Survivor Episode 7 Recap: There’s a New Sheriff In Town

This week, we get a double episode.  With thirteen players still in the game, the tribes finally merge.  We finally get to see Cirie attend a tribal council this season and another big player is sent home packing.  Keep reading for the top notable moments from this week’s episode!

Top Moments From Survivor Episode 7

1. The return of Cirie:  We finally get to see Cirie play, and wow, was it worth the wait!  After managing to avoid every single tribal council up until this point, Cirie has made the merge, which is her prime time to shine.  Sure enough, she takes Michaela under her wing, mentoring her behind everyone else’s back.  Recognizing that it’s not in Cirie’s best interest to have Michaela go home, she somehow manages to convince the rest of the tribe to throw most of their votes on Hali instead of Michaela, making Hali the first boot of the episode and the first member of the jury. Cirie smartly seems intent on keeping her alliance with Michaela on the DL.  Hopefully if they can hide their loyalty to one another the two of them can make it far together in the game.
2. Zeke prepares to do battle:  Just like in his previous season Millennials vs. Gen X, Zeke is ready to make a big move.  And once again, he’s preparing to do it too early!  Zeke, turned off by the fact that he feels he’s getting all of his information from Cirie and Andrea, and not directly from other players, sets his sights on voting out one of his allies, Andrea, before targeting some of the other players.  This might be a good idea if it wasn’t so early!  Zeke foolishly tells Sierra that Andrea is planning to target her, and in what seems like minutes, word has gotten back to Andrea of Zeke’s betrayal.  To put it lightly, Andrea is livid and intent on voting out Zeke.  It was at almost this exact spot during his previous season that Zeke voted out his ally Chris, which he conceded was too soon of a move to make. So why is he aiming to do almost the exact same thing this time? Further, Zeke doesn’t seem to be having as much of an influence on his fellow players this season and he did last season.  Maybe it’s because he’s not playing with a season of newbies, or his lack of eye contact when talking to other players, or a heightened suspicion around Zeke given that no one has seen his game before, but his pitches to his other tribe mates to send one Andrea packing seem to be falling on deaf ears.  My prediction is Zeke will suffer the same fate as he did last time.  He may succeed in rallying the votes to make Andrea the next boot (going out in the exact same spot Chris was voted out last season), but I suspect Zeke will be following her to Ponderosa very shortly after.
3. Debbie plays her extra vote incorrectly, but we can debate about it:  At the second tribal council of the evening, Debbie opted to play her extra vote for Ozzy.  Although Ozzy was ultimately voted out, this would have happened without Debbie’s extra vote.  Even without Debbie’s extra vote, Ozzy had six votes against him, while Zeke only had four.  Also, even assuming Cirie hadn’t decided to “spice things up” and had played her vote for Zeke, that would still have left six votes against Ozzy and five votes against Zeke, without Debbie’s extra vote.  Either way, Ozzy was going home, and Debbie wasted her extra vote.  The only way someone can argue Debbie played her extra vote correctly is if we look at Sarah.  Andrea, Ozzy, and Cirie were sure Sarah was a strong ally but we had seen Sarah chatting with Troyzan, making her inevitable flip a little less surprising.  If Debbie had her doubts about Sarah’s loyalty on this vote, and had been correct, then she would have used her extra vote to correctly break a 6-6 tie vote.  But a lot had to fall into place for this to happen which did not, and this is why playing the extra vote advantage correctly is so difficult.   Optically, however, Debbie can probably take a little extra credit for the Ozzy boot even if it’s ultimately undeserved.
4. Sierra really doesn’t like to be challenged:  Zeke approached Sierra to ask why they were splitting the votes between Hali and Michaela but throwing more votes on Michaela.  Sierra immediately became very defensive and asked why Zeke cares so much.  Zeke made the very valid point with the way the votes were being split, if Hali didn’t play an idol but had one, Michaela would go home and Hali would remain in the game with an idol, which is the exact scenario they were trying to avoid.  Zeke’s point to put more votes on Hali made perfect sense and was completely uncontroversial, but Sierra did not take it well.  Maybe she really does think Zeke thinks she’s stupid and that turned her off, but I can see problems for her if she’s only willing to have a real two-way conversation with Brad and no one else.
5. Lots of mooning:  It takes Debbie pretending to be drunk to whip down her bathing suit bottom and moon the merged tribe.  Tai streaks much more freely in front of his fellow tribe mates enjoying the reward at the Marshall’s lounge.  While Tai arguably injected light and fun a bit more naturally than Debbie, both were pretty hilarious moments during this episode.

Next week, Sarah is looking to make a big move and it seems like Zeke is the perfect person to rope in for that!  Will Zeke and Andrea finally face a show-down?

Photo Credit: CBS