‘Survivor: Game Changers’ Episode 9 Recap: Sarah-digm Shift?

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“Survivor: Game Changers” (CBS)

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Watch Full Episodes of “Survivor: Game Changers”

Last Week: Smith had to decide who he was with and Wanner was a goner because Lacina got a little mean-a.

39 Days, 20 People, 1 “Survivor” Blog…

Alright, let’s take a look at the tribes as they currently stand…

The Maku Maku Tribe (wearing yellow)

Andrea, 27
Aubry, 30
Brad, 47
Cirie, 45
Michaela, 25
Sarah, 32
Sierra, 29
Tai, 52
Troyzan, 54
Zeke, 28

The fun kicks off back at Maku Maku beach where Brad is trying to figure out exactly what happened at Tribal. Sarah quickly ends that confusion by admitting that she was the one that flipped. That’s gutsy, but if Sarah is going to win this, she’s got to own her moves.

When asked why Debbie was targeted, Zeke responds that it seemed like she was the one in charge. Really…?

Wait…really?

When things settle down, Andrea, Zeke, Michaela, and Cirie agree that the six is going to stick together for a while. Well, if “Survivor” history has taught us anything, it’s how rock solid a six-person alliance is.

Ahem.

Reward Challenge Time: The tribe will be split into two teams. One person from each team will race through an obstacle course. When they’re through, other team members will raise them in a chair to retrieve tiles. Then another member of the team will go through the course. Once all of the tiles are recovered, they’ll have to solve a word puzzle. The first team to figure out the answer (“Reinventing How This Game Is Played”) will get an overnight stay at a resort.

Our teams are Andrea, Sarah, Aubry, Zeke, and Brad against Sierra, Troyzan, Cirie, Tai, and Michaela.

And hey, guess what? It doesn’t matter how long the first part of the challenge took because the puzzle took FIFTY MINUTES. The key part is everyone trying to figure out what the eleven-letter word is.

Unfortunately, “Irrelevant” only has ten letters, because it could have been “The First Part of the Challenge Is Irrelevant.”

Zeke and Andrea eventually figure it out for their team.

At the reward, Zeke uses the same football powers he used to bond with Chris Hammons to bond with Brad Culpepper. This makes Andrea uneasy, as if she needed another reason to target Zeke. She thinks it’s “super lame,” which is quite a high degree of lameness.

Back at camp, Sierra is down in the dumps. Hey, at least if your number is up you’ll probably be known as Sierra from “Game Changers” instead of Sierra from “Worlds Apart.”

Later, Andrea pitches the idea of getting rid of Zeke to Cirie. It seems like she’s on board, but she smartly points out that it’ll have to be handled delicately to get Sarah to play along.

Sure enough, Sarah doesn’t love this plan. And, she tells Cirie that she’s not worried about Zeke because she has the ability to steal a vote. There must be some trust there for her to reveal that.

Or…maybe not. Sarah tells us that she’ll happily flip back if she wants to. Then why tell Cirie about your advantage?

Theeeeeen…she tells Zeke that she wants Sierra, Andrea, and Tai to be the boot order. They eventually decide that Zeke should try to bring Brad and Troyzan onto their side.

Of course Brad and Troyzan jump at this chance, even though Brad doesn’t like the idea of voting for Sierra or Tai.

Immunity Challenge Time: The players will have to stack blocks domino-style on a rickety platform. The first person to get all of their blocks to fall down across the beam will win immunity.

There’s not much to describe except for high-steppin’ and block placin’. It comes down to Andrea, Sarah, and Michaela with Andrea picking up the win.

Politicking back at camp starts off with Andrea not wanting to wait to pull the trigger on Zeke. Oh man, if she makes this happen, this’ll be the second time his, “target my buddy early” strategy has backfired.

Cirie likes this idea and is sure that Sierra would vote with them if they needed her. Sure enough, Sierra vows to throw anyone under the bus.

Sarah, on the other hand, isn’t digging this line of thinking. Michaela doesn’t like the idea of letting the bottom four stick around either.

That night at Tribal, Sarah again owns up to being the one who flipped. Smart to do that in front of the jury.

Tai feels like he’s on the bottom because nobody is talking to him.

Zeke thinks it’s last week’s six against the other four.

Andrea is used to a majority alliance working together, but now it feels like it’s switching up every week.

Michaela sees the six working together as long as they have the numbers and they should make the simple vote.

Zeke doesn’t think the time is right to make a big move.

Cirie is always running the numbers and trying to figure out when she should do what.

Sierra says she’ll vote anyway the others want her to.

Voting Time: Sierra votes for Tai, Zeke votes for Sierra, and the rest of the votes are lost to the magic of editing.

JPro tallies and returns. He asks is anyone wants to play an idol and…nobody does.

Alright, we’ve got one vote for Tai, one vote for Sierra, one vote for Tai, one vote for Sierra, one vote for Tai, four votes for Zeke, and the eleventh person voted out of “Survivor: Game Changers” and the fourth member of the jury is…Zeke.

Verdict: Huh…I wonder why Tai felt safe enough to not play an idol?

Anywho, it feels like the happy-go-lucky “Millennials vs. Gen-X” style did not mesh with the hold-a-grudge style of every other season.

That being said, we’re down to final nine and there are a lot of good potential winners left.

Power Rankings Results: Adam Klein had Zeke in spot nine, while I had him in spot eight. The current score is Team Adam 96, Team Gordon 92.

Any Questions? Drop me a line on Twitter: @gordonholmes

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