Survivor: Gabon, Week 11: Let Sugar Do The Thinking

Matty’s upset with Kenny for voting against him, and he doesn’t believe Kenny’s claim that he thought Corinne had a hidden immunity idol. Bob feels horrible for the position his fake idol put Kenny in, and he offers to give Kenny immunity if he wins the next immunity challenge. Kenny tells the camera that he continues to think of himself as a mastermind. I do not join him in that opinion.

The reward challenge involves racing through a swamp over obstacles, retrieving balls and shooting them into a net. Matty, Kenny and Bob do well in the challenge, while the women fail to toss in a single ball. After Bob shoots his final ball into his net to win the challenge, Crystal runs up to her net to dunk it in and prove that she can indeed make a basket from an inch away — and she misses that, too.

Bob picks Crystal and Kenny to join him on his reward trip to a gorilla sanctuary. It’s a pretty good reward for Bob — he gets food, a shower, clean clothes, some quality strategic time with Kenny and Crystal (who say it’d be good to vote out Matty next), and a slightly renegotiated deal with Kenny (who may want a rain check on the immunity necklace, so he’ll let Bob know if he thinks he needs it from him). And a connection between Bob and the gorillas rocks his soul.

Susie (oh, yeah — she’s still in this game) is chosen by Bob to go to Exile, where she kicks back and enjoys getting away from the game.

Back at camp, Matty uses his time to chat with Sugar. He doesn’t gain much ground, and it’s clear that if Bob wins immunity, Matty is next to go. He says he’d like Crystal and Kenny out, but Sugar confirms that they’re her alliance. Matty calls them the Evil Three, but she doesn’t see it that way. Matty tells Sugar she could give him her immunity idol, since no one plans to vote against her, but she says she’s certainly not going to do that.

When they return from the reward, Kenny and Crystal inexplicably decide to pick on Matty. They seem to think that Matty has no right to be miffed at Kenny for voting against him, and they say hey, we’ve had our names written down, too (which is true, but Kenny exaggerates the number of times he’s been voted against — he says seven, but it’s only been three. Does he even know anymore when he’s lying?). Then Crystal accuses Matty of not being true to a Final Four promise, and of being too close to Susie — an argument that seems to come out of nowhere.

Even Sugar sees that it comes out of nowhere, and she doesn’t know why Kenny and Crystal are going off on Matty. This gets Sugar thinking that Kenny and Crystal don’t treat people well — Kenny spins lies, and Crystal’s a big bully. She tells Matty she doesn’t like that they’re kicking him when he’s down, and she cries and says she now believes Matty’s claims that Kenny and Crystal are not good people. She announces to Matty that he doesn’t need to be voted out, and she decides to talk with Bob and Susie about taking out Crystal instead.

At the immunity challenge, the Survivors have to study features of a Gabonese mask, go through an obstacle course to collect puzzle pieces, and then re-create the mask — all while blindfolded. The fun is always doubled when the Survivors are blindfolded — Kenny and Bob each take a header into a pole, Susie strays from the course and wanders in a field, and Crystal’s performance causes Jeff Probst to say, “Crystal — you are off the course. … Crystal — heading the right way. In the wrong lane.” Matty collects all three bags of pieces first, while others start assembling what they can when they have one bag. It’s hard to say it was a bad strategy — he seemed to be close to winning — but Bob wins his fourth straight challenge.

Kenny tells Crystal that although the original plan was to vote Matty out if Bob won immunity, now the plan is to get the immunity necklace from Bob, and then vote Bob out. Kenny tells Bob he’s feeling vulnerable, like he might be blindsided, and he’d like the necklace. Bob asks why — “Why would they blindside you if they’re taking Matty out?” Bob’s guilt over the fake idol has faded, and his crap detector is at full strength. Kenny says, “I don’t know; I just feel really nervous.” You need a better lie, oh self-proclaimed mastermind.

Crystal tells Sugar, Matty and Susie about the plan to get Bob’s necklace, and Kenny tells them to convince Bob that they’re voting for Kenny. Sugar looks pained as she listens to this. Sugar says to the camera, “I don’t want to be aligned with all those guys; I want to be aligned with the good guys.” Oh, but who’s good in this game, Sugar? Bob, who destroyed Randy’s hope in humanity by lying to him about a fake idol? You, who intentionally aggravated Randy at the food auction, and then needlessly humiliated him by taunting him with your gleeful giggles after he played the fake idol? Do you define people as “good” if the only bad they do is to people they think are bad? Randy thinks everyone’s bad, so perhaps he’s the best person of all!

In any case, Sugar talks with Bob in a field, and it feels like a special meeting of the Good People. She tells Bob about the plan to blindside him, and she advises him not to do everything Kenny and Crystal say. She cries and tells Bob she has a big place in her heart for him, and she won’t vote for him, even though he’s a threat. “I just think the good guys should win in the end,” she says. Bob tells the camera he doesn’t know who to believe, but he has no reason to not trust Sugar. And, as we learned last season: When in doubt, hang on to your immunity necklace.

Sugar dries her tears and tells the others that she told Bob that she thinks folks are voting for Kenny. Matty starts to talk about the game with Sugar, and she mouths the words “Let me do the thinking. Just vote for Crystal.” Let Sugar do the thinking. She didn’t look like she had it in her when this game started, but she’s emerging as more of a mastermind than Kenny.

At Tribal Council, Kenny plays up that he feels he’s in danger of being voted out, but Bob says he doesn’t believe that, and so he’s keeping the immunity necklace.

It’s the last night that the hidden immunity idol can be played. Probst says that if Sugar plays the idol that’s around her neck, they’ll see if it’s real — there’ve been fake ones played before — and Bob laughs and says, “I didn’t make that one.” Mohawked Randy in the jury shakes his head.

After the vote, when Probst asks if anyone would like to play an immunity idol, Sugar takes hers off from around her neck, gives the idol to Matty and says, “Matty, take this cursed thing away.” Matty gives the idol to Probst — and it’s real! Matty is saved!

Well, he wouldn’t have gotten voted out anyway, since Crystal got four votes (or, the way Kenny counts votes, she got nine).

Crystal cries during her final words, saying it hurts to be kicked out with only three days left. She doesn’t know why it happened, “but when I yelled at Matty, I don’t think it helped.” Yup — and not voting Matty out when you had the chance didn’t help, either.