When they showed the sit out bench at the competition I wondered if someone would volunteer to sit out because historically there have been idols or such hidden around the bench that contestants have found or missed. I thought maybe it was to show that this time there wasn’t anything to be found, but he looked. That’s what I thought as a viewer-sometimes if it is there and they don’t see it, the camera will zoom in on where it is, but it is possible that later they will do a flashback of him actually finding it that challenge, but not showing us viewers so we can be surprised later when he reveals he has an idol.
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I thought the same thing about someone volunteering to sit out. The previous episode also had a water challenge but Noelle and Karla sat out on land and not on a bench. I’m wondering if another contestant saw him looking (he was pretty obvious) which will put a target on his back.
Also, Noelle took off her leg before the challenge. She hopped into the boat on one leg but, when she got to the island, she had the prosthetic on. I was wondering how they would handle the logistics of that. It is kind of like someone taking off their shoes before a challenge. When, and how, do they get them back?
I wondered about the leg too. There are a lot of behind the scenes stuff that I’d be interested in knowing. I think they must have a lot of questions or even someone giving a more detailed description of what they are supposed to be doing on challenges (could be wrong). When they dove down to unclip, it seemed like everyone knew what they were doing but based on Jeff’s description might not have been so quick to understand what the clip would look like and how to unclip so quickly? I also wonder about where there are when they give confessionals alone-some people reveal a lot of stuff that you wouldn’t want anyone else to overhear-strategy, finding an idol, alliances, personal opinions. It seems like it would be difficult to get people to talk openly in fear of being heard. Do they give regular health checks to make sure someone isn’t exerting too much? A couple guys last season were kind of thin to begin with and I worried they would lose too much weight/exert selves.
One of the contestants injured her chin in the first challenge (digging in the dirt under the log). She looked like she had bandages on it and it still looks pretty raw. I’m surprised they didn’t address that because it is so obvious she was injured.
I assume the confessionals are far from where people can hear and they assure contestants that they are safe speaking freely.
I thought the same thing about the clip. There have been several different types of untying/unclipping things under water over the years. Often contestants need to use a mask to see what they are doing. It seems that, with all of the adrenaline, contestants would forget the instructions. This episode they showed Jeff correcting a contestant and telling him to put down the puzzle pieces because the puzzle solvers had to do it.
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You know how they show us show staff going through a challenge to explain to us how it works? Maybe the contestants are actually watching that live - Survivor staff doing a modeling of the steps that need to happen to complete the challenge. We are just seeing a videotape of that demonstration.
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I had thought about that too-or maybe the contestants see the same video in full to see how it is supposed to work.
I don’t think so. I can’t see them bringing electronic devices out to the beach to explain the challenges.
I think staff go through it to check for safety, timing and any glitches. Did you watch the clip where staff went through the Amazing Race challenges and then removed the larger hammer for breaking up the ice?
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Oh Lindsay. (not sure how to spell her version…) Why did you go off the edge? While we hadn’t seen much of her I THOUGHT maybe she was going to be a fav of mine. But I feel like she was treating her co-players like they were her kids not her peers.
So happy that the orange tribe turned it around for reward and immunity.
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To quote Dalton Ross’ headline on the EW recap: Paranoia will destroy ya
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Interesting to see Noelle call out Elie’s name to help the other team. I wonder if that is foreshadowing some sort of alliance post merge.
I can’t recall a team helping another team in a challenge. It was smart at the moment but they may “pay” for that later. It took me by surprise
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Helping the other team seemed like a smart move to me, but I’m not the best strategist when it comes to things like that…underdogs unite! Both teams are smaller than the one team that had never gone to tribal. Once they secured a win, helping the other team to second would help to form an alliance with those members in an eventual merge and make the bigger team less powerful. The Amazing Race has seen some of this with a couple teams working together to complete tasks to move ahead of just keep up with stronger teams. The other team they helped may likely return the favor if they secure a win and a second immunity is available.
That will only work if the combined tribes enter the merge with more members than Coco. Otherwise, they will be picked off one after the other post-merge
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They are more # together now, so seems to be good strategy…if less # together, the big team would most likely pick them off anyway, so nothing to lose? This past week the 2 underdog teams knocked the big team’s number down by one. If they continue to do this it will either even out number or eventually create a lasting bond and the 2 underdog teams become like one big tribe and would be able to pick off big tribe.
The problem may be that Noelle’s team (orange?) really had 2 steps in this episode that could bite them later. I get the strategy that @1Lotus mentions above of gaining some allies for later. But they def did not gain Coco allies! And then earlier after the reward challenge, Cody may have not done their team any favors by his swarmy sales guy approach upon going to their camp to “take one thing”. He could have gone there with some humility and said “hey guys, I hate to take something but it was part of the challenge so I’ll take your ____” and be done with it. Instead he became kind of cocky and threw in some sales talk which may also have alienated some of the Coco members. So the night could have been a 2-fer in a not positive way especially with Coco.
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I get the two teams working together so that the team who had not yet been to Tribal finally lost a member to even things out a little. Don’t quite get how this could hurt them later—two tribes working together have more numbers than a single tribe does.
It all depends how a merge falls. Will they go from three tribes to one - or from three to two? And how do all the members get split? It’s often not a “fair” split.
Depends on how many of each tribe enters the merge. There is a term, Pagonging (admittedly not yet part of OED), which describes picking off a rival tribe one by one
Tbey may very well scramble up the tribes just to blunt this “alliance” and introduce chaos into the mix
They may. But at merge, there are often alliances formed along OG lines. Or they may play completely differently. That’s the beauty of twists and uncertainties.