I assume she’s free to use it, because if she’s not they would have edited it differently to make that more clear. But of course that’s an assumption.
Yeah, they even had JD in his post-tribal confessional say, “I have Shan my extra vote.”
Yeah, we’ve seen dumb moves like this before.
What I’m not sure we’ve ever seen is:
(a) Dumb move (giving up the extra vote the first time)
(b) Reflection over how dumb that was and how there’s no way in hell he’s gonna do something stupid like that again, with said reflection including statements about previous players and how he absolutely positively doesn’t want to be one of those dumb-asses
(c) Giving away your extra vote the second time
There are a few rock-solid rules in this game, and one of them is never give away your advantages. You can use them to save another player, if you feel like you must. But you have to play them. Never give up your power.
Otherwise a pretty mediocre episode, IMO. The only other saving grace was Deshawn trying to throw the challenge and Naseer absolutely not having it.
Yeah, throwing a challenge has never been a good idea, in my recollection. Someone who cares to may be able to look more deeply into the times it has happened, but as I recall there have been times where, yeah, they got rid of that annoying person, but so what - nothing was really gained for the tribe. And a couple of times where it did not work out the way they planned, e.g. the person whose idea it was to throw the challenge got voted out, or something like that.
The whole “she can hurt us after the merge” argument seemed overstated and not borne out by history. Someone will tell me if I’m wrong, I’m sure.
Which Naseer nicely pointed out this week. Good for him for holding true to the immutable laws of Survivor.
And bravo to Ricard for properly playing against the “give me your advantage so I can trust you” ploy. He held his ground beautifully, and then backed it up with his “I have voted with you every single time” comment at TC. Well done. They are still probably fucked, but well done.
Also a nice play by Liana in correctly doing the “I’m going to risk my vote, you do what you want” play at the trek. Now she has a (seemingly overpowered?) advantage at just the right time.
I liked the fakeout from the producers on the Beware idol. And it seemed Naseer had no idea what he was saying, but he got the phrase out a lot better than Brad did.
The immunity/reward challenge was finished at around the 25 minute mark into the broadcast…which means they spent 35 minutes on the machinations of 3 people deciding who got the boot.
Some of that was the trek and choice montage with Liana and Shan, but it does highlight how little seems to be going on, specifically on the Blue tribe. That’s the big downside of groups never having to vote (or, conversely, one group always having to vote) - we have very little idea what those players are like. It can make for some bad television.
I will say at least after the debacle of gameplay that was the last few episodes at least this one had sensible strategy and a reasonable resolution. It’s just barely possible that Ricard and Shan, with their numerous advantages, possible in with Liana, and newly solidified trust in each other can make some waves.
But this season really needs a shakeup/merge/something to kickstart it.
Evvie is both stupid and wants to be seen as the as ace plotter. Bad combo.
They seem to be eating coconut,and maybe some fish.
JD was so foolish.
Definitely - half the blue tribe is getting no screen time whatsoever. When Heather couldn’t do the first task in last weeks Reward Challenge, I had no idea who she was.
(Bolding mine.) Yes, her advantage is crazy powerful. Everybody knows Xander has an immunity idol. So now (as I understand it) all she has to do is walk up to him and say, “Xander, do you have an immunity idol?” and it becomes hers.
Maybe this will serve as a warning to future players not to blab about it when they find an advantage. The worst mistake that keeps getting repeated season after season is telling too many people when you find an idol.
I dunno. Ricard and Shan seem pretty satisfied with themselves for calling the shots on a small tribe that now includes only themselves. I suspect they will find the going much tougher post-merge.
The previews for next week included a “drop your buffs” moment, but it’s implied that it isn’t a standard merge or tribe switch. Could be interesting.
If I’m not mistaken, Shan has convinced everyone she’s voted off not to play the shot in the dark die because they thought she was with them. That’s pretty impressive.
When she started talking about how it would be a mistake to use it tonight, I knew she was voting Genie off. It would have made sense for Genie to go with the 1/6 chance if she was at all uncertain about Shan, so she must have trusted her quite a bit. Losing your vote in this situation won’t matter at all.
If Shan wants to vote out Genie, then Genie should obviously play the shot in the dark.
If Shan wants to vote out Ricard, then it’ll be a 1-1 tie between Genie and Ricard even if Genie doesn’t have a vote. On revote Shan will be the only one voting, and Shan will decide who goes home. So if Shan wants to send Ricard home, it doesn’t matter that Genie doesn’t have a vote.
I wondered what would happen if Genie used her shot in the dark and Shan and Ricard voted for each other. Draw rocks?
People definitely blab too much about their advantages, but the beware advantage makes it very hard to hide the fact that you have it. All it takes is for the information to spread on one tribe, and soon everyone is likely to know that “people who says weird things in challenges have idols.” You don’t even have the option to not say the phrase, you must say it no matter what, so there’s no option to be strategic about it. It’s also very hard to hide the fact that you don’t have a vote for multiple tribals, so you must either tell your allies the truth about the beware idol or lie to your allies, both of which are bad options.
My interpretation is that they’re switching to two tribes of six, but I really hope not. Those always end up being too predictable, with small pockets of former teammates getting voted out in sequence.
My total Wild-Ass Guess is that they’ll randomly redistribute the three tribes at their current levels; there’ll still be 6 Luvu, 4 Yase, and 2 Ua, but with different members.
I have no evidence to back up this hunch, but I think it would be fun, and in keeping with the curveballs they’ve been throwing this season.
It’s really a problem with having more than two tribes. The normal flow of an episode with two is Go see Tribe A, then go see Tribe B, have the immunity challenge, then go back to the losing tribe. With 3-4 tribes, that first part really gets shrunk down.
The problem compounded by the fact they’re burning segments on the prisoners’ dilemma island adventures.
They’ve been trying for a while now to keep the show from getting too formulaic. I think it’s good to add new elements here and there to keep things interesting; not everything will work, and that’s OK.
But they’ve taken that to a whole new level this season. Too much going on with the complicated advantages and the prisoner’s dilemma thing, and the shared immunity idols, etc. etc. Paradoxically, it’s making for a relatively dull season.
On the other hand, things usually only get really good after the merge, so I guess the jury’s still out, so to speak.
Speaking of which, did anyone else notice that after Jeff hinted that the next voted out could start the jury, Ricard jumped into his spiel about how he’s the mastermind and Shan’s just the closer. He’s ready to start playing the jury.