Survivor: Cambodia 10/21 - "A Snake In the Grass"

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Boy, did the editing make this one obvious or what?

  1. Our first look at the inner workings of Pink Tribe in a long time is Kimmie not liking Monica.

  2. Monica is the goat of the reward challenge.

  3. After losing immunity, Monica says “I think Tribal will be good.”

  4. At camp, she then says “going to Tribal sucks.”

Well, it’s obviously gonna be Monica, right? So many omens… they try to sell us that the vote will be the standard “old tribe gangs up on the transplants” vote for either Spencer or Wigglesworth, but Monica chooses the wrong person to confide her “all girls alliance” idea in and her tribe turns on her in a blindside. Gotta love how they did it, too - they didn’t tell either of the two players on the outs, they just took care of business themselves. Pretty awesome.

The barrel challenge was interesting, and I suppose it was nice to see an episode without the “cross physical barriers, then do puzzle” challenge design.

Has every person voted out so far been from the same original tribe?

Hey Ellis,

I just want to tell you that I got a good laugh from your OP - especially the part about Monica.

What a bizarre lady! Perhaps even more bizarre than Abi Brazil Nut.

I would have expected Monica to have been voted out much earlier (although since yesterday’s episode was Epi 05, that would hardly be possible).

I loved the TC. Wasn’t that hilarious? No wonder the producers never showed Monica or any of her confessionals before this episode. There was really nothing much to see. But yesterday made up for it all.

I think you mean magnusblitz.

Abi is too crazy to be a goat that you take to the end. You can’t predict how she’ll vote, so you could look at her funny and she’d sell out your alliance. I like that after Woo told his story, Abi tried to generate some sympathy with her aunt and grandmother’s death. She really is horrible.

Well, thank goodness this wasn’t the All-Abi, All The Time show again. Was getting so sick of her. Although that awful confessional she gave about Woo’s mother and how her tendon transplant was just as traumatic or whatever…I think she went too far. Meaning, I think she may have just shown her cards revealing that she’s *deliberately *playing the villain to get camera-time. I mean, that was so over the top no real person would say something like that, right?

I see people complaining online that the editing was too obvious, but I think that was deliberate? We, the audience, were supposed to know going in that Monica was getting the boot, so we could enjoy her comments about how going to Tribal was a good thing, and that smug little smile on her face during Tribal, and “Yes, Jeff, the vote is set.” Wouldn’t have been as good if we were in any real doubt about who was going.

Also reading elsewhere online that Bayon threw that challenge on purpose to get rid of Monica. Confirmed by Jeremy and Stephen on Twitter, although the posts have since been deleted. Which explains Stephen hitting the wrong target and Jeremy sitting out. All that scheming actually took place before the challenge. Tricky, tricky editors!

Still loving Spencer but he is so exhausting to root for…seems he’s *always *on the verge of getting voted out!

There’s something weird about Spencer. In his first show and in this one, he pretends he’s a colossal nerd with no physical abilities, but last night he kicked all kinds of ass. He showed in the challenges that he is fast, he can clamber up ladders like Spiderman, and his hand/eye coordination is very good. He probably was a track/cross country star in HS. He singlehandedly brought his team from dead last to almost winning the reward challenge and he was very good in the immunity challenge.

He seems to have convinced himself that he is useless, though. I don’t think his teammates are buying it anymore. He should sit back when the challenges require strength and endurance and let Jeremy handle them, and stay away from puzzles, but when the task calls for speed and agility, step up and demonstrate his worth.

The idea of “vote off the weak first and the strong at the merge” hasn’t really applied for a while now. It’s a persistent myth. If all you bring is strength, that is one thing, but if you’re strong and have a plan, you’ll go far. You don’t even have to be smart. See Tony Vlasos.

Well, crap. Bayon is now going to eat every clam.

EVERY CLAM IN THE OCEAN!!!

To slightly defend Monica, I don’t think her point was that they would deplete the ocean’s stock of clams, but that they would deplete the tribe’s available stock of clams. I think she was arguing that they should leave some behind so that they could eat them when they were really hungry, treating the ocean as a grocery store they could return to when they needed more food. She didn’t do a great job of making that point, however.

The first four were all Ta Keo (green tribe), Monica was the first original Bayon (pink tribe).

Right, she was simply saying “don’t eat it all now, leave some for other days” but she did a piss-poor job of explaining it, and made it sound like she was worried about depleting the ocean of clams or something.

Well, in his first season he might’ve been doing it on purpose, since he was on the “brains” tribe, and probably told to play up his nerdiness. Not sure about this season though, since we already know he’s strong at challenges. Besides, everyone should be wanting to keep stronger challenge players around just so they can get Joe out eventually.

(It won’t happen, but I would’ve loved a “Challenge Beast” season full only of returning players who were really strong at challenges. Colby is no longer invited).

I love Dalton Ross’s recaps.

Monica acted too much like Monica from Friends to keep around. She even looked like her a bit.

I gotta say that as much as I have a natural tendency to dislike Keith, that guy is damn good at challenges. He’s got NO social game, though. None.

Not sure who I’d like to see win at this point, but the only person I’m leaning towards is Woo.

It’s kid of hard not to like Keith because he’s so dumb. “Let’s just stick to the plan,” you mean the secret plan that we worked out in secret and that you just brought up in a public forum? That plan?

OK. I can’t argue with any of that. But, it still leaves the question, "How will it develop that she will be booted? What will be the sequence of events that leads to her boot?

It’s almost as if people are afraid to breathe a word along the lines of, “Let’s boot the crazy lady”. Who will bell the cat? Meaning … who will start the process to eject her and and how will it develop?
By the way … “bell the cat” is an expression from an old fable. I apologize if most people here don’t know what it means. It just means, “Who will be the first to take a stand and voice the opinion that she should go?”

If I’m playing this season, all I can think is, “Abi has to go now, because she won’t make it to the end and I sure as hell don’t want her on the jury…”

But he got wrong which tribe came in first during the Immunity Challenge. I checked the comments, and gave up after two pages, and no one had pointed it out yet.

???

He was correct on page 4:

{{emphasis mine}}

Angkor (Savage, Woo, Tasha, Abi) did finish first, partly because Fishback hit one of their targets