Fantasy Survivor - Episode 5

Daniel Kelley

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In seventh grade, my aunt and uncle took me on a trip to DisneyWorld along with their son, my cousin. It was a weeklong trip. The first few days were the best days ever. The next few were still pretty cool. The last day or two? I wanted to kill my cousin. My cousin wanted to kill me. Our aunt wanted to send us home in UPS boxes. And I’m pretty sure my uncle would have left us there if he could have.

You can only have so long spending every waking minute with another person or group of people before it comes to a head. That’s true of a vacation, a family in pandemic quarantine, or contestant on a reality TV show, and it seems Day 10 of Survivor is about where that kicks in, at least as far as Season 42 is concerned.

We’ll visit that below, and we’ll also discuss the subtle maybe-worst move of the season. It’s our look at Episode 5 of this season of Survivor, with some key takeaways and an update on our preseason picks.

Survivor 42 Episode 5 Recap

We get the post-tribal debrief at Ika, where Rocksroy realizes he’s not particularly good at the social game (yeah, Rocks, we knew), while Tori subtly mocks him at every opportunity. It’s uh, the most peaceful of our early-episode tribe updates. People are on edge!

At Taku, Maryanne continues to say more words than Jonathan believed existed in the English language, and apparently Lindsay is in on that as well, to the point that Jonathan is staring about 7.5 miles off into the distance and imagining himself anywhere in the world but right there. He gives a confessional about it where he bumps right up against veering into some gender-politic problematic stuff without quite diving in, then goes on a swimming-and-fishing outing that basically took the rest of his day. It’s productive, because we see some fish cooking later that looks like it has seasoning and citrus, and honestly looks pretty tasty even abandoned like that. Afterward, Jonathan tells Lindsay he wants Maryanne to go, and Lindsay seems on board.

We head to Vati, where Daniel goes snorkeling and “fishing.” It’s a mistake for one reason, because he can’t fish at all. It’s a mistake for another reason, because he’s very clearly on the outs in his tribe and needs to be working on strengthening his bonds. And it’s a mistake for a third reason, because if you don’t recall, he dislocated his shoulder in Episode 1 and has bowed out of virtually every challenge since. And “I can’t really contribute in swimming” is kind of understandable when you back that up with your actions, but when you then go for an extremely long swim to fish and don’t even come back with any fish … well, people are gonna be a bit perturbed, Daniel.

We head back to Ika, where Drea and Romeo go idol hunting. Romeo gets a whole segment about his pageant coaching and how he’s going to … unlock Drea? It’s very weird, and when Drea then finds the Beware Advantage, it feels like the show is saying she did it in part because of Romeo’s support, and it’s all very weird. But hey, all the Beware Advantages are located now, we know all the phrases, that’s interesting!

Then we jump back to Vati, where Mike says he won’t activate his, because then they can get to the merge and it activates anyway and then he has an idol and no one on the other tribes will know. So maybe it’s not interesting!

And then we get to the immunity challenge, where Maryanne says her secret phrase again, Drea echoes hers, and … yeah, Mike goes ahead and says his phrase. That was a few minutes’ worth of red herring, there, producers. Beware Advantages are now activated.

The challenge features the tribe members climbing up and over a rope bridge/ramp, untangling a braided rope to get a key and then a machete and then sandbags, and then catapulting the sandbags at a pair of targets. (Vati sits one person out. Daniel: “I have very little value to add.” Yeah, dude. Your friends are going to quote that to you for the rest of your life. They’ll laugh, but not really.)

In a reversal of some recent challenges, Jonathan does not get Taku out to an enormous lead. In fact, Ika wins the race through the ropes, Drea unbraids the rope and gets the sandbags, and she and Rocksroy win the challenge all before the other tribes have even finished the ropes. Vati is the next tribe through the braided ropes, because Omar goes full-on vapor lock, to the point that he’s barely done any of the braid and ultimate has to have Lindsay talk him through it. It looks bad for Taku … until Jonathan gets to the sandbags and reminds everyone that he is almost literally He-Man and takes out the sandbags instantly. Vati’s off to tribal … but not before Lydia from Vati and Rocksroy from ika have to take their Prisoner’s Dilemma journey.

Before we get to see the journey, we get some scrambling at Vati. Daniel and Chanelle appear to know they’re on the chopping block (they have to know, right?). Hai tells Daniel that Chanelle is going to go, while Mike tells Chanelle that it’s Daniel.

Over at the journey, Rocksroy digs for Vati gossip from Lydia, and Lydia digs for Ika gossip from Rocksroy, and unlike most of these journeys where people just say everything immediately, these two reveal almost nothing. And then they both choose to protect their vote, meaning nobody learns anything on the journey and nothing changes. Thanks for stopping by!

Hai reconnects with Lydia after the journey, and they have a little recon before tribal. This episode is low on the super intriguing bits, which is probably why we got the “Mike won’t unlock his idol” fakeout and an extended “doesn’t matter” journey. Oh well, they can’t all be winners.

At tribal, we get mostly pretty banal Survivor-isms except for the part where Daniel forecasts that he will outlive Mike in real life and everyone (including Mike) is like “lol, yup.” Then we head to the vote. With no idols or advantages, Probst reads the results, and it’s two for Daniel, two for Chanelle and … one for Mike? That feels very out of left field, but when they revote (sans on-the-block Daniel and Chanelle), it’s unanimously Daniel and he heads home, fulfilling his oft-repeated “I won’t win this game” prophecy.

After the credits, we see the votes. Mike and Daniel voted Chanelle, Hai and Lydia voted Daniel, and Chanelle voted Mike. And look, obviously we don’t see everything, and maybe she had a good reason from that, but … what on earth? The show never even offered a cursory pump-fake at Mike being at risk. We didn’t see Chanelle and Daniel try to put together some random “get them to split their votes, then we both vote Mike and hope Lydia lost her vote” Hail Mary. It’s just … “Hey, I’m voting Mike for reasons.” And throwing away your vote is not great generally, but when you throw your vote away and the end result is a tie where you are the one at risk? Daniel made the obviously worst move of the season with his “I won’t go to rocks” soliloquy a few weeks ago, but Chanelle’s moves also defy explanation altogether.

But hey, Daniel’s gone. My daughter turned to me and said, “Haha, you went home.” Because kids are brutal.

Recapping My Picks

My remaining picks are Hai and Omar. Hai is looking decent in his dysfunctional tribe, so that’s good. Meanwhile, we get very little Omar this week, except for where he falls flat on his face mid-challenge. That’s not exactly the showcase we want, but we can accept that for now.

Stock Rising

Drea describes herself as “Survivor rich” at one point, because she now has the Amulet Advantage, an extra vote and the now-activated Beware Advantage. That’s a silly amount of insurance. And on top of that, if you missed it, go back and watch her climb up the rope ladder thing at the beginning of the immunity challenge. It was some superhero stuff. Yes, Jonathan is still the actual superhuman out there, but I’ll bet now that the first strength-related immunity challenge not won by Jonathan (or the first one that has a male and a female winner) is won by Drea. She could take me in a hundred different fights.

Hai also appears to have his tribe on lockdown. We’ll see how that goes when things get mixed up next week (is it just a tribe remix or is it the merge? Also, it’s a two-hour episode, so my wife is going to kill me), but he’s in decent shape.

Stock Falling

Chanelle’s gameplay gets increasingly questionable by week, she’s clearly the bottom of her tribe of now-four, and Mike is certainly going to figure out she voted for him. Bad times.

If Lindsay hadn’t been off to the side shouting instructions, Omar would still be unbraiding that rope today.