Survivor Micronesia and the bad reward challenge

Survivor: Micronesia gets literally and metaphorically painful in its fifth episode, which makes for the worst challenge of the season.

Survivor: Micronesia has a lot of fun moments. The reward challenge in episode 5, “He’s a Ball of Goo!” is not one of them. Let’s get right to it.

Ozzy chose to tell Parvati, James, and Amanda about his success with the hidden immunity idol … right before the four of them were split up thanks to Jeff Probst telling them to “drop your buffs.”

The standard truisms about switches like this in Survivor hold true. It scrambles up alliances (note that Parvati/James and Ozzy/Amanda ended up on opposite tribes by this, although the latter couple at least had Cirie to form a three-person bloc). But moreover, it led to the fans, who had spent the first four episodes scheming so ridiculously hard, getting a look at experienced Survivor players who knew how it was all supposed to go down. (Erik, in a confessional later, spoke about how easy it would be to “cloud [his] judgment” if he was around them for too long. One has to wonder if production specifically inserted that, knowing what was to come.)

But before that could happen, they had to all participate in a challenge: the paired-up chase through an obstacle course. The chase format itself has stuck around. This particular variation has not, because of one major reason that is exemplified in several examples, as this went in rounds:

• Ami went over a bar and hurt her knee.
• Jonathan had a pretty big gash in his leg.
• Parvati busted her lip.
• And Chet got whipped around by Joel as they tried to catch Eliza and Parvati for the final point.

Did you pick up on the theme? It’s people getting hurt. It’s not fun to watch, at all, and it’s easily the worst challenge segment in Micronesia because of it. Again, speaking as someone who particularly enjoys the jury portion of this season, this one was bad.

Airai took the rewards of wine, meats, vegetables, and more ingredients for cooking, but also some judgment from the returnees seeing the camp for the first time. Then, the Survivor medical team came in to look at Jonathan’s knee. Production did not shy away from showing the stitches going in. He still held on through the episode, though, so we’ll have to hold that thought for a little longer.

For immunity, the huge puzzle at the end required someone up high to look down, although the tile-breaking to get the pieces proved tough for Airai to the point that Probst told them to stop whining, albeit in a slightly more explicit way. Even so, Airai took immunity with the help of Jonathan offering some wise advice.

Although people started plotting against Chet, Cirie put bugs in Amanda’s and Ozzy’s ears about taking Joel out. Neither particularly helped their case at Tribal, but Joel helped his case a bit less than Chet did, going home with six votes to two for Chet.

Quick notes:

• To cement Amanda and Ozzy’s connection, Amanda brought in a shark. Sharks don’t show up too often, so it’s a big deal.
• Joel named the episode in dubbing Chet a “ball of goo.”
• In the world of Probst fashion, he wore camo-inspired shorts for the reward.

Next: Survivor's best locations

For our next look into Survivor Micronesia, we will return to the Ballad of Igor, the Worst Fake Immunity Idol.