Survivor: Exile Island – Survivor Live Recap, Episode 6

Let’s start off this article with another trivia question. This one is a little tougher. It was interesting that Sally was granted immunity by the other team, but it has in fact happened five times before. How many do you recall? The answer is near the end of this article.

The show starts with Dalton welcoming Dan to the show. Dan looks about the same as he did on the show, except he has a little bit of a tan. Probably it’s makeup? Jenna is a little leery that Dalton has prepared a bunch of astronaut references she won’t understand.

Jenna also comments about the disappointing CBS preview that promised, “A tribal council like never before.” This was a very boring tribal council, as the vote went exactly as we expected and Jeff didn’t uncover any big secrets.

The hosts say they were expecting the two-two split in the vote with an ensuing tiebreaker. Dan confesses Terry wasn’t the strategist Dan thought he was since Terry has been eliminating his own allies by voting out first Ruth-Marie and now Dan.

Jenna points out that this close to the merge, players should forget about keeping a strong tribe and get rid of the other strong players. Dan expects the merge to come next episode and tried to point that out to Terry. It’s very possible but we’ll see – we all remember what happened when Shii Ann assumed a merge occurred when there were ten players left in the game.

Jenna says she wishes Dan had just yelled and screamed at Terry. Dan says he did have a very spirited argument with Terry about booting loyal Ruth-Marie out, to no avail. Dan felt Ruth-Marie would have been key to convincing Cirie to flip to their side. I agree with Jenna here, since rational logic wasn’t working Dan needed to get right out of character and shout and rage at Terry to get his full attention.

The relative strength of the two teams is commented on. Initially it seemed like La Mina was both the stronger and smarter tribe, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Dan feels Bobby was the big equalizing factor as he was responsible for Casaya winning three challenges (digging in the sand, wrestling, and fish chopping). Jenna points out that Casaya won this week again without him, plus amazingly, they even won a puzzle challenge!

Dan was shocked when he learned Casaya had booted out Bobby, their best player. Jenna sees no long term planning in that group. Dan points out that Casaya has stuck together so far and avoided elimination, and as I said last week, that is the purpose of an early alliance.

Dalton has them run the clip of the combined reward/immunity challenge (called “In-Cog-Neato,” by the way). Dan admits that going in, he was very confident they were going to win handily. Dan and Sally had a nice head start on the puzzle but never really got on track. Dan says, “Some days you’re there and some days you’re not.” Last time underwater, he was integral to their victory. “That’s the way it goes sometimes, there’s no explanation,” he concludes.

Jenna doesn’t like combined challenges. Dalton adds that he doesn’t like it when the winning team also has to go to tribal council. Me either – winning needs to mean something. Fortunately, they didn’t pull that trick this time.

Jenna gives the Casaya tribe credit for realizing that Sally was the next one to be booted and choosing her to go to Exile Island.

Dan tells us he was sure Terry had the idol. Before the tribal council where Ruth-Marie was voted out Terry said, “Let’s all carry our bags with us to tribal council as a sign of unity.” At first Dan thought that made no sense until it confirmed for him that Terry had found the idol. I’m not sure why that was significant, aren’t you supposed to take all your stuff to tribal council in case you go home? Isn’t it a display of arrogance to NOT take all your stuff? [Assistant Editor’s Note: I sure thought so.]

Ruth-Marie knew Terry had the idol as well, but Dan isn’t sure if the young guys had figured it out. He suspects they probably did know, but he never directly asked them.

Dan is still not sure why Terry tossed him to the wolves, but he thinks Terry was still angry that Dan couldn’t solve the puzzle. Dan feels the young guys are afraid to vote against Terry because he’ll pull the hidden idol out and one of them might go home.

Donald from Toronto asks why Dan didn’t use his bond with Nick to try and switch things around. Dan replies that Nick and Austin were “joined at the hip” and there was no separating them. This isn’t really a right response, as Dan needed both young guys on his side to make a significant move anyway. But Jenna points out that it really comes back to the immunity idol, it’s suicide to target Terry until he is in a vastly inferior position in the game.

Karen from Michigan asks Dan to assess Terry’s honesty, noting that first Terry plays a word game to oust Ruth-Marie and then reneges on his handshake with Dan. Dan says you have to recognize Survivor is a game, but Terry made moves Dan personally would not have made, “both from the strategy point of view and the integrity point of view.” There was no reason for him to make those moves because his back was never up against the wall and he had no reason to cut his lifelines. However, Dan fundamentally accepts that outside of the game, Terry is probably a good guy.

Dan wonders if he could have turned on Terry at a later stage of the game. He wanted to find that out about himself, but the opportunity never arose.

Dalton shifts attention to the “Time Capsule” feature. Essentially, contestants recorded a message to themselves two days before the show started and it’s being played back now. Dan knew the game would be physically tough but felt he could do it well. He hoped he’d lose his love handles and he concludes by wishing himself good luck.