Orange is the New Orange

The tribe shake-up!  Always fun. This one ended up with three pairs on one team (Dale & Kelley, Jaclyn & Jon, and Baylor & Missy) plus ol' Keith. That's the new orange. The new blue team features only one pair (Josh & Reed) plus a bunch of singletons: Jeremy, Natalie, Wes, Julie & Alec.

ORANGE is the new... ORANGE.

Kelley's not super pleased to be on the same team as her dad, who she's found out doesn't get along with Missy & Baylor. (Which makes me like Dale a bit more, actually. I think I'd have a pretty tough time getting along with Missy & Baylor.) Missy's going through rice like no one's business, which means the blue team has almost none while the orange team is still good... until Missy joins them and starts cooking double the amount... making Dale mad, understandably. Meanwhile, Jaclyn and Jon need to get a room. Lots of kissing & hugging, which seems to horrify Baylor until she's asked about it - when all of a sudden it's "super cute!"

So you'd think Keith would be in trouble - and he still might be down the road - but mainly the couples are looking to weaken another couple. Jon & Jaclyn find themselves in the middle of the two pairs who don't like each other and Keith will go with the majority.

BLUE and Brawny.

The blue team is definitely the fitter of the two teams. More dudes, all younger people. Jeremy off the bat sees Josh & Reed as a threat (did he read my blog?) because potentially Reed could now flip and work with Josh, Wes and Alec, leaving Jeremy, Natalie and Julie in the smaller set of numbers. Likely the blue team will just keep winning, but if not, expect Jeremy to try to make a move. I love that he and Natalie have decided that they will try to work Alec by appealing to his ego - telling him stuff like how he's so much stronger than Drew, etc. Heh. Jeremy calls it the "Surround and Drown" maneuver (from firefighting, when the firefighters can no longer go into a building to fight a big fire, so they just surround the building and try to drown it out with water.)  Natalie and Jeremy are going to just keep surrounding Alec and drowning him with seeds of doubt about any of the pairs, and especially Josh & Reed. Love it.

Of course the blue team won immunity, so the orange guys had to go to Tribal. I was surprised a bit that J & J chose team Missy/Baylor over team Dale/Kelley, but overall it's probably a smarter move. Dale and Kelley are generally well-liked and smarter. They are bigger threats in the game than Missy and Baylor (aside: I keep typing "Baby" instead of "Baylor" making me want to just call her Baby. Is that OK? I feel the keyboard is trying to tell me something.) So, they got rid of Kelley. Sad for her, because she'd have been fine and probably would have gotten far in the game had the tribes not switched up. However, that's how it goes. I did find it a bit off-putting to hear her say how she wishes she hadn't had to play on the same team as her dad, though. I mean, I get that it was a detriment in this game, but at the end of the day, isn't it cool to get to play Survivor with your dad? Isn't that how you got on the show in the first place? Bah.

The only other thing to note is that the blue team once again is trying to negotiate with my boyfriend, Jeff, because they're now so low on food. Jeff is going to bring them some food next episode, but "the price will be high!"  (Cue suspenseful music). What's it going to be? I think they'll have to go to Tribal in exchange, or at least get a huge disadvantage in the challenge given their relative strength.