Has the show or anyone involved in it commented on the Rob and Amber unfairness? I do NOT get how they could both be allowed to play. Imagine if they make it to the final 3 or 4. What an advantage!
Yes, one of the reasons Amber was targeted was because they knew they couldn’t let Amber & Rob get to the merge together. It wasn’t emphasized, but the players definitely brought it up as a reason. Of course, with this stupid Edge of Extinction mechanism, you have no idea if she’s really out or not.
A relatively entertaining start, but I worry that the existing alliances (including, of course, the married couple) along with EoE will really muck up the game play. You already have both fire tokens bequeathed to players due to relationships that existed before the game started. Now you’ll have Amber attempting to funnel as many advantages as possible to Rob. A bit of a bummer, IMO, but I’m relieved that so far the “outsiders” seem to have a pretty good grasp of what they have to do. Yul is, as always, the man.
It was pretty hilarious watching everyone stand around refusing to name a target. It was very clear they all expected that as soon as somebody said a name they would become a target. Very cagey, and could make for a pretty surprising set of votes. I do wonder if the lack of actual discussion will make it hard for the editors to explain things to the viewers. It was, I think, a first for them to show “not on the show” footage (the poker game) to try to explain what was happening at camp.
I was shocked that Rob, Parvati, and Sandra made it through the whole episode without anybody really going after them. And Natalie even sold an idol to Sandra - WTF?
Did I just miss it, or did they not show us the votes for either tribal council? It’s much harder to follow along at home when you’re not sure who voted for whom. I had to go to Wikipedia to get the breakdown.
Hopefully they’ll change that in future episodes.
Do you mean after the votes are read and the votee has left, when they show who each person voted for while the eliminated player talks about their experience? Yeah, they don’t do that when it’s an Edge of Extinction season, because the voted off player going to extinction is the final scene. Add that to the list of why EoE sucks.
That makes perfect sense to me. If you’re trying to sell an idol, you want to send it to someone who has the biggest target on her back. That would probably be Amber or Sandra, and she was already pissed at Rob.
One thing about EoE not mentioned, I hope they don’t do the whole “everyone still on EoE is on the jury” this time. That would be a mess.
Yeah, I hate EoE.
(that was not my quote you credited to me)
Well that was weird.
I remember watching the season of Survivor that Rob won and thinking, “well of course he beat these idiots.” but now he is totally dominating a group of previous winners. Rob says dump out your bags at tribal and they do it, Rob tells Ben to give him the name and he does. The only player who seems to be immune is Parv, she’s just coasting behind him, letting him wear the target.
It seems Rob’s comments shown in last weeks previews were taken a bit out of context. While he’s certainly not happy about Amber getting voted out, it wasn’t a big surprise and he’s definitely keeping his head.
What’s crazy, as madmonk23 pointed out, is how much power he has over people for no apparent reason. The “New School Alliance,” or whatever you want to call it, could easily have taken out Rob or Parvati, but everybody (according to wiki, Danni’s was the only Parvati vote) went along with Rob’s plan. Why? People are already calling him the “Godfather.” But guess what, he’s only the Godfather if everybody agrees he is, and it baffles me as to why everybody just agrees he is.
Yeah, it’s bizarre to watch. Adam is the only one who seems to be pushing back on Rob, the rest seem to be joining his cult.
The edit certainly made Danni look like she let her paranoia get the better of her, and blew up her own alliance.
Whaaa, preview comments out of context, say it ain’t so! 
I also don’t know if I’d say Rob kept his cool. He certainly fell apart in that puzzle. Whether that was because he was upset over Amber or not, can’t say (they got the first section done quick, he might’ve just made a strategic blunder).
I agree though that it’s pretty impressive watching Boston Rob be able to ‘Godfather’ a bunch of veterans. It was one thing to do it to star-struck newbies on Redemption Island. I think the thing is, we only get shown the ‘strategic’ side of things and rarely the ‘social’ side, and by all accounts Rob is a really good social player too. He gets to know everyone and is a fun guy to be around. So, I think when he pulls a stunt like the one he did this week, people go along with it because they all think they’re on his good side. Might also be some players who are fine with keeping him around for now as a meat shield… the trick is correctly deducing that you’ll still be around in a few weeks to do so.
I actually think that Rob wasn’t really thinking he’d find the HII with his stunt, but he’d at least suss out some suspicion. Denise did a great job of laying low; Adam did not, and by pushing back I think inculpated himself somewhat.
I wonder if the HII halves are compatible with each other… i.e., Kim could combine one half with Adam later once the tribes mix/merge.
I think one big advantage Rob has is that the strategy of Survivor has shifted. The old strategy was “vote out the biggest threats.” Now it’s “keep the biggest threats around, because otherwise they’re coming after you.”
Interesting that challenge performance hasn’t even been a topic of discussion when it comes to who gets voted out.
I think paranoia was part of it, but some of it was just bad game play. Failing to realize that Parvati and Rob were working together (or even that it was very likely that they would be) and telling each one, at different points, that they should vote out the other one, was pretty poor I think. Add in spilling the beans about the old-school agreements in front of Ben and I think she just didn’t bring her A game. She also won in a season that was pretty passive, if I recall correctly, so I’m not too shocked that the new style of game didn’t work for her.
I do think this puts Parvati and Rob in a bind. They kind of needed Danni as another “old school” vote and now they are pretty clear targets. They need to get the new school group to crack up, which I’m not really seeing.
ETA: re: challenge performances, I think it did come up. There was a comment between the “new school” group along the lines of “We need Rob. We need Parvati. So let’s target Danni”. I guess that could be read as needing them as targets, but I read it as at least having a bit of a challenge flavor to it.
I always thought there was too much emphasis on immunity challenge performance in the past, and the game is moving past such simplistic thinking.
I mean, if you have one player who’s terrible at every challenge and it’s hurting your tribe, that’s one thing. But to say “Rob messed up the puzzle today so he has to go” is shortsighted and foolish. And these players aren’t that.
Also I think the challenges are just too random nowadays. It’s almost always some sort of obstacle course + puzzle combo, where the obstacles aren’t really that difficult (so a weak member won’t really sink you), and the puzzle always gives people a chance to catch up. And the producers want to keep things relatively even, so whenever one tribe starts kicking ass there’s a tribe swap anyways, so it doesn’t really matter how strong your tribe is/was.
I agree with Jas09 that getting Danni out came back to bite Rob and Parv tonight. Interesting to see Jeremy and Michelle working as the swing group.
Do you think they would have shown the entire Tony/Sarah scene if the episode wasn’t airing on Ash Wednesday?
I really don’t get why they decided to break up the old winner’s alliance by voting out it’s weakest, least strategic member. Parvati & Rob are huge threats, take one of them out first to force the other one to work with you. Ethan not so much.
Does Sandra ever not sit out a challenge? I think they really should institute a “once you’ve sat out a challenge, you can’t sit out another until everyone else on your tribe has sat one out too” rule. Reset it on swaps. But this whole hiding your physically weakest player sucks.
No TC or jury management issues at EoE island. Natalie was smart in hiding and breaking the clues. Survivor cutthroat sans subtlety.
Yeah, I don’t understand the thinking, if you’re on a beach with Rob and Parvati, they are huge threats, I don’t care if it’s Survivor Beach or Myrtle Beach, get them out or they will destroy you. The only reason I could see for not sending one of them is they don’t really go home, they go to Exile Island, so you might just piss him/her off.
On Exile Island: it robs the story of tension, since no one goes home it’s hard to care.
And yeah, I never would have figured out the Pooka shell code on the string, and props for destroying the other ones. That was brilliant.