Welcome To The Gabler Show: Survivor 43 Episode 7 Recap

This season of Survivor has become the 2007 Cavs. It's just LeBron and bunch of others. One man carrying the load. Gabler put up another triple double last night. And I'm not talking about gameplay at all here. Don't be ridiculous. I'm talking only in terms of entertainment. Just another dominant performance from the aliGabler. Plus a good challenge and some intriguing gameplay. An overall good episode of Survivor. 

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Also available on iTunes and Spotify. Now onto the written recap...

Pre-Challenge

-We joined camp after the Elie vote out where Jeanine was down bad after losing her closest ally. Noelle was trying to offer her some comfort and advice that she should just pretend like she doesn't care. Good advice. You never want to be too butthurt after a tribal and isolate yourself from the tribe even further. Jeanine seemed to understand this. 

-Owen and Dwight were talking some strategy on the beach and Owen mentioned how he doesn't trust Gabler. This will be something to monitor that will ultimately cost Gabler at some point. He's just such a wild card that you can't rely on him to consistently vote with you. 

-Also of note is that Gabler's idol was no longer good. We thought maybe it would be since he was immune at the previous tribal council, but that was not the case. 

-For the challenge, the 12 remaining castaways had to break up into 6 pairs of 2. Interesting twist that likely brought back schoolyard horrors for many. Or in class when you randomly had to find a reading partner. This could've got ugly, but they chose the diplomatic way of drawing rocks for teams. Smart. 

-The pairs were: Owen and Gabler, Cody and Dwight, Noelle and Sami, Ryan and James, Karla and Cassidy, Jesse and Jeanine

Immunity Challenge

-The challenge was three legs and was very intense. The pairs were together for the first two legs, crawling through a net in the mud, getting across a balance thing. The first two teams to finish then dissolved to become four individuals doing the bucket challenge.

-Noelle and Jeanine struggled to get through the net part of the challenge, which looked incredibly difficult. I definitely would have freaked out stuck in there. I can imagine it's even harder when you only have one leg like Noelle. They helped her and Jeanine get out after the first leg of the challenge was complete. And then led to Jeff stopping the challenge for some big emotional moment about how much these players care about each other. Felt very forced to me. What are they gonna, leave a girl with one leg stuck in a net for three hours? It's not like the challenge was live. It was a stoppage anyway. Just like the bare minimum show of human decency and Jeff was acting like they were doing kidney transplants out there. 

-The final four for the bucket challenge was Gabler, Owen, Cody, and Dwight. It came down to Gabler and Cody. Cody wanted to redeem himself for a high school wrestling match he lost or something? Bizarre. Gabler meanwhile was dedicating every minute to someone different. First some war veteran. Then his uncle getting heart surgery. Then Idaho? Then Alaska? Then a Navy seal. It was incredible to watch. Perhaps the most entertaining endurance performance ever? Maybe Christian from Season 37 is up there too. This was special to watch, and he ended up winning it. I maintain that Gabler stinks at the game of Survivor, but I have fully embraced him as a character who can be must see TV. It also would be objectively if it he turns into some Ozzy level challenge monster.

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Pre-Tribal

-At first it seemed like the Baka (red) and Vesi (yellow) tribes would bang together to target Coco (blue). They were going to split the votes on James and Ryan. 

-Things got a little hectic, however, when James found a bottle in the well with a clue to an advantage to it while surrounded by a few others. It said there was an advantage hidden underneath the shelter, but they all agreed to just not pursue it any further. 

-You would've thought that people would keep tabs on James, but nope. The one place you'd think everyone would be (the shelter) somehow became totally unoccupied and James was able to go grab the advantage. It was Knowledge Is Power. He immediately started telling people which I thought was so dumb. It's the last advantage you want to tell people about. It loses all its power because people can give their advantage to others. And in the case of someone who has an advantage, like Cody and his idol, this makes James a target to you. Why keep someone who can just take an advantage from you at the drop of a hat? I've liked James as a player a lot this season but he takes a hit for his performance here. 

-To avoid James successfully using the advantage, the maneuvering began. Cody gave his idol Jesse. Noelle gave her Steal-A-Vote to Owen. And Jeanine gave her idol to Dwight. Karla is the only one who has managed to keep her an idol a secret. 

-Jesse began to worry that Noelle was growing too powerful and wanted to take her out. When he brought the plan to Cody, Cody suggested Dwight instead. Basically because he found him creepy. Jesse that gave a very wise confessional about how he was fine switching the vote to Dwight because he wanted to Cody to feel like he had agency in the game. You don't want to be an overbearing alliance member and say "my way or the highway." Jesse really impresses me with his confessionals. He has a great understanding of the game. 

-So Jesse and Cody had a big decision to make. Make a bigger move and turn on their old tribe and vote out Dwight to weaken Noelle. Or play it safer for now and stick with the Baka-Vesi alliance. Timing is everything in this game. I think, usually, this is too early to make a big move. But I think this was an exception. First of all, it wasn't that colossal of a move. But also, you have to really think about who you want to play with. The Coco four seem like a safer bet to align with than the other group of wild cards and misfits. You have the alliGabler. You have Noelle and Dwight who you don't trust. You have Jeanine with her idol. So I think, in this instance, going with Coco was the right move for Jesse and Cody. 

Tribal Council

-I thought the commercial break before tribal felt exceptionally long. Nothing else on that.

-Everyone said they felt confident in the vote, which means a blindside is coming. Well Sami was the only once who said he didn't know. And that led to a brain vs. gut discussion that we had on Snuffing Torches. I won't type it out because I want you listen or watch instead!

-Jesse and Cody did decide to flip, and Dwight was voted out with 7 votes. Ryan got 3 votes. James got 2 votes. I was surprised to see 7 votes on Dwight. I assumed it would just be the Coco 4 plus Jesse and Cody. But turns out Sami voted for them too. Would've liked to see how he ended up voting with that crew. 

-And the big story here was Jeanine losing her idol. She gave it to Dwight to hold onto, and kept looking back at him to get it back once the votes were coming out, but he never gave it back to her. Just absolutely brutal for Jeanine. Last week loses her best ally and this week loses her idol. Kind of a dick move by Dwight to not give it back but if I was just blindsided I'd probably be mad at the world too and think "I'm not helping any of these people."

Winner Rankings

This is a ranking of the players I think are most likely to WIN. This is not necessarily who I think is safest in the game. Don’t look at the person ranked last as the person most likely to go home next. Look at them as the person with the least chance to win. That person could very easily get dragged to FTC as a goat, but won’t win. This is ranking people based on their chance to actually win the game.

1. Karla

2. Jesse

3. Owen

4. Cassidy

5. James

6. Sami

7. Jeanine

8. Noelle 

9. Ryan

10. Cody

11. Gabler

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