He’s likable, he’s smarter than everyone seems to think and he’s a tough competitor in these challenges. And yet, everyone is basically letting him run the show. Yes, I’m giving away right here that J.T. didn’t get voted off Survivor tonight, so if you don’t like it you can suck it! I once wrestled a polar bear to the ground to get the coordinates to the Swan Station from it so I could save Charlie from Kate’s horse, so I’m not afraid of you. Oh wait, that was Coach. My bad, sometimes I mix up fiction and fact.
I’ll admit, I’ve been a little unclear as to where the real alliances have been this season, though many of you have had no problem following all the blatant lies these yahoos have been telling one another. And it continued tonight, though at the same time it wasn’t a surprising elimination at all.
I’ll be honest, I thought there was a real chance that Erinn would get eliminated tonight just because these players have allowed last minute comments made change them into getting rid of someone just to stop them from talking. Still, you have to give it up to J.T. Whether or not he intended for Coach to go home the way he did, the fact that Stephen was the swing vote and Coach knows J.T. voted Erinn assures J.T. one more vote in the finals.
Honestly, who can beat him? Stephen could give it a try but he doesn’t have nearly the charisma or charm. Everybody loves Taj but she’s married to Eddie George and they don’t even know about her own celebrity past. I just don’t see them giving the money to a woman who’s not wanting financially over J.T.
And I don’t see Erinn even making it that far unless she pulls off a huge upset in the last Immunity Challenge, and if that happens who would vote for her? And the last Immunity Challenge may be leading up to a Final Two. Did Jeff say three tribal councils? That would bring us to a Final Two, which we haven’t had in several years.
I’ve liked the idea of the final three because it made it more likely that you’d have two worthy competitors sitting there out of the three. With two it was becoming too common for someone to drag a chud up there with them to ensure their victory. This season that chud would have likely been Coach, but these players aren’t doing that.
Even though it wasn’t Coach that was kept, they are staying true to their alliances and I don’t think it fair to say that any of these four are completely undeserving of even a chance at a million dollars. But then I give almost anyone who makes it this far credit for doing so no matter what their strategy is. There’s no one way to play Survivor, and if its riding coattails or just keeping quiet that gets you into the finals, then that’s a valid strategy. It worked, didn’t it?
Clacked by Jason Hughes 
on May 15, 2009 @ 12:30 EST5EDT
Stephen and JT have been absolutely masterful since the merge. Use JT’s charm to get in with people, then let Stephen pull the strings on who goes home. Its probably one of the better played post-merge Survivors in quite some time. Plus, this is the first time in a long time that a final 4 in Survivor has been pretty likeable across the board. Erinn seems a like she could be annoying, but she hasn’t really been that bad. Normally, its 1 likeable person, 1 person we don’t care about, and 1 unlikeable person around this stage of the game.
That being said, I think Stephen is better at strategy and been the orchestrator for the last half, but JT will win as long as he’s in the final 2.
Like I said elsewhere – JT will be on the chopping block now. I never for a second thought that Erinn would be voted out – Stephen is too conniving. If he gets the chance, he’ll get rid of JT because he’s the dominant player. The strategy for Stephen is now to break up the girls with voting off Erinn and then hoping JT won’t win the last immunity challenge. That’s his way to get to the final two with Taj, where he’ll win because – well Taj is famous. I said it before too – their living room couch wouldn’t fit in my whole apartment it’s THAT big. Why would ANYONE give a Million dollars to someone who’s been in million copies record selling group and married to a former NFL player? Kudos for her making it this far without getting voted off but this is money that should go to the people who need it. And second place is still what? 100k? That should be enough for her. And losing a stone or so…
I understand that people do it, but I wouldn’t determine the winner of the game based on financial need. If Taj deserved my vote, I would have no problem giving it to her. I really don’t know anything about the other players’ lives and neither do those players. Just because someone is financially less secure, doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t a total f-stick of a person or that they are deserving of a ton of money.
Coach was a champ yet again. His impassioned plea to not bring in the medical team because they would make him leave the game was precious. It was similar to that time he was herding the last remaining green Bengal tigers through downtown Basra so they could be airlifted to Shangri-la for proper care.
I bet they called him the “Bengal herder (of doom)” for that.
Reading the story about the University letting him go of his women’s soccer team coaching job because he told them he’d be gone “for a week” to have him checked out for “a brain tumor” (!?!) in hospital, with him returning after two months (!!!) just displays that this guy is just lying his ass off. All the time, nonstop. Watching this episode took me 20 minutes because I fast-forwarded through all his bullshit. I mean at a certain point he named rivers he traveled on, I think he listed Orinoco, Kongo and the Amazon – I bet if you’d asked him right there and then WHERE these rivers were he would not, for the life of him, have been able to put them on the right continents, let alone the right countries they flow through. I mean ok, Kongo but that’s not the only country.
I loved your comment GL, snickered like crazy :-)
I hope they cut his mike off in the reunion show. I can’t take anymore of this crap. If I’d been there with him I would’ve been voted off simply for calling him out on all the crap he lied about and with it annoying the others around me. Erinn almost got voted off last time because of this – you’d think. I think JT tried to get rid of her to split the girls up and tried to lure Stephen into that hole. Stephen didn’t bite. He knew that with Coach still around that would’ve been a secure vote for JT for Coach lost all influence he thought he had (he never had any but this time he finally realized it). Stephen and JT should be the final two. They are the most strategic players in this game, followed by Taj. I get your point that you should vote for the one who deserves it most based on the way they played the game, I agree (I just tried to explain how other contestants might think about Taj) and it makes it easy for me not to not vote for Taj because she acted stupid more than once (revealing who her husband was without any need to do so, bitching about being left out after returning from exile for the third time). I admire her endurance because of all the exile visits but this episode showed just how dominant JT is in the challenges while Stephen showed how strategic his game is (he played Taj over and over without her noticing it – with her “coasting along” in the process or better ending up in the right spot all the time, with her having the immunity idol). Taj reminds me of the winner of Pearl Islands (Don’t remember her name right now and I’m too lazy to look it up :-)), she coasted through right to the end and made a great case for herself – for that I’d love to see her in the final two, just to see how Taj would try to convince the jury to giver her the money.