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Blake's chart was obvious sarcasm guys... stop taking yourselves so seriously, this is supposed to be fun.

Anyways, this episode makes edgic explode. I'm looking at my chart now and am really tempted to just put Mick as the only winner choice, yet I have a nagging feeling that this is horribly wrong. Here are the important points of this episode (imo):

Russell and Natalie are now connected and very important, and Natalie will beat out Russell at this point. We have only gotten slight doubt that Russell can get rid of whomever he wants, since his plan was to ultimately boot Ben, just in a couple of rounds. However, he isn't winning (I doubt that the single greatest distraction of all time will win), so someone else has to win. Following this train of logic, the person who wins has to either be a Galu that he cannot get rid of or someone who he doesn't want to get rid of. Natalie fits this profile, but her edit is so ridiculously weak that she is probably are 2nd place person here (like Susie), or she actually causes his boot. This carries me to point 2:

This episode actually developed some Galu beyond Shambo, but Shambo was still the big focus. She is going to flip at the merge; obvious flip is obvious. However, she won't win, she's been given far too many negative little bits justifying the fact that she is the outcast at Galu. After the first episode I thought of her like Kathy in Marquesas, but Kathy was shown as generally a positive force, whereas Shambo has been completely negative.

The rest of Galu is interesting. Erik got a lot this episode, but his arc with immunity idol feels a lot like a short-term thing (like, say, the rest of this season up until the Russell/Natalie pact, which is the only long-term bit that we have gotten). Erik is not winning, but he's important.

Similarly, Not-so-good Russell will also be important but out sooner rather than later. He isn't in the majority on his tribe, yet he is the leader, and he will therefore get hit hard at some point.

And the next most developed character on Galu is... John? John's edit actually has me sort of baffled. The editors gave him the 3rd most development on Galu in the first episode, and he has gone completely UTR ever since (on that note, he felt much more UTR2 than UTR1 this episode, but that isn't terribly important). A lot of people thought that it was to set him up as Galu's first boot, but that is clearly not the case, as he is towards the middle or top of the Galu pecking order (it's hard to tell, since we pretty much only know that it's Shambo and Russell at the bottom at this point). This episode had him loosely connected to the story throughout, but he was never strongly a part of it. He was shown with Erik and Shambo in the first idol scene, then saw Erik looking for the idol (and he probably knows that Erik found it, or at least strongly suspects). He was then shown as a part of the strategizing scenes, although he didn't say much. As far as the Galu edits go, this one of the most manipulated and developed ones (which, frankly, isn't saying much), but there was definitely something off about it relative to the rest of the tribe. If the winner isn't someone that Evil Russell drags to the end (aka Mick), then John would be a good candidate for the "unkillable cockroach" alternative meaning to the Russell/Natalie thing. I could be completely wrong here, but he definitely felt more hidden than ignored this episode.

Also, Mick's thing during the RC was sort of odd. Why show him get completely owned there if he ultimately ended up losing the challenge? It had to be more than just trying to make it more surprising...

BlakeB717 wrote:

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I haven't updated my chart in a while.

Ratings are subject to change after more viewings.

I especially love the Betsy winner pick after she was voted out.