Survivor: Guatemala - Episode 11 Summary

'Shut Up And Eat Your Fish Gruel' By zipperhead

For those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving, we hope you didn’t choke on anything. For those of you who didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, we hope you enjoyed all of those travel delays and unmanned phones. If you missed last week’s episode, you can catch skiver’s summary of it here. It’s a literary gem, even if it is a little frou-frou.

Previously on Survivor

Jamie’s psychosis steps into the light. Everyone gets muddy, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Lydia is a hopeless mess. Judd, Gary, Danni and Stephenie win a reward of a day away from the jungle at the Guatemala Hilton. Gary tries to sweet talk Judd and Stephenie. These four also get to watch videos from home. Rafe wins immunity again, then promptly conspires with Lydia to get the insane Jamie voted off. Judd tells Jamie that he is safe, but at tribal council almost all of the others vote for Jamie to go. Jamie, who was hyper-paranoid for at least week, exclaims that he was “Blindsided! Nice!”

Night 27 (after voting Jamie off)

Judd expresses how shocked he was that Jamie - who was supposed to be part of the gang of six - was voted off instead of Gary. Steph tells him that no one wanted to tell Judd because it would put him in an uncomfortable position. Baloney. Judd wouldn’t have been able to keep his mouth shut so Rafe, Lydia and Steph decided to get rid of the wild child since they no longer needed him to continue with their strategy. Besides, they were originally tribe mates of both Gary and Jamie before the tribes were shaken up and that group feels no particular allegiance to Judd as far as strategy is concerned. Eliminating Jamie was all about them flexing their muscle. Curiously enough, Gary gives his thanks to Lydia. This makes it seem that there is more to Lydia than we have seen so far. Previously, one would have thought that Steph was the queen of the camp, but we didn’t see Gary thanking her for keeping him around one more week.

Day 28

Gary and Lydia begin talking about what’s going to happen next. Lydia plays dumb so well that she temporarily morphs into Bobby Jon. Meanwhile, Judd slithers around in the background trying to find out what these two are up to. Rafe explains how he believes their strategy worked: Judd is now so shaken that he will have to cling to Rafe and Steph for his survival. Lydia confesses that she is ready to cut from Steph’s group if someone else comes up with a better deal that would ensure her advancement. Dumb, dumb strategy. Survivor history has shown that when you’re in an alliance that is successfully eliminating people, you stay in that alliance to the best of your ability.

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Reward Challenge

Each player has three pots filled with corn dangling from ropes. They will be asked a series of questions. Anyone who gets an answer right can go and smash a pot of corn belonging to any player. The last person to have a pot of corn left wins the reward which is a meal, a swim under a naturally heated waterfall and a massage. The losers will have to pick up every kernel of corn that has spilled on the ground and make a sacrifice to the Mayan gods. The first question is about the method of writing used by the ancient Maya (as opposed to the modern Maya, who now work mostly with spray paint on the sides of trains).

Judd smashes one of Gary’s pots. Lydia and Danni smash two of Steph’s pots. Cindy whacks Gary (he did vote for her at tribal council, y’know). Rafe takes down one of Danni’s pots. Gary returns the favor done for him by smashing Cindy’s pot. Before this round is over, this activity had been repeated dozens of times in well-kept gardens all around Philadelphia.

Stephenie tries and fails to cheat on a question about what the Maya did with the losing team in a sport (hint: they still do this at games in Brazil). Lydia wastes no time in removing Steph from the challenge. Danni takes out one of Judd’s pots. Cindy finishes off Gary. On the next question, we find out that the Maya thought the gods made humans out of corn. Take that, you vegans! Lydia and Danni use consecutive swings to eliminate Judd. Then Cindy and Rafe remove Danni from the challenge.

On the following question, Rafe is the only one who knows that Costa Rica does not share borders with Guatemala. He smashes Lydia’s first pot. Nobody believed that any of the Mayan temples were built with modern machinery in a true/false question. Cindy and Rafe demolish Lydia‘s remaining pots. However, since Lydia also got the answer right, she hits Rafe‘s first pot. Thousands of men across the world suddenly realize that they are either going to see Rafe get a massage or Cindy. A victory for Cindy suddenly becomes more important than figuring out when the Detroit Lions head coach would be fired.

Cindy correctly guesses the number of volcanoes around Guatemala and she leaves Rafe with only one pot remaining. Don’t worry, Rafe. A good doctor can make it so you function like you still have two dangling pots. Cindy also guesses that the point at which the earth is furthest from the sun is called the aphelion. Only 12% of the people watching would have known that. Or 42%. Whatever. With glee, she eliminates Rafe and those thousands of men make a mental note of when they can rewatch this episode without any females in the room.

As these contests usually go, however, Cindy is given the chance to pick one person to go with her. Showing some karma, she picks Rafe. There’s just no chance to get away without seeing Rafe getting the rubdown, it seems.

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