The alliance holds strong.
Survivor: China Blog
12th Elimination: Peih-Gee
After back-to-back previews of Amanda talking about getting rid of Todd, I had been waiting for my pick to get the axe each week. As you can tell from the previous two blog entries, I had spent waaaaay too much time thinking about every possible scenario that could play out and why Amanda would be nuts to get rid of him. Was it a tad obsessive? Yeah, it was, and probably more than just a “tad”. It’s just that after watching my 4 for 9 record of picking the winner, dwindle to 4 for 13 over the past four seasons, with two agonizing second-place finishes, I’m desperate for a win. In a season where almost nobody is thinking things through besides my pick, it was driving me nuts to watch him twist in the breeze, especially since it was nearly everyone’s best interest to keep him around!
After resigning myself that the end was near, and even going so far as to make a prediction that Peih-Gee would win immunity this past week and Todd’s alliance would turn on him, I finally had my moment of clarity while typing up the Power Poll…
“[Todd] desperately needs immunity next week. On the other hand, they’ve been playing up this “backstabbing” so much, you have to wonder if it will happen. Usually they like to make those types of results a surprise. I am mildly getting the impression that they’re creating a false sense of drama to generate hype for a predictable finish.”
At that point, I wasn’t about to go back and re-type the entire blog post, especially for what was just a mild gut-feeling. However, it was the explanation for the situation that made the most sense, and when they showed shot after shot of Amanda talking about taking out Todd, that hunch of mine kept me feeling pretty confident. The whole time it just seemed like the editors were trying too hard to drum up some drama. In retrospect, it became even more clear that they were doing just that. Think about it… Why did they show a clip from this episode of Amanda contemplating taking out Todd in the previews two weeks ago? They never do that! The answer: To keep people watching when it was obvious who should be going each week. I’ll admit, they almost had me up until the Power Poll, but I watch this show no matter what. I’m as reliable as the mail man. Come snow, sleet, hail, or a bra-less Denise in a tank top, I’ll be tuning in every week!
1. Unfair Immunity. This will be a quick one, but did anyone else think it was really unfair to have a reward challenge that featured the return of chopping ropes and eating the bird fetus? We’ve already seen that Denise is incapable of getting that thing down, and that Courtney has a severe form of muscular dystrophy. By including those two events you basically guaranteed that Amanda, Todd, or Peih-Gee was winning this thing. Personally, I think it may have been an attempt to increase Peih-Gee’s odds of winning immunity and keeping things interesting. But if that’s really what the producers had in mind, why stop there? They should’ve included a portion where you had to make out with a woman to eliminate Todd, and then a station where you had to stand for 15 minutes without having your clothes slide off to reveal a private part that needs to be blurred out to get rid of Amanda. Now that would have worked!
2. Amanda’s not stupid. Like I said above, they were pushing the whole “Todd might get voted off” angle way too hard this week. I felt really comfortable that it was going to be Peih-Gee until Amanda dropped this bomb:
“I’m beginning to think I might have a better shot of getting to the final thee with Denise and Peih-Gee”.
That one really made me question Amanda’s sanity. Would she have a better shot of getting to the final thee with Todd out of the game? Absolutely. But if she did go to the final three with the two of them, nobody would throw her a single vote! She had to know this, right? What’s the point of getting there if you have absolutely no chance to win?
Then she started talking about how Todd might stab her in the back, and I almost lost it. If Peih-Gee’s gone there would be four people left! How do you backstab somebody with those numbers? There’s nobody left to flop! When you get down to the final four, it’s all about winning immunity. Either you have it or you don’t, and everyone is going to vote for the person that they want to. Off the top of my head, in fourteen seasons, I can’t think of a single final four where somebody was “manipulated” into voting for somebody it wasn’t in their best interest to vote for. The game is too simple at this point to trick people. It’s all about immunity. If anything, Peih-Gee’s the person who’s won it the most.
Looking back, it was all either Amanda thinking about every scenario out loud, or some fancy editing by the producers, because the girl has played too smart of a game to have a last second brain meltdown like that. She ended up doing the right thing and keeping Todd.
3. Final Four. I haven’t been this pumped up for a Survivor Finale since Boston Rob and Amber were backstabbing everyone during All-Stars. The reason: Three more tribal councils!
I don’t know how many people caught this, but it means we’re going back to a FINAL TWO. I hated the three person finals of the past two seasons. They severely deplete the level of strategy down the stretch and they absolutely kill the do-or-die nature of that final immunity challenge. The intention behind them was probably to create more uncertainty as to who would win the million, but Earl’s 9-0 victory over Dreamz and Cassandra helped to prove that they don’t necessarily lead to closer outcomes.
If this season ended with a final three, here’s what we would have to look forward to: Either Denise wins immunity, and Amanda and Todd go head to head in a meaningless battle for votes because Denise is going to win the whole thing anyway, or Denise doesn’t win immunity, gets voted off, and Jean-Robert gets to decide who he hates less as the swing vote in a 4-3 finish. Not that exciting right?
With a final two, things get much more complex…
If Denise doesn’t win immunity, she’ll still get the axe, but instead of the jury picking who they like better, Amanda and Todd get to actually duke it out for immunity and the million. If Denise does win immunity, we could go down to a Todd/Amanda fire-making challenge in the next tribal council, or somebody could pull some unexpected immunity deal to keep their hopes alive and totally turn everything around. Doesn’t this sound better than the three-person finale option?
And here’s the real kicker. A final two puts EIGHT people on the jury. That leaves the possibility for a tie and a LIVE fire-making challenge for a million dollars on Sunday night. How incredible would that be?!?!
By the way, I’m pretty sure that somebody at CBS is reading this blog and took this idea from me. I mentioned this possibility back in the entry for Episode 8 of Cook Islands when Brad made the jury with twelve people left in the game. I thought there would be 10 on the jury voting for 2, but it ended up being 9 on the jury voting for 3. I talked about how awesome it would be for a tie to go down with a live fire-making challenge, and now that’s a distinct possibility. Could someone else have come up with this on their own? Of course. But it does seem a little unorthodox for how Survivor usually operates. Also, if watching this show has taught me anything, it’s that I think of things very, very differently than most people and come up with things that nobody else comes up with.
So, yeah, I’m totally taking credit for when Todd and Amanda are blowing on their flames at 10:05 EST Sunday night!
Survivor Power Poll:
| Ranking | Player | Comments | Last Week |
| 16 | Chicken | Eliminated. | 16 |
| 15 | Ashley | Eliminated. | 15 |
| 14 | Leslie | Eliminated. | 14 |
| 13 |
Dave |
Eliminated | 13 |
| 12 |
Aaron |
Eliminated | 12 |
| 11 | Sherea | Eliminated | 11 |
| 10 | Jaime | Eliminated | 10 |
| 9 | Jean-Robert | Eliminated | 9 |
| 8 | Frosti | Eliminiated | 8 |
| 7 | James | Eliminated | 7 |
| 6 | Erik | Eliminated | 6 |
| 5 | Peih-Gee | Eliminated | 2 |
| 4 | Courtney | Not getting a single vote. | 5 |
| 3 | Denise | Will need not one, but two immunity wins to take home the million now. | 1 |
| 2 | Amanda | If Denise goes next, Amanda will be in the final three with Todd and Courtney. If Courtney wins the final immunity, she’s taking Todd. If Todd wins the final immunity, he’s probably taking Courtney. She’s not out of it by any means as neither of them are strong competitors, but I don’t like Amanda’s chances as much as… | 3 |
| 1 | Todd | A Denise loss at the next immunity challenge, coupled with a win by him or Courtney at the final immunity challenge, will net him the million. Both of those things are more likely to happen than not. We’ll see how it actually plays out, but you can’t ask for more than to have your pick be sitting in the #1 spot in the Power Poll heading into the final episode! | 4 |
