Opting to turn on one of their own instead of newcomer Stephenie LaGrossa, Survivor: Palau's Koror tribe voted Coby Archa out of the game during Thursday's CBS broadcast of the show's ninth episode, making Coby the twelfth castaway to exit the competition.
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Completely alone and forced to fend for herself, Stephenie spent a lonely night in the Ulong tribe's cave camp, hoping her fire wouldn't go out and worried about her ability to survive on her own. "This is scary, this scary is as hell," she confided to the cameras. "This is the scariest thing and the hardest thing that I will ever do... but I'll never give up. I'm not a quitter."
Meanwhile over at Koror, after twenty one days of living together, significant frustration had built up among the tribe's eight members. Whether it was annoyance with Coby's whining, Janu Tornell's drama, Tom Westman and Ian Rosenberger's camp dominance, or Katie Gallagher and Jennifer Lyon's inactivity; most of the tribe seemed to have issues with at least some of their tribemates.
Back at Ulong, the dawn of Day 22 meant that Stephenie was attempting to adjust to her new solitary existence -- splitting coconuts, gathering wood, and paddling out to sea in a failed effort to catch some fish. Frustrated and on the verge of complete despair, Stephenie retrieved her tribe's tree mail and discovered that since her tribe had been "conquered," she'd now be joining Koror's members. "Oh my god, it's a merge... I'm gonna to have friends -- and food -- thank god," gushed a tearful Stephenie.
Packing her tribe's Home Depot tool kit, fishing spear, and her personal belongings, Stephenie paddled her canoe over to Koror's palatial camp. After surprising Koror's napping members by wandering right into their camp without anyone noticing her approach, her new tribemates greeted her with open arms. Given the grand tour of Koror's camp, Stephenie was overwhelmed. "I love this camp, [it's] so much better than ours... oh my god, there's a roof, there's a toilet that's working, there's clean water -- it's amazing, this is like heaven compared to where I came from!" said Stephenie.
In celebration of Koror's victory over Ulong. two Palau fishermen arrived to teach the tribe the art of traditional Palau-style fishing. After being taught how to catch bait, a conflict erupted over which of the four Koror men would be allowed to go fishing with the Palau fishermen.
Realizing that they didn't have enough bait to take all four of Koror's men out fishing, one of the Palauan fishermen told the men that "some" of them would have to remain behind and teach the women how to catch bait while the rest of the men were fishing. Coby immediately suggested that two of the Koror men go fishing while the other two remained behind -- and instantly volunteered to be one of the men to continue bait fishing. However Tom objected to Coby's suggestion that Ian should join Coby as the other male to remain behind, instead asking if Tom, Ian, and Gregg Carey could all go fishing. Once the fisherman agreed to Tom's request, Coby instantly began whining. "I'm going to left out again as usual, that's fine," complained Coby -- while conveniently ignoring the fact that his latest predicament was largely the result of his own premature assumption that the other men would agree to his "two and two" suggestion.
After a celebratory evening feast in which they enjoyed their bountiful catch and Tom drank far too much, the Palauan visitors bid goodbye to the Koror tribe on the morning of Day 23, leaving the battle for Stephenie's loyalty to begin in earnest. Openly calling Stephenie over for a private conversation, Coby revealed all of Koror's internal alliances to Stephenie. In addition to revealing the tribe's Tom/Ian/Katie/Gregg/Jen majority alliance and his own alliance with Janu and Caryn Groedel, Coby also told Stephenie of Gregg's secret intention (or at least what he told Coby) that he and Jen would betray Tom, Ian, and Katie and join with the tribe's minority alliance. Coby also alleged that Jen was Stephenie's "main foe right now" -- having become jealous of Stephenie's success in their numerous head-to-head challenge matchups -- an allegation that one would think would have hurt Coby's attempt to convince Stephenie to ally with his minority alliance that, should Greg follow through on his stated intentions, would also soon feature Jen.
Returning to camp, Stephenie immediately shared the details of her conversation with Coby with Jen and Katie -- demonstrating that short of a massive individual immunity victory run, Coby was unlikely to survive much longer in the game. Later, Tom also approached Stephenie and implied that he, Ian and Katie where still committed the "Final 4" alliance (an alliance first revealed during last week's show) that the foursome had formed during Survivor: Palau's initial days of communal living.
Assembling for their first individual Immunity Challenge, the tribe discovered that the challenge would be a simple endurance challenge similar to Survivor: Amazon's famous "we'll strip for peanut butter and chocolate" challenge. After standing on their perch for an hour, Survivor host Jeff Probst tempted both Coby and Janu to quit in exchange for two donuts each.
After two hours and twenty three minutes, Jeff carried out another round of temptation -- fifteen cookies and a glass of milk -- that convinced Jen, Gregg, Ian, and Katie to quit. At the three hour mark, Jeff brought out his last temptation -- a large pizza -- and told the three remaining competitors that they had five seconds to claim a share of the pizza, otherwise the six castaways who already quit the challenge would receive it. Jeff's final temptation worked, causing Stephenie and Caryn to instantly leap from their perches, leaving Tom to claim victory in Survivor: Palau's first traditional individual immunity challenge.
At the evening's Tribal Council, Janu frankly voiced her opinion that she expected to be voted out of the tribe, however in the end, the majority of Koror's castaways decided that they'd had enough of Coby's incessant complaining, voting him out of the game in a 7-2 vote and making him Survivor Palau's first jury member.
