Donny Ketchum

Good on Misti for plowing through her pain, but this team keeps making rookie mistakes with transportation. They're lucky they recovered from picking a jeepney that went the wrong way. They did the Detour well enough (though Jim could've at least shown some concern as to whether or not Amy was all right), but Jim missed the simple document that Robbie and Adam also missed. Getting the dolly was a smart move, though. Third place was deserved, but let's see how they run the final leg.

They started strongly and never looked back. They actually thought to check on the correct direction of the jeepney and got back to Manila first, and then, Adam owned the This Detour. Losing the clue was a stupid mistake, though. If they hadn't, they might've kept up their usual good racing and won the leg. Adam not catching the document was another costly error, too, but one from which he recovered, at least. Second was deserved, but they need to race for first on this next leg. Good luck to them!

For once, they ran an amazing leg! They got on a jeepney heading the right way to their Speed Bump, finished that Speed Bump fast, and for the most part, didn't struggle too much at the Detour. Robbie had some stumbles at the Roadblock, but he figured out his mistake, and they actually got their first win, as a result. Nonetheless, the way they've acted -- especially me -- rooting for them to be the team eliminated midway through the final leg in next week's finale.

It was another tense leg, and one that wouldn't have been as tense without that jeepney mistake at the beginning of the leg. Calling the Detours This and That was very titter-worthy to me. The Roadblock wasn't as fun, but the level of competitiveness was still apparent, at least. The only thing was that the "shocking" news was only semi-shocking due to Phil saying "may" rather than "will." When he said that, I figured out that something was going on. But enough with that. Here are the teams: Brooke & Robbie: For once, they ran an amazing leg! They got on a jeepney heading the right way to their Speed Bump, finished that Speed Bump fast, and for the most part, didn't struggle too much at the Detour. Robbie had some stumbles at the Roadblock, but he figured out his mistake, and they actually got their first win, as a result. Adam & Bethany: They started strongly and never looked back. They actually thought to check on the correct direction of the jeepney and got back to Manila first, and then, Adam owned the This Detour. Losing the clue was a stupid mistake, though. If they hadn't, they might've kept up their usual good racing and won the leg. Adam not catching the document was another costly error, too, but one from which he recovered, at least. Misti & Jim: Good on Misti for plowing through her pain, but this team keeps making rookie mistakes with transportation. They're lucky they recovered from picking a jeepney that went the wrong way. They did the Detour well enough (though Jim could've at least shown some concern as to whether or not Amy was all right), but Jim missed the simple document that Robbie and Adam also missed. Getting the dolly was a smart move, though. Third place was deserved, but let's see how they run the final leg. Amy & Maya: These girls had me worried when they also made the jeepney mistake and didn't ask about it in time. Still, Amy recovered nicely from the accident at the Detour. And while she didn't make the same mistake as Robbie, Adam, and Jim when it came to the document, she did make the mistake in terms of the quantities she needed. And I felt terrible for her when she got hit by that dehydration and heat exhaustion. Hope she's okay! But they should be feeling damn lucky that they changed up the structure of the final leg this season, or they'd be gone after Amy's costly error at the Roadblock. Good episode, good twist, and hopefully, a good finale is on its way next week! I admit, though, that the other reason I was only semi-shocked by the twist is because Still, a pretty good twist on their part! I approve, show!:)

Don't really agree with what everyone's been saying. I thought it was a solid episode since it at least stayed on sex crimes. But I could've gone without the Noah drama, even if that baby is cute.

Well! Apparently, TAR26 is trying something very new! According to RFF, the penultimate leg is a TBC, and the final leg features a F4, but with a mid-leg elimination. The F4 are apparently Tyler & Laura, Rochelle & Mike, the black man and Asian woman, and an as-of-yet-unidentified coed couple. Sounds like both gay couples were eliminated before the F5, because the fifth-place team was confirmed as another coed team.

I'd change the title. This should be about hero vs. villain edits, too. Like some others early in the season, I was worried that Josh was getting the winner's edit, because they were showing each facet of his game in the early weeks and showing how he was in control of Coyopa. The only things that gave me hope were that they showed at least one person distrustful of him (Baylor) after he went behind her back and wrote her name down at the very first Tribal Council, and she continued not fully trusting him after that. Even more so when he missed an episode, confessional-wise, after he was swapped to Hunahpu, took control there with Reed, Alec, and Wes, and he wasn't shown setting up his game in terms of how to proceed. By the time the merge had hit . . . I don't know. There were just some moments that led me to believe he was being set up for a fall rather than taking control of the game. Sure enough, he was gone the second week of the merge. So that takes me to Jeremy. Unlike Josh, he had confessionals every week he was in the game. We got to see every facet of his game, as well -- his alliances, how he was adapting to the changes of the game, and how he was dealing with curveballs thrown at him. And unlike Josh, his edit also came with a bit of a hero's edit, such as his disgust in the majority of the guys' unrefined behavior around camp the week Josh was booted. He was presented as the leader of the "good" alliance who took over and got rid of Josh. If anything, his only remotely negative moment (in my eyes, anyway) was when he lost his temper a slight bit over Keith trying lie about him having an idol when he didn't. But other than that, he was generally portrayed positively. Even the last part of his final words ("Good guy lost this time") indicated that the editors had definitely chosen him as the hero. Next is Jon. At first, with the early talk about his father, I did think he might've been a contender, editing-wise, for the winner. And he generally remained positive in the early weeks, until he finally lost his shit for a moment over being left out of the Drew blindside. Also, for several weeks, his own game wasn't truly followed, as far as I could see. It wasn't till the drama over him and Jaclyn being swing votes -- the power couple, basically -- that they even started following his game. And even then, any positivity to his edit got thrown out the window when he betrayed the designated hero, Jeremy. From there, they steadily made the power he'd gotten go to his head. And even worse, they started showing how blind and oblivious to things he was, like the blindsides being planned behind his back. No winner would ever get presented as that unaware. Not to mention him being so adamant to claim playing his idol as his own move when everyone with eyes could see that Natalie was the one who'd gotten him to do so. And to go with it, they showed how sick of him the other castaways were starting to get, as well as his moments of entitlement and arrogance coming out in full force. Yes, they had the moment of him saying he saw past Jaclyn's condition, but that was to give him a redeeming quality, really. Nothing more. Once they showed the jury clearly disinterested in his father story, I was positive that he wasn't winning even if he did manage to get to the end. So looking at who's left . . . I'm going on Natalie. They've shown bits and pieces of her game at just the right times. This began with her tirade that got John voted out, leading and organizing the Drew blindside, her taking Julie's place on Exile Island, securing her alliance with Baylor while there, her moments of being shown as observant and having a decent pulse on what was going on, and, since Jeremy's ouster, her quest to avenge his vote-off. She hasn't gotten too comfortable, she's worked quietly to engineer things to her advantage, and skillfully led Jon's amazing blindside. That, and they actually showed her friendship/alliance with Baylor as cute, not annoying, pretentious, or just plain too much (unlike Jon and Jaclyn). She seems to be liked and respected by everyone and has just plain played an amazing game, not making a single enemy. That moment on Exile Island when they showed her having her moment of missing Nadiya when they didn't have to show her visit there since no idol was there all but clinched it to me. So I think Natalie's the one who had the winner's edit this season.

Agreed. I also suspect he's the villain of the season. The chefs all seem to decently get along, from what I've seen, but he's already given the editors just enough to work with to, at the very least, give him a "root against" portrayal, what with his temper issues, his admission to seeking out Sade's weaknesses, Sade knowing he was seeking out her weaknesses, her being happy that she gave him nothing, and him very nearly telling LaTasha she'd look like an idiot for voting for him to go up for elimination.

So the spoilers keep coming true. Kym & Alli did indeed go home two weeks ago, though not quite in the way that was speculated. They did lose that Fast Forward faceoff, but they were not U-Turned out of the race. They just didn't make up the time quickly enough. Also, leg ten was an NEL, just as everyone thought it'd be. However, I'm a bit surprised that Brooke & Robbie were the team spared by it rather than Amy & Maya, as several RFF posters thought. There were reports of a black girl being seen crying alone at a place where a Roadblock was supposed to have been taking place. It was thought that she knew that they'd fallen into last place and was crying over possibly being eliminated or Speed Bumped. But it looks like that was a false spoiler or a misidentification, because leg ten had no Roadblock. Still, if the spoilers hold up, Brooke & Robbie will finally be eliminated. And they have to head to the finish line knowing that Amy & Maya will be racing to the finsh instead of them! Ha! :D

I agree that Josh and Jeremy had deceptive winner's edits, but not Jon. Jeremy was also getting a clear-cut hero's edit, and Jon betrayed that hero over idol paranoia. From there, I thought Jon, like Josh close to the merge, had a subtle-turned-obvious villain's edit. Or at least he had the closest thing to one. No one one-hundred-percent trusted him save for Jaclyn (even Missy was only at ninety or ninety-five percent there), Natalie, Baylor, and Keith were all tired of him and Jaclyn and thought of them as fake (whether or not they were is irrelevant; that was just how they were perceived by the other castaways), and the editors just left in so many moments of Jon annoying the others and being seen through by the jury. Nothing about his edit screamed "winner" to me.

If there's one good thing I liked about the episode, it was the families mixing it up again. Finally. Didn't care for Haley welching on the tattoo, though, and leaving Claire in the lurch. And yeah, Jay tanking Phil's clearly better deal was annoying. But other than that, it was enjoyable. :)

So long, Santos. You had no business reaching the black jackets, anyway, so I won't miss you. The entire Terrible Trio who tried to throw dinner service to sack one of their own is gone now! :) Really sorry to see Roe go, but she really was the least consistent of the F5. Six times nominated to Jennifer's . . . what? One? Two? Yeah. No contest. Good on her for winning one challenge and taking second in another, though. We saw the first chinks in LaTasha's armor tonight (and her up-to-now-positive edit, in general), but I think she recovered nicely with her performance at the second dinner service. The only one, it seemed, not to make a mistake on that service. How they work the pass is gonna make all the difference next week, and I think LaTasha will ace that, for sure. Bryant might, as well, but the preview showed that Jennifer and Sade seem to be having trouble with that. So yeah. I'll go with that F2 prediction, as well. Good episode, one great, long-awaited boot, and one okay boot. Next week, it's the decision of the F2!

Wait, we were supposed to be siding with the kids? I thought Zoey, Junior, Jack, and Diane were acting like such ungrateful little shits toward Bow tonight. Your mom just wanted to change things up a bit, you brats! Go with it! Though I'll admit that at the same time, Bow could've just tried to incorporate some of her old traditions into their current ones rather than take it over entirely. Other than that, I was okay with this episode.

It wasn't. But all of the self-righteous whiners saw it that way at the time. The ones who lost their money were careless with it, and Natalie & Nadiya just took advantage of their carelessness. Plain and simple, hands down.

Oh, Jaclyn might be annoying to Jon, for sure, outside of the game. But I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if Jon can be just as insufferable with his entitlement issues or his sort of pride or boastfulness in his privileged life, and Jaclyn's been on the wrong end of that outside of the game.

Bitterness over Jon's boot, @blackwing? Because I just saw it as her giving him a taste of his own medicine.

Perhaps. But if he handles the jury terribly (like he handles Tribal Council, in general), he easily loses that vote.

As a person. But his actual strategic game? Nope. Not one person has mentioned liking or respecting that.

Once again, how? No one respects his game. The only thing he can rely on is challenges. And that only worked for Bob in Gabon because the jury were just bitter babies, and for Fabio in Nicaragua because Chase and Sash were so disliked and had fucked over way too many people. I see almost no one on this jury being all that bitter.

The jury now has six men on it, all voted out in a row -- Josh, Jeremy, Wes, Reed, Alec, and now, Jon. This beats the record of One World, which, up to now, had the longest streak of male jurors with five -- Jonas, Michael, Jay, Leif, and Troyzan -- before being broken at just the right time by the (still inexplicable) blindside of Kat. Though of course, the last man standing, Tarzan, was then voted out after her. Coincidentally, both One World and San Juan del Sur have seen six men voted out (or just exiting the game) in a row -- Colton, Jonas, Michael, Jay, Leif, and Troyzan from One World, and Josh, Jeremy, Wes, Reed, Alec, and Jon from San Juan del Sur. As for Keith winning, I don't get the thoughts that he'll win if he faces the jury. Josh, Jeremy, Reed, Alec, and probably Jon do NOT respect his game. Only Wes would vote for him.

Meh. Doesn't bother me. They both brought it on themselves, and it was a near-impossible feat to pull off, so I'm not gonna come down on Natalie at all for gloating over it. Plus, Jon clearly annoyed the piss out of everyone who wasn't Jaclyn, so . . . whatever. I'll let the shit-talking slide for as long as possible.

She would be, though. If Natalie is being a sore winner, then Jaclyn, from that preview, is being an even sorer loser. Then again, so was Jon when Drew got blindsided. So they're two peas in a pod, pretty much.

Well, I guess this finally answers the question as to whether or not idols can be played on revotes. They can't be, based on Jon not playing his. Anyway, Natalie ownage! That was orgasmic! She ran the show from start to finish, and good on her for it! I do reckon that confessional about Nadiya might set her up quite nicely for at least facing the jury! Goodbye, Jon, you arrogant, insufferable prick. You got too comfortable and complacent, thought you were the mastermind of the whole game, and lost everything when you trusted your alliance way too much! Whoever would've thought that Missy and Baylor would be the last pair fully intact?! Wow! . . . Well, I kinda did based on the editing of the early episodes. . . . Natalie for the win next week! And Baylor in second, please! I don't care who comes in third, though, so long as Jaclyn doesn't sniff the Final Tribal Council. A win for her would equal one for Jon by proxy, and we can't have that.

That explains Jon's complacency most of the time. He does seem to grasp some basics of the game, but he's clearly behind when it comes to many others. Meanwhile, Jaclyn seems on top of things way more than he was, just like a true fan should be. Interesting reading that she's the bigger fan.

Oh, not just Brody. He threw Matthew, Cole, and Markko over for them, too.