Survivor: Cagayan Episode 9 Thoughts

An ode to the Tyler Perry idol...

A lot of people (including people much smarter than me) have basically put Tony into the final 4. They do this because of Tony's discovery of the Tyler Perry idol. I think this is short sighted at best.

The Tyler Perry idol is a throw back to Cook Islands (and Panama) and the idol that Yul Kwon used and abused with great skill to make it to final tribal to win. And it is this that everybody remembers. The problem is that using Cook Islands to guide your thinking on how the idol will be used going forward is a bit akin to applying strategy from Borneo to current day Survivor: While it might give you a bit of a guide, it can not be applied directly to current day Survivor. There are too many seasons that have passed, and the game has evolved.

What made the Tyler Perry idol so powerful in Cook Islands was that nobody had any experience in playing with an idol in the game, so when they were confronted with the fact that Yul had an idol, they basically did not see a point to vote Yul out. Now, people know how to play against idols. They know they can split votes if they know that an idol is in play. They know how to bob and weave around idols. Most importantly, people are less afraid of idols in general.

In this case, the only way that Tony would be threatened by being voted out is if two players from his alliance would jump ship against him. If that happens, then Tony would only have a one week reprieve, and then he would face a 3-3 split vote (at best). And then he would have to deal with the fallout of deceiving his alliance one last time, after swearing that he wouldn't.

But what if he were to reveal that he had the idol? He could hold it over everybody else, sure. But since he can not play it on other people, it would be easy for a majority alliance to work around him and take out his supporting cast. With

And with all this in mind, it is very important to note that Tony is in the majority alliance right now. The only way that he can even be targetted prior to, say, the final 5, would be if he lost a majority of his alliance. And if that happens, he will be targetted after that. So if it comes to that, he will still be in trouble.

In short, this defeatist attitude about Tony having an incredibly overpowered idol is based off of old history and a bit overblown.