‘Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites’ spotlight: Francesca Hogi
When the cast for “Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites” was announced, there was one immediate reaction that we had: why in the world is Francesca Hogi on this list? If the theme for the season was contestants who deserved a second chance to play the game, she would be in our mind a unanimous choice. However, in what world is she a favorite of anyone except for the producers? We just did not get to know her well enough.
While some of our other castaway spotlights so far for this season have been fairly complicated, this one in our mind really hinges around just one question: can Francesca and Phillip Sheppard coexist on one tribe? If not, than the odds of her staying around in this game are very slim.
Let’s start by explaining why Phillip is surprisingly a better player to keep around: you know what you are going to get from him. He’s fiercely loyal, a hard worker around camp, and you know that his odds of winning at the end are low. Boston Rob proved exactly how you should handle a character like Phillip in this game. Francesca, meanwhile, is more of an unknown. We assume that she will be a solid competitor in challenges and is incredibly smart, but if you have to pick and choose between the two, why would you pick a wild card in a game all about security.
There are only two real ways in which we see Francesca going beyond the merge:
1. She forms a tight alliance on day 1, and can convince everyone within it to get rid of Phillip early. Considering that five-person alliances have dominated the game lately, this could feasibly happen.
2. She actually makes a peace treaty with Phillip. This seems a bit more of a stretch, since it is very hard to hide your true feelings when you are forced to spend every waking minute with someone.
Prediction – We are sure that Francesca will try to learn from her past mistakes here, but the truth here is that there is a reason why she left the game early last time: she made bad alliances and did not know when to stop playing. We can’t really imagine her doing much better here, though to be fair she can’t do any worse. While we’re sticking with Brandon Hantz as the first boot from the Favorites tribe, we anticipate seeing her be the second person out.
Are you happy to see Francesca back and how do you think she will do this season? Be sure to share your thoughts below, and you can check out more of our castaway spotlight series over here.
Photo: CBS