Getting Survivor Heroes vs. Villains’ worst challenge out of the way

Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains went hard in its reward challenge again in episode 5, and it also didn’t make for an appealing watch.

By now, I think I’ve made my opinions on most of the completely physical direct competitions clear. A lot of them make it really easy for people to get hurt or to hurt each other. Basically, whenever Jeff Probst says “battle” or the challenge involves trying to take something from someone else … yeah, there’s a lot of painful potential, even when it’s just for a reward as it is in the case of episode 5 of Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains.

The reward challenge involved the Heroes refusing to eat the chocolate Probst offered them before putting six people on the lower level to fight over balls to toss to the upper level for three on each side to shoot. In just the first point shown, James went down with a knee injury, which knocked him out of the challenge. We talked a little about it in analyzing Micronesia.

The second point was not much better. And then, since the tribes were trying for just two points … the third point had the chance to get nasty, but Jerri made the score and won for the Villains after taking a body blow from Rupert in the second point. Even as Probst narrated, there were a lot of sounds of thudding, and there were a lot of takedowns.

Russell’s idol hunting caused everyone save Parvati to start thinking about his elimination at the reward. Parvati, meanwhile, saw an opportunity to bring Coach in with the idol, and Coach had a little knighting ceremony with Russell.

The immunity challenge offered an opportunity for James to not have to try and move on his knee. He had a chance to sit and guide his blindfolded teammates to gather up everything for the puzzle, which turned out to be in the shape of a cube.

Of course, there were things for the blindfolded people to run into. Even though the Heroes started the puzzle first, the Villains brought it back and gave the Heroes another loss.

Candice arrived to ask J.T. and Rupert about the wisdom of keeping James over Tom. James offered his reassurances that he was fine, but J.T. seemed more in favor of eliminating James, at least to Tom’s face.

Unfortunately, Tom went home at Tribal Council with five votes to James’ two. When talking about James’ Survivor career, I said that this move basically established the Villains as the ones to beat for the entire season. To bring it to the flip side of that point, that means that the Heroes really had trouble with their strategic acumen.

Then again, they already voted Cirie out, so that makes sense.

Quick notes:

• “Knights of the Round Table” is thanks to Coach and Russell’s scene at the reward.
• Coach also led everyone in “Dragonslayer Chi.”

Next: Who is the best winner of Survivor?

For our next look, it’s back to the ongoing saga of Russell vs. Boston Rob.