Erinn Lobdell (26) Waukesha, Wis. Hairstylist	James "JT" Thomas (24) Samson, Ala. Cattle Rancher	Stephen Fishbach (29) New York, N.Y. Corporate Consultant	Taj Johnson-George (37) Nashville, Tenn. Mrs. Eddie George/Pop Star

And let’s also meet the five losers who will be joined by two more in the finale, and will have the power to let their delusions run rampant while asking questions and deciding who is the Sole Survivor:

Brendan Synnott	Tyson Apostol	Sierra Reed	Debbie Beebe	Couchebag Wade

This is where VerucaSalt’s The Players, The Game, The Editing – Survivor Tocantins thread really comes in handy as we’ve now had an entire season to analyze editing patterns and in-camp relationships to try and figure out who might be the most likely to remain standing at the end of the game. As Veruca has explained, that thread was never designed to figure out who’s being booted in any particular episode, but rather to look at editing patterns. Compelling arguments had been made quite early in the game for the longevity of Stephen and Erinn, in particular, and the people who have championed their causes can stand up and take a bow (yes, including you, Michel!).

The title of this week’s episode as brought to us by SquidProQuo (well done in setting up your first thread!) is:

I Trust You But I Trust Me More

Sylvester suggests that the title is from JT during the final immunity challenge after (let’s say) Erinn steps down and Stephen/JT are making deals to take the other to the final two, and JT says this and then hangs on to win immunity. OFG pointed out that Stephen likely wouldn’t have said this as he would have said “myself” instead of “me” in order to be grammatically correct, so it’s either Taj or JT.

We’ve got vidcaps here. The long-awaited spider challenge is finally here after first seeing promos for it when there were still 11 people left, and the spoiler that Taj and JT would have to make final four for this to be true has been upheld.

Here are the clues for this week’s episode as taken from Squid’s thread just above:

Loyalties and strong alliances are questioned when the final four face the fact that only one will be awarded the million dollar prize and the title of Sole Survivor.

"I Trust You But I Trust Me More" - After one shocking vote, a seed of doubt is planted by a carefully constructed lie that, after the second vote, leaves the final two turning on each other at the final Tribal Council.

Goody, this is the type of clue that leads to a lot of excellent discussions and theories about what it means! Many people speculate that the “shocking vote” would mean that Erinn is safe because booting her in fourth place wouldn’t be a shock in the eyes of most viewers. Booting Stephen or JT would qualify as a major shock, while Taj would also be a shock if Erinn doesn’t win immunity. Another angle to consider – are we talking about a single vote (“shocking vote”) where there is a tie and a burn-off, or are we talking about a shocking vote resulting in an unexpected boot? Or was the “shocking vote” actually the JT vote for Erinn in the previous episode when Coach got booted – i.e., did Stephen go against the plan to boot Erinn or did JT go against the plan to boot Coach? Is it all simply a matter of jury vote wrangling?

Also, several good points have been made that “the final two turning on each other” sounds like JT and Stephen butting heads while trying to persuade the jury that one is more worthy than the other. If Erinn or Taj were in the final two, we might not be seeing the clue “strong alliances are questioned” as presented. Really, who knows with the way the CBS hype machine has been deluded for weeks after hearing Coach’s proclamations?

Note that SquidProQuo has found a new preview: http://resources.survivorphoenix.com/postnuke/html/index.php where Jeff says JT and Stephen turn on each other -- Stephen is clearly looking ahead to the jury vote and he's mad that he'll "look like a villain" vs. JT (because of the Coach vote).

As for the “carefully constructed lie”... well, interpretation of that one is still very much wide open.

Let’s have a look at what each of the four finalists are saying about themselves:

The first challenge of the finale is the Spider Challenge.

Note that JT is very gung-ho right off the bat in this challenge while Erinn is rather lackadaisal. JT looks like a heavy favourite to win this challenge as it’s quite physical and there’s a lot of running, so it would seem that the only question is whether he gets locked up long enough on the puzzle portion at the end to prevent him from winning immunity. I’ll go with JT as the winner of this challenge.

The F4 boot? With the “shock vote” term being tossed out, I’m leaning towards Taj as the boot. Stephen might be a real seismic shock vote, but I’m more apt to believe that Stephen and JT are the final two with the potential for long time alliance partners turning on each other as we’ve been hammered over and over with the storyline of JT/Stephen bonding together and planning the game. JT/Erinn, Erinn/Taj or JT/Taj wouldn’t have the same kind of hype, in my opinion.

Jeff is also promising a “betrayal” of some sort in the finale. Having JT/Stephen go on and boot Taj instead of Erinn would count as a betrayal, I’d say.

Finally, are we going see a build-the-fire tiebreaker? We’ve been repeatedly shown Stephen successfully starting a fire so does this translate into a F4 tiebreaker fire-off between him and Taj?

Next, we don’t have any scenes of the F3 challenge. Historically, it’s been an endurance or balancing sort of challenge so we’ll go with that. JT has usually done well in endurance type of challenges so far this season, so we’ll go with him as the winner – especially if you tie it in with what Sylvester mentioned earlier about the idea that JT says the title quote to Stephen while negotiating a deal after Erinn throws in the towel.

With all the circumstantial evidence so far gathered heavily in favour of a Stephen-JT final two, Erinn is the obvious boot choice here in third place.

So. Who wins the final vote? We, the viewer, have been seeing a brilliant performance from Stephen all game through his confessionals and through what the editors choose to show us; he seems to be, on the surface, the mastermind behind the Jalapao alliance. But what gives me pause is that we’ve seen a couple of post-ouster interviews (Sierra and Debbie in particular come to mind – Debbie said, “Stephen came across as a follower of JT”) where the bootee said that they were surprised to see how Stephen was playing the game. This suggests to me that Stephen has not shown what he can do to the other Survivors and may have been too subtle about what he did to manoeuvre himself to the final two. Will the others respect his game-play over JT’s more obvious dealings with the jury members?

From TDT:
Projected votes for JT – Taj, Coach, Debbie, Tyson, Brendan (personally, I’d give Taj’s vote to Stephen as we’ve been shown more interaction between these two than between Taj/JT)
Projected votes for Stephen – Erinn, Sierra

TDT’s projection – JT wins 5-2
Pepe’s projection – JT wins 4-3

Let’s see what other discussions are going on about the game that might shed some light on how the finale would unfold.

Dabo has a thread on Jury Vote Assessment. This is a good analysis of Jiffy’s assessment on the final four and how he views they’ve been playing the game, plus dabo throws in some questions to analyze how the jury may be leaning. From Jiffy:

J.T. – If he gets to the final two he probably wins...unless he goes up against...
TAJ – This would be quite a show down. Two of the most well liked people in the game.
STEPHEN – Best bet is to go up against Erinn, who he could probably beat.
ERINN – A long shot due to her betrayal – hard for her to get votes from the former Timbira members on the jury. Might be smart to take her all the way to the end.

All four had strong strategies to get themselves to the final four. Erinn positioned herself to piggyback and save herself once it became obvious she was not welcome in the dominant Timbira alliance. JT has been fun and easygoing but willing to blindside anyone if it would improve his chances. Stephen has been the mastermind of the Jalapao Three who managed to take them from underdogs to topdogs while obliterating the Timbira. Taj formed an early and creative cross-tribal alliance, partnered wisely with Stephen and was instrumental in playing the Timbira dynamics to break the Timbira, has remained well liked throughout.

sol throws in an unlikely – but possible – scenario discussing about Taj asking for the HII back. Question is whether it’s too late to use the HII at this point (I believe it is).

In summary, this is what I’m leaning towards:
F4 challenge – JT wins
F4 boot – Taj
F3 challenge – JT wins
F3 boot – Erinn
F2 finalists – Stephen and JT
Winner – JT by a 4-3 score.

So... what do y’all think? Hop on over to dabo’s Vote Thread to tell us your picks who will go out in what order.

What’s next after this Survivor? How about a trip over to Western Samoa as brought to us by OFG? I’m still holding out hope that if there’s a pseudo-celebrity on this edition, it’ll be Jack “The Throwin’ Samoan” Thompson who is from Samoa. Hopefully Jack still has the giant Afro he was famous for when he was in the NFL.

Thanks for a great season, folks!

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