Parvati Shallow, winner of Survivor: Micronesia and veteran two other Survivor competitions, gives THR her view of Wednesday’s night’s Survivor: Redemption Island.
Matt is still king over on Redemption Island. That guy is on a pretty impressive winning streak. First, he beats out Francesca, then he takes out Russell, and now he eliminates Kristina. If I was there and I saw him winning challenge after challenge I’d be impressed and probably throw him my vote at the end. Not only does he keep winning but he has to live out there by himself too, and that’s not easy.
This whole Redemption Island thing…it’s really interesting. In past shows when the two tribes merged that would be the first time you met the other tribe. You wouldn’t know their names or anything about them really. Now that there’s this Redemption Island twist, the spectators from each tribe get to meet each other and talk and have conversations while they watch the two cast-offs battle.
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In tonight’s episode Stephanie basically outted Zapatera’s entire strategy to Rob. It definitely throws another interesting twist into the game and adds a whole new level of game play. Merge-play, if you will. They can meet and discuss possible merging strategies before the option even comes out on the table, it’s insane!
With that in mind, it probably wasn’t a smart move by the rest of Zapatera to send both Stephanie and Krista over to Redemption Island to watch the survival showdown between Matt and Christina…but I really don’t think they care. They feel so secure and confident after having successfully kicked out Russell that its causing their egos to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger — soon they’re not going to be able to see when somebody is coming after them. If they do merge they’re not going to be able to see it when someone is causing trouble in camp because they’ll be too busy holding hands and singing “Kumbaya.” They need to realize that they’re not on “church camp,” they’re on Survivor! Eventually someone is going to get sneaky, but for now they all just feel so comfortable because they have their little voting cushion of Stephanie and Krista to vote out. They haven’t realized that once those two are gone eventually they’ll start stabbing each other in the back and then their church camp will get all broken up and they’ll all be sad. Then they’ll cry.
READ: Parvati’s recap from last episode
It’s not all perfect over at Zapatera though; there is a little crack in the alliance now with David and Sarita clashing heads after losing the immunity challenge. It kind of seemed like David was attacking Sarita, he was getting very defensive and it turned into attacking her. I could tell that by the end of it she was upset, and believe me — the longer you have to think about that and marinate on it while you’re sitting in the dirt uncomfortable, and rain is pouring on you, and your fingers are pruning up, and bugs are eating your skin off -– the more annoyed you get at that one person who is making your life even more miserable. So this could be a huge opportunity for Stephanie to make a move and try to get back in the game. If Stephanie would go and try to befriend Sarita and stir the pot up a little bit (which it seems like she likes doing), and cause some more trouble between David and Sarita. If Stephanie does that then she might have a few more chances to stay in the game.
For more and Parvati’s predictions, go to the next page!
And for the record, Stephanie is great under pressure; she’s really good at challenges. The rest of Zapatera are a bunch of clowns if they thought she blew the challenge in tonight’s episode. It was Ralph who was yelling the whole time and throwing the rest of the tribe into a frenzy. Everyone else was panicking while Stephanie was calm, steady, and poised. I am impressed with her actually. Stephanie probably would have won if she wasn’t going up against Rob at the final puzzle. It sucks to go up against him at a puzzle challenge; he’s really good at them. He should be; he’s had four seasons to practice!
Over at Ometepe, it’s still so hard to watch. It’s like watching Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dumber walking down the road. The whole tribe is blinded by Rob’s charisma or something. I can’t believe that no one even tried to look for the clue, Grant just so happened to stumble across it. And I had high hopes for Grant, I really did, but it turns out that he is a dumb-dumb too. He finds the clue and then instantly gives it to Rob, I mean come on!
I feel bad for the guy; Grant thinks that Rob is his friend when really he is just getting bamboozled. Rob is playing with him like he’s his own personal toy. Rob is crafty and dangerous, but the only one who seems to notice is crazy Phillip! I’m sad we didn’t get to see much of him this episode, besides him walking around in pink Underoos trying to get a massage from the girls. But he was working on Andrea and trying to create and alliance with her. I like the idea of a partnership between those two. Andrea still has a little vendetta against Rob for voting out her boyfriend, Matt, and Phillip supposedly “sees through” Rob, so we could see something interesting happen there.
So Zapatera lost the challenge and had to go to tribal council. I’m still not entirely sure why they voted off Krista, I guess they did say that she was a little bit of a negative force around the camp and that she never reached out to anyone and just complained. But I think Zapatera was stupid to not vote Stephanie out. She was obviously the more intelligent and outspoken troublemaker of the two. They did themselves a disservice by keeping her in the game. And like I said earlier, if Stephanie notices this imperfection in the armor of the tribe’s alliance, she could be a definite threat.
My predictions for next week: I’m hoping that the pot does get a little stirred up bit and that if Zapatera has to go to tribal council David will get voted off. And if Ometepe has to go to tribal council it will probably be one of the other little girls that we haven’t really seen too much of yet. I’m thinking that it will be Ashley who gets the boot.
