It was not a dumb move for Russell to play the idol. It was a dumb move to show so many Galu members that he had it, because it immediately put a target on his back. It is possible that Galu was smart enough to make Russell think that the Erik vote off was a ruse in order to smoke out his idol, but was not shown in the episode. Also keep in mind that voting off Erik was Jaison & Natalie's plan B and Russell really didn't have a lot of faith in the outcome. So he felt he had to play it. Had Laura not gotten immunity, Russell probably would have held on to the HII since his plan would have been the operating plan.
I want to defend Shambo just a little bit here -- when Dave told her, "we're voting off Eric" and she replied, "Who?" my wife and I were crying from laughter. BUT...
Shambo follows up with, "OUR Erik?" indicating that she assumed it would be a Foa Foa member being voted off, and she didn't know of a Foa Foa member named Erik.
Now, this doesn't mean it wasn't yet another display of incompetence/ignorance/spaciness on the part of Shambo (no one else was confused like she was), but at least it wasn't that she didn't know her own tribemate's name. We laughed our asses off just the same. Besides, whose stupid idea was it to tell Shambo anything? She didn't even vote correctly anyway!
Natalie the Butterface has got to ditch that shapeless yellow dress and go bikini only full time. That would mitigate the numerous close ups of her face. It's not that she's ugly, it's just that she looks like a boy.
It's always fascinating to me that someone like Laura, who purports herself a servant of God and one who doesn't stray from the path of interpretive righteousness gets a big ole boob job. Unless she's going to claim that her husband instructed her to get implants, I'm going to file this kind of hypocritical nonsense under "D" for "DO NOT LIKE". At least she's willing to touch the immunity idol, unlike one past
nutjob contestant.
I am going with growing sentiment is that Russell is growing on me and I'm actually rooting for him. The fact that he's the underdog make him that much more root-able. Then again, after pouring out canteens and burning Jaison's socks, there was no where to go but up.
This was the first tribal council with real suspense. I was getting goosebumps when Jeff read the first four votes.
Edited by Hanson - 11/6/09 at 9:00am