In Hindsight: Survivor: China Episode 15-6

Shows

My apologies for missing last week, but I had a good reason – my daughter Hannah was born on Tuesday morning (Oct 16) and, well, I haven’t gotten much sleep since. But also, there wasn’t really that much time to watch much of anything until Sunday. Well, I paid for NFL Sunday Ticket, so I needed to make use of it, right?

OK, so last week four castaways switched tribes, and Aaron gets the Silas Gaither Memorial “I got screwed by a twist” Award for this season. It sucks, but you know something like that was coming, so as they say, it is what it is. By the way, I loved his interview with Murtz which once again exposed Dave’s liability in challenges.

James would appear to be on the chopping block now, but over on Fei Long, they should really be looking to axe Frosti as he’s probably got the best chance of being a challenge monster and running the table in individual immunities.

Reward Challenge
This challenge was really won in the race to collect pieces. Fei Long built a large lead and as a result had a little more leeway in trying to solve the puzzle. The real story here was once again deciding to sit out weak link Courtney in a reward challenge which necessitated her participation in the Immunity Challenge. Tribes never learn – sit out your weak players during Immunity Challenges!

The Reward itself was nice, and we got some equal-opportunity sexism as we had naked James plus Amanda and Courtney sharing a tub. Something for everyone!

Post-Reward
OK, Todd had a brilliant plan with respect to the hidden Immunity Idol (which is more like a plaque), but the initial execution was so poor I have to question whether he’s truly a master player. A guy like Rafe wouldn’t have made the blunder of trying to grab the Idol while everyone was awake. As a result, Frosti wormed his way into the Todd-Amanda alliance and if he plays his cards right, the “student/athlete” could go a long way.

Regardless, James had the Immunity Idol and all that had to go down was that Fei Long needed to win. And hey, with Courtney and Amanda in the mix, winning Immunity was no problem, right?

Immunity Challenge
Finally, the return of the gross food challenge… although thousand-year old egg isn’t all that gross. It’s actually a mass-produced product that you can find at any Asian grocery store – and at Chinese congee restaurants. Relatively speaking, the gross food here really wasn’t all that gross.

As I mentioned before, sitting out Courtney in Reward Challenge was a huge mistake. She was probably still full from the “tea house”, and to expect her to eat some eel was a bit much, no? The most hilarious thing here, though, is James trying VERY hard to throw the challenge, but Lunchlady Doris Denise couldn’t get her balute down. I’m blaming this one on her lack of mulletude.

Anyway, the hungry (literally) Zhan Hu pulled it together and managed to win this one, so I suppose that during P.G.’s “conversation” with Sherea, she picked up the negative vibes. I can’t see any other reason that the tribe wouldn’t throw the challenge to get James off.

Tribal Council
Sherea and Frosti seemed to have no problems selling out their old tribe in favour of their new one, but the old Fei Long weren’t going to extend their trust that much. In eliminating Sherea, they played the numbers game and there wasn’t anything wrong with that. Interesting to note that the second vote for Jean-Robert was from Courtney, and I really think that she’s been kept out of the loop as far as voting goes. There’s a possibility that she may flip during the merge, but with numbers still in the favour of Fei Long, I don’t see that happening just yet.

Sir Linksalot: Survivor: China

Kevin has been an Insider since 2003, writing on a variety of topics ranging from The Amazing Race to Mixed Martial Arts. His current hobbies include Fantasy Football, Sporcle, travelling, making liberal use of his DVR and wondering what the heck he's gonna do when his two daughters are old enough to date. You can follow Kevin on Twitter (@starvenger).