i didn't think it was a filler episode.

and it's hard to tell how much we see of what is actually said, but it seemed like connor did a good job of subtly making the point that sam will flip back to blue alliances when given the chance.

if you're connor you don't want to be too blatant about throwing sam under the bus. connor and sam survived and didn't make any enemies. that's about as good an outcome as they could have hoped for.

that challenge was painful to watch.

WTF were the producers thinking when they casted Barry for the show? During the interview process didn't anyone ask him what his strategy going into the game was? Anyone who answers "my strategy is to pick names out of a hat to vote" should automatically tell you he's a dud. I'm completely shocked that he lasted this long. It's impossible to go too far into the game when he's this unreliable as a member of your team. He'll never be a vote you can count on to further your game and can even pick your name out of the hat LOL. Blue team made the right decision, shouldn't have had to struggle with it for that long.

Prob the right decision. Not a fan of how they keep Kylie on the outer.

At a merge its really only 3 of them because who knows what Nick will do and they consistently vote against Kylie.

The right move imo would have been to get Nick and Teagan to vote for Kylie and to then put 4 votes on Teagan. That shows loyalty and garners trust with both Kylie and Nick. It doesn't matter if Kylie uses her idol or not because if they go to tribal again the three of them still have the majority.

I'm glad that Teagan was the one to go, it would have sucked to not get a satisfying conclusion to the Nick vs Vavau storyline. I'm excited for the tribe swap especially since there are 6 people for each of the original tribes still in the game.

What a mess of a tribal. Not only was the 2-2-2 split completely stupid and unnecessary as now they've alienated Kylie and Nick, it was extremely dangerous as well. Since Kylie was going to use the idol anyways, she could've easily gone to Nick and Teagan and the 3 of them could've voted out one of Brook/Flick or Matt. They could've been the new majority. Kylie needed to put in work with Teagan/Nick and not just go with the flow and let death take her. Had she sniffed out that Brook/Flick and Matt were splitting their votes she may not have needed to use her idol but I'm assuming she doesn't know. Either way a better play was to get Nick and Teagan on her side and vote together. It would've been a much better situation for all of them involved. I reckon it wouldn't be too hard to get Teagan and Nick on your side when you present them with options. Kylie and Nick are now saved by the merge tomorrow.

i was impressed that both nick and tegan voted for kylie. if either one of them had backstabbed the other, they would have been safe.

nick should have been hammering home the argument that tegan has strong alliances with her old tribe, and nick has nothing, so he is less of a threat post merge.

I'm pretty sure that option never crossed their minds. It should've never went to a 2-2-2 vote. There were so many opportunities for something to go badly wrong. LOL.

If I was Kylie, as soon as Nick and Teagan set foot on the new tribe I'd try to reel them in. Present them with the option that she'll use the idol and they can vote together, or even give them a hint that she'll use the idol on them during tribal to solidify the 3. Or Nick and Teagan could've taken the initiative and reached out to Kylie.
The tribe could've been a 3-3 split but Kylie's crew has the idol so they have leverage. They should not be in the position that they're in that they're just waiting for the other 3 to pick them off. At the very worst it goes to a 3-3 tie and they can draw rocks. Pretty sure Matt was already willing to flip on Flick anyways so it wouldn't be too hard to get him on your side. Lots of ways they could've played it.
The way Teagan and Nick played was about as poorly as you could play. They were basically flipping a coin to see which one of them was going home. Their only hope was that Kylie wouldn't play her idol, that's a huge assumption considering the position she was in. They were there for her last tribal.

yeah i agree. survivor basics... when you're not part of the strong alliance with the numbers, then you rally everyone else who isn't and you **** **** up.

Absolutely loved this twist! That was a great advantage and definitely a game changer. This is how merges should be done going forward. Love it that the players had control over their destiny by having to win the challenge. I feel 1 million dollars is just too high of a stake to leave it up to chance. In Survivor sometimes your whole game can be derailed because you were unlucky enough to pick the wrong color for the tribe merge. Here you lost a challenge so you have to take part of the responsibility for your position. Love it.

Lots of gold in this episode, possibly my favorite of the season so far. I love how the entire episode centers around the merge and gave us a closer look at the different tribe dynamics. I could be wrong but this might the be the first time ever that we see an episode not end in a tribal and have someone voted out. We've had in the past that someone was medivaced so no tribal but this was different. This episode focused mainly on the merge.

Love the Nick and Jenna exchange LMAO. Jenna was so indignant lol, god I can't stand her.

Loving this season so far. This has so far exceeded my expectations and for me personally has this has been a superior version to US Survivor. This is how Survivor should be done. Maybe had CBS showed us more of Russell Hantz's antics and got to see more of the tribe dynamics we would've gotten a clear picture of why he lost so badly to Natalie the first time and less people would've been so outraged. CBS loves to swerve us and throw out misdirection to give us their narrative.

Remember when we had that Survivor production guy who use to come onto our survivor threads and give us some behind the scenes info? I think Bonafide was his nick, doesn't come on anymore. I remember asking him how come we don't have some longer episodes because there's so much going on in 3 to 5 days to cram all into a 40min episode. He told me that longer episodes are not possible because there's a lot of downtime where nothing is going on.

I always thought that he was talking out of his ass. There's so much footage that CBS puts up as secret scenes that never make it on the show. Even tribal council, we're told it goes on for at least an hour and a half, sometimes more. CBS crams that into 5 mins. There's lots of footage that CBS can use to fill an episode but they don't. They need to edit the show to give us their narrative. They just have to have a villain, or edit someone for us to root for (make them to be more likeable than they actually are). I've always hated that about CBS. They like to tell us the story that they want to tell, not what is actually happening. Big Brother live feed watchers know this. The editors are awful and usually the story that CBS gives you is not what's happening.

LOL @ saying there's not enough material to fill a longer episode. The AU version has much longer episodes and on 3 nights a week LOL. It is FAR away the superior show imo.

I have the opposite opinion. Nick came out of that looking really bad, acting like a bitter child whilst still being completely patronizing. I actually think that if it came down to a vote that Sam would have the influence to keep Jenna over Nick. I also think it is highly likely that Nick will rub Lee and El the wrong way where Jenna will be able to integrate herself with most of the tribe fairly quickly.

Oh man did you miss that thread? He was full of **** and never worked in television at all and was a scammer. Somewhere in here or this one sorry don't really wanna reread it but it was a pretty great beatdown iirc.

Ratings tanked super hard on Sunday but were holding steady Monday's episode compared to last week, Tuesday last week had a big showing so tomorrow morning could be telling.

LMAO, after reading the last few pages on the links I found it. LOL apparently he scammed someone from staking arrangements and was impersonating Fabio on Survivor. Said he was a model and used Fabio's picture LMAOOOOOOOOOOO
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1016
So he got banned, no wonder he doesn't come here anymore. So he came onto our survivor threads and spent all that time there trying to build up his cred that he works in production so he could scam more people wtf. I always thought he was FOS like the time he said that RC is not that good looking in real life. GTFO of here man lol.

I like the idea of a tribe earning control over a swap. Much prefer that over the random ones they do in the US version.

Also interesting that they didn't feel compelled to end the episode on a tribal or other big note. Much less formulaic than the US version, and it's refreshing.

I can't remember the exact details, but in one of the threads Bonafide claimed that he was an alternate for S19. He wrote something like "21 of us were flown out to Samoa. The producers told 20 people to get into boats and start rowing to shore, but I was not one of the 20." Said that that was how he got his start working for the show

I loved this, and I hope there's more of that sort of thing coming. Pretty sure the only time the US has broken their formulaic sequence was in S12? Didn't the final episode start with the Cirie/DD fire tiebreak?

While I do think Nick acted a bit patronizing, I hated how she was just rolling her eyes the whole time instead of just saying "Yeah, I didn't trust you and I thought you were making alliances with everyone so I voted you out". Done.

However, I really enjoyed Nick talking about his bucket list and revenge plans. I didn't really like him at first but he's definitely growing on me, dude's got heart.

its surprising to me how every just pegged nick as a snake. my read was that he was a bit snakey. but everyone on the show seem to think he's omg snakey.

flick seems more snakey than nick, but she's not getting the heat

my read on craig(the gay guy in the yellow tribe) is that he's an ahole. it would have been hilarious if when nick got voted out and switched tribes, he would have picked craig to go with him lol! and then convinced everyone to throw the challenge to vote off craig lol! pretty sure that's optimal strategy.

He's not more snakey than the majority of the people in the game by any means. It's just an easy way for them to create an "us vs. them/him" thing and paint a target on his back instead of on their own. If anything, he's much less snakey than these people, since he's pretty up front about his strategy and doesn't try to manipulate or talk behind people's backs to achieve his goals.

That's the thing with Nick is that he's more overt than the others and therefore comes across as more snakey.

Exactly how I feel about the Jenna exchange. I have no doubt that Nick can be a bit grating in real life and can come off douchey however I hated how Jenna acted so indignant that some great injustice was thrust upon her. Nick had every right to be bitter at her after she blindsided him and if he wanted to take a shot at her, he's within his right as per the results of the tribe swap. He won the competition to put himself in the position that he's in and owes her nothing.
At the beginning of their exchange he said he wanted to talk it over with Jenna and hope that they can squash their beef and move on. However Jenna was having none of it and kept rolling her eyes and antagonizing him until he could take it no more and decided to just let her have a piece of his mind.

Super annoying after I woke up this morning and forgot there's no episode today. I'm so used to waking up in the morning and there's an episode waiting for me.

I mean his actions speak for themselves. It's not congruent to say that he wanted to squash the beef after he purposefully brought her to the tribe with the exact intentions of getting her voted out. My interpretation is that he wanted them to be friendly towards each other so that she'd get the same feeling of betrayal that he experienced when he votes her out. And then once she starts calling him out on his bull**** he is still unable to own it.

I'd be super pissed if I was JL considering it is rather **** that the person who got saved by a twist then got to **** you over through another twist. I also think it is much better for her game to be openly anti Nick than it is to pretend to be his friend. I definitely see it coming down to the two of them for the next boot.

Only thing I didn't like about the Jenna Nick exchange is I feel like he should have done that in front of the tribe. Would have secured his shaky spot a little more maybe.

the nick jenna tribe has to be a huge favorite to win the challenges

Oh come on now

Challenges are random enough, I don't think Vavao is drawing dead. Challenges where the tribes as a whole is physically challenged are rare.
Matt is good at puzzles and Lee's Cricket throwing ability and overall prowess might help but I wouldn't underestimate Vavao by any means. Rowan is dumb as stale bread but can compete.

It's still compelling TV and we're not even that deep into the game.

At this point I still haven't dared to watch the opening-credits, I feels there's still challenge-footage in there that hasn't been shown. Isn't there a mud-challenge in there?

Since this game is so long I don't think any of those who outed themselves as "gamers" are going to take this. As much as I like characters as Craig or Magician-Matt, they're just on everybody's radar. I feel like Brooke or Kate are much more likely to win at this point than those two.

I love Phoebe's fake smile. I could be wrong but I feel like many will underestimate here, she plays the dumb blonde very convincingly, even though, she's seemingly in the minority alliance right now.

My sleeper pick at this point is Andrew, I get a good vibe from him.