Survivor retro rewatch: Borneo episode 11, “Long Hard Days”

Food! Rewards! Music! Survivor: Borneo had it all in episode 11. Let’s break “Long Hard Days” down (and talk a little bit about ratings, too).

Survivor: Borneo kept on barreling towards the endgame in episode 11, with the focus still on alliances, but also social/strategic decisions. And, of course, a new entry in the Survivor lexicon was born.

11 episodes in, and Survivor finally ditched its little introductory video. By now, however, over 20 million people — 28 million for this episode, according to Variety — were watching every single week. No wonder CBS decided that Jeff Probst’s narration didn’t need to show up anymore. Instead, we get to go straight into the brief recap of episode 10 and those famous credits.

Want to sing along?

Okay, let’s get to “Long Hard Days,” episode 11. Things got somber around Rattana again. After 30 days, people had just gotten tired of it all, and injuries were piling up. Survivor had some long, up-close shots of the scabs, sores, and bugs on Colleen’s legs, but she still had some insight on the alliance situation. Speaking of insights, Sue basically made the case against Kelly’s social game, noting how Kelly had tried to make friends with people on Pagong.

That meant it was time to cement as many alliances as possible for everyone not named Colleen. As much as she had a great read on people (seriously — a lot of her Rattana confessionals include commentary on the other players), she didn’t want to play Survivor as fans now know it. If she ever decides to come back, I’d love to see if she’d hold on to her initial perceptions of the game or put her strategic sense to work. (It’s probably very unlikely that she’d come back. Would you want to after your legs looks like hers did the first time around?)

Survivor brought out two well-known ideas for the reward challenge: the yacht reward and the quiz cubes. The challenge was perhaps a little needlessly complex in that players had to effectively keep up with each other on a series of different color tiles. Probst also asked survival questions, not local history questions. It came down to a tiebreaker between Richard and Sean, and Sean won. He did have to spend a night at camp first, though he did get to give Richard breakfast despite promising Kelly a meal.

So yeah, the broken reward promise thing isn’t new, either. Probst also escorted Sean up to the bridge to meet with his dad that night. (Which, have you noticed how much Probst has participated in rewards this season? He cooked a barbecue earlier.)

More from Surviving Tribal

Sean’s dad also visited the camp, trying to update everyone on what was happening back in the States, although Sue said he didn’t know much. She also wasn’t shy about bringing the Kelly thing up to him. However, Sean’s dad had things for everyone from home — cards, food, and the like.

But the happiness didn’t last long, because Probst invited them out to an immunity challenge (for the talisman, not the necklace). This was the first balance on a slowly-changing platform challenge. However, the first plank removal (by Probst) happened an hour in. There were no individual platforms, either: the players had to stand side-by-side and could not touch each other.

Rich serenaded everyone … until he summarily fell off. He and Rudy had a strategy session on the beach while they watched, naming Kelly as a target. Once Sue and Sean fell off, she joined in on the session, throwing Sean’s name out before he arrived. Eventually, Kelly won after nearly three hours up there. Probst gave her insoles to walk to Tribal.

To make up for basically cutting straight to Tribal, there were confessionals from Sue, Sean, and Colleen talking about how everyone’s perception of Kelly in particular had changed. Kelly’s confessional, meanwhile, said she’d stopped caring about what others thought.

Sean had to defend his breakfast with Richard decision. Colleen said that things were going to get “pretty nasty.” The Tribals still aren’t quite as in-depth as they can get on future seasons, but Probst had already shown a somewhat pressing style of questioning.

With a 4-2 vote, Colleen moved to the jury, with Sean taking the other two. And so it was that Tagi, er, Pagonged Pagong by systematically voting all of them off after the merge, one right after another. In her elimination video, she said she could have won if she’d been on Tagi from the beginning.

Next: Survivor; Borneo episode 1 rewatch

Episode 12 of Survivor: Borneo has all of the Tagis turning on each other, as you might expect.