I love, love, love the family visit episode. I love how emotional they all get (ummm, yeah, I might have gotten a little teary too.) and I love how it humanizes them. Even Abi. You realize even she has a mother who loves her - hard to believe, but true. Now, it was a short lived humanization of Abi. More on that later.
Skupin was pretty great with his eldest son (and uh, I'd hate to be one of the other SIX children who now know (or maybe they knew already) that they're not the favourite.) Lisa completely ugly-cried over her brother. Like sobbed with the ugly-face and the shaking shoulders. We've all been there, right? You just hope not to have to ever ugly-cry on national television. See? Humanizing. Denise was super cute with her hubby and Carter with his mom, who's about 4 feet shorter than him.
Malcolm and his goofy brother won the challenge, even with their bad hair. Seriously. For all men out there... this is a bad haircut.
Yeah, that's Malcolm and his bro. Bro Miles is in the headband, which Malcolm also often sports. Dudes, headbands are not for you. They're for girls 12 and under. Stop it. I'm not denying Malcolm's a bit of a looker, but would he be better with a haircut? Yes. I've wandered off topic, non?
Right, where were we? The headband brothers won the challenge and got to pick 2 other Survivors that could keep their families at camp over night. He chose Lisa + baby brother, and Skupin + favourite son. He wanted to 'reward' Lisa & Skupin for sticking with him & Denise. How did Lisa & Skupin reward Malcolm back? By plotting to vote his headband out of there! Yup. Lisa's bro talked her up on playing the game to win it - with her head not her heart. Now, I'm not sure that switching strategies at the very end is necessarily a good move... but that's another discussion.
However, in another great, close challenge, Malcolm won immunity. I liked hearing from him that he had a sense that Lisa & Skupin were plotting against him. He has very good Survivor instincts, our Malcolm. He knew that Lisa's brother was busy talking her into hard strategy. Also, it was interesting to see how Lisa, Skupin & families "bonded over Jesus" as Denise put it. They sat on their own, away from the group & chatted & laughed & prayed. Lisa's prayer went something like, "Lord, we'd like you to bless our plan to get rid of Malcolm, but if that isn't your plan, we're ok with whatever." And, "Bless everyone, even Abi." Snort. Even Abi. Haha. So when Malcolm won immunity, Lisa and Skupin were seriously, "Oh, well, I guess it wasn't God's plan." It's an interesting way to live, that. And again, that's a conversation for another day.
Meanwhile, Abi was yapping on and on about how she has a hidden immunity idol and no one believed her. I laughed too when she said something about how the rest of the Survivors couldn't "take her honesty" so now she has to resort to lying. Hee. All that good will she built up by having her mom there.... evaporated. Everyone went on about how they just can't stand her any more. Lisa said she's just done with Abi, that she's tried being nice and kind and nothing works. Malcolm said that she's going to be voted out eventually just "because she's a bitch." And I get the feeling that's not a word Malcolm throws around that much.
But here's the thing. Everyone saw Carter just about beat Malcolm at that super close immunity challenge I was talking about earlier. Carter has won immunity before. He's super young & fit. And he's nice. And he's got a bunch of pals on the jury like Penner and Jeff. You can't not like Carter. (He's grown on us all, non? I mean, he's still only said about 25 words all season, but I still kind of like him. What's with that?) He tried to appeal to the others' sense of fair play, that he 'deserves' to be there way more than Abi and that he has lots of respect for all of them and how they play, etc. etc. Old Lisa, I think, would have been swayed by this argument. Lisa-since-her-brother-visited, however, put it this way, "You could keep someone around because they deserve it, but why make it harder on yourself?" Good point.
Here's the flaw in the logic, though. You're in a 'final four' pact with 3 other people who are 'deserving'. You have made a point of being loyal and playing with the heart. Again, it's just not necessarily a good thing to all of a sudden change your game. You know who hasn't changed their games since day one? Malcolm and Denise. Even Denise last night said something about voting for someone who deserves to stay vs Abi and she said she wouldn't keep Abi because it would go against the way she's been playing all this time. Huh, you say? But she voted for Carter.... Well, because she can make the following arguments:
1. I was going along with my 4-person alliance.
2. I had never ever made a pact with Carter.
3. My strategy was to get to final 4 with Malcolm, Skupin and Lisa, so it doesn't really matter whether Carter or Abi goes first. What matters is that one of them goes.
4. If Carter goes first, we've gotten rid of a huge threat to our final 4 alliance. Abi is less of a threat.
5. Hopefully, we only have to endure Abi for another 3 days.
Right? Denise's (and for that matter, Malcolm's) alibi on this vote is air-tight. Skupin and Lisa are less so, just slightly.
Let's assume Abi goes next, which she should unless hell freezes over once more and she pulls off an immunity win. That gives us 7 jury members: Abi and RC are the only women. Then there's Artis, Jeff, Pete, Penner and now Carter. 4 of them are former team yellow. What's your take on who these people will vote for? Of course it'll depend a bit on how they perform at the final Tribal and on the 8th jury member (which will itself depend wholly on who wins immunity.) My feeling is that Abi, Pete and Artis would probably all give their vote to Malcolm. They never really liked Skupin or Lisa and they got to know Malcolm more than Denise. Carter and RC are hard to peg. Carter because we don't really know him and RC because she didn't get to interact much with these guys who are left. Would Carter give his vote to his former tribemate Denise? Or fellow "young dude" Malcolm? Or to Skupin, who's like a dad to him (except for that whole voting him off thing... and the fact that he's already got a favourite son.) No, then. Not Skupin. I like to think that Jeff & Penner would stick with Denise... but Jeff is a bit of a guy's guy, so hard to guess. Then there's Lisa. Lisa's a dark horse for the win if she makes it to final three. Not everyone loved Lisa, but some did (Penner) and she's smart and a good speaker. She could sway votes her way if she plays her cards right and sells her story. Because she's got a great story. Lisa really IS the story of this season, right? The former child star, the divorce, 'finding herself', etc. And it's hard to stay mad at the church mom. So, if all goes as it should, it should be Malcolm, Denise and Lisa in the final. But we all know that on Survivor, things don't always go as they should. Will someone (Lisa) try to bring Abi to the final to discount at least one vote? Would Abi get any votes from Artis & Pete? So many questions!!
Finally, we finally have another Survivor character who could be a muppet.
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