time to go to bed imo D:

Eliminating Sheri, allowed Corinne/Malcolm to maintain the appearance they were still with Stealth R Us as they are still eliminating a fan but just not the ones she wants to work with in Michael/Eddie/Reynold. Which would allow them the majority at 11, to start voting out the remaining Stealth members + Brenda. Two problems occurred with this as Corinne misread Dawns spot in Stealth and Malcolm and other did a poor job of securing Erik.

grunch: Crimeny, Corrine. How do you screw that up? Seriously. Terrible. Like she didn't even need to move the target to Sherri. If Phillip wants to split votes, let him split the votes. He's counting two votes that he doesn't even have. Then, fine. Great. She gets the target moved to Sherri. Maybe that's less dicey. But then she manages to f that up, too by running her mouth to Dawn. wtf? Why? So stupid.

But LOL Cochran.

This was awesome for the game though. If Malcolm's 6 gained control + their two idols it was probably going to be kind of boring. Although maybe Corrine would have found a way to F them all up after they actually had a lock on the game--which was pretty much what she did.

Shame on Malcolm for not wooing Erik appropriately. How hard is it to get him to vote against Phillip's side? He needed to be making Erik his best bud. Outlining how it was him and Erik to the end paired against Eddie + Reynold and Corrine + Michael. It's clear that didn't happen. Gotta work for it now.

LOL Cochran. He's so awesome.

lol

You get yelled at in this thread if you don't believe that pretty much everything went down the way the edit implies that it did.

Probably just too complicated with 12 people to really show how it all played out. Yea, obviously Erik was not sitting there like a moron with two options (one of them not even told to him verbally) and no other clue about what was going on.

I think the decision is pretty easy for Erik. He's probably thinking if he goes with the faves, then they'll pick of his main challenge threats (Eddy, Reynold, Malcolm), and then he just needs to beast through a few challenges ozzy-style to make it to f3.

That's probably his best path at this point.

Erik having no clue is pretty ****ing believable

It seems like Erik is just clicking buttons out there. Surprise. The sad thing, is someone could scoop him up and make him their own, but instead they let him wander around like a lost puppy. He's got two different people telling him to vote two different ways and he doesn't know what's going on. That's a real problem for Malcolm. Erik obviously needed it explained to him that if he doesn't align with the other athletic males he will quickly find himself being targeted by a bunch of women and not-so-athletic males. Yeah, it should go without saying, but clearly it doesn't.

Corrine runs her mouth too much. And isn't terribly likable to normal people. That can't have helped her in this spot.

I get that editing has to tell an interesting story each week, in a game that's inherently deterministic since the only variable between shows (who wins immunity) is relatively inconsequential, so I get that you kind of have to block out that cynical part of your brain to enjoy the show. But this episode just seems like editing just grabbed the reins and went to town to depict a very unfair, untruthful story.

Seems like it would pretty much HAVE to. Dawn just had a hand in preventing Malcolm from gaining a majority alliance of 6 + two idols which I have to imagine would be pretty devastating. Though I'm open to 'not' because Corrine would have been in the alliance and she's obviously capable of blowing up a spot that should have been locked down.

Pretty sure Cochran and Dawn deciding to go full villain would have been an awesome story

This is what I think, with an outside shot of someone on the opposition going on an immunity run and then getting eliminated right before FTC. (Panama with Deitz or SP with Ozzy)

I doubt Malcolm told Erik anything more than "we are voting Sherri out tonight". Why would he? I'm sure he had planned on taking Erik aside after the next tribal and explaining to him the long term plan. He probably figures worst case scenario is Erik doesn't go along with them at 11 and they have to use an idol to take out Phillip.

Malcolm's downfall was Corinne. He should've buried her head first in the sand after the immunity challenge.

"If he's a challenge threat..."?? Not sure if you've watched any of this current season, but tuning in for even a couple episodes would make it pretty easy to surmise that Erik is going to be a threat in immunity challenges. And the fact that "he does nothing" is precisely where Erik's jury equity would lie. He'd just be the nice, young kid who everyone loves and gets along with and worked hard and performed well in challenges to get to the end. He also wouldn't have any blood on his hands...why not reward the nice ice-cream scooper with a million dollars and grant him redemption for his silly blunder on FvF1?

As has already been mentioned ITT, it is possible that Erik processed this information and just decided it's better for him to get rid of all his competition then just idol run to the F3 against a weak(er) bunch.

Umm...off the top of my head? Most of them. Stop acting as though Dawn is Parvati out there (she dropped out of the sandbag challenge first), or that Philip is Chet, or that Cochran would be completely hapless in the types of final challenges we've seen. Unless the final challenge is giving birth*, I don't think Cochran and Philip together are even close to "drawing dead" against Dawn.


*Apparently all of Dawn's kids are adopted, so Philip and Cochran are probably drawing live even in a childbirth challenge.

Cochran is basically Chet in any final immunity challenge. At least from any of the one's we've seen the past 10-15 seasons. Phillip is not as bad but his skills don't translate well to final immunities.

Agree with everyone that

1. Shame on Malcolm for not securing Erik and
2. Corinne didn't know when to stfu.

I disagree with the notion that Malcolm is totally screwed now. He doesn't know how much Corinne told Dawn, and he could very easily play it off next week like he just thought they were getting rid of Sherrie, and then ingratiate himself back in with the faves.

OR, it would be pretty easy for him to have 6 with him, the two muscleheads, Michael, Erik, and Brenda. It should be pretty simple to explain to Brenda and Erik that they were on the outside of the faves and still would be if they stick with them (something that should be obvious to them I know) and that the six of them could get to the end, then take out the muscleheads and then Michael.

It's amazing that after so many seasons, so few people out there realize that the best way to get to the end is
1. Have a majority
2. Have the majority within your majority and
3. Make those who are unaware that they're in the minority feel like they're in the majority (and more specifically, those on the bottom of your majority feel like they're at the top)

or a twist on #3, have your majority feel so solid that those in the minority stand no chance of flipping them (Boston Rob style). And actually, the way you do this is by the above parenthetical. If no one realizes they're at the bottom of the totem pole, they'll have no incentive to flip.

Obviously this is all easier said than done, but it's incredible just how few contestants realize that this is at least what they should be aiming for. To make EVERYONE feel included right up to the point that you vote them off.

btw, I've never yelled at anyone for hypothesizing about the edit, I've just expressed that I think it's a little pointless to try to guess what we aren't being shown since we have no possible way to know and it would just be a bunch of stabs in the dark. The editors are trying to feed us certain storylines and I'm happy enough discussing those and their implications.

However, if someone happens to feel very strongly about the edit in a certain episode being glaringly warped and manipulated from what really happened out there, I'd be interested to know specifically what kinds of things you meant and why the alarms went off for you. Personally, the storyline this episode, even with all of the action going on, seemed to make a lot of sense. I bought it.

Precedent for final immunity challenges seems to be a 50/50 mix of balance/multi-tasking/concentration and puzzle/mazes/very minor athleticism. In what universe is Cochran, the Harvard law student, a "Chet" in these kind of things? Especially seeing as how his performance today demonstrates without question that he's been practicing extensively.

Harvard law doesn't teach you hand eye coordination or balance. The puzzle challenges have all been paired with a physical element as well(RI and South Pacific). Unless he's been practicing his card houses he's not winning a final immunity.

Harvard law also doesn't teach you how to swallow chicken embryos whole, but if you give a sharp guy months to prepare they can (and will) do amazing things.

What exactly are you basing your assumption of Cochran's lack of coordination or balance on anyway? I'm not asking this to be hostile, it just truly seems to be coming completely out of left field unless I'm missing something.

Edit: Plus it's not like the guy is physically unfit. On the contrary I think he's pretty much the exact height-weight proportionality you would want for most balancing/semi-endurance challenges because no part of his body is going to disproportionately strain any other part. He's basically got the physique of a girl without the boobs which is pretty much perfect. Look at the guy in your avatar, for example.

You are making a lot of assumptions about the training that took place before Cochran went out on the island. For all we know, he ate weird things before his first time but it just wasn't because no eating challenge ever happened. This is not to suggest he is unable to win anything else, just that until further evidence this an independent event that should be judged accordingly.

Great episode except that I'm not a fan of the old school eat-gross-stuff challenges. Glad to see Cochran win it though.

LOL no, not even close

Casual fans (i.e. most fans) aren't paying attention to that type of thing.

yeah if corrine just agreed to a split vote i dont see how they dont get rid of philip

makes no sense

did anybody else get the Holy winners quote batman from Dawn?

Also, fairly disappointed with the editing this episode. Corrine was the for sure boot when they showed her "I want a blindside tonight" confessional

To be fair it was quite obvious from the beginning that this was Corinne's episode, and it seemed no attempts were made by the editors to show anything else.

StealthRUS FTW!

I'd really like to see more of the conversation. Who's talking to Brenda? (must be Andrea) Seems to me the power is spread and they're really playing well as a team.