Showing that despite appearances, old alliances die hard, the former women of Survivor: Vanuatu's Yasur tribe realigned immediately upon the competition's tribal merger, and as a result Rory Freeman, the 35-year-old housing case manager from Des Moines, IA, was voted out of the game during last evening's Survivor broadcast.
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Survivor: Vanuatu's eighth episode opened with the Lopevi tribe returning from Tribal Council, where they had ousted John Kenney, the last of their tribe's young male outsiders, rather than Julie Berry, the 23-year-old youth mentor from Gorham, ME, or Twila Tanner, the 41-year-old highway repair worker from Marshall, MI.
Over at Yasur, Rory had grown extremely weary of being the sole male member of his tribe. "I'm ready to get the hell out of Yasur," Rory exclaimed. "I really, really, really want to be around some men!"
When the tribes assembled for the episode's Reward Challenge, they discovered that the competition would involve a modified firefighting bucket relay, with the tribe members having to fill a bucket with water and then transport the water to a larger container by first tossing the bucket and lastly the water itself from person to person. After some early struggles in which both tribes tried to determine how to throw and catch the bucket with minimal water loss -- as well as how to execute the final water toss to ensure as complete a transfer as possible -- Lopevi jumped to a lead and won the challenge's prize of milk, cookies, and chocolate cake.
After reconvening for the following day's Immunity Challenge, the tribe's were hit with the news that Rory had been waiting for -- the tribes had merged and the Immunity Challenge would now offer individual immunity to its winner. After two heats of the flag retrieval challenge, the competition's four finalists had been determined: Rory, Eliza Orlins, Lea "Sarge" Masters, and Ami Cusack.
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The speed of the final competition appeared to slow significantly versus that of the two initial heats. All four contestants appeared to hit a wall early in the final round, but by virtue of his initial early lead, Sarge was able to handily win the competition, and with it the highly coveted individual immunity necklace.
Despite realizing that they were outnumbered by the women 6-4, the men remained confident of the evening's Tribal Council, believing that Twila and Julie, the two former Yasur members, were now loyal to the Lopevi men as a result of the tribal swap. However their confidence began to wane once the men saw how quickly the women appeared to reacquaint -- creating some doubt as to where Twila and Julie's true loyalties laid... fear's that were confirmed when the six women allied to oust Rory in a 6-4 vote.