Deal or No Deal Island Recap: Agents of Chaos
In this life, there are some rules we all must follow. Don’t play with fire. Don’t talk with your mouth full. And please, for the love of God, if you’re on a reality-competition show, do not — I repeat DO NOT! — take undue credit for your team’s victories. Otherwise, you’ll wind up like Sydnee Peck, who managed to turn half of the Deal or No Deal Island cast against her before they’d even finished unpacking.
Last week, Joe Manganiello, our host and keeper of the golden deal-making phone, offered Sydnee the chance to alienate her fellow players and she took it, declaring herself the leader of a challenge team that actually spent most of its time carrying her on its back. This, combined with other cracks in her game (like the cringey flirting with Australian Survivor “Golden God” David Genat), planted the seeds for her downfall. But more important than the why in this case is the who: One player just proved she’s a great liar by promising Sydnee she’d be safe when she definitely was not.
This week’s challenge drags us through a “twisted treasure hunt” in the jungle. The Banker (a woman this time, in case you haven’t heard!) has scattered unmarked briefcases across the island inside treasure chests. Our intrepid players must pair off and find them. Each team gets a piece of a map marked with chest locations and briefcase amounts. Whoever comes back with the highest amount chooses one of the two lowest-scoring pairs to play a game of Deal or No Deal. If that team makes a good deal, they pick one person from the other low-scoring team to go home; if they make a bad deal, the other low-scoring team eliminates one of them instead.
No one wants to confront the horrors of the forest only to go home in the world’s silliest luggage-based game of chance, so the team-picking process is revealing. Dickson Wong gloms on to his “island dad,” David, who happily chooses him back in order to “get the hell out of Sydnee town.” Dickson’s smart to keep David and his island “mom,” Survivor legend Parvati Shallow, close, but honestly, his “Mommy, Daddy, goo-goo gaga” shtick has got to go if he wants anyone to respect him as a player in his own right. Also, Sydnee doesn’t love that David ditched her for Dickson despite promising not to do that.
“I can really be manipulated by, like, charm,” Sydnee admits, and, well, she’s right! Still, I’m not sure how David “charmed” her, given all of the barely hidden grimaces he gave the camera whenever she flirted with him.
I’m gonna pause here and say that as easy as it might be to make fun of Sydnee, that’s probably because it feels a little too close to looking in a mirror. As much as we’d all like to think we could be like Parvati, who sincerely says things like “I love a jungle so much; I thrive with a sweat mustache,” there is a 100 percent chance we’d be just like Sydnee instead — tripping over floating platforms and getting paired up with Hawaiian-shirt enthusiast and (so far) total dud Rock Carlson because people assume we don’t have the juice. Like it or not, Sydnee is all of us.
[Exhales] Anyway, Parvati links up with Phillip, which is fun because he’s both quippy enough to keep up with her and willing to follow her lead when she says they should abandon their search for the $700,000 case and instead pursue the Banker’s Bonus. What’s the Banker’s Bonus, you ask? Why, it’s a game-changing surprise hidden somewhere along the way, of course! When Parvati and Phillip find it, they also discover the highest-value case, worth $1.5 million. Yay! But what does the Banker’s Bonus do? We’ll get to that shortly.
As for the challenge, La Shell and Courtney “C.K.” Kim snag the case Parvati and Phillip abandoned. (Nice of Parv and Phil to share its location; they might’ve just gained some allies for the future.) Although it takes La Shell and C.K. time to pry the treasure chest free from its watery enclosure, they successfully bring back the $700,000. Dickson and David score $800,000, Storm Wilson and Seychelle Cordero bring back $1 million, and Alexis Lete and Maria-Grace “M.G.” Cook brave a box full of rats to snag $1.25 million. This leaves (you guessed it) Rock and Sydnee at the bottom with $500,000.
As for that Banker’s Bonus: It turns out that Parvati and Phillip brought Dr. Will Kirby, known as the greatest Big Brother player of all time, into the game. I’m sure he won’t be a threat, though. Not at all.
No one seems excited to see Dr. Will and his doofy tuxedo. C.K. calls out his “vampire looks,” and I don’t think she means the Edward Cullen kind. Storm thinks his new adversary looks “like he died, like, 100 years ago.” And Phillip dubs their new competition “three much” — as in, one step further than “too much.” (Sometimes, his jokes land, and sometimes, he’s trying a bit too hard, but I appreciate the effort every time!) But Dr. Will is not here to make friends. He’s here to dominate the competition, berate them for only pulling in $1 last week, and keep us compulsively Googling his age while thinking, “Really?”
This, my dear friends, is when Sydnee’s meltdown begins. When she realizes that she and Rock are in the bottom, she cries — and I mean cries. Later, she asks C.K. if she wants to send her home. In an Emmy-worthy example of dramatic irony, C.K. promises Sydnee she’s safe and shakes her hand while we, the viewers who’ve watched her complain a lot about Sydnee, can only shake our heads.
Everyone’s tactics (or lack thereof) are now on full display. Parvati, one half of the pair who actually gets to pick who plays Deal or No Deal for their lives, suggests to C.K. that Sydnee should stick around as an “agent of chaos” but admits that she can’t stand Sydnee and might send her home. Parvati’s right; Sydnee’s the kind of walking disaster who can unify a cast in shared resentment. She’s a walking shield, a Hail Mary waiting to be deployed, a body to throw under the bus when the need for such a thing finally comes. She’s not proven herself incapable enough (yet) to threaten the pot, so why not keep her? Answer: Courtney doesn’t like her!
Parvati and Phillip honor La Shell and C.K.’s desire to play Deal or No Deal, but the game is barely about them. Our first hilarious moment comes when our players choose a case, only for Dr. Will to smugly shake his head like he knows that choosing that case, in particular, is a bad idea. The second best moment is when Sydnee interrupts everything — literally, the whole game — to apologize to her fellow players for acting like an ass. Oh, Sydnee … This is just not your game. No one really knows what to do with this, so Deal or No Deal continues.
Despite some awful luck, C.K. and La Shell pocket a healthy $281,000 offer from the banker, which turns out to be an excellent deal. Given the choice between Rock and Sydnee, they choose to eliminate Sydnee as “the bigger threat.” (Sure, Jan.) On her way out, Sydnee tearfully says, “I need to be more aware, and I need to be more conscious.” Once again, all I can say is I feel for her.
More than anything, this episode has given us a lot of information about C.K. She told Sydnee she was safe without blinking, and by defying Parvati’s suggestion to keep Sydnee around, she also proved that she’s got enough spine to follow her own instincts. Letting Sydnee go is by no means a mistake, but this cut also shows us that C.K.’s game is both emotional and tactical. Let’s just hope that she knows there’s a time and a place for each.
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