Survivor: Tocantins

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This

By Kim Hollis and David Mumpower

February 27, 2009

He's pretty happy for someone who feels so awful.

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column
It's time to play It's Anyone but Jerry. His indicating a desire to quit the game is good news for Sierra, great news for Erinn and probably welcome news for Coach as well. Sierra is perceived as the weakest player on their tribe, a somewhat unfair assumption relative to her effort to date. Erinn had exactly one ally in the game and that person is currently hanging out the hotel right now waiting to catch a flight out of Tocantins. Coach is just a jerk and even the people he believes are his allies despise him. So, either of them would have been likely to go if Jerry had not committed the cardinal sin of the game.

The next few minutes show some discussion about other potential eliminations. Coach laments the fact that Erinn is no longer on the chopping block today. He sees her as the blueprint example of what is wrong his tribe. Coach proceeds to demonstrate "The Look" to Tyson and follows this up with a classic moment of reality show self-absorption. He blithely tells the others that while it's okay for them to put up with Erinn's despicable nature, he is "so true that existing around people that smile evilly when somebody else is on their knees kills me." Sierra proceeds to point out to the camera what the audience already knows. Voting off Erinn over a personal grudge when Jerry wants to be eliminated would be an epic mistake. The fact that Coach is even considering it speaks volumes about how short-sighted he is as a player.




Advertisement



The one noteworthy aspect of the time between the immunity challenge and Tribal Council is that Brendan finds the idol. He has a burst of logical curiosity regarding the carved wooden statue next to the tree mail box. Ignoring the clues and simply feeling around the statue pays dividends when he unearths the idol. He proceeds to hide the idol by burying it a bit by a rock in the forest. This is a huge turn of events for the overall direction of this season. Should he tip off Taj to the location of the idol at her camp and she find it, they would have a hammerlock on the game after the merge. This assumes only that no one else becomes suspicious of the two of them making such an agreement while spending time together at Exile Island. As long as they can deflect attention away from such an agreement, that super-secret four-person alliance that seemed silly when they discussed it earlier suddenly becomes a potential winner. While we oftentimes feel that the power of the idol is vastly exaggerated, Brendan's chances of winning Survivor have just increased exponentially due to the fact that his group would have two.

Tribal Council is little more than a restating of known positions. Coach feels he should be leader and he feels that he is the de facto leader. Meanwhile, Erinn and Coach do not like one another and she feels Brendan is a much better natural leader. At this point, Coach throws Brendan under the bus by pointing out that the tribe has last three straight challenges and that is apparently all the leader's fault. Probst busts him on this nonsense, saying that it sounds like his real issue is one of ego. He...doesn't like that. We're guessing that when Coach was a little boy, he took his ball and went home A LOT.


Continued:       1       2       3       4

     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.