The Survivor Research Project: Ep 11

A strategy heavy episode, with extra serving of paranoia at the side. Stephenie fights to stay in the game, Tom cozies up to Caryn, the Katie-Ian alliance is revealed to us. Tom lost the immunity challenge for the first time this episode, and the tribe did not take advantage and vote him off, choosing instead to boot Stephenie. With Stephenie finally leaving, the tribe is down to all original Koror members. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out. Katie has shown she is willing to get rid of Tom if needed, and even Ian seems to be entertaining the thought, despite his obvious bond with Tom. Caryn has no super-secret alliance apart from her loose "look out for each other" arrangement with Tom so she could be the wild card in all of this.


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

Caryn
ST: 3
Im: 3 (finally, we learn where she is in the game. It seems she has made no alliances at all before Tom approached her. She actually seems rather grateful to be still around, and isn't playing that hard.)
Lk: 2

Gregg
ST: 2
Im: 2 (made his case about wanting Stephenie to leave, but was not shown in the thick of the strategising. He obviously has not approached Caryn, and wanted Stephenie to leave, so where was he going to get the numbers to back up his alliance with Jenn?)
Lk: 3 (he's level headed and all that, but we are not being shown enough of his thought process with respect to "the Plan", so he's coming across as rather dim in the strategy department of the game.)

Ian
ST: 3
Im: 3 (strategising with Katie, and also with Tom over Caryn's revelation of the women's scheme. He overthought that part, suspecting Caryn of making up stories, then voicing it to Katie, who was the one who approached Caryn in the first place. He was also the "star" of a segment focused on his bathing in the sea after Jeff Probst remarked that he reeked.)
Lk: 4

Jenn
ST: 2
Im: 1 (apart from a half-hearted profession that she was willing to vote off Gregg if that is what it takes to get further in the game, she said and did nothing of much interest. She was pretty happy to get her ice cream sundae, so there was that.)
Lk: 2

Katie - Koror
ST: 3
Im: 4 (very much in the thick of all the strategising. She was the one to approach Caryn, also talked with Ian, Jenn and Gregg about Tom's plea to not be voted off because of his strength in challenges. )
Lk: 2 (she's overdramatic and her attempts at humour could tend towards meanness. But I like how she understands that the game involves voting off people you like and needing to lie along the way.)

Stephenie (voted off Ep 11)
ST: 4
Im: 3 (initiated the thought of a women's alliance, but she actually took a backseat to the original Kororians this week. She was pretty emotional over getting her letters from home, which was a nice humanising moment.)
Lk: 3 (She left graciously and seemed to be truly happy with what she has achieved. She's wildly popular on the forums and has a popularity rating of over 90% on the CBS website. I can't share that level of enthusiasm as I think her portrayal has benefited from favourable editing. In the Survivor Insider videos, the longer version of her post-boot interview was shown. In this, she returned to her favourite theme of her "deserving" to still be in the game, the one thing that makes it hard for me to warm to her entirely. She even made a vague reference to being a "true survivor" compared to some of the people still there. She seems a cool person on the whole, but the sense of self-entitlement is annoying.)

Tom - Koror
ST: 5
Im: 5 (he actually asked the tribe not to punish him for his strong performances in the challenges, saying that he had helped to bring them to where they are. Nice try, but I am not sure how effective it is to spell out even more clearly to these people that he is an IC threat. He also approached Caryn, bringing her into the strategy game for the first time. Thereafter he was shown talking to Ian about Caryn, revealing that he is playing hard.)
Lk: 3.5 (docked half a point this week for his dubious strategy of pleading with his tribe to cut him some slack for his strong performance in challenges. To me, it didn't strike me as thinking he was more "deserving" - that dreaded word - than others; it just wasn't smart thinking and he lost some respect points with me there.)

This was an episode that set the scene for episodes to come, with several sub-alliances jockeying for position: Gregg/Jenn, Ian/Katie/Tom, Tom/Caryn, Ian/Katie and the possibility of Katie jumping over to the Gregg/Jenn sub-alliance. With an even number of players next episode, this could get interesting.