“Spit out his bones on Edge of Extinction.” Survivor: Winners at War February 26 2020 recap

Day 7: Adam suggests to Denise that they try to get Parvati out, and Adam actually thinks he can get Rob to join them, noting Rob “really trusts me.” Yes, you read that right, Adam wants to try the exact same thing Danni tried the previous day and failed miserably at! And before that Adam wants to recruit Ethan, i.e. Parvati’s other best friend. After the conversation Ethan tells us “that was a silly mistake on his part.”

By the way, Denise reveals to us that Adam gave back the half-idol she gave him, so she now has a full immunity idol.

On the Red tribe, Tyson knows he’s considered possibly the biggest threat, and he wants to put the target on someone else. He chooses Sandra. He pitches Yul on getting Sandra out but Yul wants to keep Sandra around and tells her about the conversation.

Sandra places a net to passively catch fish, and it works — they snag a small shark which Tony tries to pick up only to find out it’s still alive and wriggling, in a funny scene.  I don’t ever recall someone passively catching fish  on any of the prior 39 Survivor seasons!

On the Edge of Extinction the three women are led to a combination lock but can’t figure out where to get the numbers to solve it. Natalie does figure it out, and it gets her an advantage — a clue that will help someone get a vote-steal advantage. She needs to decide whom to sell it to for one fire token.

We soon find out she chose Sarah. As on Game Changers, everyone seems to think Sarah’s their friend, that’s how she won the last time! Sarah reads that she can get a vote-steal advantage, but it’s at the other tribe’s camp, hidden in one of the torches!

Sarah reminds us that she played a vote-steal advantage successfully in Game Changers. Well, not really as the vote she stole had no effect, though it provided a dramatic moment when Cirie tried to steal it from her! You can refresh your memory about all of that here.

Sarah recruits Tony to help her out on the stealth mission, though his only contribution is to spread some camouflaging ashes on her face, and it’s unclear if that helped at all. Seeing her sneak into the camp is very exciting. She may or may not have been close to being discovered, but she at the very least thinks she was.

One more note on the Red tribe: I got visual confirmation that Nick is still in this game! He has kept a very low profile and definitely has garnered the least camera time of anyone.

The immunity challenge is close. It comes down to the final puzzle and Red wins by one piece. Once Blue gets back to camp, these veterans all just sit there, nobody wanting to make the first move. When conversations do start, it sounds like everyone wants Parvati out except Ethan and Rob.

So now it’s time for Adam to have the conversation he hinted at when the episode began. Rob reluctantly says he’s in and that he trusts Adam 100%. But as he walks away we viewers learn Rob has no such intention. He walks over to Michele and Jeremy and says they need to target Adam. The two say OK but it doesn’t sound convincing.

As for Parvati’s thoughts? “I’m ready to pounce on Adam, devour that guy, and just spit out his bones on Edge of Extinction.”

Michele and Jeremy want to weaken Rob by ousting one of his allies, but they are also considering voting Adam. They tell Denise and Ben that Adam told Rob about the Parvati plan, and both are disappointed. It looks like Michele and Jeremy are the swing votes who will make the decision.

Probst reads the votes and there is one vote for Parvati, only three for Adam, and four for Ethan. Ethan heads for Edge of Extinction and wills his fire token to Parvati.

Obviously the three Adam votes were by Rob, Parvati and Ethan, and the Parvati vote must have been Adam, that means Michele, Jeremy, Ben, and Denise voted for Ethan. Adam has an oh-no expression on his face as he realizes his alliance went a different direction and didn’t even tell him.

Fire token count: Rob 2, Denise 2, Parvati 2, Sandra 0, Sarah 0, everyone else in the main game 1.

idol and advantage count: Sandra and Denise each have an idol. Kim, and Sophie each have half an idol. Jeremy has a leave-tribal-council-early advantage. Sarah has a vote-steal advantage.

Favorites: Sarah, Jeremy, Yul, Tyson, Parvati

Not sure: Sandra, Rob, Nick, Denise, Adam, Tony, Kim, Wendell, Ben

No chance: Michele, Sophie

Edge of Extinction: Natalie, Amber, Danni, Ethan

“Is she just clueless?” Survivor: Winners at War February 19 2020 recap

Rob finds a fire token in his bag and knows that there’s a very good chance it means Amber was voted out. He tells Parvati about it.

Ben tells us he wants to focus more on building relationships this season. He gives Denise tips on finding idols and sure enough she does. However it’s a two-part idol, and half has to be given to someone else by sundown. Ben, who is with her when she finds it, plays it cool and doesn’t push too hard to be given the other half. Denise tells Adam about it and floats the idea of giving the other half to Parvati, which he says (correctly!) is a terrible idea. He tells the camera, “One of the best players who has ever played this game! Are you serious?” Denise gives Adam the other half but Adam is nervous about Ben knowing about it.

Over on the Red tribe Kim finds an identical two-part idol. She gives Sophie half, and Sophie tells the camera that was a mistake.

On the Edge of Extinction, Natalie and Amber get a clue with the hidden message “water well.” They don’t decipher it but Natalie checks the water well anyway and finds an advantage that allows a player to leave Tribal Council before votes are cast. He or she may not vote but also cannot be voted for. Natalie has to send it to someone still in the game and she chooses Jeremy, who gladly pays the price of one token, especially since he had two at that point.

Tony, seeking an outlet for his energy, puts together a very wobbly 20-foot-high ladder. While the other players keep telling him it’s too dangerous, he climbs the ladder to get some high-hanging fruit. Afterward Sarah takes a walk with Tony. She doesn’t want them to be seen together much but Tony proposes they revive the Cops-R-Us alliance from the Cagayan season.

When the players get to the challenge site, Rob sees Amber’s gone. His expression is grim but when Jeff Probst inquires about it, Rob says “It’s tough. It’s a game. I get it.”

As an aside, I’m struck by the fact Wendell is the tallest person on either tribe. I watched him for a whole season and never realized he was that tall!

The challenge comes down to the puzzle, and Sandra and Sophie complete it much faster than Rob and Denise, and Probst needs to exclaim at least five times about what a bad job Rob and Denise are doing.

This means Blue has to go to Tribal Council. Parvati tells us the newer players outnumber the old-timers on her tribe so they have to make sure one of the newer players goes home. Rob, despite his puzzle failure, is not worried about going home, and he tells us he has his eye on Ben: “He wants to seem harmless but Ben is dangerous. And I don’t trust him!” I’m hoping Ben doesn’t go.

Now we see a bit more of Danni (who is 44 but looks 57 thanks to awful plastic surgery). She is talking with Ethan, whom everyone seems to trust, and also Ben, and mentions the “old school alliance” to Ben, to Ethan’s shock. Shortly thereafter Ben proposes ousting Danni to Jeremy, Adam, and Ethan.

Danni mentioned earlier that Parvati, who she thought she was hitting it off with, is now distant. For whatever reason her next move is to go to Rob and propose they team up to oust Parvati! Rob says he’s in, but we viewers know Rob is a great liar. He soon tells Ethan and Adam that he’d be fine with voting Danni out. And when Parvati hears about Danni’s maneuver she says “is she just clueless?”

But maybe the idea of voting Parvati out isn’t crazy, as we soon see Jeremy, Michele, and Adam seriously consider it. They think they have the numbers to make it happen.

At Tribal Council, idols are being discussed, and Rob proposes everyone dump their bags to prove they have no idol … and they go along with it! (I seem to recall that on a prior season Rob conned everyone into throwing an idol into the ocean.) Denise clasps her idol through sleight of hand, though it’s so chaotic and dark there, there could be five idols and nobody would see them.

The votes are cast, no idol is played, and Danni is unanimously voted out. Boy, was she bad! She wills her fire token to Denise.

Fire token count: Rob 2, Denise 2, Sandra 0, everyone else 1.

idol and advantage count: Sandra has an idol. Denise, Adam, Kim, and Sophie each have half an idol. Jeremy has a leave-tribal-council-early advantage.

Favorites: Sarah, Parvati, Jeremy, Tyson

Not sure: Sandra, Rob, Nick, Yul, Denise, Adam, Tony, Kim, Wendell, Ben, Ethan

No chance: Michele, Sophie

Edge of Extinction: Natalie, Amber, Danni

“I was starstruck and just told him everything.” Survivor: Winners at War February 12 2020 Season Premiere recap

We begin with a flashback to Jeff Probst hosting the show 20 years ago. Then we see two boats making their way across the water, one with ten male former winners, one with ten female former winners.

Alas, when Probst announces his traditional “One … survivor!” and the camera pulls back, he is just standing on a mere sandbar.

One of the women on the boat is Sandra, who of course we just saw as an advisor last season. She tells us that when she and Rob were on Island of the Idols he didn’t tell her he was about to play the game again, and she now feels betrayed.

Probst greets everyone, remarks how much time has passed, and opens some champagne and gives everyone a glass. He announces some twists:

– The  game now has its own currency called fire tokens. Each player will start with one, and if voted out, he or she must will the token to someone still in the game.

– The Edge of Extinction is back.

– The prize for the winner is now two million dollars, and Probst hastens to add that this is the largest cash prize in reality TV history.

Without too much further ado it’s already time for the first immunity challenge! The players have already found out which teams they are assigned to. The blue team loses and will have to vote someone out, however Probst tells them they will have a day and a half to deliberate.

Before we go any further let me get my first impressions of some of the returnees out of the way:

Sophie won her season? I still can’t believe it.

Michele won her season? I still can’t believe it.

Danni has had some plastic surgery and does not look like the girl next door anymore.

Many of the players’ outfits are throwbacks to their first go-round, for example Nick is wearing a sportcoat once again.

I remembered that Yul was a great player but I had forgotten how likeable he is.

Rob has gotten pretty grey!

I must confess I only really remembered Amber for her stunning looks and for being Rob’s girlfriend, but this episode reminded me how much screen presence she has in her own right. There’s a reason why she was chosen for the Australia season from among the 50,000-odd applicants!

Back to the recap.

The players get to camp and each gets a fire token along with a price list. For example, four tokens can buy a challenge advantage. Purchases are to be made at the challenge site.

At the Blue camp, Rob knows he will be one of the first people the others want to get out. After all, “I was just on season 39 where they built an idol of me.” A lot of the players ask about each others’ kids, and many have families now. Parvati tells us she is now married and a mother so she can’t play the flirt role that she used to excel at.

Adam and Denise go looking for the water well using a map. Denise’s physique is amazingly ripped, but then we see some flashbacks to her Philippines season and are reminded that she was very fit back then as well. Adam jokes about being her “Malcolm,” which of course would be great since Denise and Malcolm made it to first and fourth place in the Philippines. The other players notice that those two are gone, and predictably that starts conversation that one of them should be voted out.

On the red tribe, Tony is the first to mention an idol to us viewers, but he knows he has to resist the temptation to look for one — he can’t be as frenetic from minute one as he was in Game Changers.

On the same tribe, Yul worries because he doesn’t have the connections the others do. He recently saw Kim, Jeremy, Tyson, and Rob all playing poker together on TV (we are shown a brief clip from that show) and joking onscreen that they would all have an alliance if they played the game again. Yul sees himself, Sophie, Nick, and Wendell as the free agents on the tribe.

Back on Blue, Rob reaches out to Parvati about working together. After all, “You and I know the game better than anybody else,”

The Blue tribe has an outsiders’ group as well: Ben, Adam, Danni and Ethan. The first two won too recently to be on the Survivor A-List, while the latter two haven’t played since 2005 and 2004 respectively. Unsurprisingly, they talk about potentially voting Rob out.

Ben later takes a walk with Rob and vaguely mentions that someone has said his name. Within a minute Rob gets him to reveal who it was. A stunned Ben tells us later, “I was starstruck and  just told him everything.”

Rob sees two of the aforementioned outsiders, Danni and Ethan, as potential allies for him, along with Parvati, as an “old-school” alliance. Also on the blue tribe, Natalie reminds us that she and Jeremy were strong allies on the San Juan Del Sur season.

Everyone still seems to be talking about ousting Adam or Denise, but Ben says his gut tells him to keep Adam safe, so he talks to Adam, who thinks the focus should be on Natalie and Jeremy. It soon becomes apparent others feel the same way.

Rob sits with Parvati and says “You wanna know how stupid this feels? You and I are probably the two biggest targets and I don’t feel too worried!”

At Tribal Council, we see two votes for Denise, one for Adam, and the rest are for Natalie. Presumably Jeremy was one of the non-Natalie voters but we aren’t shown who the other one is.

I absolutely love this Rob-Parvati alliance. It’s not something I thought would ever happen, but if you look at my all-time rankings you will see I consider Rob the best male player and Parvati the best female player of all time. Maybe this alliance won’t last but it could be hugely entertaining if it does.

Natalie walks the path toward Edge of Extinction and sees a table full of boxes bearing each player’s name. Remember, she has to bequeath her fire token to someone. She picks Jeremy. When she gets to the Edge of Extinction a sign tells her that she can earn fire tokens while there to help get her back in the game. The next day she finds a price list of things to buy with tokens, and after a long search she finds an idol that she can give to someone on the team that loses the next challenge.

On the Red tribe, Yul tells Wendell and Nick that they have an advantage — since they have no prior connection nobody is particularly worried about them. They swear allegiance to each other which I think is great (I cheered hard for Yul and Nick in their respective seasons, and like Wendell as well). Yul thinks the three of them could form a coalition with Sarah and Sandra who know each other from Game Changers.

On the Blue tribe, Ben now hopes he and Adam can team up with Michele and Jeremy. By the way, I find Ben much more fun to watch now than he was on Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers. Perhaps he himself hasn’t changed, but in that prior season the producers obviously wanted him to win so badly that they did everything but cue an orchestra every time he was shown. Here he’s just one star among many.

The most interesting part of the immunity challenge is a rotating drum suspended just above the water level in about 5-foot-high water. It’s too big to jump over and almost impossible to climb over without help Even these athletic players have a hard time getting over it, though Boston Rob is able to throw some of the lighter women most of the way over! Rob might have a chubby stomach now, but he is still a force in challenges. Blue makes an incredible comeback to win, sealing it with some deadly accurate ring tosses by Jeremy. The victorious team leaves and there’s a great shot of Rob looking over to Red with a grimace, as he knows Amber will be in trouble and he can’t help her.

So Red has to go to tribal council soon, and seemingly every player’s name gets mentioned as a potential boot. Amber has a great comment on Sandra: “When names are thrown out, she’s the person who’s gonna go to that person and say ‘your name’s been thrown out.’ That’s her game.”

We soon find out that Sandra can play with confidence because she’s the one that got the idol from Natalie! That seems like a strange choice on Natalie’s part.

Tony has been laying low until now, but then he hears that Tyson suggested voting him out and thus immediately begins a campaign against Tyson. Tyson seems to have an alliance with Kim and Amber, but once he hears the three of them as being the main targets (for being in, or married to someone in, the aforementioned poker TV show), he immediately decides to dump that alliance and make other plans.

Kim is really worried about being the target, because every time she walks over to a group they stop talking. This is Kim, mind you, who last time we saw her could easily make women or men alike do her bidding and bend them to her will! Well, I’m on record as saying the competition in her prior season was not so great, and  she will really need to step up her game here. Though the very first challenge reminded me that she was a strong challenge competitor when she first played.

When we get to the votes there is one for Nick, three for Jim and the rest for Amber. A smart move by the other players I think. As you’d expect, she bequeaths her token to Rob.

Early favorite: Sarah

Fire token count: Jeremy 2, Rob 2, Sandra 0, everyone else 1.

idol count: Sandra has one.