A couple of things I took issue with from past podcasts:

Most recently Stephen trying to undercut Rob's praise of Denise in the challenge because she lost ground during while carrying the rice pots. Are you fkidding me, Stephen? Yes, PETE completely erased the lead that Malcolm had gained during the first leg, but come on. Pete is a specimen, and Denise's legs are little stubs compared to those guys. She had to balance that rice while stepping over that obstacle course. I can't imagine how difficult it was despite watching Carter stumble through it. Let's try not to be insane, Stephen.

Also, to Dom and Colin for the final reveal about who is on the next season. Seriously, . I mean, I guess it's my own fault for listening to a podcast that repeated the word spoilers about 300 times. My skin was crawling the entire time, but I trusted you guys. Still love you guys, but

And to Gary Wise: I see that Penner rubs people the wrong way sometimes. I even sort of see why. But Fairplay thinks Penner is a prick and Yul and Aras both say Penner is a good guy. Who's opinion should we trust there?

Fully aboard Team Denise/Malcom. I know we've seen a lot of them so far because they're losing every episode, but they're great. Both seem to have a good understanding of what the game is, and are very level headed.

Abi is terrible. Will get more satisfaction if/when she gets voted off than anyone else on the show.

*Grunching for now so I don't know what the Penner/Fairplay stuff is that Soncy is referencing, but Penner>>>>>>>Fairplay, in terms of someone I'd want to have a beer with.

Few thoughts.

1) LOLLL Matsing. I mean, seriously? Whatever. Russell is gone at least so thats a plus. Malcolm and Denise are obviously a really strong twosome.

2) I haven't watched a season of Survivor since JRB (and stopped watching once he got GGd), but I'd be pretty surprised if they don't get absorbed. Which naturally means its not going to happen.

3) I thought Pete had the right idea at first (and for all I know he could still turn out to be an awesome player), but the more he talked the more obvious it become to me he's trying entirely too hard and all his nonsense is going to bite him in the ass once they go to a TC or 2.

4) To add to that, Abi Marie is bat **** crazy. The only reason she isn't the WOAT alliance partner to go along with being the all around WOAT is that ****ing idol. God that girl rustles my jimmies something fierce.

5) lol @ the all girl alliance thing. No way that's strong. One of them dips at the first sign of resistance. My prediction is its the lesbo, but only because its the smart thing to do and she seems less dumb than the other 2 (if memory serves correct).

6) No way my boy Jeff Kent is going home. Someone definitely gets messed up good next EP though. Easy ploy to put Kent there with his knee hurting when talking about someone getting medvac'd out. Wonder who it'll be? If this proves true you can almost 100% rule out Skupin because they'd surely advertise him getting hurt again in the preview.

7) God damn RC is fine as hell. Jesus the things I want to do to that woman.

Point well taken on Penner, Soncy.

Regarding Pete's move, one point I haven't seen in this thread (granted, I've skimmed) is that pushing Abi away from RC pushes her towards Pete. Abi needs SOMEONE as a sounding board and Pete is the obvious choice right now. The less she trusts others, the more she's going to trust him by default. I like the move.

Can someone please PM me who are the returning players for next season?

I heard the names of the people but I can only remember one name. I will say that I was pretty underwhelmed.

Pm sent, not sure of one of them, but it is no doubt an underwhelming bunch.

In the future can people please not request spoilers posted within the thread? This basically always leads to someone who is inept at using the spoiler function to try and do this:

but fail miserably and instead do this:
[spoiler]spoiler[/spoiler] or this [sp]spoiler[/sp] or this [spol]spoiler[/spoil]

mods took it down but saw something that affects this season and next that I definitely didn't wish to see. and yea, i'm mad about it.

Sorry guys, someone has informed me via PM about my mistake. I will be more careful in the future, hope I didn't ruin anything too badly. Enjoy the rest of the season.

If they somehow each voted for each other and had a 1-1-1 tie, would they have revoted once or went right to stones?

Good to see that all the vocal God-lovers are being instabanned from the island this season

Good point...against. Who wants to be getting closer to Abi? Likely to get blown up when she goes off.

I'm still trying to decide what I think of Pete. He seems intelligent, however he also seems like someone who likes to blow stuff up for no reason other than blowing stuff up is fun. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the pieces are always going to fall your way when your method is let's toss this grenade randomly and see what happens.

But being aligned with Abi makes perfect sense for Pete given the proclivities he seems to have.

pass them on here too

Returning players means nothing to me lol.

they've always done re-votes previously so my guess is they'd give them another chance to re-vote. although i don't think they go to stones in this scenario since you are supposed to not pick a stone if you are voted for. so if they couldn't break the tie, they prob go to fire challenge.

twoshay

Steve - be less dumb about spoilers or get banned

Mods cleaning house ITT

I made the same mistake. I started listening. Then after a couple of questions about this season I decided to fast forward through the questions about this season because I started to level myself about every single sentence your guest (Jeff Pitman) had to offer and decided not to stress my brain anymore.
I resumed play when you started talking about potential information about the coming season and I hated myself the rest of the day because I didn't make the connection about the repercussions it could have. I guess that's how stupid the contestants must have felt when they didn't make the connection what the idol was.

Sorry, Soncy

I thought we gave ample warning before getting into the S26 cast, such as giving Jeff another chance to plug his stuff for the people who would now be tuning out after hearing the spoiler alert for the upcoming segment. Sorry again if it ruined something for Soncy or anyone else.

General question:

How likely is it that the next IC still has them all in three tribes?

I can't imagine any tribe challenge with just two players from each tribe would be that exciting. So my guess (that's a total shot in the dark, I have no infos either way) is that they shuffle tribes in the coming episode unless there's a med-evac and there's not immunity challenge whatsoever which would suck even more.

also fwiw, if you're trying to avoid even slight spoilers, i'd recommend not following the current cast on twitter. seems kinda obvious but figured worth mentioning. they certainly haven't mentioned any outright spoilers that i've seen but probably some foreshadowing going on.

It's not just the cast. I follow a fan of the show on Twitter, and she RT'd something (originally posted by Skupin) today that seems extremely spoiler-ish. Sigh. I wish they'd ban these people from tweeting during the airing of their season.

i mentioned this weeks ago, and unfollowed all the current cast, but i forgot to unfollow Penner and he posted something pretty spoilerish last week. I haven't been spoiled, but i feel like i have a reasonably decent idea of how the season will play out just based on what Survivors have said on twitter. pretty annoying.

plz pm me also with cast members for next season

was it required that each person on the team carry 2 pots? could go malcolm have gone twice instead?

ok, since this seems to be blowing up now and I feel it's only a matter of time before some idiot comes in and drops another major spoiler, are some of you not aware of the existence of google? do you not realize that you can probably type in something like "Survivor Season 26 cast spoilers" and most likely in a few seconds you'll have all the answers you want? Seems fairly obvious and definitely faster than waiting for a pm, but I guess some of you aren't the brightest bulbs out there.