Survivor Results: Week 12

A very eventful and satisfying episode.

This week, the reward challenge turned out to be mental, which was good news for gimpy Alexis and finger-infected James. Survivors had to answer subjective questions about their tribe mates, and then predict the most popular answer. Every time a survivor answered a question correctly, he or she got to attack another player's totem. As soon as a player's totem was attacked three times, he or she was out of the game. Parvati ("mistakenly thinks she's in control of the game") was sidelined early, and the challenge came down to Cirie choosing between Alexis ("never stops talking"), and Amanda. Cirie chose Alexis, who returned the favor by taking Cirie and Natalie along on the reward challenge. She also chose to send Amanda to Exile Island, which turned out to be not so smart. The reward challenge featured the players' loved ones visiting from home, but the episode barely registered them. The only noteworthy loved one was James' dad, who seemed like a smaller, older, and more genial version of James.

I hope James' dad didn't hustle out of the country, though, as the episode turned to James' infected finger. A doctor felt that the health risk was too great, and James had to be pulled from the game. He seemed to take it in stride, and while it was clear that he didn't want to go, he didn't seem like he'd be losing any sleep over it. In all likelihood, he was going to be voted out anyway, which may have made it go down a little more easily.

The immunity challenge went to Erik, who proved that he could shoot targets better than any of the ladies. It also further points out how challenge-weak the four-girl alliance of Parvati, Natalie, Alexis, and Cirie is.

Since Erik had immunity, the girls plotted to turn on Amanda, who was a natural target since she's good at challenges and will probably do well in front of a jury. Parvati refused to turn against Amanda, but Cirie and Erik were only too happy to play along.

Amanda, meanwhile, had uncovered the final clue on Exile Island, which told her that the hidden immunity idol was planted under the Dabu (Erik: that means good! Hee hee hee!) flag back at camp. She wisely told Parvati and only Parvati about this, and even went so far as to empty her bag to demonstrate to the others that she had no immunity idol on her. Parvati helped her to dig up the idol, and the rest of the episode featured Amanda playing the part of sacrificial lamb. She begged Cirie and Erik to save her, and then appeared resigned to her fate after they refused.

It was a great and memorable tribal council, with all of the girls admitting to Jeff that there was consensus on voting out Amanda. Natalie and Alexis expressed admiration for her as a person, and just hated to see her go, but it was her time. Their barely-reined-in smugness took a 180, however, when Amanda produced the idol and turned the tables on them. All four votes against Amanda were rendered null and void, and Amanda and Parvati voted out Alexis with their two votes. Now that's how you use a hidden immunity idol.

Two big ousters had a huge impact on...


This Week's Standings:

1st: Matt: 501 (-8 on James, +3 on Alexis)
2nd: Dawn: 490 (-20 on James, -27 on Alexis)
3rd: Kim: 489 (-14 on James, -9 on Alexis)
3rd: Carl: 489 (-4 on James, -25 on Alexis)
5th: Paul: 445 (-6 on James, -31 on Alexis)

I received 12 bonus points for correctly predicting that Erik would win immunity this week.

I also had a huge week, losing only 5 points on two eliminations. I didn't hit any eliminations head on, but I was only off by a couple of spots in each set of picks, and the immunity points were a big factor. This leaves me with a small but significant 11 point lead at the top of the pool. Hot damn, I'm in the lead!

Dawn lost a soul-crushing 47 points, which is the most of anyone this week. She made her immunity pick by drawing Alexis' name out of a hat, but fortune did not smile on her today. She was hurt by having too much faith in both James and Alexis, having consistently placed them both in the final four. She hangs on to second place, but just barely.

Carl and Kim are now tied for third place, and just one point below Dawn (which is kind of amazing, when you consider all the different scores people could have with three sets of picks). Carl lost 29 points-- he was very close on his James picks, but he also had too much faith in Alexis, which hurt him. Kim lost a second-best 23 points, which allowed her to catch up to both Carl and Dawn.

Paul had another crappy week, dropping a big 37 points. His third set of picks was only one off for both James and Alexis, but he was hurt badly by picking Alexis as the first elimination in both his first and second set of picks. The good news for him is that he was going to lose those Alexis points anyway, and the longer she was in, the worse it would have hurt.


Death to me!