“Back home, my average meal is 18 eggs.” Survivor Season 42 Episode 6 recap

The first significant thing in this two-hour episode is Jeff Probst telling us viewers that the show is going to repeat the “turn back time” twist from last season, with some minor tweaks. Since this was filmed before that one aired, the players do not know anything about the twist.

So the players are told to drop their buffs but do not get new ones. They draw rocks, and Lindsey and Rocksroy draw the gray ones. That means they will not compete in the challenge, which is contested by two randomly-drawn groups of five. Whichever one wins will decide the fate of those two.

The first part of the challenge involves unearthing huge (artificial) boulders and rolling them along a course.The group of Lydia, Hai, Marianne, Tori and Jonathan gets out to a huge lead that they never lose. So now that group has to make two decisions: are they taking Lindsey or Rocksroy into their tribe, and secondly (this part is new this season), will they send Rocksroy to Exile Island or choose one of their own group to go, since Probst does tell them that gaining a power is involved? They choose Lindsey to join them and send Rocksroy to Exile Island for two days. Rocksroy is sanguine: “It’s Survivor, this is what you want.”

The winning tribe gets an Applebee’s lunch, and by the way they shrieked for joy when they heard that was the prize. Jonathan chows down and tells us what his average meal is at home: “18 eggs, 9 pieces of cheese, and grits.” Those bodybuilders!

The losing group gets no feast other than a bit of rice. Drea and Mike talk for the first time, since each knows the other has one of the three-way idols. Drea tells him to watch out for Tori, and Mike tells Drea to watch out for Chanelle.

Rocksroy makes the most of his time at Exile, being the only solo castaway ever (that I can recall) to build his own shelter! I love Rocksroy.

Lindsey reminds us viewers that she, Hai and Drea all got Advantage amulets on Day One. They talk and resolve to work together, though Hai immediately worries the others will cheat.

Mike and Jonathan bond. Hai reveals to Omar that Chanelle lost her vote after the island excursion she and Omar made a couple episodes ago, that is to say she risked her vote after telling Omar she wouldn’t. So Omar now knows he doesn’t have a vote at his next Tribal Council.

Hai wastes no time building a coalition of, I think, eight people, and they seem to agree the next vote should target either Tori or Chanelle. Drea tells Jonathan, Omar, and Hai about her extra vote.

Jeff Probst goes to Exile Island to tell Rocksroy about his power. If Rocksroy smashes the hourglass, the results of the last immunity challenge will be reversed and Rocksroy will join the losing group in being immune at the next vote.

The players assemble for the immunity challenge and Rocksroy’s power is revealed, and he reveals that he did smash the hourglass. So the five people who thought they would be watching the challenge are the ones who will now have to compete. It’s the “stack blocks on a wobbly table” challenge that has been used as the final immunity challenge a couple of times. Tori wins, which saves her bacon because she was almost certain to be the one voted out, Chanelle now being immune.

So now, while all players (except Omar) will vote, the only people who can be voted out this time are Marianne, Lindsey, Lydia, Hai and Jonathan. Hmm, Hai and Jonathan have both been featured heavily in this episode…

Back at camp Lindsey is for voting Marianne, Romeo wants it to be Jonathan. Lydia tells Omar she is considering all options, and once Omar hears that this includes possibly going against the alliance of eight by ousting Jonathan who is in it, he decides to try and get everyone to vote Lydia out! In fact he even pitches it to Hai, who drew rocks earlier in the season to keep Lydia around!

So Hai starts campaigning for this not to happen.

As we go to commercial, I’m guessing this is it for Jonathan, that he will be ousted and all the rest is a smokescreen.

Nothing of interest happens at Tribal Council, so let’s get to the vote: it’s Lydia!

The winner in all of this is Omar who orchestrated Lydia’s ouster. The loser is Hai who loses his number-one ally and shows he might not have been as much in control as he thought. And another winner is the viewers, since Lydia was the most boring character left in the game by far.

It is rare for four different people to get votes at a Tribal Council, but that is what happened here, and with just five people eligible! The Lydia votes were: Jonathan, Lindsey, Drea, Marianne … and Hai. I’m guessing he realized at the end he didn’t have the numbers to do anything else and just went along. The Marianne votes were Romeo and Lydia, also odd since we saw them pushing for Jonathan to go. The Jonathan votes were Chanelle and Tori, and then Lindsey was voted for by Rocksroy, very oddly. I’m not ruling out that Rocksroy meant to vote for Lydia and just got confused.

Advantage count: Marianne has an extra vote and a three-way idol. Drea has an extra vote, an Advantage amulet, and a three-way idol. Lindsey and Hai each have an Advantage Amulet. Mike has a three-way idol.

Contenders: Hai, Drea, Romeo, Omar, Tori, Mike, Jonathan, Lindsey

No chance: Rocksroy, Marianne, Chanelle