The Survivor Research Project: Ep 10

We have truly swung into the Koror story arcs, with this latest episode. It seems a little abrupt, as we have seen so little of them apart from Tom and Coby. I did feel that the edit for Janu came from nowhere, with the editors wringing a redemptive story line from her time on exile island. Perhaps if they had shown her mental deterioration a little more, her tribesmates reactions to her might have seemed more understandable. As it was, I got the sense that they wanted her to leave in a positive light despite the fact that she quit the game, to play up her role in the twist that saved Stephenie's neck during TC.

My personal opinion is that there was undue producer intervention, with Jeff Probst persuasively helping Janu make the decision to lay down her torch. I did notice that Ian was the first to make the suggestion, which might be a sneaky maneuver on his part to not vote for Stephenie while keeping Gregg and Jenn happy. However, we are actually shown very little about the strategies and alliances of the Koror members. Gregg talked about the threat posed by Stephenie, but was not shown discussing his longer term plan to remove the Tom-Ian axis, which he had been concerned about in earlier episodes. Tom spoke of his early alliance with Stephenie, Ian and Katie, but not about the specifics of how that is supposed to be maintained with Gregg and Jenn in the picture. The females are hardly shown to talk about strategy at all. For us as the viewer, it leaves room for much interpretation and speculation, which does keep up interest in the game.


ST: Screen Time ; Im: Impression Left ; Lk: Likeability

Caryn
ST: 1 (a couple of interviews about the reward challenge)
Im: 1 (where's Caryn in this scheme of things? She's the potential swing-vote that does not seem to be used? Or perhaps she has a super-secret alliance which has been kept away from the cameras?)
Lk: 2

Gregg
ST: 3 (strategising with Ian and Tom to remove Stephenie, a couple of confessionals )
Im: 3 (a very interesting confessional on what "deserving" means in the context of the game. He's thinking, but I am not sure if he's on the right track. If it's just him and Jenn, how are they going to overcome the Tom/Ian/Katie group?)
Lk: 3.5 (He shows that he understands that the game is not personal although it is social. He also made a great comment about the "Stephenie story", clearly thinking ahead to how the show would be edited after they are off the island. All very meta, and very highly-aware of the manipulated environment they are in.)

Ian
ST: 3 (taking a backseat role in the strategising discussions with Tom and Gregg, and being the first to mention the possibility of someone quitting during TC)
Im: 3 (a strong performance in the underwater cage IC, coming second to every-conquering Tom. He was also the one that Stephenie approached about the voting at TC, where he could not directly lie to her about her being the target.)
Lk: 4

Janu
ST: 5 (arguing with Katie, a whole segment about her time on exile island, many confessionals.)
Im: 5 (over-wrought and somewhat creepy, although classy and dignified in her departure. She will always be memorable for being the first person who made the jury to willingly quit, and for her unwitting foiling of voting plans.)
Lk: 2 (Despite the editing, I think she was somewhat whiny and overly dramatic. Jeff Probst wanted to make us think that the Koror tribe was being unkind to her when she bailed the IC, but quitting after 6 minutes was worthy of a more than a few giggles.)

Jenn
ST: 1 (shown gossiping with Katie about Janu)
Im: 1 (a bit of the popular Heather girl emerged this week, but not as strongly as I think the editors want us to think.)
Lk: 2

Katie - Koror
ST: 3 (gossiping about Janu, then complaining in a confessional about Janu's creepiness, and how Caryn and Janu ate the dessert they brought back from their reward challenge.)
Im: 3 (she is the sarcastic, mean girl of the group. She was also shown to be a pathetic challenge player, being by far the worst performer during the team tower building RC. Her team was slowed down entirely by her slowness and her lack of stamina.)
Lk: 2 (she's obviously of little worth in terms of contributing to camp life, and is of no use in challenges at all.)

Stephenie
ST: 4 (an impassioned plea at TC)
Im: 5 (tears at TC, showing distress at the thought of possibly leaving before Janu, who had declared her desire to leave. )
Lk: 2.5 (My conflicted feelings over Stephenie returned in full force during this episode. I think she's probably delightful as a person and I still respect her more than any female player in all Survivor series. But her sense of entitlement because of she showed "too much heart" is truly gag-worthy. She needs to understand that the game isn't always about being "deserving" and "worthy". I agree she's more worthy than the non-working females on Koror, but the other part of the game is strategic and social. She's well liked in Koror, but has not formed a close one-to-one relationship, which I think she needs to do in a great hurry.)

Tom - Koror
ST: 4 (strategising with Gregg and Ian, and a couple of confessionals about strategy, also confessionals about Janu and Caryn eating the food they brought back. Once again winning the IC, with a clever strategy of forming a snorkel with his hands. He also spoke quite a lot at TC about how the game isn't like real life, and how you might vote off people you like that in real life, you would like to keep around.)
Im: 4 (he's the superman of challenges, with strong performances in both the RC and IC. But I am not sure where he is going strategically. He might have pissed Stephenie off to his own great detriment, but I think that has a lot to do with the producer's intervention. If they had kept their hands off the intended voting outcome, the threat of Stephenie strategising next would be a non issue.)
Lk: 4

Next week: Stephenie plots with the women, possibly in retaliation after realising that her long-ago alliance with Tom/Ian/Katie might no longer be working. I don't know that it's particularly in Katie's or Jenn's interest to go along with this, though.