by Gina Scarpa

On tonight’s episode of Survivor: Tocantins, the players reel from the news that Joe will be unable to continue in the competition due to an injury.  Coach tries to let those around him know that life could be worse by relaying a strange story about being captured by indigenous people in Peru when he was younger.   The story does much more harm than good for his game as many people don’t believe or trust him once he finishes.  Erinn, now on her own in the game, turns to JT to try to form a connection and buy herself a little more time in the game.

In tonight’s reward challenge, players will be divided into teams of three.  One member from each team will toss a metal ball to try to break an opposing team’s tile.  The winning team will go white water rafting complete with picnic.  Of course, they’ll also get to choose someone to go to Exile and that person will be headed off alone.  The black team (Brendan, JT, and Debbie) is immediately targeted for being a strong trio but soon, everyone’s tiles start disappearing.  Erinn knocks out the red team, Brendan knocks out the white team, and that means the black team wins!  They decide to send Stephen to Exile Island, which is an interesting choice and I can't quite figure out the reasoning behind that.

After the white water rafting, Brendan tries to figure out who JT has aligned himself with.  Boy, JT is quite the hot commodity these days, isn't he?  He looked like a dead man walking going into the merge and now, everyone is lining up to be part of his alliance.  In his interview, Brendan was as far as to say that if JT won this whole game, it would be like he won it himself - that's how much he likes JT as a person and wants to see him advance.  Back at camp, Brendan approaches Sierra and tells her that he wants to align with JT, Stephen, and Taj in order to take out Tyson, Coach, and Erinn.  Man, do tribal alliances mean anything anymore?  Not that I'm complaining.  It's certainly making things interesting.

Enough strategizing.  There's an immunity challenge to get to.  Each player will be attached to a rope that is threaded through a series of obstacles.  The first three to finish will make it to the finals where they will compete in another obstacle course, only this one has three levels to it.  JT, Tyson, and Brendan move on and it was a very close first round, with the exception of Taj and Stephen, who weren't even close to being competitive in this challenge!  Tyson flies through the final course and wins immunity for the second challenge in a row.  Impressive.  Coach feels that this means Brendan will definitely go home but in the game of Survivor, you never know...

At tribal, even Jeff can't help but question Coach's outrageous stories but he stands by the moments in his life that have defined him.  Tyson admits that trust has a lot to do with tonight's vote and if Timbira starts turning on each other, then many people are going to have to rethink their strategy.  Here are the votes: Coach.  Coach.  Brendan.  Brendan.  Brendan.  Sierra.  Sierra.  Sierra.  The final vote goes to Brendan.  Dammit!  I kinda wanted him to hang around.  He's now the first member of the jury.

Survivor: Tocantins airs Thursday nights at 8pm ET on CBS.

(Image courtesy of CBS)

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