Survivor Results: Week 6

This week Airai won both challenges and enjoyed the best meal of the season, but still took a heavy loss in the form of Jonathan Penner, who eventually succumbed to an infectious knee injury and was forced to leave the game. This was especially bad news for Eliza, who had a tight alliance with Jonathan, and James, who seems to think that his tribe just got a little too girlie for his liking (also Paul, who had him lasting until second place, but we'll get to that later).

This leaves the fans in charge over at Airai, while the favorites are still running the show at Malakal. Whether the fans-vs-favorites dynamic will continue to rule the season remains to be seen.

The reward challenge had each team obstructing a bamboo tunnel, and then clearing out the other team's obstructions as quickly as possible. It seemed that Ozzy and co. had a strategy of making one huge obstruction in the beginning, and that gave them an early lead, but was ultimately less effective than Airai's spread out obstacles.

In the immunity challenge, Airai again out-thought their opponents, this time by effectively carrying their team members across a stretch of waist-deep ocean on a single platform. Malakal, which used two platforms as stepping stones, never had a chance.

This means that when the tribes got mixed up, the strategic brains migrated from Malakal to Airai. Since Jonathan wasn't around for immunity, that leaves Parvati, Eliza, or James as the mastermind. I'm as uncomfortable with that assessment as you are, I'm sure.

Ironically, this is probably only the second challenge in which Joel's brute strength may have made a big difference (the first one being the muddy bag-wrestling challenge).

The show kept us guessing as far as who the boot would be. Chet was, once again, the obvious boot choice, and also would keep the favorites in a majority over the fans. But Tracy went to bat for him again, this time correctly targeting Ami as a potential swing vote against either Ozzy or Cirie. Ami seemed all lined up to perform a backstab against the other favorites, which is once again a testament to Tracy's powers of persuasion. Ami even seemed to think that she was giving Tracy a "pep talk" instead of functioning as another of Tracy's surrogate pawns.

But in the end, Tracy had the same problem that Jonathan did. Her infectious, bum leg gave out on her. No matter how much she tried to keep him in, Chet demanded to be voted out. Whiny Erik may have overstated things a bit when he told Chet that staying in the game would make him one of the best survivors of all time. What, for not quitting? Not even Erik's naked begging and Tracy's powers of persuasion could overcome the awesomely sucky inertness of Chet.

Interesting aside: Five of the first six people out of the game have been men, leaving the women with an 8-4 majority. Never saw that before.

The double-ouster of Jonathan and Chet means we had two weeks of numbers to crunch for our pool:


This Week's Standings:

1st: Matt: 90 (-6)
2nd: Dawn: 82 (+6)
3rd: Kim: 71 (-6)
4th: Paul: 58 (-15)
5th: Carl: 52 (-13)

Dawn, Kim, and I each got four points for correctly predicting that Airai would win immunity.

I still have a decent hold on first place, but I saw my lead go from a healthy 20 points to a scant 8 points after losing six points. I was hurt by the fact that I had Jonathan lasting until 6th place, but helped by the fact that I had Chet out in 13th (he actually went out in 14th).

Dawn had a great week, actually gaining points after correctly picking the tribe that would win immunity, AND correctly predicting Chet out in 14th place (she also had Jonathan out in 12th place, only 3 off). She was the first person in the pool to gain five points for a correct prediction, and as a result she regained second place and put some space between herself and Kim.

Kim had a decent week, having predicted Jonathan out ninth and Chet out 18th. But since she was nip and tuck with Dawn for second, her fair showing wasn't enough to keep her from slipping into third place.

Carl and Paul both had a terrible week, wiping out their gains from last week. Neither one was right with his Immunity Pick, they both had Jonathan lasting a long time (Carl had him out sixth, and Paul had him lasting until second), and they were both were about average with Chet (Paul had him out 16th, Carl had him out 18th). In a race to the bottom, Carl got two points closer to fourth place, but is still firmly in the bottom of the pool.

Everyone has a great opportunity to improve their standings with the second set of picks, which I'm hoping to have from everyone by Monday. Next week's episode airs on Wednesday, so we don't have as much time as we usually do.

Good luck everyone!