LAST EDITED ON 10-06-02 AT 08:24 PM (EST)

>IMHO,
>Paschal, Kathy and Neleh saved
>the game's popularity by switching
>sides and abandoning the Rotu4,
>saving Sean and Vecepia.
>But that might have happened
>ANYWAY!

I must disagree with you there... The act of Kathy, Paschal, and Neleh allying with Vee was instrumental in keeping the show interesting, and if Kathy had won, I really think that it would have been the best of the four Survivor series.

However, you claim that would have happened anyway??? I sincerely doubt it!... Kathy, Neleh, and Paschal were left out of the Rotu-4 alliance as a result of the switch. Without that swap, the Rotu alliance would have likely been structured differently (Kathy would have been gone first, but do you really think that Gabe, Paschal, and Neleh would have been next by coincidence????)

The swap worked perfectly last season. It broke up the Sarah/Rob/Sean/Vee alliance, and also forced smaller, more fluid alliances to dominate the game. This ultimately resulted in a game of surprise (if there had been large, rock-solid alliances, Kathy never would have been able to strike a deal with Vee, who, in turn, would have been unable to strike a deal with Neleh).

The goal of the swap is to encourage small fluid alliances of 2-3 people working together to save each other at any cost, thus resulting in larger, but unconsistent alliances (making the game much less predictable).

Yeah... we knew that Paschal and Neleh would never betry each other, but we had no clue how the final game play would go down with Kathy and Vee in the mix.

So how can we rationalize a swap in the upcoming episodes???

Well here's a wild guess:
E4: GDiva is voted out unanimously by her tribe in an obvious boot... necessary to produce hatred that we've heard about. The obvious outcome is clouded only by a "gender alliance" created in the editing room with bits of unrelated conversations strung together (sound familiar???) Meanwhile, Shii Ann is confident in her position in her tribe... they have crushed the outlying lazy group, Robb falls into line, and Steph is the isolated obvious boot for the next episode.

E5: SWAP!!! Shii Ann, who was confident last episode finds herself in the minority after the swap, her up-front semi-confrontational attitude paints a large target on her back, and she is removed from the game when her new tribe loses immunity (Note: She would fall into the minority if she was in a tribe with any four CG's or with 3 CG's AND Steph, so this is a very real possibility)

E6: Robb's attitude doesn't go over well with his new tribe. He is eliminated, having made few friends in SJ, and no friends in CG.

(It is possible that Shii and Robb could be in the reverse order, but MB likes showing the irony of the swap destroying a strong alliance, and I have a hard time imagining him painting Robb as being in a strong alliance.)

E7: MERGE!!! Old CG has taken advantage of the various in-fighting in the other tribe. The merge occurs at 5-5, but outcast Stephanie recieves no support from her own tribe, and may even choose to try to ally with th CGs. She is voted out, as no one is willing to vote with her, giving the CG-Five the majority AND validating all weight-loss spoilers to date.

Without the merge, I have a hard time getting Shii-Ann voted off to validate GDiva's smoker's list, which I have faith in.

Okay, now let's talk mechanism of swap.

I actually see a third possibility...

The problem with S3's swap was that the new tribes were too even, and it resulted in one betrayal, one tie-vote (with previous votes breaking the tie), and one tribe came out dominant.

So for S4, MB attempted to fix this by doing a random, uneven (MUST be, if this is pre-planned, and there are only 3 people voted off) swap, to encourage new alliances (hey... if you're suddenly in a losing position, it's time to bargain for your life!!!)... However, this resulted in an unexpectedly weak tribe, which made for bad television (and obviously rigged challenges).

So it's time to combine elements that worked from each... There will still be a random swap, to encourage new alliances, but why should the tribes be uneven??? Instead, why not form 2 new tribes of six... this DEFINATELY encourages new alliances, because it's like starting from square one... each tribe has an equal advantage in the challenges, and no one wants to risk being voted out.

It also makes for an interesting merge, because we have old tribe alliances and new tribe alliances to sort out (which was the whole point of the swap in the first place).

Summary: For the short of attention span...

• Swap is likely, because it has worked in the past.
• Swap could still produce the results that we expect from GDiva spoilers (results that may be difficult to reproduce without a swap).
• Swap may have a new format, involving random redivision into two tribes of six, regardless of profile of original tribes

You never know what might be up my sleeeve...