Randy says of his Fang tribemates, “I really shouldn’t blame them for being complete idiots, but they are. They don’t know it, but they are.” Then he and GC bicker over rice and leadership, and Randy tells the camera that he thinks of GC as a cancer to be excised.
Dan, the lawyer who’s looking for himself, observes in his astute way, “I don’t think we’ve pulled together as a team.”
On the Kota tribe, Sugar and Ace have pulled together as a mini-team, with Sugar trusting Ace to take care of her as much as he can. So her early strategy appears to be “ride the coattails of a strong man.”
The reward challenge involves two people prying a member of the other tribe off a post and dragging him or her across the finish line. After Ace’s pole-clinging wins the first round for Kota, he suggests that Paloma be the woman hugging the post in Round 2. Being tiny and light, she’s pulled off the stake easily. Kota loses Rounds 2 and 3, and the challenge.
Fang wins blankets, pillows and a hammock, and they choose to exile Sugar, who says she knew they’d pick her because they think she’s dumb.
Sugar’s attempt to find the immunity idol on Exile doesn’t start well, as she gets lost in the jungle. After telling the camera that she went on the show to become a stronger person and deal with her father’s recent death, she perseveres and finds clue after clue, and eventually discovers the immunity idol. “I’m a lot tougher than I thought I was,” she says. “I can’t believe I found it, and the lawyer didn’t — how funny is that?” Yeah, but, well, the lawyer was Dan.
The immunity challenge involves players launching themselves, one by one, down a slide into the water and collecting tiles, and then one person solving a math puzzle with the tiles.
Kota is the first to collect all its tiles, and then it’s a race between Ken and Bob to arrange the numbered tiles in the right order and use the combination to open a chest. They both fail on their first attempt, and Ken figures the puzzle out first, winning the challenge for Fang.
Sugar tells her tribemates about her experience on Exile, laughing that she must’ve misread the map she was given to guide her to the idol. I start to think she could really be a strong player. She then tells Ace that she found the idol, and he says, “This is ours. That just sets our game up so well until right to the end.” Sugar doesn’t object to Ace’s co-ownership of the idol, and I’m back to thinking that she might be a little too dependent on a man who annoys the rest of his tribe.
The members of Kota try to decide who to vote out, and there are the inevitable little discussions — Ace thinks Paloma’s the obvious choice; Bob thinks Ace wants to take Sugar to the end; Paloma says that Ace put her on the pole during the reward challenge to point out how weak she is; Corinne can’t stand Ace, thinks he’d be a danger to flip if he makes it to the merge, and wonders if his accent is real.
Corinne sums it up with “I dislike so many people on this damn tribe that it’s a toss-up.”
Yup. That’s about how I feel. I don’t actually dislike anyone on the tribe, but I also don’t care who’s voted out.
Paloma is the one who’s booted, although Ace may have gotten a little bit of a scare when he gets two votes — one from Paloma, and one from Kelly, who, I believe, only says two things during the episode: 1) I don’t like Ace, and 2) I don’t like Ace.
