Episode 28.5

You know, before I do anything else, I have to talk about more firsts from this season. I’m wonder if this is the first season where a tribe failed to throw a challenge after attempting to throw a challenge. I know something like that might have happened in China, but I’m pretty sure that it was something else. I think that what happened in China was a tribe failed to win a challenge after trying to come up with a great plan to idol out a member of the opposing tribe. So I’m not sure if that’s what I’m thinking about or not. This could be the first season where a tribe failed to throw a challenge and if it isn’t, I would like to know which one is.

Something else interesting this season is that Sarah is the only player right now who has not gone to tribal council. This has happened before, but it is very rare which makes sense. How often does a single player who is still in the game be the only player to have not gone to tribal council? To my knowledge, the first time it happened was in Pearl Islands. Due to a kidnapping twist, Rupert was able to skip Drake’s first tribal council which would have been his first had the twist not made him immune. Bruce did this in Exile Island. You see, he was not at the first tribal council and only joined his new tribe after they attended tribal council. Thus, he did not actually attend that tribal council. And the other tribe attended tribal council before he would go for the first time. Candice was also exiled when she would have attended her first tribal council in Cook Islands and didn’t end up going until every other contestant from that season did. Sylvia sort of did this Fiji. She was exiled after choosing the tribes and came back after everyone else on her tribe had attended tribal council. But since the other tribe had not gone to tribal council, that doesn’t really count. Laura Boneham sort of did this last season. But that only counts if you count the returning players’ visits to tribal councils in previous seasons. So this season marks the first time that only one player hasn’t gone to tribal council yet and this person was not chosen by the other tribe at some point.

Before I forget to post about more dreams that I’ve had, I might as well tell you about one of them. So I will first give you some set up behind this dream. You see, there’s a rumor that if there was ever a tie at the jury voting for the winner of the game, that the producers of the show would go to each jury member and ask them to possibly change their vote. It could be how tie-breakers work, but is just an unfounded rumor. And what I’m going to post here about that possible rumor was just a dream. I hope that what they do for tie-breakers isn’t what I just described because that would literally be jury tampering. That doesn’t seem at all far to the finalist or finalists who could potentially get screwed by the changed vote. If a more far method exists, I’d like to see it. But in this dream of mine, it turns out that a jury member changed their vote in Micronesia. In the dream, I was really upset to learn this, even though I’m not sure that I was that big an Amanda fan. Basically, someone who had originally voted for Amanda to win changed their vote so that Parvati got it instead. Parvati was thus able to win the game because of it when a tie-breaker could have happened between her and Amanda. I would like to point out again that THIS WAS JUST A DREAM!

So let’s do some thinking as to who this jury member could have been. First off, we know that it wasn’t Ozzy, James, or Erik because they were all on the record as voting for Amanda to win. It probably wasn’t Cirie because of Amanda voting her out at the final three and Cirie probably just didn’t like Amanda as much as she did Parvati. I’m not sure if Natalie would have voted for Amanda or not. It’s possible that she would have, but I doubt it. Alexis more than likely would have not voted for Amanda since Amanda was mainly the reason she was voted out. Parvati may have also voted against Alexis, but I really don’t think that would have changed Alexis’s mind about it. Jason probably would have still voted for Parvati in any situation as I don’t think that he really wanted Amanda to win. This leaves Eliza as the last person left. Would she have voted for Ozzy’s lover considering how much she wanted Ozzy out of the game? I don’t think so. So, basically in my prediction, none of the players would have changed their votes since it wouldn’t have been a tie in the first place. And since it was just a dream after all, there were probably no switched jury votes in this or any other season. Although you do have to wonder about China since that’s the only season where CBS said the jury votes were originally the wrong way before they corrected themselves (as for every other season, they simply revealed the right votes in the first place and never had to change them).

I have no idea what to make of the contestants so far this game. I don’t see a clear person as making it that far in the game. I will regularly check back to my predictions to see if they accurate or not and I’m pleasantly surprised by how many of my picks are accurate so far. I have one thing wrong so far (I put Brice on the jury), but the rest of the premerge boots that we’ve seen thus far were all predicted to be just that, premerge boots. But I have no idea who is doing the best in the game based on confessionals alone. I’m glad that I have not heard any winner spoilers this season and hope that I don’t find out until they air the jury votes live in the season finale. Please be a good one. The way I see it now, Tony and Sarah have an alliance to the end. Are they both finalists? I don’t know. They could wind up like Vytas and Aras did last season. If you don’t remember, they were both out early into the merge. L J and Kass are close enough, at the moment, to be the third potential finalist.

It looks like Kass is doing well in the confessional count so far.  She’s one of my two favorites to win since I’m strange and if a contestant just follows me on twitter, then I will root for them to win the game. Trish is the other person who followed me and I’m rooting for, although she doesn’t seem to get the much of an edit on camera so far. It looks like she’s having a fight with someone in this episode. I still don’t know if Woo should be called by that name or not. I might have to, but he’s one of the people getting an invisible edit this season. But if Jennifer Lyon taught us anything, it’s that even with an invisible edit, you can still get pretty far in the game.

Back to the contestant analysis, I had predicted that Yung, Jeremiah, and Kass were the final three. I don’t have much of a hope in all of them making it to the end anymore. But, I will remind you of the “winners” of this season, based on where they are on the list where the contestants are at. This, of course, is complete coincidence during a season that is still airing that doesn’t have any of the contestants in order of elimination yet. The winner is always at a certain place in all of these lists should the season have already aired. It is like this for every former season. So the supposed winners that I’m talking about have nothing but lucky placement in their names that put them where a winner should be. The three winners are Alexis, Yung, or Jeremiah. They will remain those three until one of them is voted out and gets replaced by whoever is next alphabetically, should they still be in the game.

I’m still hoping that we see more of Yung just so I know for sure if I should call him that or Woo. I know that with the other two people, you should call them by their nicknames, but I’m just not sure about him yet. My mom says that I’m in for another good episode today (does she even know that they make bad episodes?) so hopefully, she’s right. Hopefully, breakfast won’t be a problem, although I’m making sure not to eat something that involves a lot of my hands since that would be problematic to try to use the keyboard of my laptop with messy hands. This then comes into another problem since I don’t want something messy that could spill near my laptop. Hence the reason that I mostly do the blog writing during the commercial breaks that I don’t fast forward through. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, Solana got back from tribal council. And the drama at camp started immediately. Trish and Lindsey had a fight over simply not liking each other for seemingly no good reason. At least I finally know of a good rivalry from this season, although there are probably others that I don’t know of. For some odd reason, Jeff Probst is called to camp over Lindsey’s issues. Apparently, she’s quitting the game for some odd reason. This is so weird. Why didn’t she give herself a moment to consider about it before just leaving? She just left! What happened? And I thought that Colton quitting from last season was for a strange and no good reason. She shouldn’t be admitting defeat. And no Solana is down two members instead of just one. She didn’t even seem to be at a low point or anything. Am I the only one who finds this to be incredibly strange?

In the second segment of the show, the reward challenge happened and Aparri learned of Cliff getting voted out and Lindsey quitting the game. The reward is a camp raid and this challenge first appeared in Philippines as a reward challenge. Solana won the reward challenge. That’s probably good for them since they just lost two members very quickly.

In the third segment of the show, Aparri got back from losing the challenge while Tony and Woo prepared to raid their tribe. Jeremiah was disappointed that the clue was to the other tribe’s hidden immunity idol. Tony and Woo got back from the raid and explained what they did by targeting Jeremiah on the other tribe. “In order to prove that he is trustworthy, Tony told us all that he lied,” said L J who was confused about this person’s strategy in the game. Jeremiah explains how his tribe was dubbed with a clue to the other tribe’s hidden immunity idol. Spencer doesn’t believe his true story, which is very typical in a show like Survivor.

In the fourth segment of the show, the immunity challenge happened. Is it bad that I’m rooting for Solana just because of them being unfairly down a member? The challenge sounds fun since it starts by building a staircase out of some sort of wooden material with a small platform on top. They then have to go through some sort of maze that is mostly vertical. They then have to take a key through the challenge which they then use to unlock a machete to unleash puzzle pieces. Then, they have to solve the puzzle to find a combination. After solving the combination, they win the challenge. So it is a bit complicated. In the end, Solana won the immunity challenge. This should even things out at the moment. Appari lost the challenge and has to go to tribal council. This means that Sarah will have to go to her very first tribal council, but I’m not sure if the fact that she hasn’t gone yet will be mentioned or not.

In the fifth segment of the show, the commercial ends before I can finish breakfast. The people on Aparri were disappointed that Tony on Solana thought that everyone on his tribe was going all the way to the end. People think that turning on Jeremiah was a good idea. Kass thinks that everyone on the former brains tribe is sticking together. Are they? We don’t know yet, although they might be. Sarah does get to light a torch when she gets there. She obviously would either way, but we did see her do it now for the first time. I’m fairly certain that Morgan is not getting voted out tonight due to her lack of confessionals. Sarah doesn’t think that she’s part of the group although her name doesn’t seem to come up on the chopping block. Everyone, including himself, thinks the Jeremiah is a target. He might get voted out tonight, but I can’t tell who will be. So the voting happened next. It is either Alexis or Jeremiah who will get voted out, in my mind at least. Jeff asks for a hidden immunity idol even though none exists on this tribe. Guess that he has to do this no matter what. The person voted out was Alexis. I guess that this makes Jefra the next supposed winner since Alexis isn’t no more.

On the next Survivor, the merge happens and some woman is apparently a swing vote. I don’t know who it might be. But I guess that I’ll find out in the next episode.

Total confessional counts: Tony- 15, Jeremiah- 7, Jefra- 5, Spencer- 11, Tasha- 9, Trish- 10, Yung (Woo)- 6, Sarah- 13, Alexis- 9, L J- 10, Morgan- 8, Kass- 10, Lindsey- 5.

New confessionals this episode: Kass- 1, Lindsey- 1, Tony- 3, Jeremiah- 2, Jefra- 1, Spencer- 4, Tasha- 1, Trish- 2, Yung (Woo)- 1, Sarah- 1, Alexis- 2, L J- 1, Morgan- 0.

I have decided that from now on, Woo is going to be called Woo instead of Yung. For some odd reason, he only seems to get one confessional each episode, but at least he’s not getting no confessionals a lot. Not quite sure what to make of this high number for Tony. He could be going far or he could get dethroned pretty soon. I’ll just have to watch more of the Survivor Live After Show since at this point, Parvati starts saying who she thinks will win and she’s typically right. So we’ll see how crazy the merge is probably going to make things. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.