Survivor: David vs. Goliath episode 2 recap: Come again another day

With the David tribe reeling after a twist of fate that took out Pat, Survivor: David vs. Goliath episode 2 saw both tribes recover from the storm.

As the episode runtime gets back to basics, so, too, do the Survivor: David vs. Goliath tribes, as both teams sought the end of an unrelenting downpour, facing the brunt of a cyclone that has derailed the gameplay. Now with 19 players left and both tribes owning a flint to make fire, perhaps now we’ll start to see the game really pick up.

Immediately after losing Pat, the David tribe seemed broken. The rain was like Ivan Drago at that moment, saying “I must break you” even further with unstoppable rain. Both the David and Goliath tribes were victim to Mother Nature’s destruction, disrupting the shelters. Poor Natalia was shaking uncontrollably as both tribes struggled to find some sort of warmth.

With David tribe still broken, Christian and Nick went out to get bamboo. Appearances are deceiving as it comes to alliances, though, as Christian wanted to take the time to save Nick, who was destined to be voted out in the previous episode. They formed Team Mason-Dixon, as Nick continues the strategy of “making a Big Brother alliance with everyone.”

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As both tribes got a gimme tarp and fire-making kit, Natalia, Kara and Angelina started to brew their winning strategy around the witches cauldron. The new-look coven plans to use their connection with one man each to create a six-person majority, with Kara using her showmance with Dan as a strategy. Poor Dan continued to bumble it up, leaving his idol in his jacket with Jeremy discovering it later.

Meanwhile, Davie has taken over the provider role at the David tribe, finding food whenever possible. It also means he has the opportunity to look around for an idol, eventually finding a Hidden Immunity Idol of his own. We continue to see the winner edit begin to pile up, and he’s got no major flaws at this point.

The David tribe knows that they can’t afford to lose challenges, so Lyrsa’s name gets thrown out by Carl angling to throw the target towards her. For her effort, Lyrsa knew that if she blew up on people, she would only drive her chances to escape out of her bad place into the ground.

For that effort, it makes her a way better player than Natalie, as she found herself with alliance partners wanting to help her out despite her best efforts to throw them under the bus. Despite Natalie’s name getting thrown out, both John and Jeremy wanted to work with her in order to further their game as a voting target to shield them.

How did she repay them? John told her not to say anything, but Natalie went scorched earth, raining fire from above and burning everyone’s social game in the progress. As Jeremy spoke to her on an intimate black kinship level, she was not having it, insisting that she has a good rapport with everyone in the game. There are two ways to react to adversity, and only one of the two women handled it properly.

The Immunity Challenge saw the Goliath team take in the bad news that Pat Cusack got medically evacuated from the game. It did not deter either tribe from competing in the challenge, where one player had to climb up a ladder to retrieve a key to the boat, both tribes paddle out to collect puzzle pieces and then place the pieces on a balance beam the team needs to hold up while finishing.

With Natalie sitting out, Alec and Bi took on the ladder challenge. Alec was so far out ahead that they were able to start solving their puzzle as Bi collected the keys. This gave them such a leg up that they were able to lay out all their puzzle pieces in a row and work as a team, as opposed to the David tribe throwing their pieces together, yelling at each other and dropping parts all over.

Even with the Goliath tribe having a huge leg up and taking their time, needing to hold up their puzzle parts across five players took up so much time that it took an hour in the hot Fiji heat to accomplish the challenge at its fastest, earning an ultimate fishing kit that includes the first inclusion of a fishing pole. The Goliaths are so dominant, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see an early tribe swap.

Although Bi tried to rally everyone together and keep everyone’s spirits up, the real underlying talk was that the tribe needed to vote Lyrsa for strength reasons. With Gabby finding herself not far behind her in terms of strength, that saw Elizabeth and Lyrsa try to bring in Gabby to whip a vote for Jessica.

That put Christian in an interesting position, as he saw it as an opportunity for the Mason-Dixon alliance to dictate who should be voted out of the game. Jessica could prove to be a big move for them, but it’s at the first vote. “Logic” of the tribe suggests that Lyrsa’s perceived weakness makes for an easy vote.

What’s interesting about this dynamic is that Christian is selling this as an opportunity for Big Bang Theory and Kentucky to decide the fate of the David tribe. However, Survivor editing is a season-long process, and it’s clear that the women are deciding the votes on either tribe right now. They’re slowly building up hubris, Christian and Nick, especially when Nick was so close to being the first boot.

On Night 6, we got the first look at the brand new Tribal Council setting, with discarded masks littering the path to an arena-like staging area that’s something befitting a Gladiator movie (of a different era and culture, of course). With Jeff laying out the foundation of the David tribe’s family, the guns were quickly drawn, some arguing “challenge performance” over who you can feel trust in.

We saw some lively discussions about the game of Survivor from the David, with Nick and Christian arguing for the “needs of the tribe” due to the fact the game is so early. Everyone else seemed a bit on edge, but the two knew that they were the deciding factors in what would be a divisive vote.

With no Idol Nullifiers discovered and no idols played, there was no changing the first vote. By a 5-4 decision, the first player voted out of the game (in 19th place) was Jessica Peet, as the very first vote of the game was a massive hashtag blindside. Lyrsa, Nick, Elizabeth, Gabby and Christian banded together and proved that the David tribe is as divided as they proved in the episode’s challenge.

The tribes don’t seem headed for a merge in the “Next Time On Survivor” preview, so the David tribe has to pick up the pieces and move on quickly here before risking an epic tribe implosion.