Zoe is the key now. Why did she drop out of the alliance? Obviously someone approached her before the vote and made a new deal. The question is who and what was the deal?
My guess is that Neleh and Paschal regard their alliance with Sean as being very temporary. Both of them obviously want him gone and only voted with him because they had to for their own survival. As soon as they safely can, they’ll vote against him. If they were the ones who made the deal with Zoe (which I think is most likely) then Sean will probably go this week.
The second most likely scenario was that there was a re-approachment between Kathy and Zoe. But even if so, I can’t see Zoe jumping over just for an alliance with Kathy. If this is what happened, I’d bet on a new Gang of Four with Kathy, Neleh, Paschal, and Zoe (and maybe Vecepia). Once again, Sean’s likely to be the next to fall.
If Sean does manage to hold his backing together, I see Robert as the next most likely target of that alliance. Tammy and Zoe (assuming she isn’t part of it) will be seen as less threatening in the individual challenges.
On the re-caps, this gives me a chance to raise a couple of points I didn’t post earlier. Prior to the maze immunity challenge, John was shown saying he wanted to throw the challenge in order to have an opportunity to vote Rob off. Rob guessed this might happen and made sure he led the Rotu’s to victory. I know there were three people who had to be on the team because they had sat out the previous challenge, but Rob wasn’t guaranteed the fourth spot. So given that John controlled four out of seven votes, why didn’t he use that to keep Rob off the team so he couldn’t influence the outcome?
After the Maraamu’s lost that same immunity challenge, they were faced with a difficult decision on who to vote off. It was clearly going to be Gina or Kathy and from what we saw, Neleh and Paschal genuinely liked both people. When I was watching the show, I said Gina should have tried to get herself a better chance by suggesting that Neleh and Paschal split their votes so it went to a tie. That way it would have gone to the tiebreaker quiz and Gina would have at least controlled her own destiny. Personally, I think Neleh and Paschal would have gone for this idea.
A few other points: Was it just me or did the narrator (Jeff Probst?) keep pronouncing Maraamu as Mataamu? And why, when the tribes were reshuffled, were all the contestants still shown in their original tribes in the opening credits? And why is it that this year you see large groups going to get the mail? In previous years, it was always two people. Was that a rule that was dropped or just a custom that this season’s people aren’t following?
One final idea: in the spirit of keeping everything interesting, maybe next year they could have the contestants form real alliances. After the first few days of getting to know each other, the players would be divided up into couples (either by choice or at random). From that point on, each couple would vote together, win challenges together, be voted off together, and split whatever money they ended up with.
