Lingo

Yeah no kidding. His face was so lumpy and swollen, he looked like this guy:

I don't know. She deserves a lot more credit than she got, but I think she lost because she couldn't convince the jury of her decisions to vote out Sunday and Bret over David. Hell, I'm still not convinced either.

Maybe I'm biased because I've felt Adam was getting a winner's edit ever since he found the idol, but the vote made sense to me. I don't think Adam won by a sympathy vote. I think they were going to vote for him even before he revealed that. Just to me as a viewer, he seemed to have a more complete "resume" than Hannah (2 idols, finding the reward advantage, winning an immunity, etc.). On the other hand, Hannah worked hard and played aggressively in order to build her own resume for the jury, and I wish she'd gotten more respect and recognition for her efforts. When Chris was talking about how ADAM convinced Ken to vote out David, and Ken got all agitated, I actually thought he was going to say, "Uh, it wasn't Adam at all, it was Hannah." But what he actually said was, "It was all ME"! I'm shocked Hannah didn't at that moment turn to both of them and say, "Really, guys? Really???" Anyway, this was a great season.

OK, brainstorm. Maybe they weren't sure how Bret and Sunday were going to vote and were hoping to convince them to vote for Jay too? Then the vote split would have been 1 for David (from Jay), 3 for Bret, and 3 for Jay. Then on the revote they vote out Jay, because that's the one they want out most. But if Jay plays his idol then they can safely vote out Bret. Or if Bret and Sunday vote David, then they can just vote out Bret on the revote. OK, I think that makes sense! Actually that's pretty clever now that I think about it. I wonder why they didn't go through with it.

This is all very interesting. To me, it's very clear that Adam is going to win based on the edit, and I expected to see a bunch of posts saying the same thing here! I just base that on the increasing amount of airtime he's gotten in recent episodes, particularly the last few, where he's getting a lot of talking heads explaining his strategy and pointing out how he's a pivotal swing vote. But I've had a feeling he's going to win since he got his idol. I just feel he's gotten so much airtime, even aside from the drama with his mother (I was gonna write "mama drama" but that seems disrespectful!). David's gotten a lot of airtime too, but I don't think he's getting the winner's edit. He's getting more of the Spencer or the Kelley Wentworth edit, of the dynamic player who will fall just short. (Similar to Jay, who's getting the "popular challenge beast who will just fall short" edit.) I just say this because the last few episodes haven't really focused on David's strategy. I think the last 3 are gonna be Adam, Hannah and Bret. I picked Bret because he's gotten a lot of airtime too, and Hannah because she's Adam's alliance partner and he'll need her to get to the end. So they're going to pick off Jay, David, and Ken, probably in that order unless one of them wins immunity. They'll target Jay first because everyone can agree on that. Then Adam will convince Hannah that it's time for David to go. If David wins immunity then they'll vote out Ken. Then David will fall. If they vote out David first, then they'll vote off Ken after him because I don't see Adam feeling a need to betray Hannah. Although possibly Adam, Hannah and Ken might vote out Bret instead. If Adam gets to the end, then I can see him winning without relying on a sob story. The jury will see Bret as a goat like Sunday, and they won't respect Hannah's neurotic style of play. Adam will be able to point out his decision to vote out Figgy as a risky but pivotal strategic decision (in contrast, Hannah wasn't part of the alliance to boot Michaela). Then he and Hannah were on the winning side of every post-merge vote (except the rock), and he convinced Hannah to vote out Will. On the other side, Hannah convinced Adam to vote out Sunday, but choosing to target a goat like Sunday instead of a player like David will not be looked upon favorably. Adam can also point to playing his idol at a strategic point in the game (sure he misjudged Will but the jury will respect the decision and appreciate the flashy play), NOT playing the reward advantage, and winning an immunity challenge (possibly more on Wednesday). I don't know what Bret can say other than that he survived by jumping from alliance to alliance. And if I'm wrong and Ken replaces Bret or Hannah (more likely Bret), I don't know if he can say anything in his favor either other than being loyal to David. So yeah, I really think it's Adam. Then again, I was totally shocked by Michelle's win!

OK, am I the only one who understands the rules, or am I the only one who doesn't understand the rules?? This still doesn't make any sense to me. Nevermind what they actually did. David wanted to play 3 votes on Bret and one on Jay. Let's say they did that, and the other 3 players vote for David. If Jay doesn't play his idol, it's a tie and they revote (Bret vs. David), presumably David's alliance all votes for Bret on the revote, and he goes home (3-2). If Jay does play his idol for himself, it changes nothing. It's still 3 votes Bret and 3 votes David, and the revote plays out as before. If Jay plays his idol for Bret, David goes home 3-1. There's no revote! If instead they all 4 vote for Bret on the first vote, pretty much the same options play out except without the revote. If Jay doesn't play his idol, Bret goes home. If Jay plays it for himself, Bret still goes home. And if Jay plays it for Bret, David goes home. The only situation I can think of in which that single vote would have a consequence is if somehow someone played idols for both Bret and David, which I don't think David was actually counting on! Actually, forcing a revote is a riskier situation in that it tempts your alliance members into voting you out on the revote.

Shame on you Tara for insinuating that Grafelnik is based on Taken. How do you know that Taken isn't based on Grafelnik? It is so typical of Hollywood to steal their best stories from exotic cultures (see e.g. The Magnificent Seven)!

No, that doesn't work. You can't play an idol on a revote. You can only play it when Jeff asks for it, before the first vote. I mean, if the rules are consistent with every previous season anyway.

Jessica: "Living with you three was worse than the torture I endured in China!" Never mind the F3: Imagine the reactions of the viewers who aren't in on it!

So can anybody figure out why David wanted to put a single vote on Jay and the rest on Bret (or Sunday)? For the life of me I can't think of any strategic value in that whatsoever. It didn't help flush out the idol because Jay didn't see the vote before he played his idol. And even if by some miracle Bret/Sunday had an idol of their own, the single vote on Jay would not be enough to send him home. So wtf? As Kim said in the recap, just put all 4 votes on the person you're voting for. You don't actually have to waste a vote on Jay, you just have to convince him you're all voting for him.

It'd be hilarious if they kept it up during the Final Tribal Council. Like Zeke just casually mentions in his speech, "As an FBI agent, I have to deal with liars every day, but you three are the worst!" And the F3 are like, wtf?

I don't think that's true. Aside from that last scene in the finale, I think all those scenes with Jeffrey Wright were her actual memories of Arnold. Well almost -- that scene from last week in which he reminds her she killed him must have been at least partly her imagination too. But I think most of the other scenes only work as memories. On the other hand, Ford insinuates at the end that the voice she hears in her head was her own -- rather than remote satellite transmissions, as previously suggested. But I don't think that entirely works either. It was a voice in her head that told her where to find the gun, after all.

That is indeed a very interesting idea. Sadly the only place I remember seeing anything like that idea being presented and considered was in the goofy Michael Keaton comedy Multiplicity. The more I think about this show, the more I think it was kind of a mess. A big beautiful mess. Even though I watched a large part of the Westworld marathon yesterday, I now feel compelled to watch it again just to see if Ford's motivations stay consistent through the entire thing, because I'm not convinced. Another thing that bothers me is that the writing felt inconsistent as to what it would mean and look like for a host to become "conscious". When I compare Maeve and Dolores, I feel like they were written by two different writing teams, or perhaps just interpreted completely differently by the two different actors. The problem with Maeve is that she was almost so smart and funny and fully realized, as performed by Thandie Newton, that I never quite believed that she wasn't conscious. She seemed conscious from the start -- though she didn't know she was a robot. But having consciousness and knowing you're a robot are two very different things in my mind, and I think the writers confused them unfortunately. Same with Bernard -- he always seemed conscious. Dolores, on the other hand, was always so consistently confused and, um, dopey, that I never bought that she was conscious and making her own decisions, even at the very end when it says she is. Not to mention, at the end, does she even realize that she's a robot?? I don't even know. And all the plot holes you have to hand-wave away to get the plot to work are distracting. And I was annoyed that they didn't even hint at the fates of Stubbs and Elsie. They had to leave the fates of every single character up in the air so they'd have complete creative freedom for next season (except for Ford, but even then they could bring him back as a robot, or claim that Dolores killed a robot, as others noted). Like, couldn't you at least kill off Sizemore? Or Sylvester? Or Logan? Throw me a bone here! They could even bring back Jimmy Simpson and Ben Barnes for more flashbacks if they wanted to. But in spite of all my complaints, I did enjoy these 10 weeks and I'll probably be back in 2018 or whenever.

Ooh! That's something I never noticed before. Let's make a list of all the times the maze symbol was seen: On the ground underneath Maeve and her daughter as they lay dying or dead. Obvious pain there. Underneath the scalp of Kissy in the pilot. That's physical pain and murder. Lawrence's daughter, drawing it on the ground for Dolores. Arguably she's in the present and has just lost her parents. Gypsy-Dolores gives regular-Dolores a fortune card with the Maze on it, right? I'm not sure how that fits in exactly, though she's still suffering the loss of her parents. The maze symbol is on the coffins in the train that Dolores rides (Lawrence's bodies stuffed with nitro). The brand that the Union soldiers try to use on Teddy. Besides the obvious physical pain, arguably he's suffering through the memories of his involvement in the massacre in Escalante. Ford catches sight of it in Las Mudas, on a tabletop. This one doesn't seem to fit the pattern, although perhaps that's the table Lawrence and MIB sat at when MIB killed his wife. Then Ford finds it in Arnold's notes. Perhaps he is reliving his pain of losing Arnold. Of course, when Dolores finds the "center" of the maze, it is buried in a graveyard. In the finale, Ford hands Bernard the toy maze as he tells him that he's afraid Bernard will have to suffer a little more. Did Bernard see the symbol before then? I don't recall.

Well they did try to flush it out a couple of times early in the merge (on the Taylor and Chris votes), but it didn't work. And at this point no one's got an alliance big enough to try another split vote, and probably no one is willing to try blindsiding him. So my guess is that he's going to leverage that idol fear all the way to F4, and then he's going to be voted out then because he's too big of a jury threat.

I disagree. Even if they're told to put in the votes face-down, Jeff can easily reorient them so that he can see them, or mark them in some way. Even if not, he knows the order of the votes, so he can pull them out out-of-order. Not that hard to remember. Probst did the same thing he does every time an idol is played: he first showed all the votes for the immune person, and then just enough votes to determine who goes home. Strictly standard procedure. There was nothing unusual in him not showing the last 2 votes. They only conceivable reason he might not show Will's vote (if he had voted for Hannah) would be just to screw Will over, which he wouldn't do. But all the Survivor fans in the cast know that he is completely predictable out this, and they saw that he showed only 4 Hannah votes, so they'll know only 4 votes were cast for Hannah. So Jay will know, David will know, Adam will know, Hannah will know, Bret and Sunday will probably know. Ken will not know. Well, I don't know about real life, but on TV and in the movies at least, moms often hide secret children from their daddies because they don't want the daddies in their life in any way. Again, I don't know anything about real life. :) I don't think they've ever mentioned a challenge, but now that I think about it, an advantage that removes a person from the jury would probably play out on Day 38 rather than Day 36, right? You'd probably want that to occur only after everyone is on the jury and the final 3 are settled. Well the thing is, what plan? As far as Ken and David and Hannah knew, they had no idol. So they had no plan, other than hope Will was telling the truth and hope for the best. You're right, as far as they knew, it totally could have been a trick by the other side to get them not to play an idol (or play it for the wrong person maybe), but it was irrelevant because they didn't know Adam had no idol. So Ken had no reason to determine if Will was lying or not. Actually the person who really needed to find out if Will was lying or not was Adam, since he needed to figure out whether to play his idol.

Adam split from Zeke last week when Hannah did, basically, or possibly before. He had a good pre-merge relationship with Ken and Jessica, so my guess is that it was an easy choice for him to make. Jay ended up "in league with Zeke's crew" because he had a good pre-merge relationship with Bret and Sunday, I'd say, and at one point Sunday was the only person willing to work with him. I don't remember him ever hating Zeke. So Jay's alliance with Zeke is sort of second-hand, as is Adam's alliance with David.

What was ... I don't know what word to describe it, so I'll say "interesting" ... was when Ken was talking to Jay and then Will came up and then all the members of Zeke's alliance appeared and started arguing, and Ken just ... walked away. I don't know, I just think if I were in that situation I'd stay and eavesdrop in on that as long as they'd let me. But he just decided he'd heard enough I guess. Man, the exasperation on the face of Ken's alliance members when he told them about his "test" ... I have a smile on my own face just thinking about it. I know a lot of these players are big fans of the show but I don't think Ken is. (And I'm pretty sure Michaela wasn't either.)

I think he said both. But I could be wrong.

I'm with you. I thought it was going to be Will (because irony), then Ken, then Hannah when they suddenly switched their vote to her. I didn't expect Will to vote for Zeke at the end or especially not Adam playing his idol.

Thanks, LanceM! Some interesting relationship dynamics going on there. Michelle and Zeke seem to get along well. And Chris says he has no hard feelings toward Jessica. And now we've seen that at least one Millennial was lying about something, so it's not just Gen-Xers after all.

Well, they spent so much time dragging the family out to the reward challenge, one at a time, with Jeff having to ask a personal question of each and every one, that there wasn't any time left to show them on the barbeque. Which is a good reason not to have this particular reward so friggin' early!

Probably because it probably wasn't re-hidden. There have been exceptions, but they usually don't rehide an idol post-merge if there's another idol still in play. Especially if there are TWO idols still in play. Although to be honest, they probably ARE looking for idols, but they usually don't show fruitless searches.

Ken? Ken??? Ken, don't do it you moron!!!! Ken? Ken! Ken! Ken Ken Ken! KEEEEEENNNNNNN!!!!!!! ARGHGHGHHGHGH KEN!!!! OMG so dumb. He did basically the exact same thing Jessica did before the tribe shuffle. The thing everyone mocked Jessica for doing. He just did the same thing really. And some of you are STILL rooting for him to win? I don't get it. He's pretty but he ain't that pretty. Well, I'm absolutely certain he's not winning anyway, just due to lack of screen time. As of last week I was pretty confident about him (and Will and Sunday) but this just seals it. Adam "wasted" his idol, but I understand him doing it. It's a pivotal vote, he couldn't be certain about Will (especially after what Ken did), it's a good time. He's hoping that will give him a solid majority to the end.

There is a scene where Dolores is running away from the Confederados in the night, and suddenly she stops and realizes she doesn't hear anyone chasing her, she actually doesn't hear anything at all. And she looks down at her shirt and realizes there's no stab wound. That's the point in her scenes where it switches from past to present. Present Dolores is also running around out there, remembering her past and getting it confused with the present. I think there's no reason to think that the source of any of the accurate speculation is from leaks from the show itself, and frankly I find that idea insulting to the fans. There's a bunch of fans out there (hundreds? thousands?) with plenty of time on their hands and instant access to all the episodes at any time (hell, I took all of last week off and spent most of it arguing about the stories I read and watch with people on the internet! I am one of these people with no life!). You have the combined collective brain power of the entire internet, looking at the work of a man (Nolan) known for writing and producing stories with tricky narratives (e.g. Memento, the Prestige, etc). And the clues have been there from the beginning. It's no surprise that people working together on the internet figured this all out very early on. There was a moment early on, well before Episode 7, in which Ford told Bernard something like "I know everything that goes on in that head of yours" and that set off alarm bells in my mind. (Figurative alarm bells, mind you. I swear I'm not a bot!) It does indeed appear that past-Dolores will have gone through all of her adventures, seemingly for nothing. There is almost definitely some tragic ending for past-Dolores waiting to be revealed in the final episode. Most likely, Ford discovers her awakening consciousness, or some other park operators decide that she is malfunctioning (hopefully involving Logan's death in some way); either way, her memories are probably "erased" and she is tragically put back on her loop for another 30 years. It will be a bitter ending to that story, but we can at least still hold out hope that present-Dolores does not meet the same fate. Other thoughts: That really precarious situation that Angela and Wyatt's gang left the MIB in really made me sit up and take notice. Was that the first time MIB's life was ever truly in danger? He did look quite alarmed by this situation (though perhaps not as completely panicked as someone truly facing death for the first time might act). I thought the trap was quite clever. We know that the hosts are programmed to be unable to kill guests directly, and also they have Samaritan Reflexes to prevent other forms of death. But I thought that perhaps Angela et al. had cleverly devised a trap that could kill the MIB indirectly. After all, all they did was tie a noose around his neck, tied the other end to a horse, and left him breathing. And that horse did take off and start to hang him? If MIB didn't get the knife (and Charlotte wasn't around), would he have died? Would the horse have backed down? Would the park operators or another host have intervened? Anyway I thought it was a hint that perhaps some of the hosts have become clever enough to find a way to kill guests by indirect methods. I'm still holding out hope that Arnold faked his death somehow (not least because it would give Jeffrey Wright at least one role for next season). Perhaps he just programmed Dolores to think she killed him. Perhaps he even built his own robot double that she killed, and has been hiding somewhere in the park since then. Less plausibly, I also want to believe still-living Arnold stopped robot Bernard from killing Elsie, and together they lured Stubbs into that same remote area of the park so that they could all plan a rebellion against Ford together. And even less plausibly, that robot Bernard was simply acting his way through that last scene and faked his "suicide." But if that were the case, I'm not sure how/why Bernard would fall under Ford's spell again and be forced to kill Theresa. Unless they made a robot Theresa at the last minute and faked her death too! No no no, probably not.... Also, in the scene at night in which Dolores escapes and William tells her to run away and he'll find her later, did anyone else think that William's voice sounded strange and dubbed over in that moment? To me, it sounded weird and different; in fact, I may be wrong on this, but it sounded to me much like the voice that Dolores has been hearing in her head all season (the one that says "Remember" and stuff like that). Which makes me think that somehow, everything that's happened to present-day Dolores was intentionally caused by MIB/William somehow. I know it's been said here in this forum before, but perhaps he did something to her in that barn in Episode one other than raping her, that triggered her memories. And he planted the photo for her dad to find. And he buried the gun for Dolores to find. Maybe? I don't know.