Blindside Time

Blindside Time is the eighth episode of.

Day 20
On Day 20, a boat arrived at the Gota beach announcing the Merge, where it took the Gota tribe to the Bikal beach, where the newly Merged tribe took part in the traditional Merger feast. Malcolm Freberg named the tribe Enil Edam; unbeknownst to the tribe, this was to honor his mother Madeline, for Enil Edam was her name backwards. Phillip Sheppard told Andrea Boehlke that they, along with John Cochran and Dawn Meehan, could take themselves all the way to the Final Four. Corinne Kaplan plotted with Malcolm about blindsiding Phillip, and they planned to gather a majority voting bloc comprising Corinne & Michael Snow, plus Reynold Toepfer & Eddie Fox of the Cool Kids Alliance, with Malcolm and Erik Reichenbach. Their master plan was to vote along with the Favorites in eliminating Sherri Biethman before turning on Phillip at the following Tribal Council.

Day 22
At the Immunity Challenge, Andrea, Malcolm, Eddie, Cochran, Phillip, and Michael advanced to the second round. Malcolm, Eddie, and Cochran then downed the shipworms to advance to the third round. Eddie struggled with the balut, giving Malcolm the opportunity to face off against Cochran in the final round. The final round was a close and fast competition, with Cochran barely defeating Malcolm and taking the win, upon which he celebrated giddily. Back at camp, Phillip told Corinne that he wanted to split the vote between Reynold and Eddie, but since she needed both of their votes and wanted to keep them from being nervous, she lobbied to vote out Sherri, aiming to keep the eventual plot to blindside Phillip under the surface. Trying to gather support to blindside Phillip, Corinne talked to Dawn about joining the blindside. Worried about what happened last time she kept serious post-Merge information to herself, Dawn decided to relay the information to Cochran, and it traveled through the Stealth R Us 2.0's members until it reached Phillip. The core Stealth R Us alliance was concerned that Corinne did have the numbers to blindside Phillip, and went to work to blindside Corinne instead. Phillip told Sherri that she could advance in the game by voting for Corinne. Erik became the swing vote, with Andrea telling him to vote for Corinne, while Malcolm told him to vote for Sherri. At Tribal Council, Erik decided to vote for Corinne, and she was blindsided by a vote of 7–5.

Immunity
Challenge: Caramoan Catering  Castaways would have to eat exotic dishes in which they must eat all of it in their mouth and show their empty tongues to finish, in which a certain number of fastest finishers would advance to the next round. The castaway that finishes all stages wins immunity.

Winner: John Cochran

Others

 * This episode marks the first time that John Cochran has won an individual challenge in any of his two seasons.
 * This episode marks the first time since An Emerging Plan where the first person voted out of a Merged tribe isn't a member of the Jury.
 * However, it marks the first time since The Dragon Slayer where the first person eliminated from a merged tribe isn't a member of the Jury, as Joe Dowdle was evacuated with an infected knee.
 * This episode marked Corinne as the first contestant to be voted out from a merged tribe of twelve that did not make the Jury.
 * This was the first Tribal Council post-tribal swap where the person voted out hadn't switched tribes.
 * This was also the first post-swap episode where a favorite was voted out in favor of a fan
 * As of this episode, every member of the original Gota has received at least one vote at Tribal Council (although Laura Alexander's vote for Reynold Toepfer was not counted due to his Hidden Immunity Idol).
 * With Corinne's elimination, Dawn Meehan is the only woman left from the post-switch Bikal.

Episode Title

 * The title of this episode was said by Corinne Kaplan.
 * Ironically, Corinne would be blindsided at this episode's Tribal Council.