WOW!
What else can I say? Never, never, NEVER in a million years did I ever expect this so soon. The females broke up, and now, with one sudden vote, it is suddenly anybody’s game.
It’s amazing, really, the sort of impact just one Tribal Council can have on the scope of the entire game. Now, Chris is suddenly back in the running, and has a very, VERY good shot now of winning this entire game.
In fact, right now, none of the six truly has any leverage over the others, even though it may appear that way on the surface. Ami and Julie are currently on the outside looking in, but with only six people left and nine days to go in the game, anything is possible.
It seems pretty obvious that Ami will be going this week, and even more obvious that the Immunity is the only thing that saved her last week, otherwise she would have gone instead of Leann. However, don’t count her out just yet. She’s proven to be a wily player, and could easily pull off an Immunity win if desperate enough.
In addition, she also has the power to negotiate last-minute alliances to shake up the game. She’s done it before”¦..remember Lisa? I fully expect that Ami, alongside Julie, will be playing full tilt this week to use Eliza’s vote as leverage to restore themselves to power. And there is a chance Eliza will bargain.
In any event, Ami will not go down without a fight, and it should be a lot of fun to watch. I’m really looking forward to this week’s episode.
Before I address each player one by one, I want to talk about Twila. Up until this week’s big Thanksgiving Day Shake-Up, I truly did not give Twila anywhere near enough credit for the type of game Twila is playing. She has been playing almost flawlessly, especially since the merge.
Here are a few highlights that I picked up after looking back and realizing the full gravity of what Twila has been pulling off in Vanuatu thus far:
1) If you look at the six people left in the game right now, Twila is the only person who has a perfect voting record. Meaning, at every single Tribal Council she has attended in this entire game, the person she voted for is the person who ended up going home. She has never been on the wrong side of an alliance.
2) She has not seen her name pop up since TC #3 where Mia was voted out. That was a LONG time ago, and she has not seen her name since then. So, even though she is always on the right side of an alliance, she has taken very little heat for it in terms of votes at TC.
3) She orchestrated the entire new alliance this week. It may look like Chris or Scout, but it was Twila all the way. I doubt it was an accident she voted with the females to send Chad home and then magically change her mind last week to vote Leann out. If she had made her new alliance then, there would have been a purple rock tie. I think she deliberately waited until last week, when she could take advantage of Eliza’s precarious position, Chris’ desperation, and her and Scout’s joint feeling of the need for change to their advantage in the numbers game. She made the right move.
And, once again, she has taken very little heat for all of this. The girls blamed her and Scout for conspiring with the guys, but then dropped it and reformed their alliance. Now, it’s possible that if Twila gets to the Final Two, some of the girls may still hold a grudge for the deception both she and Scout committed against them.
That’s why I also believe Chris now has a very, VERY good shot at winning this game. He’s got two major things going for him right now:
1) He is currently in a majority alliance.
2) Even if this alliance breaks apart, the girls aren’t really gunning for him anymore. They’re prematurely tearing each other apart, and Chris can use that as leverage to get him to the Final Two, where he will stand with a platform of prevailing against all odds.
I’m honestly surprised that Eliza is still in this game. Now, I’ll be honest: even though she is a native of Syracuse, my hometown, I’m not overly fond of her. She’s just too perky for my liking. However, I can’t deny that she is in a fairly powerful position right now.
She has been so close to the torch snuffer so many times since the beginning of this game I’m shocked that she is even still in the running. She annoys the crap out of everybody, and she is in the Final Six. She annoys them so much, in fact, that even Ami agreed to vote her off before Chris, so that says something right there.
And yet, right now, she is probably the most powerful person in the game. Why? Because she, once again, has the power to shake everything up.
Think about it. She annoys the crap out of everyone, that’s a fact I just established. Which means that in whatever alliance she is a member of, she will be the first person out.
Right now, the alliance is her, Twila, Scout, and Chris. With that alliance, if she stays with it, Eliza will achieve no better than fourth place.
I fully expect that Ami and Julie will campaign HARD for her vote this week with one token promise: With them, you go no better than fourth place. With us, you go to the Final Three.
So, at this point, Eliza could use her vote as a swing. If she realizes her potential in this position, and if she deserves to win at all she will, then it would truly be in her best interests to switch and join Ami and Julie, because she’s guaranteed at least 3rd, which is better than fourth, plus she needs to break up the alliance of Twila and Scout.
Plus, the farther she makes it, the more chance she has of having her annoying aura work towards her advantage. It’s all too easy for me to picture a scenario where someone takes Eliza to the Final Two because she is so annoying to everybody, and then she wins because the Jury respects how she made it out of all those scrapes from day 1 to day 39.
So, in summary, it is truly anybody’s game at this point. Who will win? With only 3 episodes left, your guess is as good as mine. But I’m going to go with either Twila or Chris. The competition is heating up in Vanuatu, and if the rest of the episodes play out as well as the Turkey Day episode did, then we are in for a true volcanic-explosion ending!
“See” you next week!
