Survivor, Ep. 26.10

All over Twitter for the past week and especially today, I keep reading that tonight's episode is epic and that the Tribal Council is one of the most absolute craziest Tribals ever. Ever. And as they keep saying, there has been 404 of them. So, unless everyone is way over-hyping this, I think it's going to be a game-changing douzy. Can't wait...

Back from Tribal
Malcolm, Reynold and Eddie are left behind, as Stealth-R-Us decides to go talk after returning from Tribal.. Eddie: "We don't have anything to be afraid of." Malcolm: "Everything I tried went wrong."  No one knows about Malcolm's idol, and they all vow to look for the idol in the morning, because they think Reynold's will be rehidden. Can he pull a 3rd-time bit of magic? Phillip: "They have no idol". Hopefully they aren't even considering that another idol might come into play.

Dawn's Meltdown
Dawn lets out a blood curdling scream and she yells to Brenda to come right away. Everyone wonders what's going on. Brenda comes running, and Dawn bursts into tears. The reason for the meltdown: she lost a retainer with her bottom teeth. Yes. You read that right. She said it came out when she was swimming and she has to have them. She was physically shaking, she was that upset. She is so embarrassed and won't go to Tribal without them and she will pull herself out of the game without them. Are...you...kidding...me? I think that could be the single dumbest thing I've ever seen. She literally lost her mind over this retainer. Brenda came and used a snorkel to go in the water and retrieved it for her. Her life is not over and she can continue.

Does anyone else wonder how she can possibly put that back in her mouth after being at the bottom of that nasty lagoon? That's just nasty! Not to mention also very, very unsanitary. I guess you could probably stick it in some boiling water, but wouldn't it melt?

Reward Challenge
Malcolm is first on the course for the Purple team. He uses a unique strategy and looks for all the bags in the mud while Erik only gets one and goes to the rice. Reynold was the 2nd one out for the Orange team and copied Malcolm, and found all the bags for his side. By looking for all the bags in the mud first, the ones that followed only had to pick up the bag and go to the rice. Sherri for Orange took forever on the balance beam...she was SLOW! Phillip just about got stuck going under the beams before the slide! Eddie is the last one on the course for Orange.

Purple starting throwing their balls into the tubes and they just kept nailing one after another before Orange even starts shooting. It wasn't even close. The Purple team wins Reward.

At the reward, they get to take a nice shower and get cleaned off and there's a nice pool to swim in. What does Phillip do? He goes into the nice clean pool with his muddy body, strips down naked and proceeds to make the clean water completely disgusting! Thanks a lot Phillip! Nice to see he's back to his antics of annoying everyone.

Paranoia Sets In-Dawn Freaks Out Again!
Dawn's worried about a blindside. Andrea has been talking with Malcolm, so she thinks they are coming after her. She runs to Phillip and Phillip thinks she's acting like a lunatic. Cochran is suspicious of Dawn for even thinking that if they would blindside anyone, that it would be her.

And then Dawn goes into freakout #2. Phillip says "she's going out of control." It's like the Brandon effect. She even says she feels like she is unstable. She says she needs some time and that she's stronger than this. Cochran said they already had a cuckoo fly over the nest and that was Brandon, and now he thinks Dawn might be a little hummingbird zipping over the cuckoo's nest. Ha! I don't know what happened all of a sudden, but she is definitely not doing OK and they need to get rid of her ASAP.

The next day, she thinks she is completely back to normal.

Stealth-R-Us goes for another walk. They decide they want to target Reynold. Andrea: "Tonight nothing can really go wrong." Oh, the famous last words. I guarantee those words will come into play when all of this is said and done. Their plan is to split votes again like last time--4 girls vote for Reynold and the 3 guys vote for Malcolm.

Immunity Challenge
1st Heat: Reynold is first to move on, followed by Andrea
2nd Heat: Malcolm is first to move on, followed by Brenda (Eddie would have moved on, but he missed putting his ring on the pole!)
-Phillip chose to sit out the challenge because he had a traumatic experience in water as a child. Wow.

Final Round: It's down to Malcolm and Reynold and Reynold wins! Malcolm really struggled on his last ring...he was pooped! That was a great challenge.

I'm worried about Malcolm, he just isn't looking as strong as he did last season (and for good reason, he only had a 2 week break from playing the last time, so he didn't get to build his muscle back up). Reynold is proving to be extremely strong and tough to beat. For now that's OK, but if it should get down to the nitty gritty, Malcolm is going to have a tough time beating him in physical challenges. But for today, this is great because it completely screws up Stealth-R-Us' plan, but it's also bad because the target goes back to Malcolm.

Final Scramble
Phillip talks to Andrea and Dawn. Phillip feels confident because he thinks Malcolm thinks he's safe and that they will be targeting Eddie.

Malcolm, Reynold and Eddie go looking for the idol. Andrea and Dawn decide to go look for the idol as well, while Phillip and Brenda discuss what happened to him as a child.

Somehow Andrea and Dawn end up in the same place as Malcolm and Reynold. Dawn tells Malcolm to tell her if he sees something. I'm like, yeah right, why would he do that. But, she obviously thought he might find something because she kept hanging around him. And just as Dawn says "Can we get a clue or something?", Malcolm puts his hand in this hole in a rock and finds an idol!!!!! The question is, is that his original to make them think he found it, or is that a 2nd idol?

Tribal Council
I'm dying to know how this is going to go down. Does Malcolm or Reynold give up their immunity? Does Malcolm go home with 2 idols in his pocket? Does Malcolm use an idol on himself and the 2nd one on Eddie  and they vote out Phillip? That would be the craziest scenario that I can think of...so maybe, just maybe that's what happens.

Almost immediately, Andrea outs Malcolm for finding an idol, so he's forced to show it. I love the way his face just perked up with this huge smile, like 'yep, I found it and I'm so happy right now.' He then pulls it out of his pocket like it's show-and-tell. But he wasn't done, the fun Malcolm was here to play. The surprise comes when he whips out his 2nd idol! He used his quick wit to throw out some zingers. He casually says "I've had this one for awhile." Boy the looks on their faces were classic! They were absolutely shocked! I actually think that Eddie and Reynold were the most surprised out of all of them! I don't think Malcolm clued them in before Tribal about what he was going to do, because they had a giddy look of excitement, along with quite a bit of surprise when Malcolm handed over his 2nd idol to Eddie. Eddie kind of puffed out his chest and I've never seen someone with a bigger smile than he had, his smile was all teeth, literally grinning from ear to ear.

Immediately, Stealth-R-Us begin whispering to each other. Probst is trying to talk to Malcolm and Probst interrupts because he can't believe they are all still talking to each other. they were whispering "What are we going to do?" Someone mouthed "Andrea". Malcolm, Reynold and Eddie had the biggest smiles on their faces. It was too cute.

Eddie labels them The 3 Amigos, and they are sitting pretty and the rest continue to frantically whisper back and forth. Michael over on the jury couldn't contain his laughter.

Malcolm then announces they are voting for Phillip--I was right on that as well! So many things running through everyone's mind. What if the guys don't actually play the idols? Are they really targeting Phillip? So much craziness!

Phillip addresses the group and says he feels like they should all vote the way they were going to when they came. He even said he was OK if that meant that he would go home.

On one hand, I almost hope they keep their idols because would they really think they would not use them? Then they would still have 2 idols. On the other hand, that is WAY too risky.

The Vote
Eddie stands up to play his idol and Malcolm remains sitting. Oh boy, what do they have up their sleeve. Then after a short fake out, Malcolm also stand and then plays his as well.  That was intense. My heart is pounding. I love their little fist bump on their way back to their seats...nice. That means Reynold is safe, and all votes for Malcolm and Eddie DO NOT COUNT!

Malcolm-2--didn't count
Eddie-4--didn't count
Phillip-3 (Note: the 3 Amigos, plus Erik, Jeff only showed 3 of the votes)

PHILLIP GOES HOME! That was absolutely nuts! I can't believe that they ALL thought that neither of them would play their idol. They must think they are really cocky and wouldn't go through with it. Wow. Or, they wanted to continue to show their loyalty to Phillip and be able to say they never voted for him. True cult members. By sticking to their original plan, they also don't risk ruffling each other's feathers by throwing other votes out. But, I forgot, and only realized this upon watching it again, that Phillip announced that they should vote the way they had planned and he was OK if that meant he went home. Those people were completely loyal and followed his instructions to his own demise. Wow.

And to make things even crazier...for like the first time in Survivor history, someone CHOOSES to sit out an individual immunity challenge for a reason other than a bribe. It just so happens that that person ended up being voted out in the end. Absolute craziness!