Monty Brinton/CBSAfter a week off so that us Yanks could celebrate Turkey Day, the game continued Thursday on Survivor: Gabon with a few puzzles, a slog through a swamp, a little trivia and a nice surprise standing in the way between one contestant and a free pass into next week.
Or, for another, a seat on the Gabon jury.
Here's a rundown of the challenges and twisted thought processes leading up to tonight's elimination:
Bob Crowley, despite being the one who actually plied Randy Bailey with a fake Immunity Idol, is pretty pissed at Sugar Kiper for being so mean-spirited about the trick, aka laughing her ass off when Randy tried to play the resin-and-wood piece-of-nothing Bob fashioned while in exile.
Meanwhile, Sugar's not-so-sweet side targets Corinne Kaplan as a potential next victim.
Kenny Huang goes for a friendly fishing trip with Bob. Obviously, he has some ulterior motive.
Reward Challenge: Two teams of three, tethered together, race into a swamp to collect seven sprocket-shaped puzzle pieces, which need to be arranged so they all work together, cogs-in-a-machine style. Then the teams split up to solve a slide picture puzzle.
Crystal Cox and Susie Smith get to be captains. It's Crystal, Sugar and Bob vs. Susie, Matty Whitmore and Kenny. Corinne is left out, meaning she gets no shot at the reward—the chance to watch a lengthy cell-phone video message from a loved ones while enjoying pizza, beer and brownies.
"You will fill up your belly and you will fill up your heart," romanticizes Jeff Probst.
Crystal, finally pulling her weight, leads her team to the pieces first, but the others pull ahead after Sugar stumbles one too many times, and then they fall way behind, as Matty, Kenny and Susie get their last four pieces first. Can Bob the physics teacher help them make up for lost time?
He sure does! And then he goes and wins the whole thing. Kenny, not appreciating Bob's victory, decides that if Bob doesn't win immunity…he's out.
Aw…video phone, shmideo phone. Bob's wife shows up in person, and their reunion is adorable. Turns out his missus digs the full beard and campfire smell her hubby is rockin'.
And because these folks are on a reality-TV show and not in prison, along comes everyone else's loved ones, too—Kenny's sister, Matty's girlfriend turned fiancée (he proposes with the ring he made!), Crystal's boyfriend, Sugar's sis, Susie's husband and Corinne's brother.
Tonight's strategizing: Bob tells Corinne he's up for blindsiding Matty. While they're gone, Matty tells the rest that he's down for taking out Bob. Bob shows Corinne some scrap he's going to use to make another fake Idol, with the idea of implying to everyone that he found the Idol that Marcus had supposedly thrown into the sea. An idea that's kinda played out, don't you think?
Immunity Challenge: Gabon trivia! Each islander earns rubber balls for every question he/she answers correctly, then they take turns throwing their balls off a platform toward a huge target on the ground that's divided into various zones. Whoever gets his/her ball closes to the target, wins.
Corinne and Sugar get the first question right: True, gorillas were first discovered in Gabon in 1847. Who knew?! Sugar's the only one to get all the questions right, and ends up with four balls heading into the big toss.
Bob wins, getting one of his balls just one zone away from the bull's-eye. Someone's on a roll tonight.
Kenny rallies the troops to get rid of Corinne. Later, Corinne tells Kenny that Bob found Marcus Lehman's Idol and that she and Bob are gunning for Matty. Kenny believes the Idol mumbo-jumbo, and figures he needs to flip on Matty—and should probably get Crystal onboard, too. But Kenny instructs Crystal to vote for Corinne regardless, meaning Corinne could still be in big trouble, considering she doesn't really have an Idol to play, if four of the votes go her way.
Tribal Council: When Corinne doesn't play an Idol after the voting, Kenny and Crystal know that they were sucked into the big scheme of things. Or is Kenny just brilliant? Fourth member of the Survivor: Gabon jury, 4-3: Corinne.