Another slow week on Survivor where the only real excitement came at the Redemption Island duel. Last week, Krista (one of Russell’s former devotees) was voted out of Zapatera and bonded with Matt over their religious beliefs while they waited to duel. It’s interesting to see that the ousted tribe members are given their luxury item when they get to Redemption. Apparently the contestants are still allowed these things, but they no longer bring them to camp (like Colby did with his Texas flag). Instead, the producers will dole them out when and if they see fit. I guess it gives the person sent to Redemption a little comfort and perhaps some strength, as Krista’s bible did this week, but does it ultimately affect their game? It didn’t help Krista, but she was very generous in giving the bible to Matt as she left the game.
The rest of this week’s episode was all about trust/loyalty versus strength/passion. On Ometepe, Phillip continues to show his strength and his loyalty to his tribe (and to Rob) by doing most of the grunt work. He’s a good worker, but his constant nagging of the girls is going to hurt him at some point. Unfortunately, Phillip is so delusional that he actually believes he’s in an alliance with Rob and Grant. He believes it so much that he even gave the alliance a name: Stealth-R-Us! But for a man who claims to have the power of observation, he has no clue how far on the outside he actually is when it comes to Rob and Grant. He just might have a clue now that he managed to catch the guys sneaking off to read the next hidden immunity idol clue without him. Rob wants to keep Phillip around because he’s a loose cannon that takes the spotlight off of him, but knowing about the clue to the idol could be Phillip’s downfall.
And about that hidden immunity idol clue – did Rob manage to pull another switcheroo while Grant wasn’t looking? Last week, Rob swapped the first clue and the second clue to keep Grant in the dark. The clue this week would have had three riddles, so did Rob manage to swap clues two and three or did Grant not notice that that there was one more riddle than there should have been?
Over on Zapatera, David tried to convince Stephanie that she needed to make amends with the rest of the tribe so that she could stay and Sarita would get the boot. Sarita hasn’t proven herself a strong player in challenges and got on David’s bad side when she said she felt he would panic in a challenge. Now that she’s got a slightly infected tooth or gum that caused her to sit out the challenge, David and Stephanie tried to seize upon that to sway the rest of the tribe to keep Stephanie, who is a physically stronger player (except David seems to forget they lost the last challenge because Stephanie couldn’t solve a word puzzle before Rob did). Unfortunately, Stephanie wasn’t given a chance to prove her strength as her team lost the immunity/reward challenge.
The question facing Zapatera at Tribal Council was Sarita’s loyalty over Stephanie’s strength. Stephanie and David did what they could to throw Sarita under the bus and a lot of the comments made it seem that Stephanie did have a fighting chance, but in the end her mouth and her past behavior under Russell’s guidance sent her to Redemption Island. As much as I didn’t like Stephanie because of her blind devotion to Russell, I’m actually pulling for her to come back into the game now. I think Zapatera made a huge mistake by sticking with Sarita, and if Stephanie does manage to conquer Redemption Island, that decision is going to come back and bite them in the ass hard … that is if there’s a Zapatera tribe left come the merge. It’s also going to be interesting to see if David’s attempted manipulations for Stephanie’s sake has just made him low man on the Zapatera totem pole. They are now down to the original alliance of six, and if they lose again they will have to start cannibalizing their alliance, weakening the tribe come the merge.
Clacked by Chuck Duncan 
on Mar 24, 2011 @ 08:48 EST5EDT
I saw a little bit of intrigue in David’s storyline. I think he just made it personal with Sarita and was kidding himself about the relative strengths of Stephanie and Sarita – buying into Steph’s propaganda because Sarita antagonized him last week. I’m surprised he would vote against his alliance, and that pretty clearly puts him on the outs if they lose again next week. Pretty bad move. And even if they win, there’s now a core of four – Steve, Julie, Ralph, and Mike – that’ll look out for each other and no one else if it comes down to that. Dave took down Sarita for future councils by pointing out her weaknesses, sure, but at the cost of his own position. Hope it was worth it, you petty fool. I think Julie and Mike are playing the strongest game on that side right now by staying almost completely in the background. Ralph had the intrigue with the hidden idol (and is just a loud character), and Steve has made himself the leader and face of the alliance, which will make him a target for the other tribe come merge time.
On the other side of things, Philip is pretty clearly the next one to go if and when they lose again. I just can’t see it going any other way. Getting rid of him will cement the loyalty of Rob’s female followers, and even then he’s still got Andrea clearly at the bottom of the pecking order. I don’t know how he earned Grant’s loyalty, but that’s really going to pay off with him being that good at challenges.