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Returning to Sash for a moment, his ego is unquestionably becoming an issue. This is his statement prior to Tribal Council: "Well, it turns out I don't even have to dig for idols. All I have to do is ask for them. People will literally hand me an idol just because I may or may not keep them in the game a little longer." Uh oh. People who say things like this usually do something stupid soon afterward.

The biggest punch at Tribal Council comes from Marty, who calls out Jane as a flip-flopper. Little does he know - learn how to be a better judge of body language, dude - that Jane has never been with him from the start. He then goes on to state that he no longer has possession of the immunity idol. When Probst queries him on its current owner, Sash raises his hand and indicates that the item is safely nestled in his pocket. At this point, Sash spits the bit. Big time.

Probst asks Sash whether the team owns it and he would gladly give it to Brenda right now or if he does not in fact see it as a group possession. This comes right on the heels of Brenda and Fabio saying that they have no problem with his holding on to it, because they trust him that much. How does Sash reward that trust? He makes this unfortunate slip of the tongue:

"If that's what we decide as a group, then maybe back at camp, I might do that. At this moment, I don't think it serves a purpose. But if there is a time when I lose trust in them or, I'm sorry, if there is a time when they lose trust in me, then I'll have to turn it over or I'll have the biggest target on my back of this entire tribe."

Survivor is a fascinating demonstration of human behavior and one of the things that makes us marvel about it is how consistently the same mistakes are repeated. This has become an annual rite of passage, that moment when someone is in a position of power and they let it go to their head. At this point, they inevitably make mistakes due to their lazy arrogance. Sash was sitting pretty with the complete confidence of his tribemates in a power alliance that has little chance of losing authority for several more votes. Now, he's a guy who will almost certainly be pressed to give away his immunity idol since he can no longer be trusted with it. And he has showed he has a disloyal streak either a week or a day before the tribes merge once more. That's a crippling miscalculation that happened only because he got too damned cocky.

The vote itself is no real surprise although there is one humorous moment prior to it. Fabio is pressed to display his knowledge of the concept of the Freudian slip. His statement is, "Yes, I'm actually a little bit familiar with Freudian psychology. It might have been the whole 90% of the subconscious coming up above and coming out." We're now like 70% certain that he has three different doctorates and that the whole dumb pretty boy thing is just a facade.

Anyway, the vote is not a swerve. Marty and Jill express their bitterness by voting against Jane. The other five votes are exactly as described. Marty gets two while Jill gets the other three and is eliminated from Survivor. We think that she seems like a relatively bright player, but she tried to be too fine with some of her maneuvering. If, for instance, she had taken possession of the immunity idol herself rather than doing everything but squarely place it in Marty's hand after she solved the clue, she would be the one surviving to play another day. Possession is even more than 9/10 of the law on Survivor, a point that Brenda and Co. should be spinning over in their heads as they consider Sash's slip of the tongue.

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