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Hello good people and thanks for joining me out on the Edge of Extinction! My name is Jim and I'll be your guide on this tour of the 38th season of reality giant Survivor!

Last week was a bit of a yawner episode as Keith can't swim, or ring toss or build an alliance and he was sent packing, presumably to the Edge of Extinction. However, the episode ended on a cliff hanger of whether or not Keith would grab the torch and get on the boat. Honestly, if he doesn't, then he never should have been cast on the show in the first place.

The big take aways from the first 2 episodes of this season seem to be that Kama will never lose a challenge and the returning players (save David Wright) are in deep doo-doo. Wentworth has had her name written down in both Tribals and Aubry was caught telling everyone the same thing. And everyone knows that Joe isn't long for the main game. I mean, isn't that the whole point of the Edge of Extinction, to give Joe a legit shot at winning? At any rate, previews suggest that the returnees are under even more fire. And let's not forget about Ron's Advantage Menu. I mean, they didn't waste precious airtime showing it to us so that the 3rd Tribal would come and go and it would be deemed useless. Something tells me it'll come into play tonight. Alright, enough from me - let's get to "The Decision".

The episode begins with Reem at the Edge of Extinction as a boat with a single torch approaches. Yep, Keith has decided to stay in the game. And he's happy, and Reem's happy and mostly, Production is happy. As they get reacquainted, Reem tells us that it was looking bleak for her out there, but with Keith in town, she can't leave him all alone. His arrival may have saved her from raising that white sail.

As morning dawns, 2 bottles are left at the ship mast, 1 for each player. They contain maps of the island and tell to go find a set of stairs. After a considerable hike, and seriously - it was a pretty long hike, they find the steps. Mainly because the map didn't really show where the steps were. It just told them to find them. Atop the steps they find a clearing with a bucket. In the bucket is a very meager supply of rice. They're basically told that they will have to work for everything they get at the Edge of Extinction and this does appear to be true.

Ok, ready to get back to the real game? Me too. We begin at a Probst Sighting! Whaaaaa? That's right; it's our first straight up reward challenge. The tribes will race to assemble a wheelbarrow and take it through some obstacles picking up sandbags along the way. Once they have all of their sandbags, they'll take it apart to create a slingshot. They'll use the slingshot to shoot sandbags at 4 targets. First to knock down all targets wins reward. And once again, it's a choice. Comfort or chickens. Worth playing for? Everyone seems to think so. Aubry and Ron sit out for Kama.

As you would expect, with Joe on the wheelbarrow, Kama jumps out to a pretty solid lead. They get all their sandbags to the end first, with a pretty big lead. But they have an issue with building the slingshot. One piece is not fitting and while they struggle to fix it, Manu actually catches up and gets their slingshot done first. Chris goes to work shooting sandbags. Hits on his first shot. Kama finally figures it out and Gavin shoots for Kama and misses. Chris hits #2 while Julia steps in for Gavin and hits the first target. While Julia misses a couple times, Chris hits targets 3 and 4 and Manu wins their first challenge of the season. Their choice? Chickens. I'm not sure that's the best choice here. I know, as an impulse, it sounds better...but I think comfort might be the way to go here.

As we head to commercial, we hear from Wendy and learn that she injured her ankle during the challenge. Apparently part of the slingshot fell on her ankle as they put it together. With adrenaline flowing, she didn't really notice it as the challenge was going on. But as it finished, the ankle has blown up and is seriously purple. Not sure she broke anything, but she definitely bruised the hell out of it. This does not look good and appears to be the lead in to the first med-evac of the season.

We come back from break as the Manu tribe arrives back at camp with Chris and Devens helping get Wendy back to camp. She tells everyone what happened and she tells us how worried she is that she has never broken anything and doesn't want it to be serious. She actually seems way more worried about the actual injury itself than it's relation to the game. This tells me that it is pretty serious. Normally, people would try to downplay something like this because they don't want to be pulled. She, however, is worried that it could be something pretty bad. Not good.

Talk turns from Wendy to the chickens. Everyone is super stoked to have chickens. And here it goes - the yearly (well, it seems like it's yearly) discussion about killing chickens. Turns out that when she busted up her ankle, Wendy also decided she was against killing the chickens.
As everyone talks about eating chickens, she is just getting more and more upset. And somewhere in California, Sia's spidey senses tingled and she felt compelled to write a $14,000 check. But I digress.

The silliness of this whole scene is that Wendy eats meat (including chicken) every day. But now, she wants to set the chickens free to save them. She goes so far as to ask Devens to help her, which he flatly refuses. This is the one time to go ahead and break the first rule of Survivor. When someone asks you to help hide, steal or destroy a major food source on Survivor, you say, "No." It's just ridiculousness and I have no idea why this type of situation constantly wastes precious episode time. But, moving on...

We finally get to check in with the Kama tribe to see how they're handling their first taste of defeat. As they console each other, Victoria tells us about their group of 6 that is forming. Her, Ron, Julie, Julia, Gavin and Eric. Aurora has fallen in with the returnees and Victoria says her group feels very strongly that a returnee needs to go first. Now, this cuts us to one of the best scenes I've seen in Survivor in a while. Victoria and Ron are down in the water having a strategy session and the camera is close up on them as if they're the only ones there. They're talking about which of the 3 they want to vote out and Victoria says, "I think Joe and Aubry kinda come as a pair." Ron says, "They do." And as she's talking, the camera pans over to show that Joe is literally less than 5 feet away from her hearing the whole conversation. He says, "What do we do?" It's absolutely perfect. The editing and camerawork has only been getting better over the last few seasons. From last week's Aubry montage showing her using the same lines on several different people to this camerawork as Victoria totally gets busted - it's just top notch.

We check in with Joe, Aubry and Aurora and none of them are feeling good. They know they're all on the bottom and Joe is really feeling the heat. But so is Aubry, so much so that she goes off on a major idol hunt. Once again, the Survivor editing team is on point. As Aubry talks about how she's always wanted to find an idol. As she's telling us this, we're seeing shots of her searching for idols in Koah Rong, searching for idols during Game Changers and then searching for the idol on Edge of Extinction. Except this time - she finds it! She completely breaks down as she knows she's in a really bad spot in the game and this might be her chance. Just a really well done sequence to tie a nice little bow on the Aubry idol find.

Over at Manu, we're still talking effing chickens. Wardog is trying to understand how a meat eater is so against killing these chickens. She even claims she's vegetarian now. Wardog, Lauren and Wentworth are on the beach just complaining about Wendy and the chickens. They all pretty well decide that Wendy has to be the one to go. Plus, she's voted for Kelley 3 times and she has to get rid of her.

And we're back just in time for another Probst Sighting! Today's immunity challenge will see a group of 4 tethered to a boat and pulling it through the water via swimming. They swim to a platform where the other 3 members will climb up and retrieve a key. Once they have all 3 keys, they'll use them to unlock a chest where the ship's wheel puzzle pieces will be. First tribe to complete their ship's wheel and use it to raise their flag wins immunity. Julie and Victoria will sit out for Kama. Survivors ready?

We have Chris, Wardog, Devens and Wendy foe Manu and Joe, Aurora, Eric and Ron swimming for Kama. Despite the ankle, Wendy proves once again that she is pretty damn good in the water. Both tribes are neck and neck as they get to the key platform. The tribes remain even through the key retrieval portion of the challenge. Manu gets a bit of a lead heading to the puzzle. Kama catches up pretty quickly and both teams are working on the puzzle. David Wright is pretty well known as a Survivor puzzle master. He 3D prints and practices Survivor puzzles for fun. And yet, this ship's wheel proves to be more than he was prepared for. Ron, Aubry and Julia absolutely kill it on this puzzle and Kama wins immunity. Again. For the record, it was David, Wentworth and Lauren who couldn't get the puzzle for Manu. As we head to break, David tells us that while losing was devastating, he's looking forward to going back and taking out Kelley Wentworth.

And we're back and it's time to play It's Anyone But Wentworth. Or Maybe Wendy. Once again, let's talk about what should happen here. It has to be Wendy, if you ask me. She's a completely loose cannon, which means no one can really trust her. After the whole chicken thing, she's completely on the outs in the tribe which makes her a huge question mark in the event of a tribe swap (spoiler alert - we're due for one). And, while she's stellar in the water, her ankle IS really messed up and she's going to be a major liability in any physical challenge outside of the water. I get the urge to take out Wentworth for your "big move moment" but right now, she's with Manu and (in the event a swap doesn't happen) she's solid in challenges, despite this puzzle. To me, this is a no brainer. Let's see how they screw it up.

Wendy tells us that she was great in the challenge and felt good about it, but that she's still on the bottom. And with that, here come the effing chickens...AGAIN!! Determined to not let them eat a chicken, Wendy actually steals the flint. The next montage is of the tribe freaking out over the flint and playfully suggesting that Wendy might have stolen it and also of Wendy showing us the flint and laughing about how she stole it. David and Devens agree to go talk to her and see if perhaps she has the flint. They go to her and talk about the flint being missing. She completely plays it off saying that Chris had it last and she hasn't seen it. The three of them talk about voting out Wentworth and David tells us that he loves having Wendy out there as a potential boot. When he comes back into camp, he confirms to the camp that she did not take the flint. Chris, meanwhile, did find an ember and was able to get the fire started, so there will be some chicken for dinner.

Speaking of Chris, David targets him as the 4th person to join the vote out Kelley side of the tribe. He tells Chris it's time to make the move and that he can't tell Lauren or Wardog as they're too close to Kelley. Chris tells him that he thinks Wardog would be a number with them. He tells us that he is really close to Wardog so he doesn't feel right about blindsiding Wardog with a Wentworth vote. David reiterates that he cannot tell Wardog or it won't work. So naturally, Chris goes straight to Wardog. I have to say, though, he handled the conversation really well. He asked Wardog his thoughts (Wendy) and then casually suggested maybe Wentworth should go as she's not to be trusted. Wardog says he'll go along with whatever Chris wants to do, but he tells us that he actually trusts Kelley WAY more than Chris and that it might be time for Chris to go.

So, off he goes to Wentworth to get her on board to get Chris. They know they have 3 votes and they decide Rick is the person to get to be their 4th. So now, Wendy is totally off the chopping block and it's between Chris and Wentworth. So Wardog goes to Devens and pitches the Chris idea. Devens says he's on board with it, but he doesn't want to alienate David. Wardog tells him that if he's on board with this and trusts David, he's fine with him telling David the plan. The bottom line here is that somehow Wendy is no longer in trouble and the guys that were gunning for Kelley Wentworth (David and Devens) have somehow become the swing votes this time around because Chris is getting blamed for THEIR plan to take out Kelley. It's absolutely amazing how this has all worked out for David and Rick. They can dump Wentworth, like they originally wanted to. OR, they can dump Chris, keep Wardog close and no one is any wiser that it was actually their plan to boot Kelley. Incredible. As they pack for Tribal and we head to commercial, David tells us that tonight is going to be huge and all kinds of betrayals are going to be exposed.

The talk at the start of Tribal is about how inept they are at challenges and how they've even lost flint and argued over chickens. They're just a hot mess and getting worse. And seriously - we waste even MORE time talking about the damn chickens. How much of this episode has been about chickens? Who cares? Somewhere amidst the poultry talk, they talk about how the tribe needs to stay strong so they can finally win something. David suggests that it's time to get rid of the biggest social threat and it might not necessarily be the person that's hurting the tribe in challenges. One interesting thing comes out of this - Devens suggests that because they've had to go to 3 Tribals and have had to really play the game, perhaps they'll all be quite a bit ahead of Kama as far as actually playing Survivor goes. And with that, it's time to vote.

Jeff tallies and no one plays an idol. The first 4 votes alternate between Kelley Wentworth and Chris. That's 2 votes a piece. And then it finishes up with 3 straight Chris votes. 3rd person voted out of Edge of Extinction, Chris. Now, let's see if he has as hard a time as Keith did with the big decision. As he gets to the signpost, he is pretty much in shock. It takes him about a second to say, "Screw those guys, I'm getting back in the boat." He grabs the torch and head out to the Edge of Extinction.

Next time on Survivor: Wendy releases the chickens. Seriously with the fuckin' chickens - it's enough! And it's time, "Everybody, drop your buffs." They're swapping from 2 tribes to 3 tribes. And while that's been kinda cool in some seasons, for this one, I think not. We're already losing how many minutes per episode to the absolute nothingness that is Edge of Extinction? But now we're going to have to split between 3 tribes as well? So, we're going to be following 4 tribes now? It's too much and it's a large reason why we still don't know half of the Kama tribe. I hear there's an awesome girl named Julia over there, but we'd never know it because we're spending too much time on Extinction and damn chickens. Come on, man! Until next week kids, take care!