Survivor New Zealand: Thailand Episode 4 recap

As we approach the fourth week of Survivor NZ  there are questions. Will Chani win an immunity? Will the producers take things into their hands and give us a tribe swap to break the Ulonging that we are suffering through? Why did the previously on call Frankey’s boot a blindside?

Pre-Challenge

Renee has noted that her tribe is now a boys club but it’s the game all round. Three boots in and three women have left leaving 9 men and 6 women in the game. Does that mean a recipe for the men to take over or for a SJDS situation where the remaining women can get to the end.

Bless Liam’s heart, he’s amazed he’s in Thailand and playing Survivor. 

Adam is being a bit bitchy about Dylan. He’s a delightful bitch is Adam.
Dylan and Kaysha are discussing how everyone doesn’t like him then Kaysha jinxes it completely by saying he doesn’t need to worry as they aren’t going to lose immunity. Others in the tribe including Lisa, Tara, and Josh discuss how if they lose it’ll be good because Dylan is the one to go and it will test their alliances.

Reward Challenge

It’s Sumo at Mud. Khangkaw can’t sit the same people in back to back challenges which is better than the previous can’t be someone who has sat out before. It’s first to ten which is again too many rounds when there are only six people on one of the tribes.
Khangkaw wins, tea, coffee, drinking chocolate and biscuits. Annoyingly Chisholm says “in the drink” a thousand times and there isn’t even water.

The Outpost

I’m starting to get exhausted by the Outpost.  At Khangkaw Tess wanted to rig the sticks for who can go but Kaysha took over and did a weird thing where she let people pick then turned around to take that stick out to hand to the recipient. Brad thinks she’s rigging it and I’d think the same thing if I were there. But Josh gets it so she clearly wasn’t.

Chani pick sticks and JT rigs it for Arun to go.

They face a dilemma, someone from their tribe won’t go to the challenge, that person will be safe from the vote also. Arun decides to use the time to get the info Khangkaw and Josh gives it up. Arun offers Josh an alliance and they shake on it.

Josh decides to sit out himself and Arun sits Eve out.

It would be sensible for Josh to ask his Invisible Five to throw the challenge and get rid of Dylan. This would give him safety in his first tribal and see the tribal alliances tested like he wants.

Post Outpost

Arun tells his tribe everything except the alliance offer.

Josh tells his tribe that he chose to sit himself. Kaysha picked up the social cues from who reacted really well to news that Josh chose to save himself and sit out.

There is a lot of Kaysha this episode, way more than Dylan. At this point, I started to wonder if this visibility spike means another woman will be booted because of their relationship to a man.

Immunity Challenge

The challenge is an obstacle course with the tribe members chained together then a Reynolds Memorial throwing things at things to end. This is a great challenge to throw because it just needs one person to decide to slow it down.

Chani make a quick start and although I can’t tell if Khangkaw are going slow on purpose they are going very slow. Arun begins to make the bowlers to throw at the ladder before Khangkaw get their second set of bags, but he’s very slow.

Chani manages to win before Brad can even begin to throw. The whole episode was building up to this. If it was anyone but Tess the Rookie who untied the knots so slowly that the tribe couldn’t catch up I might have suspected a thrown challenge but I’m not sure she has it in her to even understand you can throw a challenge.

Pre-Tribal

Tess freaks out about the fact Kaysha is targeting her. She’s being dumb and worrying that Dylan might have an idol but she knows where her tribe’s idol is! Jesus Christ Tess, I know you haven’t watched any Survivor but it’s common sense!
Kaysha tries to convince Brad, Tara and Matt to split the vote in case Dylan has an idol. It’s a terrible plan as she is the person who they would split the vote on. She offers Adam as the split vote with Matt voting Adam with her. It’s bad and Kaysha should stop trying to save Dylan and hope for a swap.

Tribal Council

At Khangkaw’s first tribal council Chisholm asks questions and Dylan decides to offer real answers. He is nervous and he feels the tribe is being false saying this is where the game starts. He’s right, the game has been going for 12 days and he’s made a mess of it. Adam calls Dylan a bad egg. Dylan then gives Adam a speech about how he seems like he doesn’t want to be there and pisses Dylan off. This is the best tribal of the season it’s all because Adam is a massive drama queen and Dylan is flailing around trying to find safety.

It’s a vote split and Kaysha is voted out. As I said before it’s all her own fault for trying to help Dylan.

I think the tribe misunderstood how a vote split works. You put the majority on the one you all want to go home and the smaller number on the secondary target. Instead, they’ve taken out a secondary target who could have been useful to you later. Instead, they’ve left a guy they don’t like who will flip on them immediately if next week is a swap. Kaysha really played her way out of the game. She could have let Dylan go and continued working with Matt and worked on building better relationships with others in the game.

One last thought. The cave tribal council setup means the voting confessionals are all whispered and impossible to hear. I’d like them to give us subtitles at least. I have no idea what Matt said when voting for Kaysha.

Edgic

The edgic continues to show an overwhelming likelihood that Renee will win.