If Rob is pulling the shots about whom to pick, he chose the right one. By keeping Phile busy with Steve, he won’t notice it when it comes time to picking Phile off.
That’s exactly what Rob is thinking. Phillip has final 2 written all over his little pink drawers.
In other news. I’d like to strangle Julie. We’re now forced to watch Phillip dance around in his presumably unwashed underwear for the rest of the his season. Julie gets some sort pollution award for what she’s done.
One would think the players would have figured out that the HII has been found (by Rob). I mean, no notes, no clues since the merge? That’s got to mean something.
Why would it? Even after Rob found the HII, they continued to get clues. Now that they merged, the clues stopped. It could just as easily be explained as “no one found it - so they took it back”. Plus, Rob, Grant and Phillip are the only ones from that tribe that ever saw a clue - and Grant and Phillip only saw the one at that off-site location.
Why did Julie admit to hiding Phillip’s pants? Because Jeff asked? She was under no obligation to fess up.
I got the impression that that tribal council lasted for a few hours, and there was a very strong sense of trying to smooth out a lot of unnecessary conflict.
With Steve and FFA circling each other like rabid dogs, Ralphie is next on the chopping block. Then things get interesting. Where will the lines be drawn when there is no more Pagonging to do?
eta: Matt has set back Christianity more than the Fred Phelps ever did. Every week I find myself hoping that the IPU sends a shark to bite his ass, just as a lesson.
That was actually one of Jeff’s better jobs at TC.
I had to laugh at the beginning of the show, with Matt praying. ‘Dear Lord, you know I don’t want to be here and I want to go home. But I’m ready to do your will and win the game.’
So if he loses a challenge and is voted off, God granted his wish to not have to compete anymore. If he wins the RI challenge and gets back into the game, and eventually wins a megabuck, then God intervened on his behalf.
I said out loud, ‘What a weasel!’
I think it was just a hearty “F-you!” to the FFA? who was certain that Steve had done it.
Rob has made this highly unlikely. Because he’s been in exile the whole show, Matt has bonded with nobody important. Even if he survives to the Final 3, the jury is much more likely to vote the million to somebody who they watched play the game, not someone who spent his time alone. Sucks to be Matt, but that’s God’s will. 
Not if the final three are Matt, Rob and Philip.
Phillip: No one is going to vote for him - no one.
Rob: If he makes it, there’s a 50/50 chance he’ll have screwed a number of people over. (The other 50% chance is that he’ll have screwed people over and made them think it was a compliment.)
Matt: Will have won the most challenges ever in a single season in the history of the game. He also has no bad blood with 4 of the jury members. And if Rob has screwed some people over, he’ll have some sympathy. “Oh - you were screwed over by Rob? I was screwed over by Rob twice!” (Not that I think he could come up with a decent argument during his plea - it’ll revolve around “if you think I deserve it…yadda yadda God yadda yadda…I’d be so blessed.”)
I still feel really bad for Matt, who’s been isolated almost since Day 1.
I hated Ashley less this week.
Still hate Andrea. I mean, the Ometepe tribe has been plucking off the Zapatera tribe one by one. And she has the audacity to go over to their tent and ask a favor. Here’s what I would have said, “Let me get this straight. You’ve done nothing since the merger to indicate that we are anything but two separate tribes. You sleep together, you eat together, you won’t even eat the fish we caught. You refuse to engage in any conversations with us, you don’t go anywhere unless it’s in pairs, and you are voting us off one by one. Why in the world would we want to share our rice with you, you self-entitled bitch?”
Okay, maybe I’d have left out that last part. But still. Some nerve.
That being said, I think they should have voted Steve off because he has a decent chance of winning immunity. Julie hasn’t even come close. I wonder if it was a “vote whoever hid the pants” vote.
I don’t think contestants should be able to burn/steal/hide clothes. What’s to stop them from just stealing all their warm clothes and freezing someone out?
I was really annoyed that the challenge was another freaking puzzle. They practically assured that Rob would win immunity. So he’s got immunity, the HII, and he’s on the majority tribe. It’s so anticlimatic – which of the Zapateras are they going to vote off?
Phil has really gone cuckoo. Before he just said that he was a federal agent; last night he said that he was the counter-intelligence chief. :rolleyes: Of course, I feel the same about him that I did about Chief. Obviously he’s mentally unstable. So instead of being amused, I more alarmed and ashamed that the normal people take advantage of him.
So next week, Ralph or Steve? Booorrrrrrrrrrrring.
He’s the counter-intelligence chief of the made up little in-tribe spy group he described in tribal council last week. He’s not suggesting he’s the counter-intelligence chief of the CIA or anything.
I’m already looking forward to the season they bring back both Phillip and Coach.
“I’m a former federal agent!”
“Well, I was chased through the Amazon jungles by pygmies that wanted to eat my butt because I was kayaking in their underwater temple!”
Point goes to Coach…
It may be boring from the suspense side of the game at this time, but the last 6 weeks probably will step that suspense up quite a bit.
A Rob win would represent the high water mark in game strategy. He’s been in control from day one and he’s kept the group united, even in light of Philip annoying them all.
I think Julie got chosen over Ralph because she’s better at the social side of things, and I suspect Rob has a small amount of fear of the possibility of a “woman’s alliance” developing towards the end.
I don’t think he intends for the Pagonging to go all the way in order, because he’s got to be majorly worried about Grant turning into a challenge monster, and if he gets to the end, he’d get plenty of jury votes. So in Rob’s head, the desired order goes something like: Grant, Steve, Andrea, Ralph, Natalie – leaving him & Philip (who everybody despises) & Ashley (who has been a total, and unpleasant, nonentity.)
At this point, Rob’s biggest challenge is to find an excuse for getring rid of Grant without risking the cohesion of his tribe.
Philip is one crazy son of a bitch. I really think the island is getting to him. I understand part of his craziness, though. He knows he is low man in his tribe. Chief Rob has blatantly said to hate on the Zaps, so in order to raise his station, Phil will do what Rob says openly and freely. Little does he know that all he is doing is playing right into Rob’s perfect set-up. If Phil gets taken to the finals, no one will vote for him, they all loathe him.
IMHO, Jeff did a good job of attempting to diffuse the n-word situation.
I would have thought that Steve was the one going to RI, but I think Rob played his cards right in sending Julie. He stated at one point during the episode that he was sending people who could beat Matt to RI. Sending Steve just sent a similar physical threat to what was already there (Mike), sending Julie sent a different skill set that may be able to beat Matt if Mike can’t.
It will get interesting once all the Zaps are gone. I do wonder if he will keep Ralph or Steve around an extra week and send home one of the girls.
They’re both masters of an un-googleable martial art as well.
Except that it won’t be 6 weeks, it’ll be 2; they usually go into the finale with five players left. All the fun of watching the Ometepes eat each other will be condensed into the last couple of episodes. I wish they could just fast-forward to that part now so we can see more of it.