Survivor: David vs. Goliath episode 9: Immunity/Reward Challenges

The challenges from yesterday’s episode of Survivor: David vs. Goliath weren’t the focal point of the drama, but they still delivered entertaining moments.

Last night’s episode gave us two similar challenges. They both started with a physical obstacle course and ended with a strategic or mental challenge. Also, each one borrowed ideas from previous seasons of Survivor but the Immunity Challenge was able to shake things up during the final phase.

We’ll start with the Reward Challenge that you can rewatch below. The 11 remaining castaways are split into two teams. The winning team will be taken to a burger bar, where the castaways will enjoy juicy burgers cooked to their liking, served with beer and soft drinks.

The two teams were drawn by rocks. The purple team consisted of Christian, Angelina, Nick, Alison, and Gabby, while the stacked orange team was made up of Dan, Alec, Davie, Kara, and Mike. Once again, Carl gets the short end of the stick by drawing the wrong rock which meant that he has to sit out of the challenge!

The obstacle course wasn’t anything special. It started with a bunch of wooden posts to go over and under and then each team had to lift one of their members to untie a bag which contained numbers for a lock combination. This is where Alec gained some ground for his team, giving them the lead going into the lock stage.

Then came the most enjoyable part of the challenge! While Mike is trying to figure out the lock combination, Alison, who is on the other team is proactively watching Mike to find out the combos that aren’t working. When Mike finally picked the correct set of numbers, Alison peeked over and was shouting to Christian the right combination. Dan, Alec, and Davie picked up on Alison’s strategy and began screaming random numbers to try to confuse Christian!

This gave the orange team a considerable lead going into the final part which consisted of piecing together a block puzzle in the shape of a snake. I  think we may have seen this once or twice before in seasons past, but it still makes for a unique and interesting puzzle. Alec and Kara worked well together, solving the puzzle before Alison and Christian could get close to finishing.

Reward Challenge Rankings:

Creativity: 2/5

Difficulty: 1.5/5

Entertainment Value: 2.5/5

Next, we have the tense Immunity Challenge. Each castaway will high step an obstacle to retrieve a ball. This ball has to then be balanced on a disk while making their way up and down a balance beam. Once this is completed with all three balls, they will move onto the final phase.

Alec and Dan handled this portion of the challenge really well, getting across the beam with ease. Alec even leaped the high step obstacle every time, which definitely saved some time!

The final part of the Immunity Challenge required each castaway to maneuver their balls into three holes along a fairly narrow track. Dan and Alec landed their first ball before any other player began this phase. However, Dan had a difficult time landing his second ball.

That opened up the door for other castaways, as Carl and Angelina maneuvered their first ball in the hole as well, but that glimmer of hope didn’t last long. Alec grew progressively comfortable with this table maze and landed his last two balls before anyone could even try to mount a comeback! This proved to be a huge moment for the season, as Alec was able to keep Dan from winning immunity and being safe from the crazy vote.

Survivor: David vs. Goliath continued the trend of unique challenge ideas! Although it is a simple challenge made up of elements we’ve seen before, production continues to find ways to tweak the ideas to make them even better. For example, there have been many table mazes, but this one adds the aspect of maneuvering a ball through a narrow track and landing them in different holes throughout the path.

Top performers and potential threats: 

Alec’s brilliance in challenges is sure to catch the attention of the rest of the players left. His relationships with some of the David members will help him a bit, but there’s no way a challenge threat that dangerous won’t be on the chopping block soon.

It really does seem like Alec is a tier above everyone else in challenge performance. Alison, Christian, Kara, and Nick have demonstrated the ability to win Individual Immunities, but none of their performances at this point label them a serious challenge threat. However, if they can get Alec out, I wouldn’t be surprised to see on of those four go on winning streak.

Immunity Challenge Rankings:

Creativity: 4/5

Difficulty: 3.5/5

Entertainment Value: 3/5