Decent episode with a foregone conclusion. Jonathan and Colby were beasts in the challenges. The Boomerang Idols are a nice touch and already influencing decisions. Especially after next week…
The boomerang idol recipients act like they’ve received an anonymous love letter; in contrast to the giver’s actual “evil-genius how can I manipulate this situation” motives.
I wonder if any of the recipients will learn about the “if you don’t use it it goes back to the holder” clause.
Since the boomerang idol is Billie Eilish themed, I expect someone will mention the singer to try and gain favor with unknown recipients or to try and draw them out. But since the boomerang recipients do not know it is a Billie Eilish theme, it could be interesting to see if that just throws a target because now others will know who could get a boomerang back to them. Layers on layers.
Rizo still needs to be shanked ASAP. I’m hoping that next week’s Tribe Shuffle gives everyone a chance to get rid of Cirie. If Coach and Ozzy end up on the same tribe, Jeff’s gonna have to have Medical just off-camera. What ended up happening right at the end of Tribal? Dropped idol? Swapped idol? I missed the details.
Devens hid a fake idol with the Billie Eilish note. Basically a “break in case of emergency” option to cause chaos.
This is the first time I can recall anybody using the TC set for anything. Forced the camera guys to shoot from different angles than we’d ever seen.
Wow, that was a fun episode! Christian Hubicki and Rick Devens together are a chaos-generating machine!
Enjoyed the competitions. Normally, I’ll just fast-forward through them, but these were worthy of being watched, and getting into the tension of the matches. If they’d only lisened to Christian more, they would have whipped through the puzzle (at least that’s what the edit made it look like).
And the tribal interactions? Very interesting and watchable. Either the editors are on top of their games, or these people know what to give them to make it interesting.
Really enjoyed the episode.
Can someone explain what the point of that was? It can’t be used by the person who finds it, so once they decide to send it to someone it’ll be revealed as fake. It doesn’t benefit the finder (since it’s fake and won’t return to them.)
I don’t even see how that would cause any kind of chaos since it will be shown as fake before it can even come into play.
If the idea is that production would actually pass it on to someone, that is a level of bullshit rules-breaking that IMO goes way too far. If production gives you an Idol, it’s real.
I did not get the impression that the fake idol had the boomerang note. Just the wrapper that the idol was found in. My assumption was they were either going to pretend to find the idol (they mentioned faking a clue) or tell someone about the “clue” and have them find it.
I agree that it being a boomerang idol makes no sense.
But then again a fake idol without a note isn’t very believable either. I suppose if one of them “finds” it they could just act like there is a note.
The way I imagined it in my mind is that if either one of them thinks they are a target they start talking about this clue they have about an idol at TC. Then when they get there they “look for it” and “find” the package. They don’t even have to open it there - just put it in their pocket. Or even better give it to someone else making them feel safe.
Interesting! Ok at least that makes some sense.
Or, you know, an opposing player finds it when they’re at TC, and thinks its real.. 
Yeah, he needs to be voted off. It is one thing to not be super worker, it is another to goof off constantly around camp. For some reason, tonight the names batted around were Joe (wait 'til the merge), Ozzie (same) and Savannah (good), but Cirie sucks at challenges and no one even floated her name.
I will FF thru the talk-talky parts.
I didnt get it either.
I like Rizo. Hope he goes far.
I was disappointed Savannah got ousted. She is one of those people that I assumed were bitchy and snobby when she began her last season…only for me to really like her and see that she is nice.
I feel like this comes up every season now, but that’s just not how the game is played anymore. If you’ve got a strong alliance, you’re better off sending someone home who is a future threat vs someone that might help your team win challenges.Especially since they could switch up the tribes any moment.
Right.
I’d go even further and say that being strong in challenges is at best neutral and often a negative when folks are considering who to vote for. Unless you are literally carrying your tribe (like Johnathan) - but even then if there is a tribe switch suddenly he’s carrying someone else!
Cirie will get votes when folks in her alliance decide to cut her loose. She won’t win any (or at least not many) individual immunities, which makes her much easier to target as long as she doesn’t get any idols/advantages. Her #1 seems to be Ozzie, which isn’t great for her either since he’s not likely to do anything useful to save her (unlike the opposite - she has already pulled her weight by getting the vote off him). She will likely go pretty far just because she’s not really that threatening to the other players. There’s even a chance she sets herself up as a final-3 player by playing the goat.
I think what Devins and Christian are planning with respect to the fake idol is a Hail Mary.
If they think they are in danger of getting voted out, then they “find” the fake idol and pretend it is a valid idol. After all, it is does have parchment and perhaps they create some doubt before the vote and transfer the vote to another player.
Yes, I said it was a “Hail Mary”
I disagree. If your team gets down to 2 before the merge, then you gotta vote out an alliance member. If your tribe only goes to Tribal a couple of times, then you are good.
Does anyone else think Ozzie may be deliberately underperforming? He came into this with a pretty scary rep as a challenge monster … and has not only failed at delivering, he brought up his additional failure when it came up TC. Way to reduce the target on your back, maybe?
Then again.. he is 44. Age does creep up on you.