'Survivor: Cambodia', Episode 8 analysis: Blindsides and blunders

There was the Ta Keo Five from the second Ta Keo. If so, you should be taking place in our weekly prediction contest. Jeff says he'll see them tonight at #TribalCouncil.

For this week's rewards challenge the tribes had to paddle out to a bunch of crates they then had to stack in a particular order.

At that night's tribal council, Kass was brought in as jury member #1. Once she found herself on a tribe with Spencer, Kass began talking up the chaos, gleefully harking back to confessionals of old while deliberating whether to vote out her old nemesis. Jeff asks why not out them and she says she may be there tomorrow and still has to work with them.

Let's pour one out for Chaos.

Who will win "Survivor: Second Chance"?

Ciera feels she is up against people who do not want to play the game and she feels she is going to need a miracle to stay unless the group will rally to take out a bigger fish. And she was entertaining to boot! I'm not out of the game. They are down to seven within minutes then Fish drops and the field is cut in half. The other problem with Stephen's plan is that he's far too aggressive in trying to sell it to everyone, taking it not only to allies like Jeremy and Tasha, but perceived rivals such as Wentworth. Tonight's episode, started off with conversation footage.

It wasn't all emotion, of course.

Then Joe immediately suggested that Stephen get voted out after learning that Stephen campaigned against him earlier. With Abi in the fold, the only possible option was Woo. Savage has been trying to send her home from the start, and when she was the only one to strangely vote for Savage at last week's tribal council, this only made him want to get rid of her even more.

However, it's easy to rationalize game moves and impossible to separate emotions from Survivor. And at the end of the day, their personal conflict was too much for the rest of the tribe. Andrew says people are doing that, but because Ciera is on the bottom, she can't see that. Not appreciated. Savage flips her off as he exits. I'm used to getting head fakes from CBS so it's hard to tell where this is going, but if the castaways are really playing wouldn't Joe be the bigger move?

So why was it that the majority went against Kass? Keith got turned off by Kass' outbursts, but originally Keith was determined the Ta Keo Five needed to win it for Terry. They all agree that there's no way they can be merging this soon. It appeared most of the votes were leaning towards voting out Stephen. Fish sees the wisdom of this and says they just need six.

At the top of the episode, Stephen made it his mission to blindside Joe, building on his redemption arc from Survivor: Tocantins, in which his decision not to vote out the "Golden Boy" around camp ended up costing him the million dollars. And yet, while it was a a great move and all, this will only buy Wentworth another three days in this game unless she finds a way to divide Bayon and get the numbers on her side. Finally, perhaps it's another example of Tasha's social game. The apex of his edit here has to be when he overhears Stephen plotting against Joe and calls it "disgusting", as if he hasn't plotted behind anyone else's back and been nice to their face before (ahem, Spencer). Andrew says no one but Wentworth saw it coming and says he proved he can hang and played the game. It was an unconventional choice. Kass was throwing it around at tribal council, Andrew flipped off the immunity challenge, and then he flipped off seemingly at least a few people in the game when he was blindsided. But then again, it is "Survivor", and anything can happen. Spencer is out and it is down to Keith and Joe.

With the other alphas, it's a little different. They have to row out to a series of crates.

Joe and Savage want to vote out Stephen.

If they pull it off, this might be a first. Boys' clubs and/or alliances based on challenge strength often form at the start of the game, but they rarely survive the merge-usually, they don't even make it that far. Players who are good at challenges place more value on winning challenges. Joe and Fishbach are still secret enemies yet they officially belong to the same - now weakened - alliance. He's ready to go for someone who is a threat to win the game. He wants to focus on the Ciera's and Wentworths and schemes with Jeremy to figure out who they want to take out and work to offset the move. Kimmi is in trouble and finally loses it. Now it's four. Spencer, Abi, Stephen, Jeremy, Tasha, and Andrew return to camp defeated, while the Kellys, Keimmie, Joe, Keith, and Ciera head to the Survivor Coffee Bar to gorge on food and caffeine.

Turns out Kelley made a great move. It's a plan that makes sense, and even Jeremy - who's wanted to use Joe as a shield to distract from his perceived physical abilities - considers that it might be time to stop Joe now before he becomes an even bigger threat than he is. They don't know who's running the show, he says. She built something with Woo and Abi on Angkor, but Woo's gone and Abi voted against her despite knowing Kass was going home. When the opportunity to target Kass emerged at the merge (the earliest and largest in the show's history, with timing that certainly saved Savage's skin and equally certainly put Kass and Ciera in an unenviable position), Tasha went after the person she knew, historically, she could not trust.