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He continues to butter Phillip up by asking about Phillip’s “razzle dazzle” challenge-flopping techniques, and letting him go on about how a new male lion kills all the cubs. Cochran never really keeps a straight face through all of this. I think his poker face is getting worse with practice. Phillip doesn’t seem to notice, though. Back in interview Cochran muses on what the story would have been if Phillip had defeated Reynold with the grappling hook – “the spy’s basic tool” – and won the challenge for the “favorites”. I agree that would have been a corker of a speech.

It’s time for the Bikal “favorites” to decide who to vote out, which gives us our only real moment of tension this episode. They are planning to split the vote, counting on Michael and Julia to vote for each other and flushing any idol that by some fluke remains. Corinne argues against splitting because they don’t need to. After last week, it’s clear that they don’t have any idol.

But she goes too far by arguing strongly for not putting Michael through a split vote because she wants him to “trust us” and work with them after the merge. Dawn just stares at Corinne. She does not seem on board about working with any “fan”. Cochran is looking anywhere but Corinne. He’s not on board either. If Corinne was in the loop about Julia flunking out of Phillip’s double-agent academy, she would have kept quiet and let things play out. She should have done that anyway. But in interview, she clearly doesn’t get it. No “fans”! That’s the rule!

“I have the numbers without him,” claims Phillip “We do need him,” “No we don’t,” avers Phillip. “I played with Boston Rob. He would never say...” I can think of a lot of things that Boston Rob would never do. Like play this way with people who aren’t first-time rubes and don’t worship him.

Anyway, Phillip goes off to grouch in interview about how Corinne is “in love with Michael” and she is “putting her selfish interests above the ‘favorites,’” as though he only has the “favorites” good interests at heart.

He has a talk on the beach with Dawn and Cochran about how the three of them are the core alliance in this group. Phillip doesn’t want to be “bullied into doing something that’s against my core interests just to satisfy her new friend.” I see Phillip’s point, but he’s done a lot of bullying himself, which he learned from playing with Boston Rob. In interview, Phillip claims that “here’s what BR would do. Say OK Corinne, we vote Michael out of the game”. Would “BR” really tell that to Corinne? Really? I think he’d say “yeah, we’ll all vote out Julia”, then engineer the vote switch knowing Corinne is voting for Julia, and then vote out Michael 3-1 on the re-vote.

Right after Phillip says he is going to vote for Michael just to spite Corinne; Corinne comes up and asks what is happening. Phillip gets annoyed at her for interrupting, and his response to Corinne’s “but we’re in an alliance” is “so what?” “You’re being so mean to me right now,” says Corinne. He denies it and then suggests that if Corinne feels that way she should let him continue his conversation with Dawn and Cochran. “Thank you. Appreciate it.” he patronizes.

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