Random thoughts:

The fact coach has played before on Somoa has to help with his usefulness. Finding that plant and knowing which part was edible, sweet was one example. I'm sure a lot of knowledge is general but knowing the plants on Somoa has to help (but I think they are given some training in that regard ahead of time?)

Towers of Hanoi - is sort of simple once you've seen it before but obviously neither of them had. EWDaltonRoss was one of the press there for the first few days and said they actually had to stop and restart that part of the challenge because they were both completely lost and trying to stack big pieces on top of small, moving multiple pieces, complete screw-up. For those who know how towers of Hanoi works, note they had to move the tower from location 1 to location 3 (moving it to 2 wasn't good enough). It's really easy to make the wrong first move and have it take twice as long even if you know what you're doing. Likewise, anytime you start to move a sub-tower, move the top piece to the wrong location and you'll double your moves. I thought it was a good challenge.

People do know the Survivor editors know about people playing the edgic game. They now intentionally do misleading all the time because of that.

Thought it was a pretty good episode, excited to watch some survivor again! One thing I got from the episode is that Ozzy has absolutely no shot of winning this game. I don't really see him getting many votes if he makes it to the final two either.

Ozzy has some hope. So far it looks like people look up to him and like being around him. He has almost the same thing going for him as Rob last season. His team was genuinely excited to have him since hes not Coach too.

He's trying far too hard to be Rob from last season imo

I feel like Whitney will stay under the radar and go pretty far, like f5 even, but then get booted there. I think Keith could go far IF he starts to make some strategic moves after the merge. If he just continues to try and dominate challenges I think the others will obv vote him out because he's a huge threat.

How? Rob had already formed his big alliance on day 1 and was demanding that Kristina hand him the idol at the first tribal council if she wanted to stay in the game, showing just how much power he thought he had. Ozzy never mentioned any alliance to anyone, at least on screen, and is just playing it cool. He targeted Cochran because he perceived him as weak but he didn't really push it that far and barely said anything at the tribal council.

Casual Fans don't really notice such things as long as they keep it changing a bit over time. Not all winners are edited equal.
I don't think many people can narrow the field that much to guess a winner and even the edgic people are pretty much guessing.
They usually do a pretty good job editing it. They sometimes make it a bit too easy to see the outcome of a single episode, however, it's still a show full of surprises.
I sometimes skim through the thread after the season and they're pretty much guessing, too, and there's often a big variety of opinions. Like Tyson said: "Hindsight is a pretty useless super power that many people possess and like to show off".

When ppl say she is hot.....what they really mean is, she's got nice big boobs....lol

Chilltown continues a long history of being right. Cochran totally blows

Massive lol @ him being atop any power rankings and biggest lol of all time at him being top 10 ever

Of those who matter so far and got some facetime power rankings

Ozzy
Coach
Whitney
Keith
Mark
Jim
Brandon
Cochran

Brandon might be battling Cochran for biggest idiot yet. He shoulda jus said his last name was Hantz instead of hiding it. Not hard. Just say "before you ask, my last name is hantz i have tats, not related to that idiot" now it'll be completely obvious once they eventually see the tats

Coach did far better than I was anticipating given how disappointed any tribe would be to get him instead of Ozzy.

Ozzy did standard Ozzy things.

Cochran is getting set up for an absolutely epic story line.

What epic story line? A kid who blew his load in day 1 and almost got evicted instead of one of the easiest first day evicts ever?

Our boy Albert didn't get much camera time, but from watching this confessional I think he has the potential.

http://www.cbs.com/shows/survivor/vi...tever-it-takes

Omg you just completely nailed what survivor FTC's are all about

Well I don't think he's as doomed as you do, he's definitely no Yau-man or Fishbach in terms of being likable/charismatic while being a huge nerd. He's much more like Kenny, just a little better suited to Survivor. I still think he can do well, though. The longer he stays in, the better he gets, IMO.

The Tribal Council scrambling was a bad sign but not an unrecoverable one.
Yeah, agreed. It'll be impossible to hide the tattoos all the way through and this makes it transparent that he's Russell's nephew. He should have either done what you suggested or alternatively just owned up to being related and done some lying and said, "Hey guys, yes I'm Russell's nephew but I'm nothing like him. We live in different states and only see each other at weddings and Christmas, and my family calls him Hitler cause we don't like him either. Russell doesn't know I applied to be on Survivor and I just want to restore the Hantz name."

Incredibly disappointed in Cochran after that episode. What is the first rule of making it to the merge? Fly under the radar and become part a good alliance in the first two days. He did neither and only drew attention to the fact that he is a weak physical player.

As soon as I heard about those tattoos and Brandon being religious I knew he was done. He should have been up front about it like others have said since it will be so easy for him to get caught in not telling them. So stupid.

Ozzy isn't enough of a leader or influential enough to make a run like Rob did.

Mark needs to keep his mouth shut or he will start to piss people off and get booted as well.

Saying his last name is Hantz but he's not realted is pretty ******ed. He shred a lot of physical characteristics and someone is going to figure out that the producers didn't just randomly select someone with the same name

O, wtf. I must not have been paying much attention to the thread when the 2p2 Survivor was answering questions, because when I watched the premiere, I thought Jim Rice was the 2p2er (didn't he say something about winning 20 donkaments?). Good to know that Destrade is the 2p2er, since he seems more laid-back (and less abrasive ldo).

He could've played it off like maybe he figured he was selected because the producers wanted to see if the last name Hantz would have a negative connotation. Or maybe that they picked him because it was some dumb Big Brother-esque twist that Russell was a long-lost relative (with something like being adopted as his cover story).

All these people saying that Ozzy is trying to play the BRob game, didn't the shooting of this show start before last season was aired? So that the people don't know what happened last season?

Also why whatshername said: I hope it's not russell coming back (if they did see last season they would probably know that there was about 0% chance russell would get to do another back2back season).

Coach got a pretty good edit. He would be my second guess after Jim for the winner right now. Also interested in seeing why Mark got so much airtime.

You're reaching.He does that and they assume he's lying. He's of similar build, similar physicality, speaks the same way and has the same last name. There no way everyone believes him without a hitch.

I feel like Brandon could still reveal himself at this point and salvage what is going to eventually be a poor situation. I'm thinking he should call a tribe meeting and say something like this:

"Hey guys, I have a confession to make. I've been keeping my shirt on to avoid revealing these tattoos. (peels off shirt) As you can see, my last name is Hantz. Yes, Russell Hantz is my uncle (grimace). I was trying to hide this relationship because I didn't want to be pre-judged by who Russell is. But now that we've gotten to know each other a little bit, I want to let you guys know that I am my own man. Uncle Russell doesn't know I'm doing this show and I only see him twice a year, if that. My family and I don't like Russell - we call him Hitler - and I hope you guys can avoid associating me with him. I'm hoping to redeem the Hantz name."

Too much? I dunno, tough situation for him.

Too much and not within his personality type from what I've seen. The Sophies of the world will see through it.

Speaking of, I was pretty impressed with Sophie last night, both in terms of her reflections and he sociability. I underestimated her.

Showed this ep to my IP communication college class, they seemed to enjoy it. They laughed a lot at whatever Ozzy did, lol. I've never seen a season with Ozzy in it before but he's so stoner-ish it's funny.

--Brandon's decision to hide his tats is not smart. Much better to not hide it, let somebody see them, and then explain how you're different from Russell than try to keep your shirt on the entire show. It will obv be revealed eventually and then people won't like that he was hiding something and he'll have an uncomfortable situation. Also LOL at him with Mikayla.

--Papa Bear is working really hard to have that role with his tribe, with all his counseling, consoling, etc. I wonder if it will work.

--Cochran needed to come across as quieter and more competent early on in the season but decided to go the charming/funny/self-deprecating humor route which doesn't work when people see you early on as weak. I think he'll turn it around but we'll see.

--Surprised that Dawn wasn't booted after her "meltdown".