Last night’s episode of Survivor was odd.
On the one hand, Lairo finally got a night off from tribal council as the Vokai Tribe lost immunity for only the second time this season. Elaine went from being annoying to apparently being a potentially strong player and Jason was finally voted out of the game. People have been targeting sneaky Jason since day one so it’s not a huge surprise to see him go, though he certainly seemed shocked.
At the same time, we also spent what seemed like an eternity discussing whether or not “du-rag” is a racist term. Over on the Lairo Tribe, Jack referred to Jamal’s buff as being a “du-rag.” Jamal was upset because he considered “du-rag” to be a stereotypical term. “That even a sweet kid like Jack would say ‘du-rag’ shows how racist America is,” Jamal said.
There was a lot of debate online about whether or not Jamal had a point. I’m not going to get into it, beyond saying that Jamal certainly did seem to be upset. Jack later apologized to Jamal and they had a conversation about why Jamal found the term to be offensive and it actually turned into quite a bonding moment between the two. Jack and Jamal now seem to be very strong allies.
As always, the main attraction of tonight’s episode was tribal council. The Vokai Tribe went into tribal evenly split, 4-4. There were 4 former Lairo player and 4 former Vokai players. Aaron, however, had told Tommy and Jason that he was open to betraying his former tribemates and joining them in voting out Elaine.
At tribal, Elaine revealed that — as a result of her earlier visit to the Island of the Idols — she had an advantage! She could block one person’s vote and she used her power on Jason. This led to Jason whining about how unfair it was. Tommy started running back and forth to the original members of the Vokai Tribe and whispering to them that they needed to all vote for Elaine. Aaron kinda nodded and then indicated to Jason that everything was going to be okay.
Well, it turns out that Aaron is a liar. Aaron went ahead and joined the former members of Lairo in voting for Jason. With Jason being unable to vote, the end result was a 4-3 vote to send Jason off the island. So, the 4-4 split has been broken and the former members of the Lairo Tribe are now in charge on the Vokai Tribe.
It was a good tribal though I hate that the end result was due to a twist and an advantage. I was really hoping to see some serious strategizing. Instead, it was just, “Oh, we’ll just take away someone’s vote. We win!”
Oh well. Such is Survivor.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
Lisa Marie