Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X - Episode Recap
Episode 6 - The Truth Works Well
By Jim Van Nest - Gen X'er
November 2, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Finally, we have the new tribe, Ikabula which was forced to start from scratch with their entire camp. To make up for the extra work, they were given the extra person at the swap. There's a 4-2 Millennial advantage here and all four get along very well. Will and Hannah are close, while Michaela has been working with Jay. Also, they are killing it in the challenges, especially Jay and Michaela - both of whom are making very solid cases to win this whole season. They're likable, hard workers and challenge beasts. After five episodes, I'd consider either of them winning a satisfying conclusion. Bret and Sunday round out the new green tribe and they're very likable and are fitting in well. This is a very solid tribe right now. It'll be interesting to see what happens should they lose a challenge. I expect the kids will stick together and drop one of the Gen X'ers. I must say, though, if the last challenge was any indication - they're in no danger of heading to Tribal any time soon.
All righty - I think I've set the table pretty well. Let's get to the episode.
We begin at Vanua right after Tribal Council. Zeke tells us that the Gen Xers were so dumb to get rid of CeCe and that he's all of a sudden in a power position in the tribe with Chris. Meanwhile David thinks that getting rid of CeCe had to be done and that he's also in a better place moving forward.
Morning rises at Ikabula on Day 16, and we find the entire tribe getting hungry and cranky. Jay and Will take a walk and decide to do some idol hunting. After a long search, Jay finally finds the tribe color on a piece of bamboo. He busts it open and he and Will have the green hidden immunity idol. As they cement their alliance and prepare to run the game, Michaela runs up on them and discovers that they found the idol. So, I guess now it's a trio. Michaela doesn't really think that idol would have anything to do with her, but she'll keep their secret for now. But if she gets wind of something going down, "I'm snitchin'." Roll the credits.
We come back from break to a Probst Sighting!! As the tribes walk in, everyone gets a look at the new Vanua with CeCe gone. Figgy can't contain herself. She's so glad to see Michelle come walking in. Oh yeah, and Zeke's there, too.
Today's challenge is a blindfold challenge. One person will be the caller and will lead the rest of the tribe through an obstacle course to find puzzle pieces. Once the tribe gets all the pieces, the caller will then direct one blindfolded member in how to put the puzzle together. As it is, the caller is everything in this challenge. Purple has an extra member, so they sit out Jessica. Green has two extra, so they sit out Hannah and Bret. Oh yeah, they're playing for cookies and milk and stuff. Second place gets a plate of cookies. Honestly, it's not one of the better rewards, but to the starving man a cracker is a gourmet meal.
The challenge begins and Michelle, Figgy and Jay are the three callers. It doesn't take long for Jay to have his tribe moving smoothly. Figgy's not doing too badly and Michelle can't get anything going. In a humorous moment, Chris asks Michelle what she wants to tell David, because he is basically ignoring everything she says. When Chris tells him the exact same thing, David does it perfectly. Wha???? In a bit of an upset, Figgy gets all her pieces back first and she begins to direct Ken. Michaela comes back with the final set of pieces, and Jay sets off to direct Michaela.
As orange comes back with their final set of pieces, Hannah starts to complain about feeling faint and weak. Keep in mind that Hannah isn't participating in the challenge. Zeke is being directed by Michelle and out of nowhere; they get the puzzle finished first, winning the food reward. Only a moment later, Jay and Michaela finish up and despite starting the puzzle way before the others, Figgy and company will go back to camp empty-handed.
When the challenge ends, Hannah is feeling worse and worse. She starts to freak out. Jeff gets Dr. Joe over to check her out. She's basically having a panic attack and as soon as he comes over to check her, she starts to calm down, which gets everything else to come back to normal. I'm not sure that this was a big deal, but it is very nice to see that Jeff and the show have learned from previous mistakes. It was about this point last season where they lost one member of the cast and almost lost two more in a challenge that was a little too much on the players. So, I was glad to see them err on the side of caution with Hannah and get the medical staff in there before things got out of hand. Well done by everyone.
We come back from the 1000th ad I've seen for Pure Genius (coming soon to CBS) and we join the Vanua tribe and they're reveling in their come from behind victory. Talk turns to Figgy's reaction to seeing Michelle. Zeke tells us that Michelle is a very dangerous player in this game for just that reason. He feels that he's at the bottom of the Millennials tribe and that for him to go forward, sticking with Gen X and getting rid of Michelle might be a good idea.
We check in with Ikabula and Hannah is discussing her panic attack. She talks about how embarrassing it was to collapse when she wasn't even in the challenge. She hated how weak she felt and how the entire cast saw it. She tells us that she still doesn't feel that great, but that she keeps telling everyone and herself that she's good, so they don't think her too weak. I worry about the final arc for Hannah. Unless they're setting up this epic turnaround, where Hannah goes from panic attack to finalist...it almost seems like they're hinting at a med-evac or a quit. I hope I'm wrong on this one, because that would suck for her.
And finally, we check in with the reward-less Takali tribe and the biggest thing on their minds is whether or not Taylor and Figgy should out themselves as a couple. Taylor tries to convince her by saying that Adam is with them, and everyone else knows anyway. So, after a big time-waster scene, Figgy decides to break the news to Jessica. Jessica? Not surprised. #Figtails is the worst kept secret in Survivor history. Figgy pulls in Ken to tell him as well. Ken? Not surprised. As we head to commercial, Ken tells us that they're not quite as cool as they think they are, and he certainly will not sit on his ass and let them take his game away.
And with that, we come back to our second Probst Sighting!!! Today's immunity challenge will have the players walking across a series of balance beams on the water. They'll then climb a pyramid to grab bags of coconuts. Inside the bags are also three balls. Once they have all the bags and find all the balls, two people will look to move those balls through a table maze. First two tribes to get all three balls through the maze win immunity. Sitting out for Ikabula this time are Will and Sunday. Sitting for Takali will be Adam.
And we're off. David, Ken and Jay take off to begin the challenge. Jay blows through it and even David rocks the balancing. Ken is the one having trouble and has to go back to the start. Jay gets his bags to the mat. Then, out of nowhere, Ken has caught up with David and actually pulls ahead because he's able to carry all three bags at once while David can only grab one. All of this, however, turns out to be for naught as all three tribes end up working the table maze at the same time. Figgy and Jessica have a huge lead in this challenge and they squander it.
Some things we see during the table maze: Michaela, while awesome in challenges, doesn't know how to talk to people. She orders Hannah around and talks horribly to her as they play. Also noticed, we haven't seen a whole lot of Jessica. She's pretty much been the legacy advantage and pinkeye. We see in this challenge that not only does Jessica sport a huge tattoo on her side and back, but she is pretty ripped. She's been in a baggy t-shirt most of the time and this challenge finally showed her off as a competitor in these challenges, way more than they have through five episodes. Also, we learn that while not really getting along or working together in the game - Michelle and Zeke make a hella-team when it comes to puzzles and table mazes.
As it turns out, Michaela and Hannah do finish the table maze first. And right after finishing, Michaela starts offering tips to Zeke and Michelle on how to do better with the table. It definitely gets everyone's attention and despite being dead last in this challenge, with Michaela's guidance, Zeke and Michelle finish the maze and win immunity for Vanua, sending Takali to Tribal for the first time since the swap.
After the challenge, Jeff has to ask Michaela what the deal was and why she was helping Vanua so hard. "Well, we kinda want Millennials to stay and when you get two and two, somebody's gotta go home." Taylor points out that there's Millennials over there too. "Yeah, but there's three of you. If you can't figure out how to work together, you deserve to go home." And there it is. As simple as that. Michaela is now not only carrying her tribe, but she's helping to dictate which tribe goes to Tribal, in order to keep her in-game numbers. There are several people that seem to be getting a "winner's edit" - Ken, Jay, Figgy, Michaela, David and Zeke could all be seen as possible winners. But Michaela is the one who's actually building the resume every single episode. Very impressed with her thus far. I just wish she had been a little nicer to Hannah during the challenge. As we head to break, Figgy tells us that as long as the Millennials stick together, everything will be just fine.
And after the 10,000th commercial for The Great Indoors - coming Thursday to CBS - we're back with the Takali tribe. Adam tells us that it sucks for them to be going to Tribal. He's been playing both sides for a while and now he has to finally pick one. Figgy and he go to get some water and talk plans. Figgy, who IS a good Survivor player, plays this exactly the way you should. It's part of Survivor 101. When you have a swing vote, the way to approach them is not dictating who to vote for, but rather, asking them who they want to vote for. She does this perfectly, and Adam hems and haws a little, but finally settles on Ken. They bring Taylor in and it appears that we're getting ready to play, "It's Anyone But Ken."
As they separate, Taylor and Figgy talk about how they're not 100% sure they trust Adam, but it's the play they have to make. A little later, we see Jessica making a pitch to Adam, saying that she and Ken are ready to work with him. She asks him where his heart is and lets that sit for a second. Then she gets him to confirm that Ken is the target tonight. So she pulls Ken aside and lets him know what the plan is. She tells him he has to go to Adam and convince him that they have his back and will never write his name down. And if this works, the three of them can run the game.
Shortly before heading to Tribal, Ken makes his pitch to Adam. He tells Adam that he has to decide who he wants to roll forward with. He can stick with Ken, Jessica and David as the #3 or he can stick with the "cool kids" and know that he's at the bottom of that alliance. Adam wisely tells Ken that he's asking him to trust some people he's never even met. Ken doubles down by telling him that he and Jessica have his back and they will never write his name down. He goes further by saying that he will fight for him until the end of the game. As they head to Tribal, Adam tells us that his mind is reeling because Ken makes great arguments. He says that the whole world is probably screaming, "Get out the power couple!" but he's not sure that makes the best move for him right now.
As they sit down to Tribal, Jeff asks Ken to give the lay of the land since it looks pretty obvious that it's 3-2 Millennials vs Gen X. Taylor confirms that the plan is to boot a Gen Xer. Figgy chimes in that she feels they're pretty tight too, even though Adam voted for her. And in perfect Jeff fashion, he asks the best possible question of Adam, "...and that she looks at you just like she would look at Taylor, we're in this together." This gives Adam the chance to say that she most definitely does NOT look at him the way she looks at Taylor. He breaks the news that there is a show-mance going on. Everyone talks about how they are a very obvious couple.
This gives Jeff a chance to mention that he's an ordained minister and he'd be happy to marry them right now. After everyone freaks out a little and laughs a little, Jeff asks about being that out in the open with this and whether that's a good thing. And Figgy says possibly the worst thing she could say and that is that they're not as much a couple as they are two people who will always vote together. And there go the sirens!! That is the hugest of red flags - two people that will always vote together are a power couple and therefore need to be broken up. And that means now. No waiting. No thinking, "Oh, we can take care of them later." You break them up. Right. Frickin'. Now.
We go back and forth between the Figtails alliance and the Ken and Jessica alliance. Everyone makes their case as to why Adam should vote with them. Ultimately, Adam has his mind made up and the rest of this is just filling time. He ends it by saying that, "Someone is gonna go home upset tonight and someone is gonna go back to camp upset tonight." And with that, it's time to vote.
They show us no votes, but you have to believe it's going to be a 3-2 vote against either Ken or Figgy. Jeff asks about idols and we move on. Let's read the votes. First vote: Ken. Then Figgy. Then Ken. Then Figgy. Sixth person voted out of Survivor: Millennials vs Gen X - Figgy. BOOM! There it is. Not only did he break up the power couple, he took away the brains of the outfit too. Taylor might come back to camp all pissed off, but the dude doesn't have the game capacity to do anything about it.
Also with this vote, we may have seen the creating of an unbreakable voting block: Adam, Ken, Jessica and David. If David can bring in either Chris or Zeke - this could be the ultimate alliance in the game. Well played by Ken and Jessica tonight and well played by Adam. He deduced that making the flip now WAS the right move for him. And he's right. He had no future with the FigTails alliance. Even if he wants to stick with Millennials, Zeke, Hannah and Michaela have no love for Figgy. So he could even get back with Millennials after a merge, if he wants to. Well played all the way around - except for Figgy and Taylor, of course.
Next time on Survivor: A love scorned Taylor seeks revenge as we see Adam trying to explain his vote. And we also see that a new power couple is emerging on the Vanua beach as Zeke and David realize that they have a lot in common - which now includes the knowledge that David has a hidden immunity idol. And there is that fifth person to add to Ken, Jessica and Adam. If this group actually gets together, everyone else's game could be over. Guess we'll have to see how it goes next week. 'Til then, kiddies, take care!