The net is the Reward Challenge--various food items (olive oil, dried tomatoes, etc.) will be hung in gourds around the net, first tribe to gather all their items in a bag will win them.

This leaves the house-building event as the IC--opposite of what I've been reading here this week. Anyone care to tell me how this is likely to affect the winners?

GT

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Saw it too. Obstacle race is a relay, one player at a time (for both tribes), so I see no reason for any Samburu to sit this one out. This puts new angle on "thank you" speculations if no one sits out this challenge.

SMILES ARE FREE.

"If the race of man should be left naked upon a desert island, we should become extinct in six weeks. A few individuals might linger, but in a year would become worse than monkeys." (Samuel Butler, "Erewhon")

House building-thing is the IC?

Damn, I've thought all week that was pretty weak challenge, never mind it's merits as a IC -- that's even worse.

...if the house-carrying thing is the IC, then things are not looking good for Samburu (given their lack of water, lack of any strong equivalents to Boran's four strong men team of Tom/Lex/Ethan/Clarence.)

...we also have Carl's post-boot interview comment that implied things didn't end up working out for the GXA or such -- although exactly what that means (problems before the merge? problems going into the merge with only 4 people?) is very unclear.

-SB

Crap! This screws up all my reasonings for this week. Oh well, I wasn't really planning on accomplishing anything at work today, anyway. Back to the deductive drawing board.

Question for dabo: I didn't see the early show piece. Why won't it be necessary for a Samburu to sit out?

S2D

I don't see why a player should sit out a relay, if I heard that correctly; it's a matter of getting one item at a time, one player then next player then next, so a Boran can take an extra turn as in the blood challenge.

So, in the IC Boran has four men to Samburu's three (one of whom is Brandon), if upper body strength is a big factor that would give Boran an edge. This messes up my thinking a bit as well re. who wins what challenges.

"If the race of man should be left naked upon a desert island, we should become extinct in six weeks. A few individuals might linger, but in a year would become worse than monkeys." (Samuel Butler, "Erewhon")

I think in a relay situation, they would still sit people out. The team with more players would have advantage since the fewer member team would have to run the relay more frequently and tiring out.

On the house building, Boran has the advantage in terms of strength, but part of the challenge will be the puzzle of piecing the structure together, which would I believe be the more time consuming part of the challenge. I could see where Frank's take charge personality could help here. He is the clear leader of the tribe in those types of situations. On Boran, I could see Lex and Tom both wanting to be chief and getting nothing done.

The reason for a Samburu to sit out is that they will be running fewer legs of the relay if they don't. Admittedly, for a few items and a one-person difference, it won't be much, but think of it in terms of a bigger imbalance in the number of people (eg, 3 to 6 - each person on the smaller team has to run two races for each race run by a person on the larger team. If there are, say, a dozen items, then each small team player runs 4 laps, while each large team member runs only 2).

Of course, every time I analyze something, MB does it the other way...

)O_II

dabo--do I remember correctly that Jiffy said there were 20 items? and was that TOTAL, or per team? That definitely could affect whether they have to have someone sit it out.

GT

It seems to me that the strength of the younger women is being underestimated here. They do seem to be pulling a lot of weight in the challenges, and although Lindsey has been ill, they tend to be fairly strong. On the other hand, Tom may be strong, but has little endurance. Careful about those generalizations guys.

You all raise some interesting points (and thanks, dabo for the prompt reply). It may be to the Borans advantage to repeat a player in the RC. They can choose their best candidate, and he/she will have the advantage of knowing the course during the second run. If the Borans have to repeat a player I would think they would choose Kelly, who is young and flexible and would probably scramble the best. Lex is tall, and that would be a disadvantage IMO. Ethan is all thumbs and his hair would get tangled in the net. Clarence, Tom and MamaKim don’t seem like obvious choices. If Kelly is responsible for a Boran win then it might explain why she is being featured on the local news.

On the other hand, Boran might not want to depend on Kelly again after she lost the blood-drinking challenge.

As far as the house building, I hadn’t thought of putting the thing back together. Frank may indeed have the skills to direct this, but will the mallrats listen to him? KimP and Lindsey have mentioned in every episode that they don’t like to take orders from him. If they choose to ignore an oldster’s directives, that is another scenario for Linda’s sarcastic “thank you” to Lindsey.

If Boran wins another RC, one would think that the fresh water and food items would make them even harder to beat in upcoming episodes. The “twist” in ep 5 could just be that they lose the next challenges anyway. Lame, yes… but I don’t put a lot of stock in the hints they’ve been dropping.

ess_too_dee

I agree with you, except on one point. Although the mall rats have complained about Frank's orders i have noticed they almost always follow them. When he was directing them about the boma building and the SOS sign, they all rolled thier eyes and complained, but continued to do what he directed.

There are 12 bags, so
Each Boran goes twice, whatever happens with Samburu
Smburu either uses everyone the first time and two people go only once, or they sit one out and everyone goes twice.
Either way Samburu has some choice. Boran has done.

I can see Tom just flailing with the net component, but who knows?

In the house-building, I agree that Frank makes a good director and the Xers will listen to him during the challenge.

Lex is potentially good director for Boran assembly. I think Tom will shut up and follow directions. If it takes brains, i.e. a puzzle, then Kelly (brainiac) could be an asset.

In the second segment on the Early Show, on survival:

they said:
"Out in the bush, everyone has protection from animal attacks..."

As they said it, they showed a shot of the rock formation (empty) on which we've seen Boran standing. Could there be a connection? I posted earlier that they could be up there taking refuge from the Cape Buffalo (having dropped their load, I mean their gourds and poles) and high-tailed it out of there.

There is a vidcap of Boran running down a slope not wearing challenge buffs...

Some picnic.