Deal or No Deal Island Recap: You Get What You Give

Once again, the Black Widow has been squashed. Fresh off a deliciously diabolical run on last year’s The Traitors, Parvati Shallow came to Deal or No Deal Island to eat up the competition “like little gummy bears” — and for a while, it worked. Week after week, Parv managed to secure her immunity from elimination while building the game’s strongest alliance, The Family. But in the game’s penultimate episode, backed into a corner and forced to face the banker, she cut a bad deal and sent herself home. That’s the problem with becoming one of the biggest stars in reality TV: The more powerful you get, the less inclined people feel to help you out.

Part of the appeal of DONDI is its willingness to pit normies against reality royalty like Parvati and Australian Survivor “Golden God” David Genat. Now, with only the finale remaining, the show seems to have proven the thesis that seasoned champs really do have one over on the little guy. Big Brother’s infamous Dr. Will Kirby might’ve gone home relatively early, but our other two familiar faces, Parv and David, made it to the final four. Ordinary people do have one advantage, though, and that’s their sense of camaraderie. At the end of the day, it’s far easier to convince ourselves to work with fellow struggling students and stupid-email-job doers in the trenches than it is to hand another win to someone who’s already taken home a massive cash prize.

How fitting, then, that DONDI’s only remaining reality winner is David, who’s spent the game cosplaying as a buff, unassuming bloke from Australia. Alongside him in the Final Three were C.K. and Lete, and in the end, the game might’ve come down to how forgiving our most recently jilted normie, Phillip, was feeling.

David was in a privileged but tough spot this week — forced to decide whether to let his work wife, Parv, play Deal or No Deal like she wanted or to make someone else roll the dice with their fate instead. The last time he had to make this choice, he overruled his “son” Dickson, who wanted to play, and watched him get sent home. This time, David made the opposite choice but got the same outcome. Parvati made a bad deal, thus ending another run as the “Black Widow.” Where do we think we’ll see her next? Personally, I’m hoping for Dancing With the Stars. With her intensity, I’m convinced she’d crush a tango.

For now, though, this means that “The Family” is in shambles, and only the patriarch remains. (Typical!) But with more than $10 million on the line, this week’s excursion still came down to relationships — which did not bode well for C.K., who’s managed to alienate pretty much everyone at one point or another.

Each season, Survivor assembles a jury of recently eliminated contestants. On DONDI, the fresh departures showed up to either help or sabotage their former competitors as they attempted to cross a bridge full of obstacles, collecting unmarked cases along the way. Two alumni stood on each platform, where they could either provide helpful intel, laugh as the finalists struggled, or actively work against them. Whoever took the longest to cross the bridge would automatically go home, and the person with the highest case values would win the chance to play for the final case — worth more than $10 million. (Sorry, just one second — I’m wiping the drool and tears off my keyboard.)

Obviously, alliances are crucial to this challenge, but so is trust. With unmarked cases on the line, the people in charge of communicating their values had the opportunity to be very sneaky. This would not be a problem for someone like Lete, who never let anyone forget what an honest player she was, but needless to say, C.K. had a rougher time.

Lete went first, and for the most part, everyone wanted to help. Phil obviously pointed her right to his highest-value case, and after demanding that Lete convince her to help, Parv guided her as she built a bridge out of planks of wood. La Shell was not quite as helpful as Phil and told Lete which case not to pick, while Dr. Will helped her toss ropes with monkey’s fists at the end across the platform to create a pulley system to yank herself across. On the final platform, Seychelle jumped to help Lete cross, and although Dickson tried to play coy, you just knew he’d guide his former “island girlfriend” to his highest-value case. After all, once you’ve exchanged friendship bracelets, it’s forever.

The funniest round of this challenge was always going to be C.K., and she did not disappoint. People do NOT like her, and it’s not bullying because she deserves it. She’s spent weeks screwing people over, double dealing, and even got caught cheating in a challenge. As tired as this saying might be in our current era, this week was clearly the “Find Out” stage in C.K.’s “Fuck Around and Find Out” cycle. She was toast and she knew it, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t savor every smirk from a former competitor along the way.

On the first platform, Seychelle sets the tone beautifully by forcing C.K. to grovel, agreeing to help her, then doing nothing anyway. Honestly, that’s what C.K. gets for thinking Seychelle, who just recently called her “nothing but a cheat with a flat ass, baby,” would actually lift a finger to help her. If there’s a God on this earth, we’ll see Seychelle on another show before the year is over.

On the second platform, Phil got similarly petty, asking C.K., “Are you going to trust that I treated you better than you treated me?” He deliberately pointed her to the high-value case, knowing she’d never trust him. Indeed, she chose another, once again sealing her own fate. Even La Shell decided to be less than helpful on the third platform, forcing C.K. to pick her own case and ask her if she thought it was a good or bad idea. The only person who really helped C.K. was Dr. Will, who declined at first but then seemingly took pity on her. Who knew that such a softie lurked beneath that L.A. vampire exterior?

David mostly did okay in this game, but Dr. Will forced him to reveal which show he’d competed on before, which briefly threatened David’s relationship with Dickson, who overheard and wondered why David would keep such a secret. Luckily for David, the answer is both obvious and understandable, and Dickson will clearly be his biggest fan for life, so it didn’t matter — he still gave him his highest-value case. Dr. Will, meanwhile, helped David build his bridge until the final plank, which he threw into the water for a laugh. I hate to say it, but I think after all the complaining about him, I’m Dr. Will–pilled now.

Really, the only threat to David’s game came from Phil, who hit him with the same question as he had C.K.: “Do you trust that I have been better for you than you have for me?” I’ll be honest: As funny and appropriate as this question might have been the first time, it felt a little obnoxious and self-righteous the second time. Then again, Phil’s downfall in this game was taking things too personally at the expense of being strategic, so this does track.

In the end, C.K. obviously got the slowest time by several minutes — ending her DONDI run with the automatic and unceremonious exit she deserves. (That said, I do wish that we could have seen her case values, because I bet they were even more abysmal.) David and Lete were neck and neck, and ultimately, this game will all come down to which case Phil gave the guy who sent him home. Despite their beef, David trusted the case that Phil picked — which, based on what Phil did with C.K., might have been the right move. But if Phil had a different trick up his sleeve, Lete might’ve just won this thing. Curse the DONDI gods for making us wait a week to find out!

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See you all next week!