Survivor: Redemption Island Episode 7 Thoughts

One of the less talked about implications of Redemption Island is the implication on the challenge creators. There had already been a move to combined reward/immunity challenges between the tribes, but Redemption Island ended up doing those in for the tribal challenges. The other effect? A need for more individual challenges. That's why we've gotten what are essentially repeat challenges from previous years in Redemption Island, and it's also why we get the amazing game of Memory we received this time.

If there's one complaint that I have about Redemption Island, it's that the competitions have not been true direct competition. Most have been races, with Memory(?!?!) being the only one where both were competing in the same area and directly affecting each other's game.

While I think Redemption Island has been a positive on a whole, I hope that having a good 9 months will allow the challenge creators to think up fresh challenges. It will only help Redemption Island catch on as a permanent addition to the game.

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Another thing that Redemption Island has brought us is more interaction between tribes. It's had a huge impact on the game, with Zapatera telling Omatepe all of their secrets as they left the show. In a way, this has taken the place of the tribal switch in terms of affecting the internal dynamics of each tribe.

With that said, I'd like to see the tribal switch come back. They even have an easy way to pull it off. Each tribe gets to choose 2 people to witness Redemption Island, so instead of returning to their own tribes, you can instead have those sent return to the opposite tribes. This would add another layer of depth and intrigue to this game.

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A quick comment on Stephanie's strategy in the memory game. If you are going to play second, and you turn up a tile you haven't seen before, then just reveal a tile that you have seen before. By revealing a second new tile, you are basically giving up the hammer (to borrow a phrase from curling) and letting your opponent have the advantage that you wanted in the first place.

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I have to admit, I'm very disappointed in the Survivor editors. Sarita doesn't bring her stuff with her, and you don't take the opportunity to alert us to this prior to her being voted out? The only schadenfreude we get out of it is David saying "Don't be so confident". I mean, come on!

One other thought about Sarita - the reasoning behind voting out Sarita was she did poorly in the

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(SPOILER ALERT - If you are one to avoid the "Next week on Survivor" teaser, stop reading here!)

I've talked many times about how Zapatera has continually made poor decisions which have ended up to be their downfall. With the merge coming up next week, they made one more poor decision - voting out Sarita instead of David. David is a much larger threat in individual immnity challenges than Sarita, and he's not afraid to make bold moves if he feels they will further him in the game (or eliminate a rival - see Sarita). Granted, they did not know that the merge is coming, but they sure were aware of it coming at some point.

The question now is when will that decision end up haunting them?