simplyme

Unless someone thinks of using it as a fake idol. I am not expecting Gabler to think of this, but someone aligned with him could. (I don't read spoilers, so you're all safe. This is just me saying that an idol is never dead until Jeff throws it in the fire. Even if it's just a stick, apparently.)

I assumed Karla, James, Cassidy, and possibly Ryan had decided that in case Elie played an idol, they needed to throw a vote on someone else, which ended up being Owen. I suspect that Cody, Dwight, Noelle, and Jesse had the same worries about Elie having an idol and Cody maybe going home to one vote thrown his way, so they had Noelle throw her vote on Cassidy. Jesse and Jeanine had both lost their votes on the last risk-it-or-not trip. So... Owen and Elie voted James. Karla voted Owen. Noelle voted Cassidy. Everyone else (James, Cassidy, Ryan, Cody, Dwight, Gabler, and Sami) voted Elie.

She said that when she was saying something about how Cody was being pretentious about living in Hawaii. I didn't take it as an actual dig at Idaho so much as her emphasizing that he wasn't Hawaiian since he was from Idaho (which is just a wee bit different from Hawaii, I understand).

Okay. Confession time. I was so bored I didn't make it through the premiere. I barely made it through this week's episode. I liked the challenge, and I liked the change they made to the Beware Advantage (requiring the beads). It felt like way too much time spent on slow, meaningless stuff at the beginning. So much this. While I'm sure Cody will bother me the more I see him, he hasn't given me eye tics yet. He comes across as a person with a positive attitude, even if he is a lot. Noelle came across (maybe was edited to come across) as a little bit mean girl, almost. Most of these people I just don't care about yet. Maybe once a few more people are voted off I'll start feeling more of a connection. Sami is the big exception to this. He opened his mouth last week, shot straight to the top of my "Please Vote Off" list, and has only managed to irritate me more since then.

I'm just glad Omar invited Romeo for cake.

My understanding is that it is occasionally prescribed for intense depressions with sleep deprivation, particularly in cases like Jackson described (averaging 2-3 hours a night for an extended period of time), often after numerous other sleep aids and medications have been tried and failed. I know a few people who were on lithium at various points. As you said, they were for bipolar disorder except for one that was for depression and sleep issues. (That was in Pennsylvania.) That's why this is so believable to me. And probably why I'm being such a pain that Jackson not be pigeonholed. 😝 I can't find a "Woot, Woot!" hands-in-the-air emoticon, but this deserves it.

This exchange made me laugh out loud. I'm apparently a terrible person. Thank you both.

Folks, please stop assuming what Jackson was taking lithium for. Unless you are his doctor you don't know all the details of his medical past, so assuming he was telling "half-truths" or that he must really be on it for another reason is, well, bogus. (Apologies for how preachy this sounds on re-read, but I can't figure how to rephrase it. Sorry.) Yes, lithium is occasionally used for depression, anxiety, and as a sleep aid. It does have to be prescribed by and its use carefully monitored by a doctor. I don't mean to pick on the poster (and they certainly aren't alone), but based on one article someone linked to earlier in this thread, Jackson was afraid to list lithium on his application because so many people assume it is for bipolar disorder and he feared the stigma. This is rather proving his point. Jackson's explanation of anti-anxiety and sleep aid may be uncommon, but it's certainly not unheard of. I don't really feel he should need to give the public his personal medical history simply because he took one medication that people know primarily for something else.

Ha! Yes. I was trying to say that with "I don't know how successful he was with that." but clearly understated it. I found half of that tribe to be a complete miss for me so far. I did appreciate that Romeo appears to be strategic, socially capable, and somewhat flexible in his plans. I don't know that I liked him, but I thought he did okay with the hand he had. Swati was mostly background except for making a basic strategic decision on where to put the target, so no real feelings on her. I kind of liked Drea but like someone else said think she may be too intense right out of the gate. I enjoyed both calm, rationale Jenny and slightly nerdy Omar. I'm pretty sure that's the kiss of death. Sorry, Jenny and Omar!

I would have phrased it a bit differently, but agree in essence. I took Jackson's statement as encompassing the whole situation. Sure, there are people who can (and do) manage the caregiving of a parent with terminal cancer with no medication to help. But a lot depends on the surrounding situation and people and support. People who have a network of supportive and supporting friends and family will often (though not always) do better. It shouldn't be overlooked that in addition to his caretaking and grief over his mother, he was having to re-establish a relationship with his father, which can be very emotional and fraught even at the best of times and even if it ends well. And frankly, I also know a number of people who were the caretakers for a terminal parent. Some went on meds. Some didn't. Some probably should have seen a counselor and maybe considered medication for a period to help, because wooo boy. So what a caretaker needs at that time is support. What kind of support depends on the exact situation. For some, medication and counseling are appropriate, and they shouldn't be judged for that. For others, they aren't. Also, bless your best friend and sister-in-law. Rocksroy did at least have enough self-awareness to realize he was used to dealing with his children and he needed to back off. I'm not sure he was horribly successful at that. I expected him to be more effective when it came to moving the boat, that's for sure, but I also am reminding myself that not all areas of the track were equally hard. Other things... There's a Chantelle? Now I have to go look... I think I really like Marianne a lot as a person, but that I might have difficulty living with her 24/7 without killing her. I disliked both Tori and Zach, but Zach did a terrible job all around. He stunk in the challenge and tried to take the blame for the loss. He did specifically name Drea to Tori. He failed to really bond with anyone other than maybe Romeo, and that was mostly Romeo realizing that voting to "keep the strong" meant he'd go right after Zach. No one likes Tori, but they think she pulled her weight in challenges.

Okay... and I don't care about the aftershow. Good on Erika. I'm outta here. Hugs, cheers. She killed that.

Erika was smart enough to fluff Shan's ego in the questioning, too.

Damn. Danny telling Erika she played a great game is killer.

I still see DeShawn getting Danny, Shan, and Liana. It wasn't really direct, though. It was blowing all around. DeShawn's fire was steadier. That was the difference.

I was ready to eat my words there. Damn, Heather.

They've shown DeShawn struggling enough that I can predict how this goes. :P

Btw, it's nice of them to sprinkle a bit of Survivor in among all these commercials.

And Xander has somehow managed to secure 3rd place for himself. Jesus.

It's possible Erika may be victim of some implicit bias from the rest of the tribe. Asians are often stereotyped as smart. Leading on from that is the “Asians, particularly women, are sneaky” stereotype. People may not even realize that they have this stereotype in US culture, much less that they've internalized it. But when you look at who is getting what terms used for them, yeah. It's the AAPI woman who gets "sneaky." Liz Kim is Samoa talked about Asian stereotypes. **I intended to put this in the Race and Gender in Survivor thread, but after about 7 pages of searching gave up and figured it was Turkey Day. here was fine. If a mod can find that thread and move this for me, great. Sorry. **Happy American Thanksgiving.

Apparently they were sent via the US Postal Service. *shakes a fist at DeJoy*

That's interesting to me because I don't think he's actually playing the game like Ben did. Of course, Ben's original tribe lost people before the merge and there were tribe swaps before the merge that season, whereas Danny has played the entire game from a position of power (and numbers). One thing that I've become increasingly aware of over the past few weeks: Everyone appears to like Danny. Most people seem to have ruffled some feathers by now, but I can't recall anyone really saying something negative about him. Teflon Danny seems more than happy to let DeShawn be the one in the spotlight. He's at least edited to be really calm and low-key. I do think he's seen as a physical threat, but he's been coming in middle of the pack a lot. He may be trying to mitigate others' perception of his threat level. It will be interesting to me to see if he does turn into a big target as the game progresses.

They did this once before, the season of Feely Dan. They split the tribe in two. While balancing on a piece of wood, the players had to keep a ball going around in a circle they held. Nora won for one side (and immediately jumped off in celebration, losing the meal) and Elaine for the other. That was how Aaron and Missy were voted out. So... Sorry I'm late to the party this season. I missed you guys, but the show hasn't really made me care enough to want to post. I suppose the show should be lauded for managing to cast such a diverse cast of punchable people. Re: the extra vote. I tried to come up with a reason to use this and completely failed. When they showed how people voted, I'm fairly certain it showed that Ricard used the extra vote, so Shan must have given it to him to use (and presumably how it was used was agreed upon by them.) So votes for Heather were: Naseer, Shan, Ricard. Votes for Naseer were: Erika, Heather, Ricard. I mean, what? Did Shan think that people wouldn't know if it was her or Ricard who cast an extra vote so they wouldn't be blamed? Did Ricard think using the stupid extra vote was a great idea because it meant Shan no longer had it to use later if she went crazy(er)? They still don't really make sense and waste the vote.

1. Fessy and Kyle were right next to the fire. What, were they banned from lighting themselves ablaze and we're considering that a bad thing? Also as @peachmangosteen pointed out, we clearly saw them leaning on things. Look, if you've never seen a final before, people get randomly screwed by things and just have to dig themselves out or lose. Fessy and Kyle didn't win the leg and didn't go into elimination. Therefore, they got the "screwed by being frozen all night" job. This has nothing to do with throwing it for Bananas and everything to do with the asinine way they add random twists to the game. 2. Someone already covered the Rogan/Bananas elimination. A medic is not the same as a hospital, and you don't hold a very physical altercation on the side of a mountain with iffy footing and limited medical resources. 3. Winning each portion did pay off. People either got an advantage or others were disadvantaged. The fact that Fessy made a poor assumption is on Fessy. 4. For God's sake, they did not change it to male/female partway through the race. Fessy and Kaycee talked about how the two of them should have it in the bag given their competition when they were still in the house. (Yeah, foreshadowing.) Next I'm expecting to read that they paid Melissa to get pregnant and drop out so Bananas could win *eyeroll*. Someone is just salty. And I say this knowing damn well that they probably did manipulate a lot of things during the season to benefit their favored players, which definitely includes Johnny. But these specific allegations are a load of hoo-ey, imo.

Unlikely given that they all clearly knew they were only competing against their own gender from the start of the final. That's why Jenny and Cory split the tribunal decisions the way they did.

I would be shocked if they didn't do a pregnancy test before filming began but Melissa was too early for it to register. I don't really cast any blame that way. I mean, I would find it rather offensive if the female cast had to take weekly pregnancy tests just in case, which would appear to be the other option. Yes, Bayleigh. You totally tore your MCL. That's why you could still navigate a damn mountain. And ropes. You maybe tweaked something, but given all you were able to do, nothing was torn. As @Eolivet mentioned, the music stood out to me. Whoever was picking songs this season had some great choices. I still snicker every time I think about Bear and "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)". I was delighted to see Jenny beat everyone to the top. Good for her. Once we got rid of Melissa and Bayleigh, I figured I could live with anyone else winning. I'm not thrilled that it was Bananas, but I half expected that, so *shrug*. Overall, kind of a boring final. Actually, I'm going to agree again with @Eolivet that the overall season was a stronger product than War of the Worlds to me, but War of the Worlds had the superior final.