‘Survivor: Kaoh Rong’ episode 9 rankings: The blindside aftermath
Maybe it’s because the last two seasons of “Survivor” featuring all-new players were mediocre by show standards, or maybe we have a natural tendency to wait for the other shoe to drop. It’s hard to say, but for some reason or another we’re still sitting around and waiting for “Kaoh Rong” to suffer a drop in quality. Luckily, it hasn’t happened yet! While not every vote has been exciting, this has been a fairly fun season.
What’s nice about where we are now is that the two fairly-predictable exits in Nick and Neal are both gone. These guys had very odd, at-times invisible edits, and that signified more or less that we wouldn’t be seeing them for long. That’s the one weakness of this season: It needs to go look at “San Juan del Sur” to see how to properly edit a season, since that one really made you think that Jeremy and Josh were winner contenders.
As always, we’re basing our rankings on strategy, edit, challenge ability, and overall threat level at this stage of the game.
9. Scot Pollard (last week: 4) – The taller you are, the harder you fall. There’s a part of us that wonders if the best thing for Scot would be seeing Jason go home, since he seems like a better player when he’s not around. The issue he’s got right now is that Jason and him are clearly on the outs following the Nick vote, and unlike Jason, he doesn’t have an immunity idol. Since Cydney knows who has the idol, she could pass along that information. He’s going to have to work hard to figure out a new path to safety.
8. Kyle Jason (7) – He’s received a huge edit all season, so maybe he finds a way to work this out. He does have an idol and could use that to turn his game around. The main reason he’s not higher on this list, beyond the obvious target on him, is that it’s hard to envision many situations where he wins. Debbie clearly doesn’t like him, and that may go for other members of the Brains. This may be a better analogy for someone like Dr. Peter, but his bedside manner is no good.
7. Debbie Wanner (8) – Debbie loves to play “offense,” and that is insanely entertaining to watch as a viewer. Debbie is tremendous entertainment, and a lock to return if she wants to. Our fear now is that she makes her intentions to target Scot / Jason so public that she becomes the likely casualty of a vote on their end if one of them plays Jason’s idol.
6. Tai Trang (2) – It’s the first time since the tribe swap where Tai was in a little bit of jeopardy. We love the guy (and so do many people in the game), but voting for Jason last week and being the only one to do so puts him on an island. He may have an idol for now, but we do think it’s possible someone could blindside him with it still in his pocket.
5. Joe Del Campo (10) – The tide turned this week in such a huge way that Joe’s suddenly sitting pretty with allies all around him. It’s unfortunate that we really don’t see many ways that he can win the game. He’s also not getting the edit for him to be a winner.
4. Julia Sokolowski (6) – Julia was identified in our exit interview with Nick as someone who is smart and could make good arguments at the end of the game, so we’ll take that assessment of her into consideration. Our fear is that she’ll play the middle too much, and as Aubry said in a preview for Wednesday’s episode, it’ll cause her to get “run over” in the game.
3. Cydney Gillon (1) – Cydney made a big move in defecting from Jason and Scot, and she’s got the ability to expose some of their secrets. Thanks to this, her odds of winning have increased significantly since she can claim this move when it comes time to convince the jury to give her their vote. Unfortunately, her odds of making it there may have decreased since there’s now so much more flux, and she could be targeted for her defection.
2. Aubry Bracco (5) – While we give Cydney most of the credit for last week’s move on Nick, Aubry did allow herself to be put in the right place at the right time and she’s suddenly got a lot of power. We see her more as a 4th or 3rd-place edit (if there’s a final two), but if she does manage to make it to the end, she’s got a very good chance at winning.
1. Michele Fitzgerald (3) – Okay, we relented on the “Michele is going to win this season” bandwagon for a while, but we may now finally be aboard. Just look at how she’s almost always been present on the show (even if it’s just a confessional here or there), or how amazing a spot she’s in right now with Cydney and Aubry larger threats among the women, and there being so many alpha males also remaining. We cannot imagine anyone even considering getting her out before final five, and people seem to like her.
Who’s in the best place among the remaining nine to you? Vote below, and head over here to get some other TV news on all we cover, sent right to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)