Survivor Tocantin: Week 7 "Merging into Chaos"

This was the most eventful merge I can ever remember, and that's even counting the fact that there was no tribal council.

Taj gave us a little levity by telling the camera and her tribemates that she loves anything that begins with the letter "F." Technically, this includes feces, famine, and facial farts, but I think we can assume that she was thinking about more pleasant things, like feasts, french fries, fondue, friendship, and, well...fornication.

The merge happened as expected, and the tribes sat down to a nice big spread of food and wine. Coach immediately made a jackass of himself by trying to impress a whole new batch of tribemates with stories of how awesome he is (most hilariously by assuming credit for the samurai-style haircut). In fact, everyone sat down to eat except for Coach, who stood up while he ate, possibly in an attempt to dominate his competitors.

The first individual immunity challenge involved clinging to a pole for as long as possible, a task that rewarded the best mixture of muscle strength and weight. Tyson took home the gold. Coach did surprisingly well, so he is due some amount of credit here.

Joe came across looking like Charlie Brown in this episode. He just couldn't kick that damn football. First, his closest ally (Sydney) was voted out, leaving him as the low man on the tribal totem pole. Then, his infected leg took a turn for the worse, and while he was gamely telling his competitors that he was on the mend, his increasingly bad limping told another story. The injury prevented him from giving his all at the immunity challenge, which wasn't suited to his large frame anyway. And, the dominant tribe, Timbira, seemed to be geared up to vote him out first. He was probably happily relying on his ace in the hole, a hidden immunity idol that he had in his pocket. Unbeknownst to him, his hidden idol was a fake planted by Taj. So, it was just a bad episode all around for Joe, even before the medic showed up and pulled him from the game. Sorry, Joe!

Before they dropped the bomb about Joe having to be pulled from the game, the producers gave us as much scheming as we could handle. On the surface, the six remaining members of Timbira are going to take out the four remaining members of Jalapao. But Brendan and Sierra have a secret alliance with Taj and Stephen, and Coach and Tyson have a secret alliance with Stephen and JT, and Stephen and JT have a secret alliance with each other as BFF. It's all deliciously tangled and complicated, and it seems like Stephen and JT are going to have to make some major decisions at the next tribal alliance. The secret idols are complicating things even further. It seemed like the tribe was settled on voting out Brendan or Sierra at the council, but now that tribal council has been canceled, Brendan has three extra days to figure things out and try to save himself.



The Pool:

In the rankings below, each pool player is ordered according to their current score, but the ranking in bold shows where they were last week. So, Paul is currently in second, but was third last week.

You're seeing the scores in this format:
Current Score (+/- Joe Boot in First Set, +/- Joe Boot in Second Set, + Immunity Pick Bonus)
So, the first number is your actual score, and everything that comes after shows what affected it this week.



1st: Matt 292 (-1, -8, +0)
3rd: Paul 291 (+5, +5, +0)
4th: Carl: 283 (-7, -6, +18)
2nd: Dawn 268 (-5, -12, +0)
7th: Kim 260 (-1, -2, +0)
8th: Mom 260 (-5, -2, +18)
5th: Brian 259 (-4, -12, +0)
6th: Stats 248 (-8, -16, +0)
9th: Mike 229 (-5, -2, +0)

This Week's Winners:
Carl and Mom both moved up into the rankings after being the only pool members to predict that Tyson would take immunity, which was worth 18 big ones. Paul gained 10 points after hitting the Joe elimination on the head in both prediction sets, while Kim climbed a couple of rankings after being very, very close in both prediction sets.

This Week's Losers:
I lost only 9 points, but it was enough to put me nine points off the lead. Dawn had a rough week, dropping from a close second to a relatively distant fourth. Brian and the Stats each dropped big points this week, and need to have a good episode or two to stay out of the cellar.

Please send me your Immunity Pick (IP) by choosing from the 10 remaining players. After this Thursday's episode, I'll be asking you for your third and final set of predictions, too.

Good luck, everyone!