by Gina Scarpa

Following Brandon's nuclear meltdown on last week's episode of Survivor, the Bikal tribe comes together in the hopes of starting fresh. Corinne compares him to Mel Gibson "or someone" and I wouldn't go that far (at all), but things should be more peaceful now that he's out of the game. The Gota tribe must be feeling pretty great too, since they were handed immunity last week and were shown that life at the favorites' camp wasn't all it seemed cracked up to be. Well just when everyone was starting to get comfortable, Jeff Probst decided to change things up. Instead of a reward challenge, players dropped their buffs and cracked an egg full of paint on themselves to see how they would now be divided up. At least they got some rice and flint to take back to camp!

The Gota tribe is now comprised of Andrea, Malcolm, Erik, Brenda, Eddie, Reynold, and Sherri while the Bikal tribe members are Corinne, Phillip, Cochran, Dawn Julia, Matt, and Michael. Upon first glance, it's pretty clear the Gota tribe is in a good place. Not only did Eddie and Reynold get to stick together, but then brought four of the best physical players over onto their side. Across the way, Corinne looks positively horrified because she's now stuck with Phillip and lost Malcolm, but at least she's got her gay! Pretty sure Michael wasn't thrilled to be treated as a token gay friend, but he's just gonna do what he needs to do right now to stay in the game cause the fans are in trouble on that tribe.

Eddie and Reynold immediately get to work, back at the Gota camp, on getting Malcolm and Erik on board to vote Sherri out. Sherri works Amanda and Brenda to go over one of the two as well. These dopes are so eager to take each other out that they're giving the favorites everything they need to keep their numbers in tact. It's a good thing they're going to dominate challenges or those three might as well snuff their own torch and just head to Ponderosa now. Meanwhile at Bikal, Phillip tries to bring in the fans by telling them that they must complete a task in order to be inducted into Stealth R Us and be given a nickname. I'm amazed Matt was able to keep a straight face because Phillip was DAS (dead ass serious) when he tried to strongarm him and Michael into doing whatever he told them to do when the time came. I'm not sure if you've heard but Phillip's a federal agent.

For the immunity challenge, tribes had to move large and heavy boxes across a playing field, then stack them correctly to create a staircase. It doesn't take long for the Gota tribe to basically lap Bikal and their staircase was built as Julia was directing her tribe to put the wrong boxes in the wrong places. Other than that, Bikal did a great job. Gota wins!

It seemed, earlier in the episode, that Corinne and Phillip might try to take each other out but both know the value of numbers in the game so a fan will be leaving the game instead. Julia's name gets passed around since she was pegged as responsible for the loss (they all were pretty terrible) and Corinne finds her to be boring. Then, it started to become very apparent that Matt and Michael were tight and with paranoia running rampant that an idol could be played, plans shifted.

At tribal council, I had a hard time concentrating on anything else after Cochran proclaimed that didn't feel he could penetrate the other tribe. Come on, you laughed a little too. Matt tried throwing compliments around, saying he loved playing the game with everyone on his tribe, but he was too much of a risk for the favorites to keep around. My question is... would they really rather have Julia in challenges than Matt?!

When I asked the Twitter world last night who benefited the most from the tribe switchup, Dawn responded "easy answer". In my mind, it was Reynold, hands down. Does she agree? And who do you think stands to gain the most from this twist?

Survivor: Caramoan airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on CBS.

(Image courtesy of CBS)

Follow Gina @ginascarpa