Survivor: Fiji Episode 10 Thoughts

Well, this is a bit late. And I'm a bit ashamed because this is the first time since the first episode that I was actually excited to write about an episode.

The have/have not twist was tiring only because the only thing that wasn't predictable was who would get voted out next. Sure, they switched up tribes, but the pain continued. The merge and team challenge was actually a good idea to shake up the game...then Jeff basically asked everybody their voting plans at tribal council and messed up that "no team play" plan. But this week was probably the best self contained story that Survivor has ever shown, because it had so many twists. Let's start from the beginning:

• Earl catches Dreamz talking to LAX about the immunity idol. Rather than lie, Dreamz tells everybody else that Mookie has the immunity idol. I don't know what to say about this. He went from a four person alliance to a six person alliance. But it worked out for him, so I guess I can't come down too hard on him.



• Earl's crew talks to Stacy and gets her on their side. The catalyst for all of the game play. Why choose Earl over LAX? Honestly, I don't know. Maybe she likes them more than LAX? Maybe out of Moto v2.0 loyalty?



• LAX talks to Stacy to make sure that she is on board. She is rather non-commital (or more specifically, she is "hot and bothered"). All of the sudden, LAX is scrambling to come up with another plan.



• LAX decides that Alex is going to be the target, so they will give him the idol, he can use it, and then they will vote out Cassandra. Brilliant idea to an extent. The problem is, even if they vote out Cassandra, LAX is in a tie 4-4. They really didn't think that through. What they should have tried to do was bring Cassandra to the dark side. For whatever reason, they chose to do the exact opposite and they decided to tartget Cassandra. Did they think that Dreamz would go with this plan? Not the best of moves, but they are thinking.



• Dreamz tells Earl and company that they are going to use the idol and Alex is the person they are going to use the idol on. Earl/Boo/Yau Man/Cassandra decide to turn them on their ear and instead vote out Mookie. Smart move, and Dreamz is either brilliant or lucky. If he saw that LAX was not really furthering their chances, then it's a brilliant move to offer up the idol information. It earned him some instant trust to get into a new alliance. But more than likely, he just got lucky and was trying to keep Cassandra around. It will be interesting to see how stable he is votingwise later on.



• Earl tells Stacy the plan, but Stacy suggests that they vote Edguardo to make sure they get somebody. This was the best decision made of all of the decisions from this episode. If Dreamz is actually a spy trying to run Earl's team into a trap, this is the best counter possible. Especially since they decided not to tell Dreamz that the plan had switched. They got a buffer from a trap, and they got a relatively fool proof way to test Dreamz's loyalty.

And then we got the tribal council voting. Alex confidently offering the immunity idol. LAX smirking as Cassandra's name is pulled. The smirks becoming shock as Edguardo's name is pulled. And Dreamz wondering if he had been double crossed even though he had remained true to Earl's team.

(Note: This is where I had predicted Alex's boot, but having seen the show it would be foolish to post an official prediction.)