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Hello, good people, and welcome back to Survivor: Nicaragua. I'm your fill-in host, Jim Van Nest, and I can't wait to see who plans to quit this week. Rather than a quickie recap of the obnoxiousness that was last week's episode, let's leave it at "Quitting Bitch and Purple Quitter are gone." Okay...one more comment about the Quitters. I absolutely love that one day after she destroyed her alliance, sending Brenda home, Quitting Bitch leaves the game with Brenda looking on. This is the ultimate Reality show murder/suicide. The real issue, though, is what does that do to the game and the current alliances, if anything?

As it is, we have two clear-cut 3-person alliances right now in Chase/Holly/Jane and Benry/Dan/Fabio. But Jim, there's seven people left in the game. Why yes, that's true. After completely misplaying his hand over the last couple weeks, Sash was given a great gift last week as the biggest wildcard left in the game decided everyone she knew would be proud of her for getting within nine days of a million bucks. As it is right now, he's on good terms with both alliances in the game and he'll have the benefit of weighing his options and deciding which team he wants to play for. (For what it's worth, Shannon is pretty sure he knows what team Sash plays for.) The key for Sash now is to determine if he stands a better chance with the girls or the guys. If you ask me, he stands a better chance against the guys as only Fabio could potentially beat him, in my opinion. That being said, that pretty much guarantees that he'll join the girls where only Chase could potentially lose to Sash. But, there haven't been many good decisions made in this game, so why should I expect it now?

Since we started it last week, we're going to try to make the Weekly Player Rankings a new feature here at BOP. So, without further ado, here they are going into this week's episode:

Holly: 2-1. Holly leapfrogged Jane in last week's episode. First, we see her trying to talk Purple Quitter into staying in the game and we know she's played a motherly role for Quitting Bitch in the past as well. Then, throw in the whole "giving up reward for the good of the tribe" thing and Holly has really started to separate herself from the pack. At this point, if the alliances break in her favor, Holly has to be the huge favorite to win.

Jane: 3-1. Jane didn't do anything wrong last week, she just lost ground because Holly had a fantastic week. Jane is still a serious threat to win this thing, but I can see her becoming a target before Holly due to her strength in challenges.

Sash: 8-1. Sash is my biggest jumper this week and oddly enough he didn't even have to do anything to jump up like this. He was damn near a dead man walking (with only the idol stopping that from being true) and then in a blink of an eye, all the power shifted right into his lap as he'll be the deciding vote in tonight's three-on-three Tribal Council. If he chooses wisely, he'll move up in next week's rankings. If he chooses poorly, he can drop right back down where he was.

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