Survivor retro rewatch: Cook Islands episode 10, “People That You Like Want to See You Suffer”

Survivor: Cook Islands’ tenth episode has a twist that doesn’t make much sense — until you start thinking about it — as well as more of the Aitu Four.

Survivor: Cook Islands ends up being about divisions in a lot of way. That’s been apparent since basically the premiere, and it became a topic again in episode 9, thanks to that mutiny.

Although we usually don’t talk about the “Previously on Survivor” segments, episode 10 has a very special note in it. Jeff Probst’s voiceover explicitly mentions the Aitu Four. Talk about production knowing what exactly it had on its hands with the mutiny plotline. Even as early as the next episode, this mention plants another seed in viewers’ minds that the four people on Aitu are a cohesive unit. That said, let’s get into the Further Adventures of the Aitu Four … er, Cook Islands episode 10.

After all, there is another tribe still. Raro opened with a Jonathan scene, where he said “I regret jumping.” The editors then immediately contrasted that with Candice’s situation. She had a tight relationship with Adam before. But everyone else also noticed, including Adam’s alliance mate Jenny.

To pull it out to a general Survivor standpoint, the showmance requires a certain level of strategic acuity to play correctly, because other people do pay attention. Adam even said he and Candice needed not to be obvious … and of course, production showed them being very obvious about it.

Back on Aitu, Survivor gave Ozzy the chance to use the word “underdog” as he talked about the new situation, and to just further drive the point home, they all got to study a flag code together.

Probst, in his cowboy hat, told Aitu about the jury development before the reward challenge began. This was a variant on the compass, with a digging portion with four chests added. The flag code made up the “puzzle” at the end.

More from Surviving Tribal

• Survivor winners: Ranking all 42 Sole Survivors by season
• Survivor Season 42: Way too early power rankings
• Survivor Season 42 is coming in 2022 (find out what we know so far)
• Survivor Season 41 episode 12 power rankings
• Survivor Season 41 episode 11 power rankings

With Nate, Rebecca, and Parvati sitting out on Raro, Survivor again had an easy contrast to make on the case of teamwork. Aitu shot out to a lead. Raro, meanwhile, looked disappointed — and didn’t even dig up its fourth chest before Aitu won reward.

Candice went to Exile Island again (and she even predicted it at reward). She got to name the episode and have some sad music … immediately followed by the shot of Aitu on the plane to a new island for some food and some socialization with local islanders. They even got to dance a little in the rain!

The immunity challenge required yet more memorization, this time of island locations. Before then, Survivor also had a moment to set up Rebecca on Raro as well, using a Jenny confessional to talk about challenge struggles.

First, each person had to swim out and collect one set of tiles. Then, the tribes had to match 10 islands to their names. It was a little closer than the reward challenge, in that Raro nearly caught up in the swimming portion. Put the emphasis on nearly, because Raro hadn’t even untied the island name tiles before Aitu solved the puzzle and won immunity. However, Raro got to take a sealed bottle to Tribal Council.

Since the players on Raro couldn’t actually open the bottle, they had to guess what exactly would happen. They knew it would come after the vote. The word merge floated around, but when people split up, strategizing began: Rebecca, then Jenny. One would note that those two have had some negative screentime of late. Even though production tried to take it in Jonathan’s direction with a scene, he’d had a mostly positive depiction.

Probst twisted the knife a bit when it came to talking about losses at Tribal Council, in front of jury member Brad. The bottle was still sealed, but first, the vote had to happen. Rebecca became the second member of the jury with six votes, while Jonathan took one vote.

However, then the bottle came into play. Raro guessed it was a merge. Instead, the tribe immediately had to vote another member out. Probst did not give the players much time to think about it. At a 4-2 count, Jenny then immediately left the game. As you might guess, Jonathan had the other two votes.

This twist seems a bit needless on its face, but game it out for a moment. Had Aitu lost, as Nate pointed out, that would have brought that tribe down to two people. From a storyline standpoint, that would further the underdog narrative with presumably Yul and Becky as the two making it to any merge situation. Meanwhile, with Raro’s loss, it puts the numbers at a potential merge at 5-4 Raro, making it that much easier for Aitu to put up a fight. Either way, production got itself a story centering around Aitu for a little while longer.

Next: Retro rewatch: Gabon episode 4

The hints for episode 11 are slim indeed, but we’ll talk more about the art of the showmance … oh, and the merge, too.