Tony Vlachos went off this episode. He had his fingerprints all over the screen and put on maybe the best single episode performance Survivor has seen. Vlachos had 17 confessionals tonight, which ithe most ever in an episode and more than the majority of castaways get through in a season.
We kick off the episode with Jeremy Collins, who played the safety without a power advantage last week and left tribal early. The others were annoyed at him when they returned to camp, especially Ben Driebergen. Important to know for later.
Vlachos says he has played a low-key game so far and not looked for idols to lower his threat level. Now though, in the dead of night, he decides that it is his time to come alive. Just like in his first season when everyone went to sleep, he went to work. As Vlachos looked for the idol, Nick Wilson woke up and saw him. In a smart move, Vlachos told Wilson to look by the water well, as he had already looked there. Now alone, Vlachos found the immunity idol.
In a cut to Lacina, she is playing a game–just like her last season–where she focuses on the social aspect. In a highlighted contrast, when she puts on a fashion show, Vlachos won’t participate. Whereas she wants to build relationships and win people over, he wants to scheme 24/7 about how to win. He pretends to be on the sides of Spradlin, Stapley, Fitzgerald, and Collins. His lies about his allegiances work on Collins and Fitzgerald, but Spradlin sees right through it. She along with Stapley flip to the other side.
Next up is the Edge of Extinction, where Tyson Apostol–in monologue–talks about how tough the Edge is. While he and Wendell Holland chat, Parvati Shallow and Natalie Anderson find a bottle on the beach and see a clue when they open it up. After figuring out the clue, Anderson snags the extortion advantage. This allows them to extort a player in the game and take away their ability to compete in the immunity challenge and vote if they don’t pay them the fire tokens they demand. Fittingly, they send this to Vlachos and demand 6 tokens. In a humorous moment, he gets excited when he begins to read the note and then is quickly dismayed when he reads the last words at the end: “This advantage is being played against you.” He only had three tokens, so he needed to borrow from other castaways. Showing his brilliance, Vlachos gets tokens from both alliances, as Collins, Wilson, and Driebergen all agreed to give him one.
Having paid the extortion, Vlachos competes in the immunity challenge and wins his second in a row. Back at camp, the consensus vote was Collins, and the large group decided to split the vote. Spradlin and Stapley lie to Collins and tell him that the plan is to vote out Driebergen, who has started to annoy Collins. The split vote creates an opportunity for Vlachos. Being the chaos king that he is, he does not stick with the status quo. He knows he is a huge threat and that he has to change things up to have a shot at winning the game. His closest ally is Lacina, but she isclose to Sophie Clarke. Clarke has an idol, so Vlachos is careful about putting his plan in action at the last possible second. He gets Wilson on board first and then goes to Collins. Vlachos tells him that he is the target and pitches to vote out Clarke. Collins has a hard time believing Vlachos at first, but in the end, he pulls in Fitzgerald, and Clarke is sent home 4-3-2 with an idol in her pocket. This was an all-time great move from Vlachos and cemented him as a legend of the game. He lied to Collins all episode about being on his side, and then just decided at the end to be on his side. It’s a move only he could pull off.
I don’t have to say who the player of the week was. Tony dominated this episode from start to finish and was responsible for one of the best hours of television in Survivor history. We are gearing up for an iconic finish, and as a Survivor superfan, I could not be more excited.
Tune in Wednesday, April 29 for episode 10.
