By Kim
Now that there are two people on Redemption Island (Semhar and Christine), it's time for a duel. As with last season, two people from each tribe are invited to witness it. Upolu sends Coach and Stacey and the Savaii tribe sends Ozzy and Elyse. The challenge involves balancing a totem on a platform on top of a pole. At regular intervals, they have to add a segment to the pole, making it longer. If the totem falls, you lose. Before they start, Semhar does a weird spoken word thing all about this awesome man whom she has not yet met. I think she's losing it on Redemption Island. That's assuming that she was normal before she went there, though, and I'm not so sure about that. Semhar eventually loses, which means Christine and her filthy neck (seriously, there were layers of grime) get to stick around for a while. Semhar gives a big speech about how she felt abandoned by her tribe and whatever. That girl needs therapy.
Brandon finally takes off his shirt and reveals that he's Russell's nephew, mostly because he's feeling guilty about getting caught trying to oust Mikayla. Not that I don't think he felt guilty about trying to oust Mikayla; just that he got caught. The tribe is pretty whatever about the reveal. Later, Brandon kind of goes off about Mikayla and tells her that he's not the only one who wanted her out, and yells at her in front of the whole tribe. And then Brandon reveals to the camera how much he struggles with good versus evil. He needs to join Mikayla at the therapist's office.
Over on the other tribe, Ozzy reveals to Keith that he has an Immunity Idol. Keith immediately tells Whitney. Meanwhile, Papa Bear is feeling like an outcast in his own tribe, because he's not clicking with anyone.
The Immunity Challenge is as convoluted as they've all been lately, which is fun to watch but difficult to explain without a visual. I'll give it a shot. One person runs out a floating dock holding a body board attached to a rope. That person grab a bag, then hops on the body board and the rest of the tribe cranks a winch to pull him or her back to shore. Repeat five times. When all the bags are retrieved, the rest of the tribe is on top of a wall, and they use grappling hooks to retrieve the bags, which contain puzzle banners (because that's a thing). They must unroll the banners and arrange them on the wall to make the tribe's flag. Got all that? Good. In addition to immunity, the winning tribe gets reward – some staples like sugar and coffee, along with milk and cookies, as well as another clue to the Immunity Idol, because those clues have been really useful, historically.
Brandon and Ozzy are chosen to run out to the bags first. One glitch not mentioned in Probst's description is that the tribe has to feed the rope OUT before cranking it in, and Ozzy's tribe does a terrible job, so Ozzy can't go very quickly. It doesn't really matter, as the lead changes several times during this segment and the teams are dead even going into the grappling hook portion. Coach is some sort of grappling hook savant and gets the pieces up pretty quickly, earning enough of a lead that Upolu wins handily.
Papa Bear catches wind that he's probably going to be voted out so he goes hunting for the Immunity Idol. He obviously doesn't find it, since Ozzy has it, but he makes a fake one. No one is fooled, and he is voted out. He did call out the alliance of five during Tribal Council, but the others on the outs (Cochran and Dawn) don't seem overly concerned.