Fantasy Survivor - Episode 6

A two-hour Survivor episode! A two-hour Survivor episode with the merge, so there’s a lot more than normal going on! A two-hour Survivor episode while there’s a tornado warning where I live, so my signal goes out and my power keeps blinking on and off, and episodes don’t drop to streaming until the day after!

What I’m saying is, it is 7 a.m. ET Thursday as I’m writing this, because I’m a big dork who got up early to finish the episode and recap it.

Anyway, we got the merge in Wednesday’s episode, with (far too many?) wrinkles along the way and the tribe missing what I see as a golden opportunity.

Now join me as I try to recap Episode 6 before the 4-year-old twins wake up and try to climb on me. It’s our look at the merge episode of this season of Survivor, with some key takeaways and an update on our preseason picks.

Survivor 42 Episode 6 Recap

We open with Vati debriefing after voting out Daniel, which Chanelle calls a “blindside,” and … I’m sorry, but I just can’t buy that. Maybe Daniel held out hope it would be Chanelle, but he knew he was on the block. He just did. Chanelle also confirms she voted for Mike in case Daniel used his Shot in the Dark, which was the only explanation, but it was still dumb, because it was a dang tie with her on the line. She could have made it a non-tie, but instead left it open to someone flipping and her throwaway vote costing her.

Also, it appears to have ruined her relationship with Mike, who says he’d take a bullet for Hai and Lydia, but definitely not Chanelle.

Over at Ika, Rocksroy and Tori talk about his journey for what feels like forever, with him honestly telling her he got nothing out of it but then being strangely cagey about what happened. I get why Tori is suspicious. But it’s also so clearly inconsequential and not worth delving into, and she does it, and Rocksroy is annoyed, and Drea and Romeo watch and are annoyed too.

We’re at the challenge, where Probst explains to the audience that we’ll again be doing the “one castaway can reverse history” twist, which I hate a lot, because it takes away the actual strategy of play and just veers too far into Calvinball. (The good news is that I think it will be gone — or at least dramatically changed — after this season.) We also find out that the winners of the challenge get Applebee’s, and they’re so happy that I wonder if “Applebee’s” means something different in other parts of the country. Like, obviously they’re hungry, and obviously production was like “Hey, get hyped for this.” I just don’t know if I could do it. But I’m cynical, who knows.

In the challenge, they divide into two teams of five (with two — Lindsay and Rocksroy — unable to participate) and have to move a giant boulder to get some keys, then climb a tower and do a puzzle. The very second I saw the boulder, I turned to my brother-in-law and said “So Jonathan’s team will win this.” And lo, that team (Jonathan, Maryanne, Tori, Lydia and Hai) wins the challenge going away, even with Lydia and Maryanne appearing (or at least being edited to appear) to struggle with the puzzle. (Rocksroy turns to Lindasy partway through the challenge to just say, like, “Geez, Jonathan’s absurd,” and she’s like “duh.”) Poor Drea can’t climb the boulder to get up the tower even with Mike’s help, and weird body machinations get her kicked in the face. They get up there far too late to matter.

Afterward, the winning team gets to pick one of Lindsay and Rocksroy to join them for Applebee’s, while the other has to go for two days in exile … but, Probst tells them that the person gets an advantage and says one of them can choose to go instead. That’s at least better than last season’s version of this, but it ends up moot, because they take Lindsay with them (using a pretty rough “She needs to eat” argument) and sending Rocksroy off on his own.

At the Applebee’s feast, Tori spills everything about her clashing with Rocksroy, while Jonathan gives a confessional about how he considered taking Rocksroy’s place (he didn’t because “I’m the biggest guy out here” and he decided the calories were more important, which is the point where I started seriously worrying about Jonathan’s fate in this episode.

The losing team gets a bit more rice than normal and poor, naïve Chanelle is like “So it there still going to be a merge feast for us?” and they laugh at her naivete. Drea, because she is a wizard, figures out almost exactly what Rocksroy’s advantage is going to be.

This group (mostly) thinks they are at risk of elimination, and Mike foreshadowingly says, “I’m not going home with an idol in my pocket.” Those chickens don’t come home to roost this week, but I wonder when that might come back.

We recap the amulet advantage situation from the first episode — Lindsay, Hai and Drea all have it, and it gets more powerful as there are fewer of them. When all three are around, it’s an extra vote. At two, it’s a steal-a-vote. When there’s only one, it’s an immunity idol. The three of them discuss whether they need to pick each other off or work together and they (obviously) tell each other to stay strong.

Then the lie-est lie ever, as Maryanne and Mike talk about their immunity idols from the beware advantage, and she says she doesn’t want to tell people her secrets, which is comical. She’s the least secretive person on earth.

Everyone talks about how great and wonderful Jonathan is in all things, and man, being the tribe superhero is a risky strategy but complementing that with everyone loving you more than their own family is a good trick, if you can pull it off.

After Romeo and Hai bond over being in the LGBTQ community, Hai reveals to Omar that Chanelle lost her vote a few episodes back, which confirms to Omar that he has no vote as well, and also confirms that Chanelle isn’t being honest with him. Hai tells Omar not to trust Chanelle, and Omar basically goes “yep, right there with you.”

The majorities of each tribe (Lindsay/Omar/Jonathan from Taku, Mike/Hai/Lydia from Vati, Drea/Romeo/eventually Rocksroy from Ika) form an alliance, with plans to get Chanelle or Maryanne out, since one is on each team from the challenge and so it should be easy. I bet it is easy! I bet there are no wrinkles to come in our two-hour journey!

(Chanelle starts to feel like she’s in trouble around here and pulls Lydia aside to get some reassurance, which Lydia tries to provide, and it turns out Lydia is approximately the worst liar on earth.)

Over at exile, Rocksroy again proves to be my brother out there, where he’s at his absolute happiest when he can just bear down and work and not bother with all that silly conversation nonsense. He builds what is legitimately a very impressive little shelter and is making rice when Probst shows up to explain that he can reverse the game and give himself and the losing team immunity and put the winning team at risk. Rocksroy dwells over the problem.

And now we’re at the immunity challenge, where Probst brings Rocksroy back to see what he decided. And look, I hate the “reverse history” twist, because it’s not a strategy thing, and essentially no one is ever going to choose to not be immune, so I don’t think there’s any value here. But if anyone was ever going to, it would be someone like Rocksroy, for whom fairness appears to be paramount. So I was actually the slightest bit interested in his decision … and he chose to reverse it. The show needs to try things to stay fresh, but it tried this, and it didn’t work, and it can go for future seasons.

Anyway, that means our previous winning team is now the losing team and at risk. And Tori would legitimately stab Rocksroy if she could, and she more or less says so. And since the immunity challenge (walk back and forth to a wobbly table trying to hold it still with a rope while spelling “I-M-M-U-N-I-T-Y” with blocks) is not strictly strength-based, Jonathan actually doesn’t win, with Tori pretty comfortably taking it. And oh look, Chanelle is safe and Tori is now safe. What a surprise that those early machinations didn’t matter!

Back at camp, the first conversation is the obvious one — that they should get Jonathan out while they can because he’s liable to go on an immunity run at any moment. It’s the popular conversation for a bit, and then Lindsay tries to throw Maryanne under the bus, and then Omar — who is not at risk and can’t vote, and so could somewhat just take this week off — realizes he definitely doesn’t want Jonathan to go, and ends up throwing all his efforts being drumming up votes for Lydia to go, which sounds like it’s working for a bit until he mentions it to Hai, and the Hai/Lydia bond appears to be so strong that it’s not even a consideration.

(Through everything, we see strategic conversations between a hundred different combinations of people, but — hilariously — nothing about Rocksroy. I imagine he just went back to his exile and said he’d see them at tribal council.)

At tribal, the conversations center around people being their “authentic self” and whether that’s a net good or bad. Maryanne sits next to Rocksroy and talks for so long that she forgets what question she was even answering, and at some point you can see Rocksroy’s brain start to ask to go back to exile again because he just can’t with her. She has a panic moment at a beetle, and then the beetle lands on Rocksroy’s arm and he’s just like, “What up, beetle.” I do not think Rocksroy and Maryanne are going to form an alliance in this game.

We go to the vote, where there are 11 votes (with Omar voteless). Jonathan gets 2, Maryanne gets 2, Lindsay gets 1 (hilariously, from Rocksroy, and I just imagine him going the rest of his time out there voting for people at random and having no idea what the strategy actually is), and the rest go to Lydia — including the votes from “She’s my No. 1” Hai and “I’d take a bullet for her” Mike, so it seems the writing was on the wall and they just did that to stay on their alliance’s good side … except they easily could have gone with the people who voted Jonathan/Maryanne/Lindsay and drummed their support together to save Lydia and get one of the original Taku out and just didn’t, so their desire for that particular alliance outweighed their Lydia love.

Lydia leaves, and almost as soon as she’s out of sight, Probst tells everyone they’ve officially merged and they all cheer, and I get it, but man, imagine if you’re Lydia and the people you love in this game vote you out, and as soon as you walk away they all burst into cheers. Rough.

Also … how in the ever-loving world did this group not get Jonathan out? This dude is beloved and he’s going to win multiple immunities starting real soon. They might not get another chance. And if he makes it to the end, he’s going to win. Loving him is great, but the strategy there was just awful, and I’m going to judge them until they get him out of there.

Recapping My Picks

Omar and Hai both got a lot of screentime here, including non-gameplay discussions like Hai and Romeo bonding over the LGBTQ thing and Omar talking about being a virgin. They both had significant strategy conversations, and Hai — despite being strong and at risk — never even gets discussed as a threat, so that bodes well.

Stock Rising

Omar has his vote back now and appears to have the power to push people the way he wants them. I think we’ll be seeing him a while.

If Jonathan can survive being one of five up for immunity and everyone knowing he needs to be voted out, he can survive a whole lot.

Stock Falling

Tori is not what I would call stealth, and that’s eventually going to bite her in the butt. The only question is whether she can get the “I will not strategize at all” Rocksroy out before it gets her.

Chanelle appears set to be the sacrificial lamb either right before or right after Tori, as soon as it’s logical to get her out.