Lingo

Whatever you call it, and however long it lasted, the point is that it came from a place of cruelty. It was mean. I'm not going to condemn the two of them for it, call them awful people and forever root against them just because of it, but it was certainly the worst behavior I can recall out of the people remaining in the game.

Well, it might have been just Zeke's spite. But part of the strategy is trying to guess who David is least likely to give his idol to. I think that had something to do with it.

We see Ford visit her that night and then let her go. That's my theory. Ford heard from Stubbs that Dolores was off-loop and decided to handle it himself. Thanks for pointing out the Robert Ford name connection. What struck me was the way Ford said that officially it was ruled an accident, but that he knew Arnold and Arnold was "very, very careful." Which tells me that Ford himself believes it to be no accident. Which suggests to me that either it was a suicide, or Arnold faked his death. Third on my list is Ford killed him, though if that were true, Ford wouldn't be casting doubt on the official cause of death. Then again he's speaking to Bernard. The show creators have said that the original movie is not part of the show's continuity, though. I think it must refer either to the original massacre of Dolores's visions or something that goes down between Dolores, Wiliam, and Logan.

Well yeah, we talked about this above. You can believe William is the Man in Black without having to believe that Stubbs is a host. I expect, or rather hope, that the show is not going to go to the "character is secretly a host" well too often. Once is enough. Even once a season would be too often for me. It would be fine if the secret host were revealed to us immediately and is was only a secret to the other characters, but it'd be a tiresome gimmick for it to be kept hidden from the viewers only to be "dramatically revealed" over and over.

I think that was an extra-long TC and patience was wearing a little thin by that point. Not that I'm excusing Bret's behavior.

You know, whenever people on the forums complained about Zeke before, I just dismissed it as overreactions and moved on. But when Hannah stated on-air that she was considering voting out her Day-1 alliance (for David, of all people!) because he was often condescending, I had to sit up and take notice. Well actually, it's not exactly the same scenario. At F4, assuming no idols are played*, one person has immunity and 3 are vulnerable. If it's a 2-2 tie, then the 2 people who got votes would be safe, but there's still a fourth player eligible to draw a rock. The problem with that scenario is that the 4th player will know he's the only one vulnerable, so he'll have no choice but to switch his vote to whoever the person with immunity voted for. So essentially, the person with immunity has all the power to determine who goes home. That's too much power. At least with a fire challenge that person has a shot at staying. *And I think these days you always have to play your idol at F5, so there wouldn't be any remaining idols. I gave you a heart though because I agree that the most likely way they'd resolve my 6-person scenario would be with a fire challenge between the 2 original vote-getters. Maybe so, although he voted first so he wouldn't have seen everyone trying to convince Jessica to flip. Yeah, there've been plenty of people who've kept it a secret. Not only Kelly Wentworth, but I think Jeremy didn't tell anyone about either of his idols. Carolyn in the season before that, I think. Sandra when she got the last idol in Heroes vs. Villains. I think there have been many cases. The plan was to vote for Hannah. The person who asked Sunday who the target was was ... Hannah. She had to come up with a different name. She might have blurted out "Ken" because her mind blanked and Ken was the one talking at that moment. Or it could have been a plan her alliance came up with before the vote. But the way she paused before she said Ken makes me think she improvised. Adam might think he's higher in that alliance than Hannah because he's built a relationship with Ken and Jessica before the merge.

@AliShabaz: Well no. Like I said, the tie-break rules were different in at least Seasons 1-4. They do change rules between seasons sometimes. I have no reason to believe these particular rules were made up on the spot mid-filming at any point. In fact, When Tom and Ian were discussing the possibility of a tie in Season 10 they knew it would come to rocks if the tie held up, and the details of how that would go down, even though it hadn't yet occurred in a TC up to that point. So they managed to avoid the tie (someone flipped, I don't remember who). The most likely reason they knew the tie-break rules is because it was in the rules they are given to read before the season begins. I know Probst sometimes improvises things in novel situations, such as when he allowed two tribes to negotiate an end to a reward challenge once when it had come to a stalemate and everyone was exhausted. But I think the voting rules are pretty much all lawyered out in detail in advance, so to speak. Although there is a novel situation I can think of where I don't know how it would be resolved, according to these rules. Imagine there are six people left. One wins immunity in the challenge. Then at TC, for some crazy reason, 3 other players all play immunity idols. That leaves only 2 players who can be voted for. They vote and re-vote and it is a 3-3 tie. What happens next? No one is eligible to draw rocks! EDIT: In any case, when I said no rules are being made up on the spot, I meant these particular rules in this season. What they did last night is consistent with what we've seen at least since S10, to my recollection.

You may recall that Ford himself visited Dolores while she was in the town of Pariah, and then decided to let her go. As for the issue of her sometimes seeing herself (in the river drowned, as well as earlier in Pariah when she saw herself in the parade and again as a fortune-teller), I don't know. I'd like to believe its her old memories replaying themselves, but that doesn't make sense, does it? You can't see yourself unless you look in the mirror. So these really seem to be hallucinations of some sort. (Well they could have a copy of Dolores running around but I doubt it.) I have similar problems with her visions of Lawrence's daughter. Those could be memories but I can't figure out which time period(s) they're supposed to be from. She is apparently in the very old town (where the robots were being taught how to dance) in Dolores's memories, so apparently she is an old one. And Felix and Sylvester revealed that someone else has been fiddling around with Maeve's personality traits. Plus she heard the secret phrase "These violent acts have violent ends" from Dolores which seemed to start everything with her. I don't really see any good motivation for Ford to have caused Maeve's rebellion, so I don't think he did it and I doubt he knows about it. My personal guess is a secretly-alive Arnold, or perhaps a secretly-rebellious Bernard.

They should do a cover of this song: It even features Ted! Or how about this one: Man, I forgot how freaky that video is. My name is Ted, and one day, I'll be dead yo yo.

This was like the US Legislature fighting over the budget when no one will compromise and so the government gets shut down. Only this time it's one of the senators who loses her job.

OMG I can't believe Chris ate dog poop for his Survivor audition video! It's funny that so many Gen-Xers found it necessary to lie about who they are and what they do. Do we know of any similar Millenial secrets? I think Taylor hiding Chris's puzzle pieces is a funny, harmless prank. If Chris got really worked up about the puzzle, I'd feel differently, but I don't. I do hope Taylor told him the truth before the end of the game, though. Dang, Jessica cleaned up well. When she was exercising, I was like, wow. And I'm so glad she finally got her eye issues cleared up. I'm glad she decided to see the upside of her unique experience. She's one of only 3 players to have ever drawn the bad rock. That story in her letter from her husband about her car getting matching dents was funny.

Yes, I hope we can agree the degree of their stupidity was equal!

Heh...Off-topic but how about Rupert in Blood v. Water? He got eliminated in a unique way that will probably never be repeated: His wife got voted out (not even in a Tribal Council but in a spontaneous straw poll), he decided to switch places with her and go to Redemption Island, and then he lost an RI challenge and was eliminated. I know, I know ... there are probably very few people here who want to see Rupert yet again, myself included!

Well, first of all, there are no rules being made on the spot. These have been the rules since at least Season 10, I wanna say (I remember the rules being discussed on air since one tribal almost came to a rock draw but didn't), maybe even since Season 5. (Season 4 had the first rock draw, but that was at F4 which they don't do anymore.) It's the same rules, although a lot of people aren't aware of them or forget them since it comes up onscreen so rarely. And it is, in a sense, unfair. I think it's designed to be unfair. I think the producers decided that they wanted to minimize the chance of ties as much as possible because ties, while dramatic, eat up a lot of airtime. And the old ways of breaking the ties were problematic. The S1 method of just revoting over and over until someone changes their mind was too time-consuming. The S2 method of using past votes was problematic because the players don't get to see all the votes, I guess, and it's more difficult for the viewers to follow since most viewers don't keep track of how many prior votes each player got either. And the S3 method of having a quiz about the season's locale was frankly anticlimactic, time-consuming, and barely relevant to the Survivor experience. But the rock draw is relatively quick, and what's more it's designed to be unfair to discourage tie votes from happening. And the biggest factor of all: it's hella dramatic!

I laughed at that too, and then I realized that he had to close the door to prevent the players to his right from getting a peek at the maze (they were all doing the same maze). I wouldn't be surprised if they were instructed to close the door. Actually I can't remember who it was who drew the bad rock in Blood vs. Water. It wasn't Tyson (obviously), it wasn't that Big Brother guy (he was immune), and I'm pretty sure it wasn't Ciera either. I remember it being some poor girl in Ciera's alliance who took the fall. And apparently she hasn't been invited back. Come to think about it, did Will ever find out that Zeke blabbed to everyone? It's funny when Zeke interviewed about that, said something like "The best way to build trust is to give out information like that," and I was thinking, "No Zeke, that's how you prove to people that they can't trust you with their secrets." And at that point I was starting to worry that Zeke was overplaying. Yeah, I agree. But I understand what she was trying to do. She was trying to have her cake and eat it too. She wanted to steer Zeke toward some other target so she could keep both of her alliances in play as long as possible. She has good ideas but she's spectacularly bad at executing them. Still, she is so endearing that I want to see her go to the end. No, he really is gay. If you go to his personal thread on this forum you'll see a pre-season interview with him in "Out" magazine. He is gay but he just doesn't talk about it much. It seems many of us have different definitions of goat. I'm not sure how to define it. But to me, a goat is a person who can't win because they are so disliked, so if you win, you are by definition not a goat. Tai was more of a goat than Michelle last season. For the same reason, I can't call Brett and Sunday goats because I see no evidence that anyone dislikes them, though after Brett's outbursts that may change.

Oh shit, right, I meant Chris. 8|

You do know there were TWO voted off right? ;) Ken and Jessica. EDIT: Doh! Chris not Ken. Sorry Ken fans!

OMG WHAT AN EPISODE!!! There's so much to talk about!!! I barely even remember the first half! Man, I was really liking Brett and Zeke right up until Tribal Council when Bret exploded and they both made fun of David. That was really disappointing. But I'm gonna disagree that with all of yall and say that Brett and Sunday are not goats at all. I don't know why you'd think that other than you dislike them. These last couple of episodes have shown they're playing just as hard as everyone else, particularly Brett. He's staying fluid, he's not holding grudges, he's making friends with everyone and telling them what they want to hear. (Well, up until this last TC, anyway.) If Zeke's using them, then they're using Zeke. Everyone's using everyone out there and they all know it. Brett is now Zeke's closest ally. Who else does Zeke really have? His two previous closest allies Hannah and Adam just flipped on him. Can he really trust Will and Jay? Nah. Brett and Sunday are all he's got now. And if I were Brett and Sunday, I wouldn't trust David and I would have drawn a rock too. 1 in 6 chance? Hell yeah. Roll the dice. I loved the top of this hour in which Zeke and David said identical things about each other. Game recognize game. Hannah? Girl I love your guts for choosing to vote out the person you've been aligned to since Day 1. You are surprisingly strong at times. But you are as bad at bluffing as David is at swimming. You both blew it tonight. What the hell was with all the whispering? Were you just pretending to consider flipping so that someone would tell you where the vote was really going? Nice try but it didn't work. Adam. You blew it too. And I would have laughed if drew that rock and went home with an idol in your pocket! Still with all the editing focus on you and your idol and your sick mom, for some reason I still think you're gonna win somehow, though at this point it's really hard to imagine a scenario in which that happens. Jessica? Poor girl, you got screwed. I love that you stuck with the alliance that brung ya, though. Guts. Jay: way to read a room, you lucky son of a bitch. Will? Are you still there? For a moment I thought you were going to get the rock since you've been such a non-entity.

It just occurred to me that we witnessed "Bernard" set Dolores off in search of the maze in an early episode ... and then in the latest episode, she tells William that "Arnold" told her to find this place. So any observant viewers of the show out there who have no idea about the various popular theories (2 time periods, past "Bernard" is Arnold) might be quite confused at this point.

Hey, if you feel like all of this deceptive and confusing storytelling is not going to be worth the reveals at the end, I'm completely sympathetic. All I'm saying is that there are plausible explanations to the questions about the theories.

Of course. What I meant was that perhaps they are scripted to get away (a guest can always disrupt the script). So when Maeve made the white hats shoot each other, it didn't set off alarms in Mission Control because they expected Hec and Arm to get away and they weren't paying much attention to the details. Anyway this is all speculation on my part; I'm just giving the rationalizations that went through my mind when Maeve started playing God and no one really noticed until later.

Well they're still trying to trick you at this point. If there is going to be a Scene C it would be at (or after) the big reveal, presumably in the next 2 episodes. Personally though, I don't think there's going to a one-by-one reveal scene for every previously ambiguous scene. They'll show enough and expect you to connect the dots on your own (probably after rewatches...they'd love it if you rewatched!).

You are wrong. TMIB mentioned Arnold by name several times in the episodes before he encountered Ford in that saloon. I think he's mentioned Arnold in conversations with Kissy, Lawrence, Armistice, and/or Teddy before that point. Of course, we have no idea where TMIB got his information from. I also believe it's the first option. Ashley is in the present storyline. It's important to remember that (according to the theory at least) present-day Dolores is retracing the steps of past Dolores. In the past, probably some other tech at the time (not Stubbs, I don't think he's a robot) noticed Dolores going off-loop, and sent the sheriff off to fetch her right away. William rescues her. In the present, Dolores is retracing her steps, and Ashley notices it. Notice what he says: "Flag her with Behaviour. They can pull her today." Not immediately, but today. And who do we eventually see come and check on her? Robert Ford. He takes his time but it's still the same day. He decides that what she'd doing is harmless, and lets her go on her way.

Thanks. I guess I never put it together before now that the town in Charlotte's flashbacks and the one Ford rebuilt would be the same one from the Wyatt/Teddy flashbacks. (For one, I don't think Dolores has ever mentioned "Escalante.") I feel I should point out that Kenny Teddy is not dead yet! She stabbed him in the right chest, avoiding his heart (though probably puncturing his lung). From her speech it sounds like Wyatt wants Teddy to rejoin them.

Oh. It was probably just you then, my mistake :) Before I read phoenyx's link, I want to mention that I'm surprised that no one's commented that the town that Dolores discovers in the canyon, where it appears she is shooting everyone in her flashback, looks like the same one where Wyatt and Teddy were killing everyone in Teddy's own flashback. I can't be the only one who saw this? I mention this now because I have a feeling that's what the Vanity Fair article will say.... EDIT: Yep. I have to agree with everything in that article. I did suspect that "Wyatt" is actually based on Dolores after this ep, but that article goes far beyond the ideas I had. It pretty much lays out the story of the entire season. Good read!