Just watched Mike's boot episode for the first time and WOW my interest in the season has been reinvigorated. It feels almost like a South Pacific type season where the beginning is fun, the middle is boooring because it's just an obvious Pagonging (and to South Pacific's credit they were at least able to accelerate it with a double boot episode. Island of Secrets has a Pagonging that lasts like... almost the entire merge so far minus the Seipei boot
), but once the main alliance has no choice but to start to look inward and turn against each other WOW the season becomes fresh again.
And even though this was still technically the last episode of the Pagonging, omg it delivered! The family visit was actually done perfectly with splitting up the tribe between camp life and Island of Secrets life, not letting them see each other at all between the Immunity Challenge and Tribal Council. And everyone delivered and played their parts beautifully! Rob continued to shine as mafia boss overlord, Laetitia was the sympathetic person who got the family visit because
who knows how much longer she'll have on earth with her daughter (note: she's fifty), Steffi continued to lay the foundation to a potential Rob overthrow (which from what I've heard, comes to a EPIC conclusion next episode), Durao didn't really show up until TC where he acted like a bumbling idiot to snow Mike/just in general is a bumbling idiot, and then...
Mike gets his own paragraph because l m a o how embarrassing of an exit, ESPECIALLY for someone who believed his own hype. His boot was delicious. That's really been the whole theme of this Pagonging, that the person on the bottom realizes that Rob has been in control of everything, they try to rally up the ~loose change players~ to overthrow him, nobody listens and the person on the bottom is booted nearly unanimously, and then the next round starts with someone realizing "oh ****, <Juror(s)> were right all along, time for me to scramble." And each time it happens it gets more delicious because the writing has been on the wall for sooooo long. Like, not only did Mike watch this **** happen to Geoffrey but he was an active participant in it. He watched this **** happen to Jacques and was in on the plan. He watched it happen to Mmaba and somehow *STILL* believed he had Durao and Nicole on his side?!?!?! The Nicole one is baffling because literally every person on their way out thinks they had Nicole on their side and spoiler, none of them ever had her
Anyway, Mike spent the last threeish episodes salivating at an opportunity to blindside Rob but then kept chickening out because "it's not time yet" (ie Rob lied about some overpowered advantage he didn't have and scared the **** out of Mike
), and this entire episode was about "it's Steffi!!!!! We have four votes, it's a done deal!" while Durao and Nicole were just like "um yeah sure *pat on head*"
This all culminated in a Tribal Council were Rob and Nicole explicitly strategized in front of the entire tribe, only for Mike to repeatedly ask "wait what's the plan?" and then ultimately realize that he was the plan
A master class of delusion and trying to play Survivor with a blindfold on.
And then NICOLE, where to begin... it's been well-documented that she has a flair for the drama and theatrics and she speaks with such bravado and each word she speaks is the next part of an epic Shakespearean soliloquy. So naturally when her boyfriend showed up for the family visit she keeps her composure, right?
She sobbed hysterically as soon as the family visit was announced, sobbed even more dramatically when Rob won and she had to say goodbye to her boyfriend, had many epic confessionals about how this was THE BEST AND WORST DAY
OF HER LIFE, spoke about how she wanted to punch Rob in the face but it's okay because she knows he did this for a reason and she is A Collaborator and not a puppet, and then all of her TC answers were these Mrs. South Africa pageant type of answers about
motherhood and
you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't and
she knows her truth and
she was sent to the Island of Secrets, her worst place, and effectively told to sit in the corner and think about what she's done but it's okay because
she came here to be brave, and this will make her tougher and stronger. I'll just let it speak for itself because I can't possibly elaborate anymore. Nicole Capper *is* one of the most captivating narrators in all of reality television, but ironically and unironically. I don't think I've ever seen someone put 100% effort into each and every word she utters, but it really is a work of art.