Philippines Episode 8: Last Innings

Penner points out to Jeff and Carter how they could've got rid of Pete had they just voted his way. Jeff tries to blame wishy-washiness, but he isn't buying it. Penner confronts

Mike and Penner plot their path back to the top

Denise about her vote, and she admits she voted for him and she's playing her own game. Now he knows exactly where he stands..at the bottom, with Skupin. Mike assures him that there are cracks and he's not out of this yet. Hey, you don't need to tell him that. If Penner's going down, he's going down fighting.


So, Jeff wants to break up the trio of Artis, Pete and Abi once the returnees are gone, and Lisa appears to be on board for that. So I guess his move had some merit, at least. He calls Lisa naive...that's it Kent, keep underestimating her. She wants you to.

The reward challenge is retrieving fish traps and then doing a flag puzzle. Split into two teams, the blue team gets old Tandang minus Lisa and plus Carter, and the rest all form the yellow team. Jeff Kent amasses a lead over Abi (well duh), but Carter manages to pull it back for blue. It lasts until Skupin starts struggling, allowing Denise to finish the water section first. Despite Malcolm having a headstart on Artis on the digging, Artis manages to find his mark first. However the lead switches again when puzzle master Penner works better with Jeff than Pete works with Skupin, to give the blue team a nice reward.

Rice is nice, but a cruise would've been better

Back on the beach, Pete is preparing to turn on some of the stronger Kalabaws before Mike. Abi is apparently irritating him just as much as she's irritating everyone else, but he can't vote her out because he knows she'd get no votes in a final three.

On the boat, Penner says he wants to help the four of them plus Carter win the game. Malcolm comments on how Penner seems to be exploiting the good vs evil split for his own gain, and Lisa comments how the evil trio are still in her plans because they've pissed so many people off.

Back on the beach, Lisa lets Mike in on one of her plans...to take out Malcolm. He has the immunity idol and no-one else knows, so it has to be a blindside. Penner approaches and starts mouthing off that he's going to win immunity. He's never done it before, but now's the time.

Flying high: Penner is ecstatic knowing he's still in the game

The challenge involves untying puzzle bags from posts. Fastest three go on to solve it. Abi takes the lead (wtf?) and it turns out to be a very tight race. Pete and Jeff are in front, but after that, pretty much everyone is in contention. With the crucial third spot up for grabs, Penner slides in just ahead of Mike. On the puzzle section, Pete makes a great start, with Jeff not far behind. But slow and steady wins the race and Penner gradually starts to catch up. Despite everyone on the bench quietly rooting against him, Penner wins immunity...which really pisses off Kent.

Nice work, Detective

Penner is smiling because pulling that off when he needed it most is probably the best thing he's ever done. With their safe option now gone, the scrambling begins. Pete is at first hoping for an easy Skupin boot, but Lisa is less enthusiastic. Telling Pete about Malcolm's idol, Pete is shocked, because he trusted the guy. Of course, Malcolm denies everything and manages to dupe Pete. So now for some reason, Pete is targeting Jeff, and Jeff decides to hit back by targeting Pete. Which one is going? I honestly have no idea.

At tribal council, RC looks gorgeous on the jury as you'd expect. Lisa is not dropping her accusations about Malcolm so he decides to pull his idol out and threaten to use it. This stuns pretty much everybody, and Probst asks if anyone else would like to reveal their idol. So Abi does. Why not, right? Continuing the idea of getting it all out in the open, Penner proposes that the six people not in the core Tandang alliance should all vote together. After calling it one of the most entertaining tribal councils ever, Jeff sends them off to vote.

Jeff asks if anyone wants to play an idol, and Malcolm and Abi both decide to roll the dice and hold onto them. The votes come out, and the vote should have been a tie between Jeff and Pete, but a random stray vote for Abi seals Jeff's fate. And the vote reveal that plays over his bitter, Political rant in his final words reveals it was Penner who screwed him over. That's Survivor karma right there!

Fuckin' Democrats

So we're two votes in to the merge and with people playing harder than ever, it's set to be a very unpredictable path. Will Malcolm have to play his idol sooner rather than later? How the Hell did Skupin stay out of the line of fire? Will Carter be even more useless now he has no coattails to ride? And how long can Penner hang on?

STAR OF THE WEEK: JONATHAN PENNER

Penner managed to talk the talk and walk the walk this week, winning immunity and blowing shit up at tribal council. Was his vote for Abi a screw-up or a calculated play?