Death of an Alliance

Death of an Alliance is the penultimate episode of.

Day 34
With Pagong no more, Richard continues to plot and scheme. He says that the game is in his control. He and Rudy agree that Kelly should be the next to go. Rudy says that his loyalty in the game is to Richard, and he won’t break his word. On the beach, Sue and Kelly get into an argument about Kelly’s abandoning the alliance. Sue accuses Kelly of pandering to the Pagong Jury members, but Kelly retorts that she dropped out of the alliance because she thought it was a conniving way to play the game. Aside from that, all is quiet around camp. The castaways reflect upon how much they miss their families.

Day 35
At the challenge, Jeff promises a very unique reward: the winner will go to a bar and watch the first five minutes of the first episode of Survivor. To win the challenge, they must roll around in a mud pit and transfer mud to a bucket using only their bodies. When the buckets are weighed, Kelly wins the reward. One boat ride later, Kelly joins Jeff Probst for a visit to the "Survivor Bar." Jeff pops in the video of the first Survivor episode, and Kelly enjoys seeing herself and her tribe mates on TV. When Kelly returns to camp, she quickly learns that Richard, Sue, and Rudy haven’t included her in their Final Four plans. She realizes she’s on her own.

Day 36
At the Immunity Challenge, Jeff tells the group a story about Malaysian folklore. The castaways must then answer five questions about the story to retrieve five masks. It’s a close contest—aside from Rudy, who answers "I dunno" to every question—but Kelly wins by a nose. The Tagi alliance is annoyed that their voting plans have again gone up in smoke. Before Tribal Council, Sean speculates that the votes will be split in several different directions. But in the end, the Tagi four remain strong as the last alliance outsider Sean is booted in an unanimous 4-1 vote.

Reward
Challenge: Mud Pack

Under a time limit of five minutes, tribe members dove into the Pagong’s old mud pit and covered their body with as much mud as they can, then raced back and scraped it off into a bucket. They could not carry mud in their arms or in their hands, only their body. The buckets were then weighed, and the heaviest bucket would win. Reward: A cold beer, then picked up, blindfolded and taken to a mysterious bar to watch the first five minutes of the season. Winner: Kelly Wiglesworth

Immunity
Challenge: The Survivor Witch Project Jeff told the castaways a story about Bornean folklore. After telling the story, the castaways will run to the woods (where the masks with questions on them were scattered) with a video camera to record their answers. The first person to get back to the start with all of the masks and the questions right on tape wins immunity. Winner: Kelly Wiglesworth

Voting Confessionals
Kelly, Sean and Richard’s confessionals are only available on DVD. "rattana"

- See ya, bud. It's time. I held ya here as long as I could, and uh... I'm only one man. I think you've stayed quite a while, Sean, given what people have been, uh... thinking about your strategy, et cetera. But it's uh... it's time. It's down to the nitty gritty here, and the wavering and, uh... offbeat strategy, it's not something that can be relied on... in these last few very, very important days. See you at home.

"rattana"

- According to the master plan, he has to go.

"rattana"

- Nothing personal. Just competition.

"rattana"

- I'm voting for Sue tonight. She's a good friend of mine. But it needed to be done.

"rattana"

- That was fun. Good luck, buddy.

Behind the Scenes

 * According to the Survivor Historians podcast, the survivors initially had servings of beer as a reward. Angered by such an insignificant prize, the contestants threatened to quit the show, hence the producers' decision to bring the Reward Challenge winner, Kelly, to Base Camp and let her watch the first five minutes of the season.

Other

 * This episode marked the first unanimous vote.
 * This was the first time that the two tribes were split again. This time, the five remaining castaways were all from the Tagi tribe, while the yet-incomplete Jury was entirely comprised of former Pagong members. This would happen again in.
 * Sean Kenniff’s torch mysteriously went out even though there was no rain. Jeff Probst says to Sean when he formally uses a snuffer, "Tribe has spoken and the jungle has spoken." This is the second time that this has happened, following Stacey Stillman's elimination earlier this season.
 * Sean’s elimination marked the first time an original Tagi member was voted out since Pulling Your Own Weight.