LAST EDITED ON 04-29-09 AT 06:37 PM (EST)

State of the Spoiling – Episode 10
“They Both Went Bananas”

Welcome to the State of the Spoiling (SOTS) where we try and one-up EPMB and his merry band of editors and accurately predict the results of his show before it airs. Sometimes we look like geniuses, and sometimes we are left feeling like Coach after a yet another reward loss. But the show must go on and we must spoil the show!

Please check out our Community Guidelines. It’s getting late in the season and the influx of newcomers will be here soon. These guidelines keep this site running smoothly and remind us to Be Nice, Play Fair in the immortal words of Colleen.

It’s been a stellar season (at least I think it’s been one) that I’m very much enjoying. Villains! Blindsides! Alliance switches! Wild campfire stories!

On to the show...

So what happened last week? It was a double blindside with Tyson’s ego handed to him on a silver platter with a big side serving of crow and Sierra left picking up the pieces of her face after her eyes popped out and jaw crashed to the ground. It’s funny to watch people get blindsided and I hope your parents still love you after all this, Tyson.

See what others said here in the East Coast Spoiler Thread about last week’s episode!
See how Spanky carved up the delusional characters in his legit episode summary!
See what happened behind the scenes in the Insider Transcript by James Barber, as posted by Brownroach!
See what Tyson thought of what happened to him here in the Post-Ouster Interviews thread!
See what Jiffy thought about it in his blog!

This week’s episode is titled ”They Both Went Bananas” as brought to us by michel. It’s clear that this is referring to Coach and either Sierra or Debbie after the tribe returned to camp and the panic button is being pushed after the realization of what happened with Tyson’s boot sets in.

The clues given for this episode:

Scrambling to save themselves, two castaways sell out a former ally before turning on one another.

OFG and Brownroach both suggest that this is Coach and Debbie who are scrambling to save themselves. The former ally could be JT for breaking his word to Coach or could be both Stephen and JT in outing them to Taj about the so-called “Warrior Alliance”. Or it could even be Erinn as a way to try and cajole her back to the original Timbits tribal grouping.

"They Both Went Bananas" - With her heart on her sleeve, one castaway takes an honest approach to the game but lands herself in hot water with everyone.

This is clearly, to me, Sierra. She’s shown debating with Coach about being loyal and it’s worth noting that she wasn’t in the loop on the Tyson vote with JT/Taj/Stephen/Erinn, so she might be trying to explain this to Coach and Coach is in return trying to secure her loyalty to turn the tables back on the Jalapeno three.

citywitch suggests that this could backfire on Sierra to be wearing her heart on her sleeve and result in the others voting her out as an untrustworthy swing vote. It was also suggested that Coach could successfully pull Sierra and that Erinn could be the actual swing vote and the casualty of everyone turning on her.

It appears this title quote could be from Stephen as he had this to say in the Insider Transcript:

"Coming back tonight is going to be hellish. Coach is going to go ape crackers. I don't know what is going to happen but he will lose his mind...Debbie too, I know is not going to be happy. She's been sitting pretty recently and will not be thrilled..."

byoffer brings us a good discussion on tribal dynamics in this Post-Tyson Boot Discussion. Lots of good speculation of how the F7 could go and who might be aligned with whom, etc.

On to the vidcaps... you can get them right here Plenty of vidcaps to go around, no pushing and shoving folks...

Reward Challenge and Exile

It’s time for the annual Q&A and rope-chop-and-smash-yer-tribemate’s-statue challenge! This is a good way to show everyone just what they think of each other. No idea who wins this one, but it’s safe to say that Sierra and Coach aren’t winning this as we apparently see them sitting down in vidcaps of this challenge. The winner will probably be any one of the three Jalapenos.

You might be asking “why Debbie wouldn’t be considered a potential winner of this challenge?” Good question, I initially thought she could be a candidate to win, but what about these caps – are these suggesting that she might be off to Exile Island? She appears to be blowing a kiss then making a turn as if she is about to walk away. (FWIW, she could merely be saying goodbye to someone being exiled before heading back to camp – but let’s go with the idea of Debbie being exiled)

Back in camp...

Here's what I'd like to see happening:

"Find that Coachebag NOW and cook him!"

(thanks to blistering and SurvivorArctic (of SS) for these pics)

Anyhoo.

Immunity Challenge

Grappling hooks and Tilt-a-tables - The contestants throw grappling hooks to retrieve bags holding balls which are then used on tilt-a-tables to guide the balls through a maze by twisting knobs to tilt the playing surface.

Who wins? We don’t see any clear evidence who might win, but it seems from the clues that Coach and Debbie might be turning on each other and/or trying to out others, so I’d say neither one of them wins immunity. This seems to be the type of challenge that JT would be good at, so let’s go with him.

So who gets the boot?

On the surface, the likeliest candidates are: Sierra, Erinn, Debbie and Coach (in that order), while the safest seems to be Taj, Stephen and JT ... but truly, nobody is safe as long as there are swing votes to be had in Erinn and Sierra.

From SquidProQuo: Survivor Phoenix has the latest promo up with some new clips. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90IM4AB0IWY

A couple interesting things:
- Sierra says the "You're a liar" quote this week, and it appears she's talking to Debbie (although Coach might be nearby too).
- Stephen says to JT that "we've definitely caught Coach in a lie." (And Coach is shown punching the words "Truth" -- ha!)
- The announcer calls JT and Stephen the "Power Brokers"...possible foreshadowing that they're getting too cocky and/or won't both make it to the end, or just stating the obvious?

Could the three Jalapenos plus Erinn and/or Sierra take out Coach in a power struggle, or will they settle for his minion, Debbie?

Could Coach/Debbie pull Erinn and Sierra back into the fold and take out one of the power guys – more likely Stephen since JT/Taj are apparently seen in a future challenge?

Could Sierra or Erinn get turned onto for being a swing vote and get booted?

There’s some debate on whether Coach’s primal scream as seen in the recap is indicating that he won whatever he was doing or if he’s just screaming because he lost out once again, but look at this comparison:

The buffs appear to me to be different in these photos – look at the Survivor logo, they’re in different places. And Coach wouldn't take the time in mid-challenge to neatly tuck in the fold on the buff. So I’m going to take this to mean that Coach is safe this week since it seems that the vidcap has to be from a future episode. Combine that with the clue that two scramblers might be turning on each other, so I’m now leaning towards Debbie as the boot. Damn.

OFG has made a very compelling argument for Sierra as the boot - go check out her post in the vote thread. I wouldn't disagree with the choice of Sierra as the boot instead of Debbie, but the rise of Debbie's air time last week seems to indicate that her story arc could be at its peak. And there's that little bit nagging at me about the possibility of Sierra being the ideal F2 goat at this point and the story arc of the potential ultimate redemption from a bad first impression - it's big enough in my mind to keep her around in the game ahead of Debbie for now.

My feeling:
Debbie - 40% chance of being booted
Sierra - 30%
Erinn - 20%
Coach/Stephen - 10% between these two
Taj/JT - Safe (F4 challenge spoiler)

Want some more thoughts on how the Survivor contestants may be thinking or playing the game? I bring you two interesting threads:

Georjanna’s Signs of Survival
VerucaSalt’s The Players, The Game, The Editing - Survivor Tocantins

In Summary:

Reward Challenge – who knows? One of the three Jalapenos, most likely.
Exile – Debbie?
Immunity – leaning towards J.T., but could be Coach
Boot – Debbie. Or maybe it's Sierra. Ah, let's go with Erinn. Nooo, back to Debbie. Maybe.

Agree or disagree? Hop on over to Brownroach’s Vote Thread, posting in dabo’s place.

To come in the future:

Don’t forget we haven’t seen the spider challenge yet and we won’t see it this week. For more details, check out FloPo’s Recrap Promo...what’s to come thread here.

Thanks for reading, folks!

Stinky Musings <--- blog's been updated!

• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,flystorms, 11:04 AM, 04-29-09
• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,byoffer, 11:28 AM, 04-29-09
• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,Flowerpower, 11:30 AM, 04-29-09
• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,kingfish, 12:28 PM, 04-29-09
• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,sethromax, 03:06 PM, 04-29-09
• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,Belle Book, 03:57 PM, 04-29-09
• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,suzzee, 06:00 PM, 04-29-09
• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,michel, 07:42 PM, 04-29-09
• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,CTgirl, 07:57 AM, 04-30-09
• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,Brownroach, 09:42 AM, 04-30-09
  • RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,PepeLePew13, 10:31 AM, 04-30-09
    • RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,Brownroach, 11:06 AM, 04-30-09
      • RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,PepeLePew13, 11:10 AM, 04-30-09
        • RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,Brownroach, 01:34 PM, 04-30-09
• RE: State of the Spoiling - Episode 10 - Survivor Tocantins,RudyRules, 04:50 PM, 04-30-09

The cannibalistic pygmys are hysterical!! I have tears from laughing so hard! Nice job. I still dunno who is going though.

What, no more Don Cherry?

Very nicely done, Pepe.