The episode begins with the orange crew trying to patch things up with the guy they had stabbed in the back, but reparations were not to be made, at least not on any real level. Their creative strategy had its fallout to it and now they’ve received an enemy from it. Sometimes, being upfront and honest is more reliable than the unnecessarily cunning and underhanded play. Mainly because now, their is no love, and no trust to be had. On the other side, the gay dudes plot to relieve Jeremy from the game, but miss their opportunity due to winning the challenges all the time. The reasoning behind the specificity of their target has yet to be fully revealed, but most likely, it’s because people have discovered that he is conniving and manipulative. With that kind of insight into someone’s identity, it becomes hard to overlook that fact when everyone can’t be trusted, except your loved ones. The tribes merge, they rename themselves, and feel out people’s alliances and loyalties with one another. Jeremy and Josh are in a gridlock, probably because they both can tell that they are running the show from the sly. Jeremy believes highly in his own charm and starts sitting pretty with his belief that he’s got a crew that will be with him until the end. Seriously though, that’s crazy naive. People change their loyalty on a minute to minute framework, and this is the wrong time to get sloppy. Josh decides to push some gears of his own, but it’s clear that they are split 5-7 in their group. Josh attempts to manipulate Bailor using guilt not realizing that she is a sociopath and a self-absorbed user. That plan will crash and burn and he will have to come up with something better if he wants to sway the tide of war. He realizes that Bailor feigns persuading her mom and let’s the mom think she’s making the decision, when in reality, she is scared to make the hard decisions so she uses her mom as a scapegoat. It’s not that clever but it’s a strong means of pushing the blame away from her, in terms of future votes. Josh attempts to plea with the attractive couple because they are realistically, the only real fence sitters left. Josh says, there are strength in couples, Jeremy is a strong competitor and has a realistic chance of being the winner despite the game being only half over. It seems like the smart way of introducing perspective to a duo that doesn’t have the capacity to think things through. They fade off into the distance to discuss their play. Thankfully, Julie decides to become an enemy of the state by hoarding the little food that they have left. Regardless of the alliances, that crossed the line for many of them and she’s got a real big target on her back now. Realizing that you could potentially be caught, why would someone do that? The hunger must be really, really hard. The challenge begins and it is wildly uninteresting. Eventually, Keith wins. The only thing worth mentioning was the fat grin on Jeremy’s face when Josh lost the challenge. That looked downright evil. I guess I am very biased at this point or the show is pushing me to want to think in a certain way and it’s working. Keith mentions that this vote will show where the alliances stand and he is absolutely right. Julie is all ready to quit but missy tries to string her along, and not very subtly. She has enraged Julie and she has now become a wildcard. It might not matter because the frat dude still seems loyal towards Jeremy taking the numbers out of the equation for Josh. However, there are rumblings of voting off Julie, which may bear fruit. Also, Jeremy lost first, and quickly. Either he’s uncoordinated, or may have played the long con, showing that he won’t sweep the immunity challenges because he’s terrible at them. That would be amazing if it turned out that way, but I’m doubtful on his capacity to think long term strategy. He’s all about the short term, get everyone on his side, and mob rule. That kind of thing rarely works out for dictators. Josh recognizes that the only two really playing the shadow politics of this game are himself and Jeremy. There can be only one winner so whichever one gets out here sets the tone for the direction of this rag tag group of people. So WOW, what a surprise. Jon actually uses his brain and realizes the benefits of taking out Jeremy far outweigh the short term alliance of being with the single people. Let’s see how it plays out though, because deceit is the name of the game and you never know who’s out until the vote. OH DANG! Another curve ball, sort of, Julie officially quit and now it’s about to get really real for some people. Then, no tribe meeting, how anticlimactic. All it did was raise suspense, and the possibility for alliances to change over the course of the next tribal council. Jeremy is comfortable and that could be his downfall, and Josh is wary and willing to get in the dirt to succeed. It seems that for the time being, Josh has better odds, but we’ll see next time around.
