LAST EDITED ON 10-27-11 AT 05:16 PM (EST)

"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

...yeah, worked out really well for the last guy who tried it...

As much as every piece of editing seems to be screaming 'This will work because we will move heaven, earth, and the challenge schedule to make sure we have some kind of storyline!' (or cheap irony, whichever's more fun), let's count the flaws in this train of thought anyway. First, you have to win the duel. Then both the merge and the revival have to be exactly when you thought they would be, Shii Ann, or you'll have to win more duels and in the meantime, your tribe is still in group challenges and happens to be down one you. Oh, and if a revival happens with no merge and sends you back to the wrong tribe with no idol in your pocket -- one which you might have been able to take to RI and get revived with you...

Oh, right -- about that idol. It can't be stolen from you on a luggage search, true, but the instant you voluntarily hand it to someone else, it is their idol. They have no obligation to hand it back. And who did you give it to? Cochran. A man so desperate to establish a series legacy that as soon as someone says 'Hey, wouldn't keeping the thing be an all-time backstab?', he's going to give it seventeen hours of confessional thought. Because the point is to make himself known for something, this is as good as any other option -- and now he's playing the rest of the game with an idol.

But let's say you get back in and he hands it back. Now you have to lure votes to yourself (or know exactly who the other voting block is going for. At all times). Might not be that hard: you are sort of considered to be a challenge threat. But then again, you did go and tell everyone on your tribe about that idol. Gosh, that's a useful piece of information to possess. Wonder how tight Benji's alliance is? Could someone buy their way in to majority and swap out a problem child, Brandon, by letting the Nearly-Human Blunder Dog (now available in Hyper-Christian!) in on the plan, letting him target someone else while you waste your little tool on a nail that doesn't exist? Are you sure everyone on your tribe loves you? Cares for you? Doesn't see you as both a challenge and idol-finding threat which must be gotten rid of immediately because they're good enough to make themselves a new alliance and you're not?

Oh, and because it has to be brought up just for the fun of it: double bounce. Now what?

It's an interesting plan. It's a plan the producers love (and may have come up with). But for this to be a workable plan, a lot has to break just right...

...and there can't be a single pre-existing fracture in your tribe.

Good luck with that. Really. Because if it works, it's an all-timer, even given that there's only been two seasons where it was possible and a battle cry of 'Vote me out!' is never going to come across without some idiocy attached --

-- but if it fails...

...well, that's an all-timer too.

Did Markie-Mark borrow Grodner's scriptwriter?

• RE: Logic Chain II: The Kenobi Plot.,Belle Book, 05:05 PM, 10-27-11
  • RE: Logic Chain II: The Kenobi Plot.,Colonel Zoidberg, 06:06 PM, 10-27-11
    • RE: Logic Chain II: The Kenobi Plot.,Belle Book, 07:03 PM, 10-27-11
• RE: Logic Chain II: The Kenobi Plot.,Colonel Zoidberg, 06:03 PM, 10-27-11

Yeah, a lot of things have to go right for Ozzy's plan to have a real shot. I think the merge is coming, so that part will go right, but the rest? Good luck!

Ozzy might lose the challenge. Cochran might flip over to Upolu for real. Savaii might not know who to lure votes to or who the other side will be voting for, and there's the double bounce as you mentioned. You noted in your Survivor fanfic all the things that could go wrong there, so you should know the things that could go wrong here!

Given that the two tribes here are about as entrenched as Estee's tribes, I get the feeling that Estee's season might be an appropriate analogue for this one - just need one flipper. Edna on one side, Cochran on the other.

Down a different wormhole, as I recall, when I wrote All-Stars II, I wrote Ozzy as the winner. Of course, at the beginning of the game, he took a completely unnecessary risk - it is Ozzy, after all - but after that, he played what would probably be viewed as one of the best games ever. Somehow I don't see real-life Ozzy duplicating his fictional counterpart's success, given that, if I had written someone doing something like this is a season of mine, I'd probably be dismissed as a crazy old lobster who's digging too far into the realm of impossibility.

I have to agree that Estee's season is an appropriate analogue for this one, at least when it comes to both tribes being so entrenched. But Alex wouldn't take a completely unnecessary risk the way Ozzy tends to do. Thus she won and Ozzy will most likely lose.

I get why Ozzy's attempting it, but it's a completely and totally unnecesary risk, brought to you by the King of Unnecessary Risks.

This is the same guy who, in Cook Islands, spearheaded the movement to throw a challenge when there were four tribes with five - five! - members. A move that sank old Aitu, giving them literally no presence on the jury and arguably cost Ozzy the game.

This is the same guy who, in Fans vs. Favorites, decided at final 9, "What the hell. I don't need to bring my idol to Tribal." After all, four of the first five votes read were for Jason. The last four couldn't all read Ozzy, could they? Again, a strong possibility he would have won that season.

So let's see...throwing a challenge. Forgetting his idol. What the hell else can he do that's totally reckless and insane? For my sake, I hope Ozzy runs his own business one day and hires me as his legal consultant. He'll get sued for negligence every other week, and the legal retainer I'll charge him will be enough that I can spend most of the year vacationing in Tahiti.

Another side note: Does anyone get the feeling that "asking to be voted out with the option to come back" is the new "throwing a team challenge?" Because we all know that throwing a challenge just isn't reckless enough anymore.