Missing the merge is not as embarrassing as getting arrestedfor beating up your boyfriend.
IMO, Parvati is better than Rob. she has a win (in an all star half season), and a FTC in an all star season and 6th place finish. and, going into tonight she beat Rob Head to Head both times they played against each other.
Maybe rank all multiple season players by average number of episodes (or tribal councils survived) per season as a baseline score, then add bonus points for sole survivor, final tribal council, and final merge. Maybe idols found/played with deduction for eviction while holding an idol, though that biases towards more recent seasons.
Look ahead to tonight: there are still five active players, two of whom (Tony and Ben) have been shown to have immunity idols. As far as I remember, no one else holds any kind of advantage or idol, though I suppose one could have not been shown us.
Right away we get our 2nd returnee. Out of the 14 ( I think?) left on Exile, three definitely have idols (Natalie, Rob, Tyson.) Did anyone else have enough fire tokens to buy one? Or – I suppose – some group of the others could have scraped together enough tokens and did some random draw for who gets the idol.
And, of course, someone will win Individual Immunity.
So at the first TC tonight there will be six players and possibly up to four people could have immunity. That’s almost as bad as when Cirie went out.
I think the last time you can play an idol is at 5, so some might play at this tribal and some might play at the next.
Unfortunately this is shaping up to be a repeat of Ghost Island when Wendell and Domenick dominated the game, and they brought a goat to the final three (Laurel)
IMO, The best plan for the EoE player is to team up with Michelle and try to talk Ben and Denise to split their votes on Tony & Sarah.
If Tony plays the idol, then vote for the non-immune player on the revote.
(obviously it only works if Sarah or Tony don’t win Immunity).
If Michelle/Ben/Denise/EoE don’t (at least) try to get Tony and Sarah out of the game, I am going very disappointed with their status as a Survivor Winner. Ben and Denise have played very passively in the post merge game and I don’t think they have guts to do this.
Rob is the EoE player that has the best chance to rally the troops. But I don’t think there is any chance he can win the EoE challenge without any advantages. Natalie is going to have a big head start.
I hope Natalie wins the EoE challenge and she can rally the troops.
IIRC: Advantages in the Challenge
Natalie has three
Wendell, Parvati, Tyson, Sophie, Yul should have one advantage from the coconut challenge (unless they bought food)
Rob, Tyson, and Natalie have an HII should they get back into the game
Amber, Danni, Ethan, Rob, Adam, Kim, Jeremy and Nick do not have any advantage.
Has there been a single season since moving to a final three without a goat in the finals?
Man, I hope it’s not Natalie.
Probably not. But like Ghost Island, no one is taking shot at Tony and/or Sarah (or Wendell/Domenick).
They are skating through every TC. Tony has yet to receive a vote yet. Through until final 5. Rob voted for Sarah in the TC when he got voted out.
Natalie is a fierce Warrior Woman. I’m pulling for her.
Really interesting discussion of criteria for the GOAT.
Wild that Ben offered himself up for sacrifice! I wonder if deep down he was actually trying to avoid the humiliation of being a no-vote finalist.
Right? I really like Natalie but that would just destroy the validity of the season.
Everyone’s acting like it was a no-brainer for Natalie to make Tony and Sarah (Lacina) make fire against each other. But I don’t see that at all. It just sets up the winner to be unbeatable at FTC. And it certainly screws Michele out of having any chance to win. There are no great options, but Natalie herself making fire against either Michele or Tony would have probably been better for her. So would getting Michele to beat Tony.
Yup, especially as it played out, she ended up giving this great story to either Tony or Sarah and her comment that it was time to finally break up this alliance made her sound like Cruella Deville. I was surprised Michelle didn’t get more respect, I was impressed with how she hung on.
Preach! I have been complaining about Michele’s Rodney Dangerfield status since before the merge in her first season.
Yes, and one or two jury members even mentioned that Natalie should have done that.
Pretty dang good finale, and I’d say the final vote was ‘correct’ (Tony winning, Natalie second, Michele third). And I do actually think Michele played a pretty good game, which is something I normally don’t say (because the third finisher usually is just a goat, and why third place has never gotten more than 1 vote). She went into the merge in trouble and managed to stay alive despite being on the bottom; won some clutch immunities.
The Ben/Sarah vote was quite interesting, though it ended up losing importance since Sarah didn’t make the finale. I’m not surprised Ben all the sudden decided to fall on the metaphorical sword, but in a way it was almost a dick thing to do. Sarah had seemed like she finally came to terms with herself as Survivor player, only for Ben to ask her to essentially betray him, which all the sudden runs the risk of making her look like the bad guy again. Would’ve been really interesting to see what the discussion of that move would be if Sarah beats Tony at fire.
And man, that was a close fire making challenge. But I’m now convinced that Chris Underwood ruined it for everyone, and anyone who wins the final 4 immunity challenge and now sits out fire making is really hurting themselves in the final. Which I’m actually okay with because I hate the final 4 fire making challenge.
Not what I said at all. The point is that both times he went out recently were for reasons beyond his control. (His first season was weak, he was apparently lucky to make the cut for All-Stars). And I know there are plenty of times that’s happened to other players, but there’s also plenty of other times other top players have come back and screwed themselves. (JT, Sandra this season, Tony’s second season, etc.) I’d argue that Boston Rob has only played poorly once in five seasons, despite only making the merge twice.
The best moment is the return challenge to start the 3 hours, a bunch of people have gotten to the marble maze and Jeff enthuses “Everyone is moving!” Camera then cuts to Jeremy casually strolling from the last obstacle to the marble maze, untying his knots as he very slowly ambles along.
I liked that the three finalists all played completely different games and all three did them well. Tony was masterful at running the entire game as the head of the power alliance, Michelle played the underdog hand about as well as it can be played, and Natalie absolutely killed it on exile.
I get that Michelle was the goat role, but I think she deserved those 4 votes over Natalie. The whole extinction game mechanic is flawed; Natalie only had to get through three votes all season and got voted out in one of them. (Had immunity for the other two.) Even if she takes out Tony in a firemaking challenge, I still don’t think that’s anywhere near the resume of anyone from the final 8 much less final 3.
Sarah had a general point but in this specific game Tony clearly outplayed her. In terms of independent side hustles, Tony greatly outshined Sarah. (Jeremy and Nick both jump to mind.) In terms of making moves within the alliance, Tony blindsiding Sophie trumps anything Sarah has. Tony was also totally right about Natalie coming back with an idol, but deferred to Sarah who cost their alliance two idols with her mistake. Sarah’s one thing over Tony is the Ben “blindside”, but come on; staging a move with a patsy isn’t making an actual move.
The most surprising thing for me is how perfunctory and unsatisfying the no-reunion ending felt. Turns out I kind of like the reunion, I guess.
It’s really tough to compare Natalie and Michele because Edge is such a different game. I think it’s obvious Tony played a better game than Michele, but much more difficult to say that about Natalie’s game over Michele. The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to agree that Michele might’ve deserved second over Natalie. It’s tough because I dislike Edge, but it’s part of the game unfortunately. And I think Natalie certainly did pretty good with what she was given, but there’s also a ton of advantages to the Edge.
I saw a comment on Reddit that made an interesting argument that Chris Underwood’s return game was much better than Natalie’s. Paraphrasing:
You’d think that if CBS could send a camera to Probst’s garage they could have sent a real microphone.
I know that there was one woman in the past (who played multiple seasons) that Probst always referred to by her last name, but I’m drawing a blank now.
Wentworth. Because there was another Kelly. Really, Cochran set up the whole narrative that Jeff uses last names/nicknames for great players, but most of them were just from two people having the same name in one season.
I think Probst addressed Kelly Wentworth as “Wentworth”
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IMO there was a lot of bad game play last night.
Michele and Natalie should have targeted Sarah in the revote, at Final 6 after all votes were canceled in the first vote. If you can’t go after Tony, you go after the First Lieutenant. It would have forced a fire making contest.
Can’t understand why Natalie told Sarah about finding the HII. Natalie and Michelle should have kept searching for the HII
Sarah should have never voted for Ben at Final 5. If Michele goes home at Final 5, I don’t think there is any scenario where Sarah is not in the final three.
And WTF was Ben thinking?
Natalie wins at Final 4 Immunity, she brings Sarah to final three, Ben and Tony in fire making
Tony wins F4 Immunity, he brings Sarah to final three, Natalie and Ben in fire making
Ben wins F4 Immunity, he brings Sarah to final three, Natalie and Toney in fire making
Obviously if Sarah wins F4 immunity, she is in the FTC.
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Tony deserved the win, and IMO, he is the best player ever. Never received a vote this year. And he is highly entertaining.
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I think TPTB need to find a way to make players announce their intention to play HII’s during the voting process.
At Final 6, Tony and Ben only played their HII’s AFTER Natalie played her Immunity Idol. In Poker, it is called being “in Position”, in baseball, it is “home field advantage”, getting the last at bat.
The producers could force the player to mark their vote on the parchment with an “X” to indicate that they are going to play an HII after the votes are cast and before the votes are read. And that “X” is binding.
A similar situation happened earlier this season when Jeremy played his “Safety w/o Power” before Sarah played her “steal a vote”. If Sarah played her Steal a Vote on Jeremy, it would have canceled the advantage, Not exactly analogous because those advantages are played before the voting process