The following contains spoilers for Episode 5 of Survivor Season 42.This season of Survivor has given fans some of the messiest tribes and most interesting players in a while, and with every episode, things just seem to get messier and messier. Episode 5 of Season 41 gave more insight into the inner workings of the tribes and allowed the audience to see where the alliances are divided. It seems like the players are starting to get more and more annoyed by the other people on their tribe, which is usually the position that everyone is in just before a Merge happens. At the very least, it allows them to switch alliances and start working with players on other tribes with little to no guilt.
Each episode generally starts with the tribe who went to Tribal Council the previous week coming back to their camp and discussing (usually in a tense manner) what happened with the vote. This time, it's the Ika tribe who is having a debrief, and Rocksroy specifically feels left out because he wasn't informed of the Swathi vote. He has a realization that he is perhaps not picking up on the social cues of his tribe, since everyone else was on the same page as far as the votes are concerned. It remains to be seen whether or not this will change his approach to the game in the coming days.
Meanwhile over at the Taku tribe, Jonathan's teammates are starting to grate on his nerves. Specifically, he takes issues with Maryanne and Lindsay apparently talking too much, and needs to go fishing to get some distance from them before he snaps. He wisely points out that him getting mad at Maryanne, who is often animated and dramatic, would look bad since he's massive and she's younger and much smaller.
In general, it can raise red flags when people, specifically men, complain about their female tribemates being "annoying" because they happen to be loud or talk a lot, as that's a criticism that is often lobbed at women in the real world and very rarely at men. Obviously, being around the same people every day and being food and sleep-deprived can take its toll and make a person more irritable, but it's still frustrating to see women consistently being criticized for things that are more a part of their personality than something they are actively doing to cause strife or annoyance.
Over at Vati, Daniel also takes a little fishing trip so that he can feel useful, but funnily enough, all it does is call his credibility into question. The rest of the tribe watches him attempt to spearfish and points out that he's been sitting out of challenges because of the shoulder he dislocated on Day 1, but seems to be perfectly fine swimming in the water here. It is a little suspect, especially considering how he sits out of the Immunity Challenge once again this episode.
Drea and Romeo find the Immunity Idol for their tribe (which Drea gets to claim as the primary finder), meaning that Drea now has a ton of advantages in her pocket, which will be a great safety net going into the Merge (or perhaps a liability depending on how many people find out about those advantages). At the Immunity Challenge, Maryanne states the activation phrase for her idol yet again, but instead of being met with silence, she's joined by Drea and Mike reciting their own statements to activate their idols.
Mike had been debating whether to do so or keep his idol a secret going into the Merge, but he ultimately decides that having a vote at this point in the game is much more important (which he ends up being right about, knowing how their eventual Tribal shakes out). These silly phrases for activating the idols are still an element of these recent seasons that doesn't totally work and ends up being more cringe-worthy for the viewer at home than anything else, so hopefully it's not a game element that production uses again in the future. It would actually be really hard to do it again since the players would now be aware of the twist having seen Seasons 41 and 42, and would instantly clock the awkward phrases.
Vati loses the Immunity Challenge and is thus getting sent to Tribal Council. Lydia and Rocksroy are selected to go on the "journey", and while they're gone, the Vati tribe starts strategizing. Chanelle and Daniel are both aware that they're on the chopping block, so they both start pleading their cases to HAi and Mike. Mike points out that they desperately need Lydia's vote tonight and hopes she doesn't risk it on her journey. Smash cut to Lydia and Rocksroy on the island, having a conversation about...nothing. Hilariously, both players stay very guarded and don't tell the other much about their tribe. It's just a funny contrast considering how open the other players who have gone on the "journey" together have been, that Rocksroy and Lydia had basically no interest in working together and just wanted to protect their tribe.
In the end, they both decide to protect their votes (once again showing their guardedness), and Lydia gets to keep her vote for Tribal. At this point, it seems like she and Hai are both really controlling the vote, though the end result is a bit more complicated than that. At Tribal Council, the tribe appears to be buddy-buddy at first, but Chanelle says that she believes this, specifically coming from Daniel, to be a fake attempt at building camaraderie to save his own skin while someone like Mike seems genuinely invested in staying friends with these people after the game. This points to an interesting dynamic that many of the tribes have, where it's clear they have tensions but they're also quite close with each other at the same time.
The votes are read and there are two for Chanelle, two for Daniel, and one for Mike, which was quite a twist. Upon a re-vote, it's Daniel who is sent home, which isn't super surprising considering his tribe's growing feelings of distrust towards him. It is revealed during the credits sequence that Chanelle voted for Mike, which seems odd on the surface but it was likely done to ensure that there was another name out there in the event that Daniel had an idol or played his Shot in the Dark successfully. Mike was visibly upset by this, though he doesn't know it was Chanelle, and it will be interesting to see if she'll confess or keep this fact a secret and blame it on Hai or Lydia to keep his trust.
This episode really pinpointed how the tribes have grown close in some ways but are becoming more and more divided by the day. They're all a mess, with very few solid alliances, and this means that the upcoming Merge is going to get complicated. Luckily, complicated tribe dynamics are Survivor's bread and butter, so hopefully it will be a return to form, and the complex strategies and shifting loyalties will play a big role in the post-Merge game.