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3. Malcolm

Malcolm is clearly lapping up being the “stud football player." He has a hidden immunity idol, he is in the majority alliance and it doesn’t look like he’ll be going home any time soon.

Looking ahead of the next episode, Malcolm being on the Tandang majority alliance is going to lead to its destruction. Of course, all Survivor alliances eventually crumble because Survivor is like Highlander – there can only be one. But Malcolm’s membership creates fault lines that didn’t exist before. It gives Artis and Lisa an opportunity to break Pete and Abi’s hold on the group, and Malcolm changes the dynamic that only Pete would look good in front of the jury.

Also, everyone else in the majority alliance is pretty much stuck with it, while Malcolm will probably have an opportunity to flip some time in the future – and maintain his “integrity” in the eyes of a jury by saying “I stuck with the original alliance I made with Denise."

4. Lisa

Last week, we saw Lisa solve a puzzle and gush about Malcolm. Enough to make me wonder what would happen if it came to choosing sides between Malcolm and Pete. She ranks higher on Tandang than Artis for the moment because she is playing the “just tell me who to vote for” strategy, and those types are always valuable to have around.

5. Artis

Once again, we didn’t see Artis do anything. Come on Artis, something has to light that fuse. We get an indication that something might happen next episode, but promo editing is always shady.

6. RC

Last episode, RC was reduced to saying that time has to be on her side for time so that she can flirt with Malcolm. Weak, RC. Just weak. Her best chance now is to keep being awesome in immunity challenges, so she can make it to the merge and then flip.

7. Michael

Pete said it – Malcolm being on the tribe means that Michael is even more expendable than he used to be. We don’t have any indication about how he sees the game unfolding, though with Tandang winning all the time, we haven’t needed to yet. If they don’t win one, bye bye Michael.

Kalabaw

In just one week, Kalabaw went from being never-lost to losing fast. That’s what one immunity and an unfortunate medevac can do. However, Kalabaw have been down in immunity challenges before and come back. We’ll see if their violent tactics in this week's immunity challenge can help them recover.

1. Jeff Kent

He wasn’t medevac’d, so our “I’m just a normal guy” baseball player retains the top spot at Kalabaw. He’s still making the obvious strategic moves for the alliance, such as bringing in Denise. However, it would be interesting to get the low-down on why Dawson was booted last episode, because the editing suggests that Jonathan planted the seed and Jeff Kent went along with it.

2. Jonathan

I’ll keep Jonathan at #2 because he seems comfortable in the Kalabaw alliance, he has the hidden immunity idol, and for now that alliance has no option but to stick together.

3. Carter

Carter is #3 ahead of Denise because Denise is still a Kalabaw newbie while Carter is involved in the “who to vote out” discussions with Jonathan and Jeff Kent. Even if he’s not really contributing.

4. Denise

Denise is supposedly in the Kalabaw majority alliance, but we haven’t seen her have a single strategic discussion with anyone so she’s probably outside of the decision-making. The three men are going to have to bring Denise in on their talks next episode if they are going to build any sort of trust with her. Of course, if they ever realize that Denise is cursed - cursed! – she is done for.

5. Katie

Katie’s the only one outside that group of four, and she knows it. It’s unfortunate for her that she was so royally screwed last week by Dana’s exit – especially as post-show interviews revealed that Dana, Dawson and Katie did have a three-person alliance and they had brought in Denise.

We will see how these rankings stand up against this week’s episode, in which the producers succeed in creating conflict between the tribes through the traditional “physically aggressive” challenge where someone inevitably goes too far and ruins it for everyone.

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