 12th to 24th place. Which all just goes to show that you never know how things will shake out week to week - keep the faith! 

In a rare event, Ben earned less than zero points for his tribes (raking in -2 points thanks to Siga losing and him not having a vote at tribal council). And lastly, Aashi, Carolyn, and Emmy sadly lost their Sole Survivor pick this week. S-O-R-R-Y-F-O-R-Y-O-U!

Enjoy tonight's episode!

-Tribemasters Liv + Brian