Ok boys and girls, back to our regular time slot. After last weeks team swap, and the preview showing that one of the challenges allows for the swapping of players between teams this should be an interesting evening.
My predictions, at least one of the 2 dimwits is gone by the end of the episode. If there was justice in the world it would be Sean, therefor I predict the “godfather” Rob will be gone. While most people expect that Rotu will win the reward challenge and be able to dump some former Marumorons back into loserville- Burnett may try to rig the contest again (not that it helped any last week).
If Rotu wins- at least one of the Lazy Twins ("Lazy Twins Power-- ACTIVATE!) A little Superfriends there for you. Gets booted back into loser-ville. Grandpa and his non-threatening Elizabeth wanna-be would be reclaimed (why not- they toe the line and are no real threats to win).
But (if due to the scheming of Burnett et al) Maru-o-morons actually win it will be interesting to see who gets swapped, and its effect on Rotu. That is why I predict it will happen.
Overall, Sean or Rob is out tonight, and another shakeup of the teams. Should be fun! Lets here your thoughts.
Swapping? I thought the preview just said that the winning tribe got to raid the other tribe’s camp for supplies. What’s this about swapping?
According to the official CBS site, here’s what we can expect:
[ul]
[li]The tribe that wins the reward challenge gets to raid the other tribe’s camp. [/li][li]One castaway’s innocent comment sparks a flurry of activity. [/li][li]The new Maraamu celebrates its discovery of a new source of food. [/li][li]A new leader seeks to assume power at Rotu.[/li][/ul]
Yeah, there’s been nothing said about further swapping. I think tonight’s episode title, “The End of Innocence,” indicates that Rotu finally loses immunity. Hard to say whether it’s Rob or Sean who gets booted, but I suspect it’ll be Rob just because they seem to be playing him up. If new-Maraamu loses, I’m afraid Gina is history. I can’t see any of the original Rotus getting kicked tonight.
Count me in with the people who are confused about elf6c’s comments about further swapping. I didn’t get the impression from anything I’ve seen or otherwise read that the opportunity to raid the opposing team’s camp was going to include raiding people as well as property.
As far as my predictions/hopes for tonight, I do agree that “The End of Innocence” refers to Rotu finally losing a challenge. What I hope is that they do the logical thing and get rid of Sean. If they get rid of Rob (who is just as deserving, IMO), then they’re left with the Sean/Vecepia alliance. If they get rid of Sean, I don’t get the feeling that Vecepia has a direct alliance with Rob (except by dint of coming from Maraamu). Not that she has a chance in hell of surviving beyond the next few tribal councils anyway, I just think that the rest of Rotu should break up the Sean/Vecepia thing while they have the opportunity.
FWIW, I see that they’ve just given the green light for Survivor 5, and it says in the text of this link that they’ve already begun casting. So, given the surprise ratings of this Survivor 4, do you think they’ll deliberately find a few morons to put on the next version?
My bad- in “raiding the other team” I got confused .
Well that is a bit lame as they have not been much decent rewards given out yet to steal. Heck my misinterpretation would have been much cooler.
Revised Prediction then- Sean goes bye bye. Three more days of in-your-face lazyness and enlighted views on race and gender relations should really grate on the “team of love”. Although do not rule out Rob’s ability to be an idiot. The better question is does Rotu lose or intentionally tank the contest. I cannot wait.
Again- sorry all for the earlier misimpression. Just a case of wishful thinking on my part in watching the previews.
My bad- in “raiding the other team” I got confused .
Well that is a bit lame as they have not been much decent rewards given out yet to steal. Heck my misinterpretation would have been much cooler.
Revised Prediction then- Sean goes bye bye. Three more days of in-your-face lazyness and enlighted views on race and gender relations should really grate on the “team of love”. Although do not rule out Rob’s ability to be an idiot. The better question is does Rotu lose or intentionally tank the contest. I cannot wait.
Again- sorry all for the earlier misimpression. Just a case of wishful thinking on my part in watching the previews.
I took a look at Why A Duck’s spoiler link, then poked around a bit at the other spoiler links on realitynewsonline. They all seem pretty unanimous that Gabriel is getting the boot, and they’ve got a few decent reasons for it. I have to lend it some credence just because they’ve been remarkably accurate throughout this season, but I just have a hard time seeing it happen that way. I cannot fathom that the rest of Rotu would somehow be taken in by doofus Rob attempting to break them up, nor do I see any reason for Gabe to join with the ex-Maraamu. My guess is that the Gabe-hints show that Rob is trying to target him, not that he actually gets kicked. Oh well, this ought to be interesting.
SPOILERS
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
On this MB there are some rumors that Gabe and Sean both knew each other before they were on the show, from a bar (owned by a contestant from Big Brother) where Gabe worked. Supposedly, Gabe worked there, and Sean hung out there, and both were approached by a CBS casting agent to be one the show.
Makes the whole thing sound really fishy.
Dammit, minty always stealing the best line, aren’t you.
In an earlier Survivor thread, I confessed I’ve missed the last 2 years of it, and just tuned in two weeks ago. Well, thank Og, I tuned in tonight and now I can go back to not watching that dumbass show. I had forgotten why I hate “reality” shows like this, and this episode reminded me with a huge slap in the face. I’m just happy I’m getting out now, so I don’t have to watch the rest of the idiotic, self-obsessed, stupid people screwing each other over. I only wish the show involved some actual surviving, because voting off the strongest people so early should result in some actual pain for the remaining. I do have one regret, that I won’t be able to gaze upon the new love of my life, Gina. GO GINA!!!
I bet that Mark Burnett and CBS are happy that this group breathed new life into the series.
This is shaping up to be even better than old-school Survivor. They’ve managed to cast a group of psychos so paranoid that they turned on themselves already. Now the lazy-ass twins (Rob and Sean) have potential to make the jury; there, they’ll actually think they got there by their own scheming.
What is wrong with these people? The old Rotu group had a 5-3 majority and voted off Gabe! What a bunch of morons.
Am I the only one who thought that the Maraamu raiders should have left some things behind? I was amazed that they cleaned Rotu out. Seemed rude, PLUS (and more importantly in the game), it helped the new Rotu tribe bond while making the new Maraamu the “enemy”. I think leaving something, oh I don’t know, some peppers and a blanket or two, would have been an amazing good will gesture. Which will be very important when the tribes merge again.
Also I wondered if the producers deliberately made Rotus challenge more difficult by “hiding” the 14th piece of the totem better. By winning that challenge, the Maraamus were in a much better position to win the immunity challenge. It was almost a 2-for-1 win.
It’ll be interesting to see what other games can the producers come up with that don’t involve brawn. No rock rolling challenges, no challenges involving heavy lifting…
It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that whoever won the reward challenge was going to romp in the Immunity challenge. But then you had the added bonus that the only Rotus with any brains had to sit this challenge out (yes I know Zoe was allowed to compete, but so far we know more about the indigenous shellfish on the island than we do about her).
The Gabe thing was bizarre, although the Acme Brain Trust called it (they did get the reward challenge wrong though). I think I understand John’s strategy, but I don’t agree with his decision to try and recruit the lazybones. That could’ve backfired big-time. And now he’s being set up as the “leader” which pretty much signs his death warrant at the first available moment.
Kudos to Sean for not bringing up slavery, “massas”, or “the man” once that we saw.
Rob. This guy really thinks he’s hot stuff. I felt personal shame when I saw him wear that Patriot’s hat. I can’t like the same football team as that cro-magnon.
You have to believe the Motorhead tribe is loving life. Two challenges AND crab. They may be the only Survivor contestants to gain weight while there.
And minty, I am so jealous that you beat me to that.
Even worse was that they got away with it. The former maru-morons just had to get Gabe to vote for ANY of the Rotu members with them and those dimwits would have had control.
Now with a solid 4-3 advantage, they will pick off the idiots one by one.
This is the latest the stupid, stupid, stupid rescue game was used-- is it my poor memory or was it used before for the reward challenges, not immunity?
And again Burnett et al seem to be overtly scheming to even up the teams. Both challenges were too subjective and subject to gaming (as noted above-- one piece was hidden really well, although “not-playing-the-game-boy” did not help by forgetting how to count.) Rotu got lucky that the ex-marumorons and Gabe did not team up. Love the dumbfounded look on Gabe’s face when the first vote was read-- priceless. He was almost as clueless as Sarah.
After last week’s confusion - I skipped the preview this week. So without any spoilers or previews I think this is the week the Godfather gets it. Darkhorse- Gina.
I was thinking that that would have been a good gesture, but then I thought it was good strategy to take as much as possible. It was with Rotus own blankets that Miraamu won the immunity challenge. Nobody knows what the next challenge will be. If it’s physical, then it’s better to make the other guys as uncomfortable as possible. For example, if losing the blankets makes Rotu too cold to sleep well, then their performance will be off. Taking the snorkeling gear is a way to make getting food more difficult. And of course, taking away good stuff would help demoralize them.
John wanted to get the old Rotu back together. He saw that Gabriel was bonding with Intellectuals Incorporated. At this point he felt he could not trust Gabriel to vote with the team. Gabe’s a likeable guy. Someone will have wanted to vote him off at some point, and it would be harder later. On the other hand, nobody likes Rob or Sean. Those two can be used for their strength up to a point, and then they can be discarded without worrying about hurting a friend.
minty: I really, really hope that the answer to Rob’s question on the next episode is what my answer would have been. Oh, the idea of Rob exploding!
Actually, I don’t see anything wrong wtih what the core Rotu people did. What they were faced with was Gabe, who wouldn’t commit one way or another to voting with them in a bloc and 3 ex-Maraamu who were obviously on the defensive as far as voting was concerned.
Here’s how it could have played out:
John, Tammy, Zoe and Robert keep their alliance and vote for one of the former Maraamu, but they can’t count on Gabe, so they assume that Gabe is going to ally with the Maraamu bunch and vote for John. That would split the vote 4-4, and would force the vote to a tie-breaker at TC, and neither team would be assured of winning. Whichever segment lost the tie-breaker would be have been picked off one by one.
Why didn’t the Maraamu follow the strategy above instead of jumping on the Rotu bandwagon and winding up with the 7-1 vote against Gabe? Check out the voting history for your answer. Gabe voted for Rob, not John. He obviously refused to form an alliance with either group and totally went his own way. Without being able to count on Gabe, the Maraamu did the only thing they could do, which was try to show some solidarity (and try to ingratiate themselves) with the people who were most likely to win. Although I still think the Maraamu are going to be picked off as soon as Rotu loses another IC, they at least bought one of themselves and extra week, and possibly one or two of themselves a spot on the jury.
In other news, I really think that if Maraamu loses the next IC, it’s not carved in stone that they’ll dump Gina as an outsider. I think that group has bonded well, and former tribal alliances aren’t playing as big a part in this round of Survivor as they have in the past (hence Gabe’s toss despite the presence of 3 outsiders who obviously don?t blend with the tribe at all).
All in all, I don’t think that dumping Gabe was as big a mistake as people think at first. Core Rotu still has the majority, they could afford to wait on Rob and Sean. Gabe was the bigger threat at the moment (merely because he was unpredictable), even though it turns out in retrospect that Gabe was voting for Rob anyway. Gabe could have saved himself if he’d just said that to John. His toss is his own fault, but as he said, he’s not bitter about it. He wanted to play commune, not win-a-million-dollars.
I’m still going back and forth on the decision to dump Gabe. His refusal to commit was serious grounds for concern for the original Rotus, but cutting off a guy who’s presumptively on your side is not such a hot idea when that leaves four solid votes against three hostile and one squishy.
Clearly, the execution was terrible. By giving Sean & Co. so much advance warning, it gave them every oppportunity to secure Gabe’s vote, which would have resulted in a 4-4 tie, even odds of either side emerging as the majority. Clearly, not a good situation to be in. In fact, if Gabe was anything like what John was afraid of, it would have guaranteed a tribal council tie, so forcing the issue was the worst possible solution.
The smart thing to do, I think, would have been to lock up the other votes that are willing to dump Gabe, then start schmoozing the guy to see if you can firm up his vote against one of the slackers. If it turns out you still have to whack him, you don’t make that call until the last minute–and only then do you feel out the newbies to see if you can grab one or more of their votes against Gabe. With little or no time to plot (or work on Gabe themselves), the bad guys would be more likely to go as a guaranteed means of saving their own necks for another week.
So this episode turned out to be very lucky for John, who could easily have been stuck by his own knife in the back. John’s neck was saved simply because Gabe wasn’t the kind of person he thought he was targeting in the first place.
John’s odds of winning have gone way down now, simply because he’s emerged as the clear leader and, thus, a high-value target. If new-Maraamu can win next week’s immunity, they’ll go into the merge with four reasonably well-bonded people against John’s four and two of the three slackers (probably Sean and Vecepia). That puts the bad guys in a potential tie-breaking position, and I’m not sure how they’d react. My gut says the John-Robert-Zoe-Tammy alliance is strong enough to tough it out, but this has not been a predictable game so far, and I suspect there will be more shakeups.
.
- I skipped the preview this week. So without any spoilers or previews I think this is the week the Godfather gets it. 