Static Zombie

Those were my thoughts exactly regarding the 3-person final, a few minutes after the vote. I wasn't unhappy that Yul won, and I think that even he recognizes how incredibly lucky he got this time, skilled though he was in his gameplay.

I think the Hidden Immunity Idol concept, while it has its good points, needs some tweaking for next time they use it (for All-Stars?) Maybe it has to be good for a limited time only, so that it's "use it or lose it," or maybe it should be a bit bulkier and harder to conceal, so that tribemates might be inclined to steal it when the person is not paying attention.

The rules prohibit players from stealing the idol. When Yul found the idol this season, they showed the sheet of information that came with it. One of the line items was something like "The hidden immunity idol cannot be stolen from you."

Once the immunity idol has been found, the whole Exile Island thing loses its interest. They're making 2 immunity idols available next season, so perhaps that will stir things up.

Yes. You're right. I hadn't thought of that.

But that's not why I write. I can't remember anyone commenting on your constant stream of titular puns, good/bad as they are.

So: this one is one of the good/bad - est in a while. Congratulations.

Re: stealing the HII: Why do the rules prohibit something like that? Is it only because players aren't supposed to take anything else belonging to other players? (Though there was that business with Rupert and the shoes...)

They think two hidden immunity idols are better than one? How about if they have sixteen of them then?

Did the Cook Islands survivors ever express a sense of real hunger? It seemed like they were eating all the time when they were on the beaches.

if i recall correctly the teams got fire and fishing gear much earlier than usual. i suspect this allowed them to eat a lot more than previous seasons, but they still lost a lot of weight, so they weren't eating as much as it might seem.

i have no problem with yul beating ozzy. ozzy was a great survivor and lots of fun to watch, but yul outplayed him.

You point out that the players knew Brad was an early jury member, and that there would be 10 jury members if there were two finalists. That's certainly a clue that something funky was afoot; another clue was the double elimination. Ozzy could conceivably have known that he should not count on solely winning immunity challenges and would have to scramble to curry favor with the jury.

It's also clear from the early Brad selection and the way the season unfolded that this twist was planned from the beginning, so it was not aimed at Ozzy per se.

All that said, I actually agree with you that Ozzy should have won. I'd have voted for him.

I hadn't thought about the fact that Ozzy likely would have won had they had the traditional final two.

But to suggest that Ozzy might have formed a strategy on getting to the final two is a stretch. As was made abundantly clear in the discussion afterwards, Ozzy wasn't much of a thinker.

Stephen makes a good point about the jury count being a clue.

I, too, thought that Ozzy would win without question. But then when Adam claimed that if Yul voted Jonathan off first that he would vote for Yul on the jury, I thought it was just an idle promise. This ended up being the deciding vote.

I thought that the two lawyers would make more of Ozzy's claim that the jury should vote for him because he went all out and won so many challenges. He certainly didn't give it his best effort when he orchestrated his tribe's deliberate loss to get rid of Billy. He even mentioned this at the final tribal council.

I think there's a problem with your assumption that Ozzy wins the extra challenge. Not that he wouldn't win, if it was a physical challenge, but the fact that it would be yet another physical challenge. And then I think Yul would have the argument that he was "robbed", given that all the individual challenges were so dependent on physical prowess this season.

I think the fact that the rules can (and do) change all the time is part of the distinction between game and gameshow (for better or worse).

I think both Yul and Ozzy were deserving, though I was glad to see Yul win. I was a little surprised that he won because Adam decided his deal (to get Jonathan out) was binding, though I think the fact that he even made that deal with Yul (and not Ozzy or anyone else) showed the leadership advantage Yul had.

Also, do you think it would kill them to have a list of all the players names somewhere during the voting so players wouldn't have to guess how to spell their opponents' names?