Brian Corridan and Margaret Bobonich fall victim to 'Survivor: Guatemala's surprise double elimination

Done in by a surprise twist in which there was no Immunity Challenge and both Survivor: Guatemala tribes were instead forced to attend Tribal Council, Brian Corridan, a 22-year-old recent Columbia University graduate from New Milford, Connecticut, and Margaret Bobonich, a 43-year-old family nurse practitioner from Chardon, Ohio, were voted out of the game during last night's broadcast of the CBS reality show.


Survivor: Guatemala's sixth episode began with Nakum returning from its Night 14 Tribal Council in which despite having a 4-3 numerical advantage, two of the new mixed Yaxha tribe's four original Nakum tribe members turned on one of their own and voted out Blake Towsley.

As Day 15 began, a still surprised Brandon Bellinger -- the only original Nakum tribemate who had remained loyal to Blake -- sheepishly confronted Bobby Jon Drinkard about his decision to join fellow original Nakum member Danni Boatwright and Yaxha's three original members in voting out the so-called "Golden Boy." Bobby Jon told Brandon he had some regrets, but the move was just part of the game. "I had to do what I had to do... I know I liked him and I know you liked him, but he rubbed a lot of other people the wrong way," Bobby Jon explained to Brandon.

Terming Blake's booting a "get out of jail free card" for original Yaxha members Gary Hogeboom, Amy O'Hara, and himself, Brian was suddenly more confident about his chances in the game. "Right now the numbers are even, so the bottom line is we need to start knocking the former Nakum members off one by one... it's got to happen," he explained in a private confessional.

Over at Nakum, the tribe began to feel that Margaret -- still upset about Judd Sergeant's fourth episode decision to immediately jump ship and team with new Nakum's four new formerly Yaxha tribe members to oust original Nakum member Brooke Struck -- was really beginning to hamper the tribe's spirit.


"I keep trying to be positive and it's harder to do that when someone is being really a negative energy around camp, which is what Margaret is being doing right now," Rafe Judkins, a former Yaxha tribe member, explained. "After Brooke got voted off she was just devastated and just took it so really hard... the six of us get along really, really well and Margaret is just like kinda fading out."

Given her open clashes with Judd, Margaret realized that she would very likely be the next original Nakum member to be voted off. "I used to be much higher on the food chain than I am now, now I'm absolutely on the opposite end after the mixup," Margaret confessed. "I'm sure Judd's waiting to get me off, I'm not giving up, but I'm not going to beat my head against the wall, I'll wait for there to be an opening."

Having received instructions telling them to bring the immunity idol to the Reward Challenge competition -- an instruction that no doubt tipped them off that something unusual was going to happen -- the Yaxha tribe met Nakum at the challenge site. Once there, Survivor host Jeff Probst explained that the tribes would compete in a giant ball rolling game, with two-person teams from each tribe attempting to push the ball across a tree-filled playing field and over the other tribe's goal line. The first tribe to score three goals would win the reward -- a barbecue meal featuring seven hamburgers, seven hotdogs, and cold root beer and beer.

But after explaining the challenge's rules and showing off its prize, Jeff dropped one additional detail on the tribes -- that there would be no subsequent Immunity Challenge. Instead, both tribes would attend Tribal Council that evening and winning the Reward Challenge would allow the members of the victorious tribe to compete for individual immunity from the evening's Tribal Council sessions in which each tribe would vote off a member. In addition to being safe at their tribe's own Tribal Council session, the castaway who won immunity would also receive one other benefit: the ability to sit in on the other tribe's Tribal Council session. "In a game where knowledge is power, this is a crucial opportunity," Jeff lectured the castaways.

After a random draw determined that the first round to be women-only, Nakum's Stephenie LaGrossa and Cindy Hall faced off against Yaxka's Danni and Amy. Although Stephenie and Cindy got off to a good start, they slowly ceded ground to Danni and Amy, scoring Yaxha its first point.


Nakum's Judd and Jamie Newton managed to tie the score when they competed in the next men-only round against Yaxka's Bobby Jon and Brandon -- a competition that ended with Jamie and Bobby Jon getting in each other's faces and screaming at each other after Bobby Jon resented Jamie's subsequent wild celebration.

The third mixed round featured Yaxka's Amy and Gary Hogeboom facing off against Nakum's Judd and Stephenie. Judd and Stephenie got off to a strong start and rolled to an easy victory after Amy fell and re-injured her ankle.

Despite being injured, the fact that the fourth round would be another women-only round required Amy, one of only two women on Yaxka, to once again compete with Danni. Although Nakum had the advantage of being able to bench Stephenie and send out Margaret and Cindy (both of whom were healthy and not tired from having just competed in the previous round) Amy and Danni somehow managed to win their round, tying the challenge at 2-2.

Bobby Jon and Brian faced off against Judd and Jamie in the challenge's winner-take-all final round. Although Judd fell down at one point, he and Jamie managed to regain the momentum and score a goal, winning reward for Nakum and giving its tribemembers the chance to compete for individual immunity.

After moving over to the Immunity Challenge site, Jeff explained that the challenge would require the castaways to race into a field and, one bag at a time, retrieve three color-coded bags containing letter tiles. Once they had collected all three bags, each castaway would then attempt to assemble the eleven tiles into a two-word phrase, with the first person to correctly spell the phrase winning immunity.


As the competition unfolded, Judd quickly fell behind the rest of his tribemates, struggling to both free his bags and later untie them. But although he had no chance to win, Judd did happen to take a glance at Rafe's board as he closed in on the phrase -- and after realizing what the phrase was, Judd (perhaps more motivated to keep Margaret from winning) blurted the answer out to Rafe, who quickly rearranged a couple of tiles to spell out "ancient ruin" and win immunity.

Back at Yaxka's camp, the tribe began to talk and scheme about who they would vote off at the evening's Tribal Council session. Emboldened by what he considered his previous success in masterminding Blake's ouster, Brian campaigned to vote Bobby Jon off, but although he kept quiet about it, Gary (who actually appeared to be the one who did all the work in convincing Bobby Jon and Danni to vote for Blake) didn't agree with the idea. "Why would I get rid of Bobby Jon, one of the strongest players on our team," Gary explained in confessional. Meanwhile, Brian was also concerned that Amy's injury might somehow result in her ouster -- leaving him and Gary, the tribe's other original Yaxha member, at a 3-2 disadvantage if the tribe ended up having to attend another pre-merge Tribal Council session.

"Amy and Brian are probably the biggest threats of getting voted off because I don't know what kind of alliances they have, but they're probably the physically weaker players," Brandon confessed to the camera. "Of the six of us, anyone could go home tonight,,, I'm just hoping that Gary and Amy aren't pulling the wool over my eyes and [somehow] everyone ends up voting for me," Brian told the cameras in a quote that would later prove eerily prophetic.

Over at Nakum, although he hadn't won immunity, Judd was confident that he wouldn't be the castaway getting voted out at his tribe's upcoming Tribal Council. "I'm going to Tribal Council tonight [with] not a damn worry in the world man, hell no," he boasted during confessional. "They need me, I'm one of the big guns here."

"I can do what I want around these people," Judd bragged -- a fact he later flaunted by deciding to drink more than his share of the beer that the tribe had won at the Reward Challenge. "Hey you know what, everyone can kiss my ass," he snarled to his tribemates. "I felt like I freaking deserved it anyway. If I took an extra beer [so what] -- you wouldn't be eating the damn hotdog and this cheeseburger if it wasn't for me," Judd later told the camera.


Judd and Margaret engaged in a lengthy (and heated -- at least on Judd's end) argument about Judd's selfish attitude and poor sportsmanship at Nakum's Tribal Council session, but in the end Margaret's efforts went for naught as her tribemates voted her out of Survivor: Guatemala in a unanimous 6-1 vote.

As the rest of his tribe departed, Rafe remained behind to sit in on Yaxha's Tribal Council session. After Yaxha arrived and had been questioned by Jeff, the Survivor host surprised the castaways for one final time, announcing that in addition to having been able to listen to Yaxha's Tribal Council session, Rafe would also be allowed to secretly grant one Yaxha member immunity before departing. After Rafe voted and left, Yaxha followed by casting their own votes. As Jeff counted the votes, it became clear that Brian's fear had come true -- Gary and Amy had indeed apparently pulled the wool over his eyes. With five votes cast against him, only receiving Rafe's immunity could save Brian, but it turned out Rafe (an original Yaxha member) had awarded his immunity to another original Yaxha member -- Gary -- making a shocked Brian the seventh castaway voted of Survivor: Guatemala.

"Well I've got to hand it to you, you did a great job pumping Brian up and making him feel secure and then you cut his throat," Jeff told the remaining Yaxha members after Brian departed.

In contrast to Margaret (who appeared to exit Tribal Council without even saying goodbye to her tribe), despite his betrayal, Brian remained a tribal cheerleader, congratulating and shaking everyone's hands on his way out. "I did not see that coming, which is how I wanted to go out -- so the fact that they pulled one over on me, I'm really proud of them, I'm glad they're playing the game," he remarked during his post-elimination interview.