I’ll wait until post two for spoiler commentary.
Dude, Russel’s team sucks and so does he. At least he sucks at this go of the game. He has got to be going home tonight.
Or not, apparently. This dude has dodged bullets Matrix-style this year.
Yeah, he was useless at swimming. But Angie was useless at everything except snuggling and bikini wearing.
I guess we now know why Russell did not want to the swimming part of the first challenge. I suspected at the time that he was not a strong swimmer and apparently it is true.
Russell’s tribe looked to be doomed from the onset. They had two very weak girls (Roxie and Angie) and one of the guys was an over-weight guy who just quit smoking who thought he was a lot smarter than he actually was.
I sure thought TPTB were leading us to another team losing immunity. With all the talk about targeting Skupkin and Penner.
So many people that I do not know. Artis ( black guy on the yellow tribe) finally got a confessional and there are three people on the Red Tribe that have barely talked. Young blond guy, and the two of the gals.
Angie is one of the most immature Survivors I’ve seen. She sounded like a 12-year-old as she tried to justify her poor performance at the challenge. Good riddance.
On the yellow team, I’m really liking RC. She’s smart, had a strong showing at the challenge, and she’s got a great body. Unfortunately, she’s putting her trust in Abi-Maria, the Brazilian girl with the fantastic ass, who’s acting like a crazy bitch to RC. It really sucks that Abi found the hidden idol.
That’s enough for me that I didn’t want her voted out, but wow, so pathetic. I can’t blame them at all.
I forget the woman’s name who remains on that tribe, but as of now I’m officially rooting for her and Malcom.
Sad to see Angie go but it was the right move. Malcolm needed to show Denise that he was with her and Russell is more useful in the challenges and around camp (except for not being a great set of pillows). On the plus side for the Loser Tribe they have cut away a lot of fat off of the tribe and the other tribes can’t sit out the same people next week at the immunity challenge so they have a shot. One single win could do it I think. I expect a merge to 2 tribes or a shake up somehow after next the next episode.
Sadly, yes they can. For some inexplicable reason that rule only applies to the second challenge in a single episode, where the same people can’t sit out who did earlier in the episode. That means you sit your better players for reward so they can play for immunity.
This rule doesn’t apply on single-challenge seasons like this one. I don’t even understand why this season is single-challenge. I understood when there was a redemption island dual, that counted as a second challenge. But why only one per episode this season? Makes no sense.
EDIT: That’s why Malcom was bemoaning how the weaker girls on the other tribes got to sit out everything while Angie was forced to play in everything.
Wow, I didn’t know that, and it really does stack the deck against a tribe that’s down players already. I don’t believe the game is “fixed” per se, but it seems weird that the rules would disfavor the previous challenge’s loser so heavily.
Anyhow, it makes perfect sense that they’ll merge into two tribes of seven after the next TC. Might give some new life to the surviving Blue Team members. More so if they can finally manage not to lose.
Other random thoughts: Angie actually seems like a sweet kid. Not a good Survivor player, by any means, but I found it very hard to dislike her, and her parting remarks were classy and seemed sincere. Best of luck to her.
Did anyone else think there was some creative editing at the Immunity Challenge? Russell and company were showing “T-R-E-A-S-U-_-E” on their puzzle, and it looked like they were finally going to avoid Tribal. Cut to the second-place team, furiously shuffling letters until they came up with the right answer. They couldn’t slide the “R” into place in all that time?
Ouch. Yeah they should change that. With that in mind I believe Russell will go home despite how they made it look in the teaser.
Personally I like the single challenge format since the challenges waste a lot of screen time. Sure they are exciting and how people on the losing team perform is often a key factor in who gets voted off but a lot of it is just fluff. I always fast forward past the explanation. That could be a lot shorter. I never have trouble figuring it out as they compete. And the milking of the drama takes up even more time. I know viewers complain about watching players lay around camp complaining but that’s the part of the show I like the best: how people keep it together in the face of hardship and boredom and maneuver within the tribe.
The only reason I know that sit-out rule is because Jeff responded in his blog about it many seasons ago during a single-challenge season explaining it after many people complained.
I went back and checked the full episodes on cbs.com to see if Malcolm had a legit gripe…
Week 2: Abi, Dawson sat out
Week 3: Abi & Lisa, Dawson & Katie sat out
So Abby and Dawson have already sat out the last two challenges, meaning they only competed the first week. Abi is the crazy chick who found the HII in last night’s episode, the one who threatened to kill RC if she crossed her.
Dawson, as far as I can tell, has had exactly two moments of screen time: both times when she walked over to the bench to sit out the last two challenges. Jeff calls her Dawson, but apparently her first name is Sarah.
Weird! Wonder if they edited out a moment when she asked Jeff to call her that, like Penner did in his first season.
The Brazilian girl bears watching closely… I predict major crazy down the road.
But she never said “I quit!” That counts for something, right?
No, not really. She sounded like someone who’s used to getting participation medals for everything.
Such a totally back-stabbing dickish move by Abi, to take the info RC shared with her and run off with it. Psycho, paranoid, and duplicitous.
IOW, a winning Survivor strategy! 
I think there’s hope for Russell’s team once he’s voted out of the game. Of course, I can’t see the producers sitting out 4 people on each side in the challenges when that happens, so I expect a merge of some sort sooner than later.
I’m almost certain that while she was standing on the dock during the challenge, she was subtitled as saying “I can’t do it.” Which is exactly what she repeatedly insisted she *didn’t *say.
That said, she did have a point about letting the players who were doing well take multiple turns. Russell was just terrible, and I wouldn’t have blamed the others for voting him out because if it. But then they would have nearly guaranteed another loss at the next challenge. It was a tough call to make.
And, yeah, letting the same players sit out every time seems to violate the whole spirit of the competition. Dumb rule.
But then she turned around and called Russell a “quitter” because he tried for his second one, realized there was no way in hell he was going to be able to get the piece, and came back to the platform to give someone else a try. So she was saying she didn’t try again after her first leg because the others were better at it, but she would have done so if they asked her to, but if she did, and couldn’t reach the next one, she would have just kept trying and trying and failing and failing instead of “quitting” and giving Malcolm or Denise another turn? That’s just nuts.
I still have the episode on the DVR. I rewound the challenge scene a few times to be sure. Angie does say she can’t do it when Denise asks if she is going again. Denise accepts this but Russell says something negative to her and she asks for some slack saying, “Come on”. Russell then goes into the water and fails to return with a puzzle piece and is delayed on the ladder again. To me Russell was more at fault than Angie in that challenge. She knew her limits. Russell didn’t and cost the team more time. I still would have gotten rid of Angie though. She’s just more limited.
I think the editing trick was in shooting the closeups of the puzzle later using stand ins for dramatic purposes. There is a crane overlooking the raft for wide shots but all of the close ups just show hands and the front shots don’t show any cameras looking directly over the players’ shoulders. It’s hard to say how close the blue team was. Based on the letters from the front they were 3 letters off just after the first team won. One of those was the first letter though. In the final front shot after they have lost they have the first five letters right and the sixth incorrect. The seventh letter is not visible. At a guess I’d say they had made up time and were seconds away from finishing.
Denise, Malcom and RC were all powerhouses for their teams in that challenge. I really hope they merge/shuffle into two teams so they can all survive a while longer. Abi’s backstabbing while a smart strategy doesn’t make up for the psycho chick vibes she’s giving off.