Chicago Redshirt

I may be giving Kaleb too much credit...he strikes to me least likely to be bitter about being booted and most likely to reward good game play. Which. like I said, I don't know if Bruce will actually bring to the table.

We don't really know how much gameplay Bruce has in him, because if memory/glancing at Wikipedia serves, he hasn't been on a tribe that has gone to TC before this one. And we don't know how much people have enjoyed being with Bruce. We at home assume "not much," because we are given that impression by the weekly THs from Katurah. And in this latest episode, Kellie and Kaleb dissed him. Are the opinions of those three representative of the whole? I imagine that there's no realistic circumstance under which Katurah would vote for Bruce to get a million dollars. It would take something like Satan and Hitler being the other members of the Final 3 somehow. But even if they dislike Bruce, I could see Kaleb and Kellie potentially voting for him. We do know Bruce has enough social juice that he could get a bunch of his buddies to cover for him as he idol-hunted. That's not nothing.

The point isn't to suggest that the two played similar games. It's to say that it's hard to predict what the actual jury might do. The conventional wisdom would (IMO) suggest that Survivors who are too bossy, too inflexible, too annoying have no shot. But all those things might make this particular group of Survivors have Bruce go to the FTC. And if he gets there, there's some chance that he is a dark horse winner rather than a goat.

So does Quentin Tarantino. :)

Do they know? I'm sitting at home with a full belly and I can't keep straight who has what advantages without the help of other posters/chyrons. Goodness knows being in the middle of the craziness while starving and being run ragged, they might be forgiven for thinking that there was more than one idol floating around, and that Sifu somehow accessed an unexpected one.

Dumb gimmick, maybe. But doing the two-random tribe split, two TCs at this point shakes things up in a couple ways: 1. By having two immunity winners, it increases the possibility that a disfavored person like Kaleb can go a little further. Instead of outplaying 10 people, he only had to outplay 4. 2. It (sometimes) forces people to have to scramble who would otherwise be safe. If you have 4 decent allies, you can rest (relatively) easy that you wouldn't be voted out at 10 or 11. (Or at least, that you will have enough time to do damage control). It is much harder to survive being one of five eligible for elimination than one of 10-11. Even if you are in the majority overall, you may not have any/many allies on your mini-tribe. 3. It sometimes allows for an increased possibility of safety. If there was a tribal council with all players, there seemingly would be no way for Kaleb to survive minus immunity. The split meant a small chance that Boston Not-Rob could have pulled off his scheme to try and protect Kaleb. Even though you're down (say) 5-4-2 overall, on the mini-tribe, you might have the numbers 4-1-1 or something. 4. At least in theory, twice the Tribal Councils may mean an uptick in all the idol/advantage play or (preferably from my perspective) pocket idols. There would have been little chance to blindside Bruce with 11 players casting votes, but the mini-tribe could have gotten him. 5. You create the chance for five people who probably haven't had much chance to interact to bond over filling their bellies, to share info, create new bonds, to lie, etc.

A few natural questions arise: 1. What does Congresswoman Neuman do with the samples of the anti-Supe virus that she got? Will anyone make any progress to connecting her to the head-exploder with her latest killing? Will Marie be able/willing to expose Neuman as a Supe? 2. Who will join the Seven? Currently they are just three (Homelander, the Deep and A-Train) so there are four slots up for grabs. It could be both Sam and Cate join, along with two others. 3. How much does Butcher learn about what really went down at God U, and what does he do with that knowledge? In addition to the virus, the season introduced a new anti-supe toy of sonics for him to play with. 4. How does Vought recover from its latest public relations nightmare? Between Soldier Boy going berserk and now two times in a short period people at God U supposedly doing so, it seems like a lot to clean up. And given that Ashley had her life at risk, it might change her perspective on things.

Jake is a young assistant public defender, so presumably he does trials. And as in his job, in Survivor, sometimes you got to do the best with whatever hand you're dealt. There was some chance that saying, "Hey, you're not as tight with your alliance as you thought, and yes, I was a part of bamboozling you, but I'm coming clean now, and you should trust me going forward, and consider that in your next steps" works. Not a very good chance, mind you, but some chance.

Emily's noises about dumping Kaleb were far from nonsensical IMO. 11 people voted to kick him off (and Austin would have if he could have). He was saved by a lucky gimmick the once, and it was likely that people would turn to him as an obvious vote if he did not find an idol or win individual immunity, or have someone feel like it was time for a Big Move and volunteer an idol or advantage to get rid of someone else. He had alienated Bruce with little chance of repair. He had alienated Dee and Julie, again with little chance of repair. Any thinking person would realize that surviving the previous vote might make him a bigger threat than before, since he can say he was part of Survivor history, and he somehow got to the FTC. There is very little benefit to Emily tying her fate to his. and a lot of risk. Of course, I don't see too many paths to FTC for Emily...figuring out which of the two tribes she can best align with and then either an immunity run or something?

Immunity challenges aren't necessarily a good criteria for who should get screen time. Being interesting or doing interesting/funny/impactful things is, and winning challenges is just one way in which people can be interesting or do interesting/impactful things. If anything, winning immunity challenges should be a way to decrease the amount of time one should get shown because those people are not subject to being voted out, and so don't have to do the same amount of scrambling at tribal as the rest. Kaleb and Emily have had the potential for elimination probably more than any other Survivors this year AND they are (at least judging from this forum) interesting and provocative, so of course they will get more coverage. Does that mean that they will make it to the final TC? Not necessarily. Shan from a couple seasons back was excessively covered and even got her own musical sting. Then she was ousted.

When I said "powers," I meant entities/agencies. What we are seeing could be the result of a Matrix-like sim, or an actual physical location that they were teleported into, or that has a door but it's carefully shielded from ordinary vision or I'm sure a number of other possibilities.

There are a few things that could be in play: 1. We saw that Homelander was seemingly disgusted that Marie would attack her own kind. He is a Supes supremacist above all. I'm assuming that we are chronologically where Homelander is running Vought solo and Edgar is out of the picture. So he/Vought have imprisoned our Core Four deciding what to do with them. They elevated Sam and Kate because the two of them are leading contenders to join the Brotherhood of Evil Supes. 2. Vought decides that it is easier to sell to the public that pretty white girl who was already a top-ranked student and unknown white guy are the real heroes and black girl with gross blood powers, Asian trans person, black kid who crumpled his dad's statue, and white girl with an eating disorder were the instigators and the real problems. 3. Vought might have made the decision not just on loyalty to the supes cause or who would play better in Poughkeepsie/Peoria, but also on the perceived strength of the powers of each side and the usefulness to Vought. Sam's got superstrength/flying/extreme heat generation such that Golden Boy was getting transfusions from him to bolster Golden Boy's strength, and Golden Boy was poised to have a massive contract with New York City, enough that they were going to make him a multi-million dollar suit. Emma's got the ability to push people (despite her hand being blown up real good, I assume) and read minds. I'd take those against the combined powers that Our Heroes have any day. 4. Once given an agenda to follow by fellow Supes, Sam and Cate seemingly would follow it without question. Our Heroes showed that they were going to act independently of what Vought wanted for them and to try to be actual heroes. Vought doesn't want that sort of wild card. We don't know if our heroes are locked in the Woods or some other Vought facility. Or even in a Vought facility, though that's a reasonable assumption. There aren't too many powers that we've been introduced to that could create a slick-seeming prison with no doors like they are in beyond Vought. But the CIA might have something along those lines, and I suppose it's possible that Congresswoman Newman might have saved her blood sister, if you will, and her accomplices and have those sorts of resources at her disposal.

It's been a while since S1 for me, so I don't remember if we were told: after beating the crap out of Mark, where did Nolan go? It seems like there would be a lot more dread over Nolan's whereabouts, the potential that there's a whole bunch of aliens with similar powers that are going to swoop in and enslave us all.

Presumably only one Mauler of the 10-20ish that were beating down Mark survived. But there's a whole multiverse of Maulers out there, plus the surviving Mauler could always create a clone. If he does, the running argument over which is the clone will be finally settled, presumably!

I thought that with Brad's forced evac and the relatively rare decent service by both teams, GRrrrrr would cut some slack. Guest judge was ruthless with his evals while seeming a) knowledgeable, b) constructive c) not trying to have a sound bite. Joe B should take notes. I think they are stringing Jason along just to make fun of him.

I think we have to assume that Starfleet Academy normally takes 4 years to graduate from. Young Mariner was said to be a 1st year, and we were told it was 13 years ago. So by my way of thinking, the Mariner that we saw in this flashback was 18 years old, and current Mariner is 31, give or take. I suppose it's possible that she is younger or older in the flashback, that the presumption of 4 years to graduate the Academy is off, that she graduated faster than the norm (either due to her mad skillz or her being a nepo-baby), etc. But yeah, unless explicitly told/shown some reason to rethink it, I believe S4 Mariner is about 31 and graduated the Academy in 2074-5, give or take.

I would say that Lower Decks Locarno does look different from Lower Decks Paris. His time since being booted has seemingly been rough.

Ironic about the "green," because old Mariner is certainly...jaded. :)

There are supposedly 5 "Not safe" and 1 "Safe" parchments in the bag for a contestant to choose from. So there was a roughly 17 percent chance of Kaleb being safe, 83 percent chance of him not being safe. For Emily's own game, she had to do what was best for her. And in this case, it's voting Kaleb. As she said in one of her THs, voting against the majority puts a target on her back. Pushing too hard for Kaleb puts a target on her back. By saying "sure I'm down with voting Kaleb" to whoever asks her and actually following through and doing it. she shows that she's a potential ally to them, or at least a number worth keeping around for the short term. If she had voted not-Kaleb, it would have stood out and likely made her the focus for a vote shortly thereafter. She outs herself as being untrustworthy and in the 13 percent chance that Kaleb hits his Shot in the Dark, they are outed as a duo. Now she is in a position where she can be like "I want nothing to do with Kaleb" to everyone else but privately be like "You're my No. 1" to Kaleb if she wants to. Sifu targeted J because she foolishly made him think that she was the one who wrote his name down even when Sean was quitting and voting anyone but him made little sense. Austin and Kelly should want to target J because they were the three amulet holders, and getting J out increases the power of the remaining amulets from "extra vote if all three agree" to "steal a vote if two agree." (I wonder who needs to watch their back more, Austin or Kelly, because now there's an incentive to be the last one standing and have it as an immunity idol). Drew targeted J presumably because he's allies with Austin and knows that getting J out helps with increasing the amulet power. Dee and Julie were fine with getting J out in general even before the quasi-merge; we saw that they were talking about actually voting her out back in their old tribe. Any others can be explained by the whispering campaign against J that took place before the revote. Yes, I don't think it's too tinfoil-hatty to think that there are ways to rig the Shot In The Dark that whatever Standards and Practices person might not catch. Or even to think that whatever oversight person might be...persuaded to look the other way. I will choose to take it on face value though that Kaleb just was lucky enough to beat the odds.

Re: Kaleb and Batman, I am ashamed it took me this long to come with... Kaleb: The Shot in the Dark Knight! :)

The math on the SITD is not very good. There's an 83 percent chance of it failing. If she writes down J (or whoever) and the SITD fails, Emily now makes it clear that she is not with either faction and calls attention to herself. Not that she would be long for this world without Kaleb IMO anyway, but being on the outs for the vote would probably accelerate matters.

I kept on wanting to attribute lines by or about Batman to Kaleb like... "Survivors are a cowardly and superstitious lot" "I am vengeance! I am the night!" With enough prep time, Kaleb can outwit, outlast and outplay anybody.

Although there's some chance someone is playing 4-D chess, I took it at face value. Cate had pushed her such that Shetty would kill herself on delayed voice-command, and kept Shetty on standby until her friends were there. Cate then tried to show that she was willing to kill Shetty in front of her friends to show them "Hey, I'm not a monster, I'm getting rid of the monster." She did not realize that her friends would (rightly) perceive that proves Cate IS a monster.

I don't know if they are worthless till the merge, although that may be a moot point. In the past, even after the merge, there have been multi-tribals, where half of the merged tribe goes to one, and the others go to another. If something like that happened, presumably, the three amulet holders could agree that Person A can use the extra vote even if all three are not present at that tribal. And yes, if one amulet holder gets voted out, the two remaining ones can agree to steal someone's vote. If two amulet holders get voted out, the last one has a full-fledged immunity idol. I don't think it's that complicated. It's just prone to backfire, as each fellow amulet-holder has a bigger incentive to have the others booted than to work together.

On the other hand, some of the components were pretty obvious visually. I have no particular cooking talent or refined palate, but I know that if something is served on a half-shell, it's probably an oyster or maybe a clam. But despite help from their team and actually tasting it, the women had trouble figuring that out.