FWIW, according to Dalton Ross’ interview with Jeff, the idols that Rob and Natalie bought before the return challenge are gone, as well as the fire tokens they used to buy them.
Yes, and they could have bought up to FOUR advantages.
That’s what I would have done. Altho honestly peanut butter the day before wasnt crazy, if you had extra tokens.
I get Rob buying the idol, because he definitely would get knocked out as soon as he came back in. Natalie made a big mistake though. Most of the people who voted her off are on EoE!
I’m curious as to what the other advantages would do. It would’ve been cool if everyone could pick which advantage they wanted and see how that played out.
Speaking of fire tokens, here’s the new menu at camp:
Merge Camp
Steal a player’s spot on a reward (3 tokens)
Send a personal note to any player on the Edge of Extinction (2 tokens)
A small bag of beans (4 tokens)
A regular bag of rice (5 tokens)
Two pillows and two blankets (4 tokens)
A tarp (5 tokens)
I’m kinda surprised there’s no real advantages.
Of course they had a chance to talk before the vote. Rob (along with everyone) did a talking head confession right before the vote.
And even Rob does not have a cast iron bladder.
Besides that, they talked before they lost the challenge.
Here’s a link to all 3 Fire Token menus. Scroll about halfway down. The changes between the original tribal menu and the post merge menu was they took away the Advantage a Challenge (4 tokens) and Coffee & Pastry (3), and added steal a reward spot (3), and note to someone on EoE (2).
I feel very confident it’s the editors. They have become addicted to “blindsiding” the audience at the end of every episode, at the expense of being able to actually follow the gameplaying. 
They had a revised menu right before the challenge:
1 token: Your don’t have to dug up your string
2 tokens: Same as 1, plus [something I forget]
3 tokens: 1 and 2, plus 3 of your sticks will already be assembled (the long stick to grab the key)
3 tokens: immunity idol
If I were Rob, I might have gone with 2 advantages each to Rob & Amber to maximize the chance one of you gets back in.
Interesting idea, but I can see why he bought the HII, given that he would have had a huge target on his back immediately upon returning to the game. It came within a fraction of a second of working for him!
Missed most of the episode because of severe weather warnings.
What a clusterf*** of a tribal council.
Wiki has TV ratings which have spiked about 15% in the last three weeks.
It was absolutely wild. All the running around before TC was crazy too. I’d love to see some kind of chart showing what all plans were floated by whom and to whom.
“You thought it was an idol?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure it isn’t?”
Best host on TV.
There is some dispute on Twitter as to whether Probst was being unnecessarily cruel. I thought he was fine and even acknowledged at the end that it was worth a shot.
Nah, Probst wasn’t too cruel - Adam was just desperate and the actions of desperate people always make us cringe. Sometimes in a good way, but for me at least Adam’s were more “sad-cringe” than “laugh-cringe”. Maybe because I tend to like him, and the dead silence when he asked for some reassurance was pretty cold. I guess he could take it as them liking him too much to lie to his face (except Ben), but still…
Better editing this week, I think, as they made it pretty clear the vote was between Nick and Adam and where the major players stood on the issue. The scramble at TC made it a bit up in the air, but not so much that it was shocking that Adam was snuffed.
As for Adam himself, I think he nailed it. He just made too many mistakes, starting on basically day one. He also never really cultivated the alliance with Ben, and was way too quick to throw other names out there to “change the game”. He possibly could have kept his profile down and survived this vote, since it was actually shown that Ben had his back (changing it from Nick/Adam and Nick/Michelle). But he just can’t play that way for some reason.
Saw this making the rounds on twitter.
On an international version of survivor (Australian Survivor) there was an idol hidden in plain sight on the hosts podium.
Adam took a swing and he struck out, but you never hit a home run if you don’t swing.
He was screwed as soon as he started that “Break Sarah and Ben up” and couldn’t say anything other than he heard “other people” say it.
Rob Cesternino and Stephen Fishbach talked about this on the “Know-it-Alls” podcast. Rob’s assessment was that Adam could probably have coasted to the end as a goat that everyone wanted to sit next to if he just stayed quiet and didn’t make waves. But he doesn’t want to be a zero-vote finalist, so he’s bound and determined to make moves to build a resume, even if that makes it more likely he gets voted out early. Rob seemed to have respect for that approach, and I do too. There is a guy who used to post here who has a podcast on the RHAP network, and he and I have argued in the past about whether there is any point to doing whatever it takes to stay around another week (including throwing your allies under the bus or helping people you loathe advance). I say no, but he represents a school of thought that you should always do whatever it takes to “survive and fight another day” because “you never know”. I think sometimes you *do *know.
Agreed. I have heard more and more that Aussie Survivor is supposed to be good. Have any of you watched it?
I watched one season, the first one I think. It was pretty good. They made way more episodes, so there were more episodes without vote-outs.
One thing I liked about the season I saw was that before the reveal of the winner was done, they had the families of the finalists come out and stand with them. When the winner’s name was ready, their family was with them. Very cute and fun.
That’s not Australian Survivor. I think it might be South African.
Aussie Survivor is usually pretty good. The extra episodes give you more time to get to know the contestants. There were 2 seasons a while ago, which were terrible (not actually Survivor), and five seasons since the reboot. The second season of the reboot (called Season 4) is my favourite season, and season 4 (aka 6) is good too.
He wasn’t being cruel. No more cruel than when someone plays a fake idol and he says “This is…not a hidden immunity idol.” and tosses it in the fire. Besides, apart from major physical injury, I see the players as puppets going through suffering for my amusement.