fishcakes

I think Ricard will be okay if he can pull Erika, Heather, and Xander together against Danny and Deshawn, which is not at all a certainty, given how much everyone seems to want to be in D&D's alliance. The four of them could easily take out Danny, Deshawn, and less critically, Liana, but I could see Erika and Heather getting reeled back into a Blue Alliance that really never existed; it just seemed like it did because they never had to vote anyone out. Deshawn seems to be a good player who's playing badly, if that makes sense. He has good instincts, but as we saw in his TH last night he's torn between playing for his alliance and playing for himself. Before I thought he was just lying to everyone, like Evvie for example, when he said he wanted to work with them, but now I think he really meant it, but then he'd get pulled in a different direction.

What happened to, "after the votes are read, the person will be asked to leave the Tribal Council area immediately"? Not, "say goodbye to Liana, praise Ricard, damn Deshawn, beg Jeff not to snuff her torch, talk about what a good game she played, say goodbye again, wait for everyone to tell her what a great player she is and that they love her, finally move her ass toward Ponderosa as an orchestral elegy plays her out." Good lord. The only thing missing was Elton John singing Candle in the Wind. No doubt Shan will be on the next returning players season. The showrunners have decided that even though 90% of the audience reaction to her has been negative, we are just kidding, and they're going to keep bringing her back until they get tired of her or she's arrested for embezzling funds from her church.' Liana has done really well considering she's one of the dumbest people to ever play this game. She reminds me of Kat from One World, but without the likability. What was she even going on about at TC with, "I am a student. I study very complex subjects." No one asked her any of that, and what would even be a complex subject for her? Counting? Shapes? Ricard has played a near-flawless game, but he's hard to like and therefore hard to root for. If he won, it would be well-deserved, but I'd rather see Erika take it. She misplayed it in waiting far too long to try to put together a counteralliance, but the dominant majority has been against her in a way that doesn't make sense. She's someone who's better to have as an ally than an antagonist. Deshawn and mmmaaaybe Xander have legitimate claims to the win, but Liana, Heather, and Danny don't seem to have done much of anything. Danny's the one I'd most like to hang out with (along with Naseer and Tiffany), but whether or not it's accurate, he's been edited to look like a follower.

Oh, I didn't realize that they couldn't lie at all; I thought they were only prohibited from lying and saying they didn't have an idol/advantage when they really did. Not letting them lie at all feels too broad to me; it means there's no risk to using the Knowledge is Power advantage aside from wasting it on someone who has nothing. I don't like the idea that this prevents people from lying or from using fake advantages/idols strategically. It seems like if a player knows that someone has the Knowledge is Power advantage, they should have some way of not only getting them to waste the advantage, but also to make them feel more secure when they're not by passing off something fake to them. But, eh. If I had my way, they'd bring back the giant gong from season 1, so maybe I'm not the best judge of how things should go.

As long as Xander didn't also have the real idol in his possession, I'm pretty sure he could have handed over the fake idol and Jeff wouldn't say anything about it. Similar things have happened a couple of times before. When Tony had the Tyler Perry idol in Cagayan, its special power was that it could be played after the votes were cast, but at TC, Tony lied and said the special power was that it could be played at F4 (it was really only good through F5), thus making the others think that if they voted for him, they'd get idoled out. And in the Philippines season, Abi Maria bought an immunity challenge advantage at the food auction; at the next IC, Jeff told her to read her advantage out loud, and she read the part about the IC advantage, which was true, but then lied and said that the advantage also included a clue to a hidden immunity idol. In both of those instances, Jeff said nothing and let the lies stand, which I think he has to do. Lying is a part of the game, and as the host and a producer, if he told players that another player is lying, that would be considered interfering in the game. Though a good reason for Xander not doing that is that if Liana and her alliance thought they had Xander's idol then they would have voted for Evvie, who at that point he still wanted to save, meaning Tiffany would have had to play Xander's real idol for Evvie. By doing it the way he did, he was able to save Evvie and his idol and make Liana look dumb, so win-win-win.

I too had thought the extra vote could only be used on the original and not the revote, but apparently that's not the case or at least hasn't been in the past. The Survivor Wiki is unclear about whether it's currently allowed, but mentioned that it specifically was allowed in Ghost Island: and cited Kellyn's reddit AMA where she talked about it. If you scroll further down that Extra Vote wiki page, it says that Naseer got 4 votes on the revote, which would mean that Shan did use the extra vote on the revote. But then on their episode page, they say Naseer got only 3 votes on the revote. Shorter answer: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If someone has a screencap of the note that came with the Extra Vote advantage or a video clip of JD reading the note out loud, that would settle it. Or even better, if CBS would put up all the votes and the voting booth confessionals because in general I would love to know what everyone is saying as they vote.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting that Jeff read all three votes instead of just the two needed for Naseer to go. IIRC, it only has to be unanimous if it goes to a second revote, and if that fails then you go to rocks. I mean, it was obvious anyway that all three were for Naseer since if one had been for Heather, he would have read it before the third vote, but it seemed strange that he didn't leave Erika/Shan/and Ricard any space to lie about who they each voted for when they get back to camp. In any case, I do think it's possible there was more to Ricard's "use the extra vote" ploy than just ensuring Naseer would go, since he could have made sure of that by just voting for him and not telling Shan beforehand, but I also think it's possible that he doesn't know what he's doing.

I don't like Liana, but she's so hilariously stupid that I want her to stick around so she can continue to ask Xander to give her his idols and advantages and he can continue to say, "um, no?" This week there were so many squandered opportunities. Xander and Erika talked about how they needed to get Evvie, Heather, and Naseer together to form a counteralliance, but we never saw them try to do that. Not sure if they could have gotten Naseer on board anyway, since he weirdly thought Shan and Ricard were his BFFs, but it seems like Heather and Erika could have made him remember how he spent the first part of the game on the bottom at Blue and understand that things really had not changed for him. Then again, Heather didn't make that any easier by targeting him last TC. And on the other side, Xander probably should have used his idol for Evvie or at least lied about how he would use it for her and force Danny, Deshawn, and Liana to turn against each other. I know Xander needs that idol for himself, but he's no longer even trying to leverage his possession of it. He's got nerves of steel, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he ends up going home with the idol in his pocket. And Shan and Ricard playing the extra vote was just a big WTF. Unless this was some elaborate con of Ricard's to throw Shan under the bus once the tribe is reunited (by claiming she was the one targeting Naseer, which would at least explain his vote for Heather), then it was a waste. And I don't think even that would work since she's on record as wanting Heather out and Naseer to stick around as an extra vote. I don't know; mostly I've decided the key to understanding everyone's strategy is to chalk it up to them all being terrible players. Everyone is doing random, useless things and thinking because they're still there, it means they're great players.

I was sure Evvie, Xander, and Tiffany would stay together and then 30 seconds after last week's TC, they're running back to camp ready to throw each other under the bus. But then Xander and Tiff talked about voting together, Tiff and Evvie did vote together, none of them voted for each other, and Danny raised the possibility that the rift was a big act. So now I have no idea where Evvie and Xander stand with each other. It doesn't help that when Evvie gets excited, I can't understand a word she's saying. When she was explaining to Jeff how she knew the pyramid puzzle and then he turned to the camera and said, "that's how you play Survivor!" I was like ???? But I wouldn't be surprised if we never see that puzzle on the show again. As for the Black alliance, Liana is the only one who still thinks that could be a thing. Shan said last night that Ricard was her number one, so I think she originally floated the other alliance just so she could ingratiate herself and Ricard in with Blue. She's clearly not on board, Danny always seemed non-committal at best, and at this point Deshawn would be just as glad if Shan walked into the ocean forever. Ricard may not have seen earlier seasons where people got upset if people came back from reward and tried to eat, but it's happened. Jenna got into a spat with Deena in Amazon, and there was some petulance about Rob and Amber bringing back candy for everyone because they also brought some back for themselves. It probably still happens and they just don't show it. In any case, I didn't think what he did was terrible. He said he wanted to try it and took one small bite. Shan just enjoys being indignant about things. Heather's bonehead whatever-that-was at TC not resulting in her getting voted out confirms for me that she has goat immunity. Naseer is probably going to be salty for a while, but she seems to be a complete non-entity for everyone else.

Anyone this season who believes they have a strong alliance to the end are kidding themselves. With the Sydney vote, Deshawn and Danny showed that alliances for them are fluid. Liana, I think, wants to be loyal (she didn't want to vote out Evvie so soon) but she's dumb and is letting herself be manipulated and intimidated by Shan. Shan is just flat-out untrustworthy. She voted out everyone who thought they were her number one on Green and she'll do it again. She and Ricard are both holding knives, each one waiting for the chance to shank the other. Erica and Naseer want to be part of Blue, and seem to think they're still Blue Strong, but nah. It kind of hurts to watch them hanging around on the fringes of whoever Deshawn and Danny are currently allied with and thinking they're part of it. It's a grade school dynamic, not mean or bullying or anything, but a clear in-group and out-group. Heather will be fine. She's an extra vote in what's currently the majority alliance. If they stay in the majority, they'll keep her until they no longer need her, and if it's an F3 this season, she could even nab that third slot. If Blue+ loses the majority, she'll still be safe because no one will target her as a threat. Unless her edit is a Purple Herring and she's secretly a strategic genius, she's going to go far into the game but not win and then give speech about how she was just happy for the experience when it's over. Evvie, Xander, and Tiffany maybe? will stay together, but Tiffany has shown a lot of mistrust of Xander in the past and both she and Xander are vying to be Evvie's number one. Although if they get Pagonged, which seems likely right now, then I guess they'll stay together as they get voted out in order.

The thing that stood out to me is how dumb Liana is. She knew Xander knew she could steal his idol, yet she still went after it, assuming he wouldn't hand it off to someone else. And then when he didn't have it, she turned to Shan and said, "so Evvie isn't protected." She seemed to think that Xander never had the real idol, even though she rifled through his bag and saw it and the note. And now that I think about it, she probably saw his fake idol at the same time. She gives boxes of rocks a bad name.

I don't remember the details, but she talked about being a breast cancer survivor.

I feel bad for Naseer. He was the only one to find an idol who was smart enough to keep it to himself, but because none of the others could keep quiet about theirs, everyone knows he's got it. Everyone on Yellow and Green knows because they knew the code phrases, and they'll tell everyone on Blue, if they haven't already. Also he seems to think Blue is going to maintain an alliance and that he's a part of it, but neither of those things are true. If Blue holds together at all, it will be Danny, Deshawn, and Sydney. Heather probably has goat immunity. Erica's going to be out of it whether she breaks the hourglass or not. Naseer might be able to form an alliance with her and scoop up Xander, but that still looks like an uphill battle. I'm not so certain that the Shan, Liana, Danny, Deshawn alliance is a done deal yet. It had kind of a Dwight Schrute/Jim Halpert "Do you want to be in an alliance?" "Absolutely, I do" feel about it. I need to rewatch the THs to see who says what privately. Liana is in for sure, Shan is always untrustworthy, and not sure what the men are thinking, especially since they're already afraid of the women. The fight between Shan and Ricard was something. He was cool-headed and she was angrily berating him. To me, that's the downside of all these new twists; it completely devalues the social game to the point where people can be openly ugly to each other and not have consequences. I don't even like Ricard that much, but I'll be disappointed if he doesn't manage to engineer Shan getting voted out.

It's still not allowed in general, but Liana got an advantage that lets her ask someone if they have an idol or advantage, requires them to tell the truth about it, and if they have one, they have to give it to her. I think this has to happen at a tribal council, but I'm not sure about that part. It would have been more interesting if she didn't know who had an advantage, but she knows about Xander's idol and extra vote and she's seen the note that came with Xander's idol, so unless she's dim, she's figured out that Shan and Naseer also have idols.

The editing is a bigger change to me than all the new twists/advantages. When Naseer said the goat on astroturf thing and they flashbacked to him finding the idol, that was at least the second time they did a flashback to reveal something to the audience that previously they would have shown in more or less chronological order. They did it when Brad found the advantage by the fire and I think there was one other time, but I can't remember the specifics. That, and conversations being intercut with THs about and photos from the players' home lives gives the whole show more of a scripted feel. To me, it makes everything feel a little flat, like I'm watching something with a predetermined outcome. Ricard saying he and Shan were running the whole game was so funny. They're not running the game, they're running their tribe and running it in such a way that they've lost four of their original six members. So kudos on that, I guess. Also, he thinks that by going to TC so many times, it gives them an advantage over the other tribes since tribes that win all the time sometimes fall apart at the merge because they haven't had to test alliances. And he's right about that, but in the past when players go into a merge down in numbers and end up doing well, it's because they were able to take a subservient role in a larger alliance (Denise and Malcolm in Philippines or Sherri in South Pacific, for example). I don't see Ricard or Shan being able to tamp down on their egos enough to do that. They're going to immediately try to start running things and alienate people. OTOH, the Blue tribe is likely going to merge with a majority, maybe over Yellow and Green combined, but they're not a particularly cohesive tribe, so they could fall apart, except no one on Yellow and Green seems savvy enough to take advantage of that. I just think everyone is playing pretty terribly this season.

As we're getting to know everyone better, I'm liking them less. Shan's evil theme song was cute the first time she explained it and insufferable now. Genie, who I loved, lost me when she took votes against Brad so personally she said she wouldn't cook for the tribe anymore; it's just a game until other people are playing it, apparently. I'm down to rooting for anyone on Team Blue minus Sidney. Her tantrums are entertaining, but she seems more suited for Real Housewives than Survivor. Speaking of egos, Tiffany turns out to be good at challenge tasks that involve finesse, but then she ruins things by crowing about it as if she's Season 2 Colby Donaldson. Also, I need a GIF of Evvie swimming the wrong way in the challenge. This really can't be emphasized enough.

He's starting to grow on me. He did seem like a villain in the first episode, but now that we're getting to know everyone else and how either untrustworthy or bad at the game they are, he is coming across more like a rational player. He may or not like a person, but he's not letting that govern his voting decisions.

When she walked in with no weapon and threatened them, I knew a bare-knuckle fight was coming, even though realism dictated that one of the guys would have just pulled out a gun and shot her on the spot.

Poor Abraham. The reason he got voted off last week was because he targeted Tiffany for being useless, and everyone else took that as evidence that he was playing too hard. I hope he had time to put up a big I TOLD YOU SO banner before Voce arrived at pre-Ponderosa.

When she was sitting on the beam not moving and then fell off, I wondered if she had passed out. I thought they were going to have to bring the lifeguards out to rescue her and I felt really bad for her because four or five days with no food and bad sleep makes that understandable. But afterwards when she said she only slowed them down my "1 or 2, maybe 3" minutes, I lost all sympathy. What we saw was edited and it took several minutes. So she had to have slowed them down by more than that, but it's not like 3 minutes is insignificant in any case.

I went from liking almost everyone to wanting to take the entire yellow tribe and clonk their stupid heads together. Why would they keep Tiffany? She's bad in challenges and she's completely unreasonable. She kept saying, "what if Xander has an idol?" Evvie and Liana would explain that he didn't and how they knew, and she'd reply with "no, I'm saying WHAT IF," and that happened at least three times. I don't think it's a matter of her being worried that he had another idol, she just refused to process what they were telling her; she even said in a TH that she didn't understand how the secret code worked. Not impressed with Evvie either. She had a choice of being in a four-person alliance with Xander and his two advantages, Voce, and Liana, with Liana as her secret two-person suballiance OR a three-person alliance with Liana and Tiffany. Her concerns about men always getting the credit is way overblown. If you look at all the seasons where men and women who were allies got to the end, sometimes the woman has won and sometimes the man has won. Whether it's been same sex or opposite sex allies at the end, one person gets all the credit and one person gets called a coattailer. It's always been a function of social game and jury management. She was also wrong to give Deshawn so much information; telling him she would protect her vote was okay because it generates goodwill by letting him get an extra vote and costs her nothing unless he later uses the extra vote to vote her or someone in her alliance out, something she made more likely by spilling all the info on their tribe dynamics. I noticed that Deshawn didn't tell her anything; he just had that hilarious "I can't believe she's still telling me all this!" face. Brad trying to be Tony, but no. When he shut his eyes so they wouldn't sense him watching, I was hoping he'd open them to find JD and Ricard standing there staring at him crouched in the bushes. Jeff talking to the audience about keeping the tribe strong vs. alliance loyalty but nonetheless someone would get voted out was helpful. I had no idea that someone gets voted out at Tribal Council. Thanks, Peachy! It occurs to me that the dumbing down of the show, the new "fun" twists, and the play-along at home rebus puzzles and social media stuff is all in preparation for a kid's season of the show, with tweens or young teens. They're not going to put kids out there for 39 or even 26 days, but I could see maybe a two-week version where there's no emphasis on surviving the elements and it's all games and advantages. I don't know that they're actually planning such a thing, but when I saw that second rebus on the side of the challenge platform, I flashbacked to that kid's show Endurance, which was kind of a Survivor Jr. I miss the opening too. I figure they cut if for the same reason most shows have eliminated opening credits and theme songs, so they can fit one more commercial in.

I liked her a lot too. They did the schoolyard pick for teams that season and she almost got eliminated before the season even began and then she turned out to be a real asset to the tribe. She was well-liked and good in the physical challenges. It was Ulong, which got demolished, so she never had a chance, but I would have liked to see her return again.

It was a fun first episode and I was surprised after the first hour that I was liking everyone. But then Ricard started his inexplicable grudge against JD and put an end to that. I thought I wasn't going to like Shan the evil pastor, but her evil theme song was so cute, especially when the Survivor musicians played their version of it over her TH. JD seems like a really nice kid, but he's too eager and he also can't tell a story to save his life. When his tribe wanted to know what happened when he was off with Danny and Xander and he started with being on the boat and hair blowing in the breeze and then after numerous cuts of him talking, he still hadn't even gotten the three of them up the hill, I was surprised that the editors didn't superimpose changing seasons or calendar pages falling away over his face as he spoke. As a superfan who doesn't seem to have real allies right now, I'm afraid he's going to get in his own way, much like Cochran did his first season. A couple of people looking directly into the camera, which we haven't really seen before. Tiffany did it when she was looking for the idol and one other person who I can't now remember. Jeff did it a few times too, but I didn't really mind. That, and the home videos, reminded me a lot of Season 1. Also, he was at least funny, telling people if they had complaints they could tweet at him @JeffProbst because "I'll probably never read it anyway!" Speaking of twitter, Ricard is trying to make fetch happen and failing. #ricard currently only has ten tweets that pertain to this Ricard, three of them are his own tweets, and one of them is some spammer trying to sell Survivor buffs. Team Blue paddling the clipped-in boat was hilariously futile and reminded me of this from All-Stars:

At the end, I thought Autumn would win, since the judges said the best dish in each round was Autumn's canape, Kelsey's appetizer, and Suu's entree, and then both Gordon and Aaron thought Autumn's dessert was perfect and that Kelsey's had a couple of issues. So I was a little surprised that it was Kelsey, but overall I don't care. I was pulling for Suu but didn't expect her to win. They probably don't choose the winner based on the finale night dishes alone, and Kelsey has been the most consistent, although personally I find her food the least interesting of the the three. Pretty dull season. I hope next time they're able to go back to the more varied format. Even if they can't do the team competitions where they're cooking for large groups, they can at least bring back the mystery box/dreaded pressure test. This season, it's pretty much been just "you have an hour to cook something. Go."

Megan is a better leader than Trenton but she had no chance with that team. Trenton had four solid, albeit annoying, chefs; Megan's only really good chef was Steve. Emily is just okay, and Josie and Victoria are useless. She had the sense to pull Josie off the meat station after she'd borked it twice (though why she put her there in the first place is a mystery), but when Kiya repeatedly messed up, Gordon had to tell Trenton to call a meeting and then all Trenton did was whine to his team, which somehow worked? It seems like Gordon has repeatedly helped Trenton the last two or three weeks in a way that he doesn't help the others (for example, tipping him off to each of the sabotaged dishes in the run the pass challenge and, in one instance, literally spelling out the problem for him), so I can't say I'm surprised he won. He's a good chef, but overall, I think Megan should have won. The fake drug bust was a dick thing to do but so hilariously stupid that I couldn't even be mad. A recreational user doesn't buy their stash in multiple five-pound bricks, and if they did know where they could buy it in that quantity and had the money to pay for it, then they wouldn't need Gordon's piddling $250K prize or a job as his head chef because they would already have gainful employment as drug lords.

All four of the contestants were good enough to keep up with the chefs, so as far as I'm concerned they're all worthy of the MC title, but I agreed with the choices in each round. Even so, when it was down to Alejandro and Suu, I was thinking it probably didn't matter which of them got into the semis, since I can't see either of them beating Kelsey or Autumn. I love Suu, and her food (when they've actually shown it to us, which wasn't until later in the season) is what I'd want to eat over the others' dishes, but she does tend to get flustered as does Alejandro. I wonder if Alejandro draining his squid over hers affected her final dish; they did say her squid wasn't seasoned that well. "Once the chef has completed her dish, you will have 10 seconds to finish plating your dish" is pure evil.