Tag: jessica

Episode 4 – ‘Somebody Loses Their Shit Tonight’ OR ‘Lucy Gets Lawless’

If you haven’t read my analysis of the previous episode I’m gonna get upset, so do what I say and check it out so here. Or you’ll be sorry.

Ken giving Lucy not quite enough rope

Episode four is in the bag and unfortunately for Takali, it was Gen-X’s turn to go to tribal once again. And what a tribal it was! David whips out a little something something to save someone who we’re not sure he is even aligned with. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more shocked player as the Jess I saw when she was saved by Dave. Hell, I too was bewildered, flabbergasted,overwhelmed, and utterly jubilant when David pulled that baby out. I have no idea if it was a good move for David but he’s certainly given us something to talk about. Let’s get into it.

Rules and Regulations

🎤They ain’t never gonna vote me off, never gonna get me out🎤

After Paul’s blindside last week I was really looking forward to seeing how the tribe reacted. The last thing I expected though was what we got from Lucy. Lucy completely tries to take control of the game, and for what reason? She doesn’t trust Jessica implanting ideas in her head? Does she not think for herself. It’s as though because the women copped shit from Bretstopher because of the blindside, she couldn’t handle the aggression and anger coming towards them and had to distance herself from that move. I thought it was pretty hypocritical of her to throw shade Jessica’s way after being so willing to make the move against Paul last week. Incidentally how funny was it when Lucy was talking to David and David was trying to find out where Lucy’s head was at, and she told him that she wasn’t ready to give him a name, that she’d give him a name later? Apparently later means two minutes later in the conversation. I guess the way she’s feeling makes sense, but the way that she actually behaved on those feelings, by being ultra-controlling was never going to work long term. She’s not Boston Rob, she just can’t get away with that so early in the game. The way she behaved notwithstanding, I’m not sure that the move itself is a good one. img_0932Jess was solid with her. Solid. Trading one solid alliance for two embittered players does not seem like a good trade to me. Let’s assume that David doesn’t play his idol and Jess goes home and Lucy stays. I would argue that Lucy is then the number one target. She has made a big move against an alliance, showing that she’s not, to quote Robert Pollard, a number I can trust. Either Bretstopher are going to want her gone, or, Ken and David are going to want her gone. The only numbers she has are maybe Sunday and CeCe. And they’re ‘maybes’. Speaking of ‘maybes’, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Ken would be next on the chopping block. Regardless, I don’t feel as though Lucy would be far behind. Anyhow, for better or worse, the idol was played, and Jessica got DaveSaved!

A Sucker’s Evening


David! What are you doing man?! The vote wasn’t coming your way, it wasn’t even coming at your alliance! I just have no idea what David was thinking when he did this. He seems like an impulsive guy. This was a move for the sake of making a move. Why do I think this was such a bad move for David? Well, actually I don’t think it was a ‘bad’ move per se, it just wasn’t the right move. In this move David lost an idol, potentially lost some respect or trust from his number one ally (Ken), telegraphed to everyone that he’s unpredictable and shifty, and all that is gained is some thanks from Jessica. It’s possible that Jessica may count David as an ally now, but in a tribe of seven where he may now have no other solid allies, that’s not much help. Okay, maybe it is a bad move. The other thing is we have a tribe switch coming up. Now sure he wasn’t to know that it would happen before next tribal, but he should have known that it was coming soon. In a twenty person game you generally are going to have a tribe switch up after losing between four and six players. So now he’s lost his idol, and has only one to two people in his corner, who he may not even end up on the same tribe as. It may have been an entertaining move, but it sure was reckless. Could be worse, he could have played emotionally.

Emotional Like a Girl

 

“Lucy, your words are like weapons, they wound sometimes”

Yes, Lucy equated showing emotions with ‘girliness’ and by extension ‘girliness’ as weak. I’m glad she’s gone, I don’t know how much longer I could have tolerated listening to her bollocks. We all know females are strong as hell, particularly ‘Amazon warriors’ like Michaela. Great effort in that challenge woman! Of course the person that Lucy directed that comment towards was our friend Ken. Gender stereotypes aside, Ken definitely let his emotions get in the way tonight. He gave us another example of poor gameplay. Again, the vote was not coming his way. He should have just been happy to go along with the flow this vote. Ken I understand that you were pissed at Lucy, but dude, it’s best just to let that shit go, you’re safe and it’s not affecting your position in the game. Even if you wanted to flip on her, you don’t have the numbers yet, it would mean that you have to get Jessica and one other. Of course Jess was going to go to Lucy and suss out where she was, that wasn’t being a snake, that was her getting the info to make a decision. I suspect that maybe there is more to the relationship between Jess and those on the bottom, Ken and David, than we’re seeing, and that is why he felt so betrayed when she did that. As far as then voting against Jess, I’m not sure whether this was the right move. I guess had Lucy stayed in the game and Ken had voted for her then he may be next on her shitlist. As it stands though, to the rest of the tribe, David included, Ken comes off as wishy washy and unpredictable. I don’t think his relationship with David is irredeemable however.

img_0997
“This is going to be more delicious than fresh goat”

I think David would understand it and still feel as though they are together. The fact that neither of them seemed to have any idea how the other was voting though is an indication that they aren’t quite on the same page. If they’re going to be an effective alliance going forward, they’re going to have to sort that out. Ken does have a right to be pissed that David played his idol though. I’m pretty sure when they formed the alliance David told Ken that the idol was ‘their idol’. If I’m wrong about that please let me know in the comments. Without the idol, there’s less reason for Ken to stay tight with David, other than maybe to keep him as a shield for later on, if either of them get there. The bad gameplay on show this episode doesn’t end at Lucy, David and Ken.

 

Zap Her Ass!!

“Y’all wanna vote lil ol’ me?”

Where was Jess tonight?! We saw very little of her around camp. Yeah, that could just be the editing, but given how things actually panned out I don’t think so. Perhaps she felt the need to go underground after blindsiding half of her six-person alliance. Still, what did that result in? Having zero idea what was actually going on. Even at tribal, Lucy made it pretty clear to anyone reading between the lines that she HAD actually approached Ken and that he wasn’t lying. Either she didn’t pick up on that or she didn’t feel she could confront Lucy about it at tribal. Either way it’s pretty poor gameplay, and for mine she deserved to go home. Where she is left now is hard to say. With a tribe switch happening before next tribal it would be futile to discuss future strategies for our remaining idiots at Takali. The vibe couldn’t have been more different over at Vanua though.

Get Yer Ta-Ta’s Out

Girl was in the Ama-zone!

Before I finish up on this episode I just wanted to briefly run down a few of the fun things we saw from the millenials. Michaela of course let the dogs out (and the puppies) to absolutely dominate amongst the women in the challenge. Adam found an idol, YAY!!! (Hannah may know about it, boo). Andy they went goat hunting, as far as I’m aware that’s a survivor first. We didn’t get a chance to see much in the way of strategy there today but I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what happens post-tribe switch and how Adam uses his idol. Until then, I’ve got nothing else for you. Head back to camp.

Episode 3 – ‘Girls & Boys’ OR ‘Charmless Man’

If you need to read about the last episode before getting stuck into this one, you can do so here.

img_0865
The bigger they are, the harder they fall…

Another episode down. It’s still early days and Gen X is taking out the big characters. Their last vote they took out Rachel, seemingly because she was intense and annoying. Tonight it was Paul’s turn. I’m sure similar reasons contributed to this decision, but a large part of it was strategy. Was it the right time though to start breaking a big alliance? Let’s make like Paul, put on our mask and flippers, and dive into this discussion. Hopefully we’ll come out of it with more than he did.

You’re on Your Own

img_0860
Hello foot, meet mouth.

With these innocent words Paul sealed his fate and became the third person voted out of the 33rd season of Survivor (US). My take on those words was that he was trying to be honest to the women in his alliance. Letting them know that he would inform them should there be a boys alliance within the six. Clearly Jessica in particular read much more into it. Good on her for asking the question. Had she not asked whether “there is a guys thing going on” I suspect we would have seen a different vote tonight. img_0857Personally I’m not convinced it was the right time to do it. My reasoning is this, if we are to assume that the bottom three (David, Ken, Cece), the ladies (Jessica, Sunday, Lucy), and the remaining men (Bret and Chris) are solid voting blocks unlikely to change, then this move gives the bottom three equal power with the ladies (in terms of numbers). If they had waited until next tribal to vote Paul, and voted Cece, then the ladies retain the power of three against two blocks of two. To me though the bigger con in voting out Paul is you lose a meat shield. It would be easy later in the game to convince numbers to vote against Paul. Less easy to convince numbers to vote against CeCe. On the pro side, I guess you take the shot when you can get it, you might not get the opportunity again. I guess it was always going to go this way, since CeCe prayed really hard and she thought it was going to be alright.

Clueless

img_0870
One ticket for Dumbass Island please!

Did the bottom three actually do anything to make it through this vote? I didn’t see them actually make any moves or have any meaningful discussion to help this vote along (other than discussion at god of course). Ken had a brief conversation with Jessica, but it seemed to me to just be an attempt at undermining Paul. Perhaps this conversation did actually contribute to the final vote, I can’t imagine it would have hurt David, CeCe and Ken’s cause at all. There was of course some talk at THE SUMMIT!!!!

REPRESENT!!!!

IMG_0833.PNG
UNITED geNerATIONS

I can’t recall the last time I saw a ‘summit’. And as I was watching I was thinking, what sort of strategy is best to employ at such a meeting of the minds. First, in choosing who to go, is there a penalty for going against the rules and just tipping all of the rocks out of the bag and choosing who you would want to go? Is there any merit in actually doing this? Maybe someone can answer that for me in the comments below. Is there advantage in going? I guess it can’t hurt right. And the more info you have the more power you have. The other question is just how much info do you give to the other tribe. My gut instinct is to go ahead and let the other tribe know all you want to about your enemies, unless you want to use your enemies as numbers post merge. Is it wise to try and form a cross-tribe alliance with anyone? Again, if you’ve got the opportunity I guess it can’t hurt. The more I think about it the more I think I would want to be part of the G8 at the summit. Unless I was the only person going, then I think any advantage you gain from obtaining insider knowledge is lost by the fact that every one else may assume you have some sort of advantage that they need to neutralise. Oh yeah, you can assume there’s going to be food top, so vote me in.

David needs to get some recognition for the way he played the summit. Very casually and friendly questioning how Mari was voted. I’m not sure how I feel about him telling Tay that he would flip with Tay in a heartbeat. By all means, try and form that cross-tribe alliance, but the way he told Tay that he would flip on his gen-xers, it seemed desperate and if I was Tay, I’d be thinking, David must be on the bottom.

Where to for Takali now?

img_0864
The road ahead is going to be a balancing act for Takali, for some members more than others…

I get the feeling this could go any way. If you’re Bret and Chris, the question you’re faced with is do we stick with the ladies or do we side with the bottom? Wow, this is really a toss up. I expect that Jessica and the ladies intend to approach Bris (Chret? Bretstopher?) a la The Great Tony Vlachos and plead their case, saying they are still with Bretstopher (I like ‘Bretstopher’ the most, assuming Chris is short for Christopher), but just needed to get rid of Paul because he said he would make a move against the ladies if he had to. I get the feeling that if this were to happen it would be a very uneasy alliance between the women (Ju(i)cyday?, alright I won’t go there) and Bretstopher, with the men waiting for the women to turn on them. Similarly for the women, I would imagine they would be watching their back expecting for Bretstopher to try and get their revenge. This actually kind of leaves the bottom three, no longer the bottom three. They potentially now have the power. With this thinking in mind they could sit back and wait for Brestopher and the ladies to approach them. So, if you’re Bretstopher and the ladies you’re actually better off sticking together and trying to mitigate some of the power the bottom three has. Ideally by getting rid of CeCe as she is clearly holding you back in challenges. So will the bottom sit back and wait or will they make a move? One would assume that David for one is not the type to sit back and wait. I imagine David would be straight in Bretstopher’s ear to get them to flip. Even if they lose CeCe, that would then leave 4 men against three women. Though I don’t actually like to see alliances formed along gender lines, this is just the way it has turned out and is probably the best move for all the men in the game, if the men can form an alliance, from a numbers point of view it wouldn’t matter whether CeCe was voted out first or one of the other ladies. So what then is the best move for CeCe, other than praying for a miracle? I don’t know. I can’t see a way forward for her. My guess is she will just stick with her alliance, let her alliance gets the numbers on her behalf and hope she doesn’t get picked off. That leaves us then with Vanua to talk about.

Meditate on this

IMG_0823.PNG
Zeke – “Hannah you are the most annoying palindrome on this island, even more annoying than when my buddy here introduced himself to Michaela with ‘Madam I’m Adam‘”

We didn’t see a lot from our younger friends tonight. Of course we saw some fallout from the previous tribal, which was much fun. Perhaps not the smartest move for our two friends on Dumbass Island (Adam and Zeke) however. I can understand that they would be really pissed with Hannah about what she had done, but guys you’ve got to keep that in check, you’re going to need her number if you’re going to stay alive in the game. At least we saw some Adam later in the episode working on keeping Hannah and Michaela. He was playing some really smart strategy here, trying to get them to see things from Taylor and Figgy’s eyes, showing them how they were on the bottom. Hopefully this isn’t all for nought, we know that Michaela has a tendency to do her own thing. I get the feeling Hannah just wants to be liked. So if the cool kids made her feel that she was still with them, then they have a chance to use her as another number to get either Adam or Zeke out. I don’t know where Will is at. If he is smart he’ll sit back and see where Hannah and Michaela land, who they side with, and go their way. He’s in a pretty good position. So if you’re Adam and Zeke you’ve got to get Hannah and Michaela back on your side. Good luck gentlemen.

Regardless of which tribe goes to tribal next week, it looks like we’ve got some engaging strategy on the docket. Until then, I got nothing else for you, head back to camp.

img_0873
“Ciao for now!”