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The Survivors arrive and introduce themselves to the group. Randy is a wedding videographer who is a sworn bachelor. Crystal introduced herself as a day care worker, but didn’t mention she’s an Olympian.

In Gabon, the eldest make the decisions. Gillian and Bob step up to choose tribe members, with only name, rank and serial number to go on.

Bob, a physics teacher, selected first. He picked “Baldy” AKA Ace. Ace picked Sugar, the pin up model. Sugar picked Marcus, then Charlie the Lawyer.

Gillian selected Crystal, who picked Susie. Susie broke tradition and picked a boy, Matty who then picked Randy.

Michelle was the last girl standing.

The first challenge starts right away. The players have to run to the top of a hill to gather their supplies, including a bag of rice. The first team to make it to the top of the hill also wins extra food.

Marcus grabbed the first immunity idol for his tribe Kota and GC got up the hill first for Fang. Matty pushed Gillian up the hill and even dragged Crystal a few feet but it wasn’t enough. Kota got their tribe across the finished line first and won some beans and corn.

After the challenge the tribes split up and head to their camps. Bob gets right to work patching the roof on the hut and building a bench from sticks.

Gillian worked on keeping everyone’s spirits ups. Randy is annoyed by her up beat attitude, until he needed medical attention for a knock on the head and then who you gonna call? Gillian the retired nurse of course. She couldn’t see a thing so they brought in the medics to give him a couple of stitches.

Ken is a professional gamer so he’s right at home. He has a little crush on Michelle, especially after she ate a termite. I guess real women eat bugs.

Marcus and Charlie formed an early friendship - if you ask Charlie it was love at first sight but that’s not the way Marcus rolls. Nonetheless, they agree to let Ace take the lead. He even led the tribe through a few yoga poses to get them warmed up for the first immunity challenge.

The challenge is a huge obstacle course, with six players tied together. They go through a leech infested swamp, over a net, under and over barricades, then dig for puzzle pieces. The other three players are at the end of the line and they have to put the puzzle together. Kota was the first team to finish the course and Bob, Sugar and Paloma pieced it together before Fang even reached the finish line.

Kota won fire and flint and Fang won a date with Jeff at Tribal Council. Half the tribe wants to vote for Gillian because she’s the weakest link and a cheerful attitude only gets you so far. The other half of the tribe is eying Gillian’s polar opposite, Michelle, who is whiney and negative.

At tribal council the tribe completely unraveled. They don’t have a leader because stepping up is a kiss of death. GC made the mistake of opening his mouth and got railroaded into being a leader.

Michelle was the first player eliminated. I think they just felt bad because she was the last one picked for a tribe, so they decided she should be the first one voted out.

Charlie thinks Marcus is the whole package —whoa now, don’t be talking about his package. They’re forming an onion alliance, adding layers including Jacquie and Corinne. They want to bring Bob into the mix.

Randy has a plan of attack called “Let other people crash and burn.”

GC got up in the middle of the night to do laundry. Ken got up, then Susie and Matty until everyone was up talking. Gillian asked if they could just keep the chatter down until the sun came up. GC got a little defensive and resigned as leader, leaving the position open for the next sucker to fill.

The leaderless tribe made their way to reward challenge. The winning tribe will get fishing gear and they get to send a player from the other tribe to Exile Island. The tribes have to push a huge ball across the hilly landscape, through an obstacle course to retrieve keys. At the end of the course they’ll unlock chains to deliver the ball onto a pedestal. It was really close, but Kota won the third challenge in a row. They got immunity, fishing supplies and they sent Dan to Exile Island. Life is good for Kota.

Dan trekked out to Exile Island and had to pick either a clue to the hidden immunity idol or a comfort. He picked the clue. He did his best to find the immunity idol, but didn’t have any luck.

Randy had better luck creating a fishing hook from his glasses. Gillian and Crystal found some worms and GC sacrificed his shoelaces. They caught fish without winning any fishing gear. Dan came back to camp before tribal council. He denied finding the idol, but his tribe was suspicious and considered voting him out That’s the last thing they need to do, because they need some physical players if they ever hope to win a challenge. Randy was the only one who thought they were just being paranoid.

Gillian was the second person voted out. She’ll forever be remembered as the old lady who sucked on the hill.