LAST EDITED ON 04-11-09 AT 06:16 PM (EST)

In the recap, Jeff said that “Coach and Brendan struggled for control of Timbira.”
We saw an old confessional from Coach where he said Timbira would be better if Brendan was voted out.
Jeff went on: “Tyson chose sides” (“Brendan’s trying to build relations with the other tribe. He’s got to go next”)
“Jalapao took a beating and they lost their third immunity in a row and Brendan was saved from Tyson and Coach.
At Jalapao… Taj reached out to JT. At tribal council, the three stuck together.
Down 4 members to Timbira’s 6, Jalapao became a desperate tribe.”

Jalapao
Night 18

We had a confessional from Taj: “At Tribal Council, Sydney was voted out… One of us had to go and I’m glad it’s not me.”

Joe: “I feel like the odd man out.”

JT and Taj commiserated about how they are just “Jala” that they lost “pao”.
Before that scene and right after it, we had a shot of a desperate Stephen, hunched over with his head down.

Timbira
Day 19

We see Coach doing his meditation complete with special effects of thunder and lightning and a chant that I think was from Carmina Burana:
O Fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis,
semper crescis
aut decrescis;

(Oh! Fortune, like the moon, stands constantly changing, ever waxing or waning.)

Sharing our disbelief, Brendan asked if the others saw Coach out there.

Coach: in confessional: “Up till now, it’s been about the team. I’ve been trying to get along but the little annoying things, I’ve had to keep bottled in. I’m the kind of person that, if I see it, I want to say it, I want to nail it, get rid of it. I need to get centered, I need to pray, I need to meditate. I spent 10 minutes in the water to get refocused and it was like boom! Everything just clicked. This is about me now. We’re so close to a merge, it could be today, it could be three days, so I’ve been pacifying everybody and getting along with the tribe.”

We saw him giving massages to Debbie and Erinn who enjoyed it.
Erinn: “Coach has a new thing. He has his morning meditation, just hanging out in the water like this. If that’s the thing that’s turned you into mister nice guy around camp, you do it every day. I will take you down there, hold your hand, push you in the water, whatever needs to happen because I like new Coach.”

The images switching from Coach to Brendan gave the illusion that they were having a stare down contest, Brendan saying “You’re like a completely different guy now.”

Brendan: “My relationship with Coach, to me, has been good the whole time. There’s definitely been some things he’s done around camp which are kind of annoying… like he’s always doing his hair and we’ve been talking about it and it’s like “I started the samurai thing”. Started the samurai thing? Like, they’ve been doing it for thousands of years in Japan and Johnny Depp has been doing it for 20 years here. You didn’t start anything.”

Jalapao
Day 19

We saw Joe’s infected leg.
Taj: “It didn’t look good to me. He swears it’s getting better but I don’t know. With these two eyes, it doesn’t look good to me.”
A vulture hanging overhead told us it didn’t look good to those eyes either.

JT: “Joe has a bum leg, he’s down and out. If there is a merge, even if there’s not, Jalapao is down to 4 members and things are really not looking our way. There’s a lot at stake for all of us if we want a shot at this game. It’s going to be our biggest challenge yet.”

Tree mail sent both teams to the merge feast, JT saying: “I hate losing, I’m a sore loser but if it’s a merge, ball game’s on. That’s why I’m hoping it’s a challenge because I don’t know if I’m ready yet. I need to redeem myself.”

Arriving on site, we saw Coach greet JT.
Stephen:: “Our biggest hope was that today was the merge feast. Less the merge than the merge feast. Jalapao is freaking hungry.”

Coach proposed a toast and then he had a confessional: “It was like meeting a new girlfriend, there’s all kinds of things to explore. I just wish we could have decimated their tribe a little bit more. We had them on the ropes, they were going to go down and I think we could have won the rest of them. But it’s all good, we’re in control. I like JT, he’s a warrior. I look forward to getting to know him and Stephen who is obviously intelligent. I look forward to these individual immunity challenges, especially in the beginning when we have the big horses and the alpha-males. It’s going to be awesome.”
(Is the last sentence a hint that the alpha males won’t last much longer?)

Erinn said they needed a name so Stephen proposed Dingus which was shot down, thankfully. Coach proposed Forza which is Italian, not Portuguese as he claimed.
(A soccer coach would know from watching Mundials that it’s “Forza Italia”! Maybe he is an accountant!)

The name was accepted even if Debbie seemed reluctant.
That’s when Sierra stepped in: “I know it’s a touchy subject and if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine, but we were just shocked by the last two votes.” Brendan’s expression had “faux-pas” written all over it. The music editor stopped the music, everybody looked uncomfortable. She added: “So, did you guys not know who was going home or was it just off the cuff.”
Stephen intervened: “How do you guys make your decisions?”
In confessional, Stephen said: “I was sort of tip-toeing around Sierra because you do need to be discrete with how much information you give out. These are your future competitors so you can’t be giving away your entire tribe dynamic.”

JT had a confessional: “I was worried about the merge because, if you’re 4 to 6, traditionally, you’re just sitting ducks.” Debbie asked that he catch some fish for them. JT went on: “I’m really worried. I hope there is a power struggle within the old Timbira (Sierra, Coach and Brendan shown) and I can exploit that. Going 4 on 6, that’s not very good odds.”

Forza
Day 19

The merged tribe arrived at the Timbira camp site.
JT described the scene: “First of all, we see the little doghouse shelter and I’m like: What is this?”

Stephen was thinking about the game: “The Timbira people are definitely running the show. It’s intimidating to go into the merge down in numbers. They can take us off if they want to. We’re depending on their good graces. Even if we make allies with them, those allies are in a dominant position.”

JT and Coach went fishing and quickly became allies.
Coach: “I knew, the first time I looked at JT, I saw the cow-boy boots, open, honest face and I said to myself, he is a good old boy. We’re kindred spirits, we both love the outdoors; I think we are both warriors.”

JT: “It’s not 15 minutes and Coach is ready to talk about the game and it was perfect. I couldn’t wait to talk about the game.”
This exchange reminded me of Erinn’s wise words during Tribal of episode #2. “We don’t know these people.” Combined with Stephen’s warning about making allies that would be in a dominant position, this tells me this alliance won’t work.

JT told Coach: “Brendan thinks he’s in control of the game.” Asked who told him that, JT added: “Taj. I’m 95% sure he’s got the idol.”
Coach asked: “So, you swear to me that Taj doesn’t have the idol?”
JT lied: “I don’t know if she’s got it or not. If she does, then there are 2 idols.”
Coach said he would not lie in this game and asked that they be honest with each other.
JT shook his hand and said they had to blindside Brendan.

JT said: “I’ve seen cracks right away. It’s hard to keep 6 people from different walks of life to stick together when they hate each other. I’m here to make sure everybody hates each other.”

Coach had his own confessional: “I have a lot of emotions going around. I said that I thought Brendan was a little bit squirrelly but if you flat out lied to me, you better be prepared to go to war.”

Forza
Night 19

Coach told Tyson about his talks with JT.
Tyson said he liked the idea of the alliance and added Debbie to make 5.
Coach: “It’s time to go for the jugular. Brendan is the head of the dragon. If you want to defeat an army, you cut off the head of the dragon. For him to go off as the first person from the merge…Yeah! I love it. That’s awesome.”

Tyson and Stephen talked about getting rid of Brendan.
Stephen: (solo) “We definitely found inroads into Timbira. This is clearly a very fractured tribe because there is no strong bonds and sense of place. So, there is a lot of power shifts at play that make it easy to exploit.”
Tyson said the “The game is all in our hands” and Stephen smiled.

Forza
Day 20

Tyson and JT were out fishing, Tyson catching a little baby catfish that proved to be a dangerous one. The two agreed on getting rid of Brendan.

JT: “I expected not to like Tyson at all. We talked a lot of smack to each other, pushed each other around and now, you get on the same tribe and you’re competing for individual immunity, you’re still competing against the guy but you’re living with him. It’s a little different.”

Tyson: “I’d like to get rid of Brendan, he’s the biggest threat. He’s just a sneaky bastard. I can’t look him in the eye and believe a word he says. You can look in my sweet blue eyes all day and I’ll tell you sweet nothings and you’ll believe all of them.”

With most of the tribe off to collect firewood, Taj had a confessional: “After the 2 tribes merged, I was thinking we were probably safe, Stephen and myself, because of the secret alliance that we have with Brendan and Sierra but they haven’t made any signs or signals. That makes me think they are going to stick with their tribe right now.”

Taj told Stephen that she couldn’t tell if Brendan was still with them or not.

Brendan explained his point of view: “My Exile Alliance is still laying low which it needs to do because that alliance is only effective once the numbers get down to 7 or 8. So, right now, Joe needs to go, JT needs to go and then my alliance can take charge if need be.”

Tyson told Debbie about the new alliance of 5 to which Debbie said: “I like JT and Stephen both.”
Brendan joined them and they humored him about wanting Joe out.

Tyson: “I talked to Brendan and I wanted to make him feel like I was still on board with whatever plan he had. I feel proud that I am a better schemer than Brendan. He’s supposed to be this big-wig businessman who gets business rolling, makes tons of money. He’s like putty in my hand. I can mold this game however I want right now.”

Erinn and Joe got together; Erinn asking if he had found the idol.
Joe answered: “I found it but I have to get back to camp.”
Erinn laughed at his blunder and had a confessional: “Since I got back from Exile, I was able to figure out that there were most likely two idols. Joe and I decided we were going to work together and see if we could find both.” Arriving at Tree Mail, they saw that the Timbira idol wasn’t there. Erinn went on: “There was a very specific pocket where something should have been in the back of the post. There was nothing in there so we can assume that Brendan or Sierra has the idol, we vote them both out and then we can actually play the game for real.”

The Challenge

We saw Sierra smiling and then Brendan when Jeff said about the necklace, this is what you covet. Will immunity play a part in their future?
Later, Jeff noted that Joe’s knee looked bad.
Coach smiled when Brendan fell out of the challenge.
We heard Erinn saying: “Sierra, you’re awesome.”
When JT fell and they were down to 4, we heard Coach saying: “All from old Timbira”. Jeff asked if that meant Timbira was still going on strong. Coach said they were.
Will the F4 be all Timbira?
Erinn told Tyson: “Be careful not to fall off.”
Tyson answered: “Don’t boss me around, lady.”
To which, she replied: “I just don’t want you to break your pretty little face.”
Tyson liked that and so did Jeff!

Tyson won immunity and Joe stayed behind while JT commented: “It’s really scary right now. I have to trust people I just met. What I have to do is remain strong to what I hope is a firm alliance. I really don’t have any other options. I have to trust Coach and Tyson right now and, if I’m still here tomorrow, I don’t have to worry about old Timbira anymore.”

Forza
Day 20

After we heard the doctor tell Joe that he risked death, we saw Debbie rewarding Tyson with a kiss. He let her try on the necklace.

Tyson: “I kicked a$$ like I always do. If any ladies want my phone number, just ask.”

Stephen: “We immediately knew that something was up with Joe because he didn’t come back from the immunity challenge.” Erinn was heard saying “I hope Joe is OK.” Stephen added: “We’re hoping we can take out Brendan tonight but honestly, I’ve known these people for 2 days. They’re obviously crafty people; that’s why they are out here. So, I don’t trust anyone but you got to go with your gut sometimes, you have to make moves in this game and I think this is one of them for me.”

Everyone from old Timbira wound up alone under their umbrella. They discussed voting out Joe first but Tyson and Erinn turned the conversation towards JT because, as Erinn said: “I say we vote for JT cause we can all beat Joe at whatever.”

Tyson: “Lying to everybody, especially Brendan and Sierra, actually brings me pleasure. In my alliance, Stephen and JT have replaced Brendan and Sierra. I’ve never liked Sierra ever, I have no clue why she’s out here except to give hope to stupid people around the world. Brendan is the sneakiest bastard I have to worry about. We smile at each other, we hug I kissed him on the neck… but, as the old adage goes: Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, right?”

Stephen was struggling on the decision as he talked to JT: “Here’s the thing: If I go with you, there’s two basic alliances: I know I can get to the final 4 with Taj, Sierra and Brendan. I’ll go with you, Coach, Tyson and Debbie now if you promise me you will turn on them.”
JT promised just as Tyson came along. They asked him if Debbie was a sure vote. Tyson said she was so Stephen worried about a tie vote. Tyson said he would get Erinn for this.

Brendan: “There’s definitely a scenario where I could be in trouble. If my old Timbira group senses that there is something between Taj, Stephen and myself, they might say “Let’s get rid of Brendan now”. Who knows, so much of it will be on the fly. I’ll have the immunity idol in my pocket and I’m not afraid to play it tonight.”

Observing from the shelter, Taj told Stephen that Brendan and Sierra hadn’t tried to communicate. Stephen asked if she’d be willing to take out Brendan. She said that she’d go along if he could pull it.

At their fishing hole, Coach told JT: “I knew it when we merged; my last hope was to talk to JT.”
(Last hope? Why is Coach talking about last hope at this point when his tribe is up 6-4 and no one is targeting him? Could this be taken from later when things turn around against Coach?)
Coach added: “They were going to vote you and you’re the warrior and we’re together now. Don’t burn me because I just screwed my whole tribe.”

JT agreed and told us: “If I’m reading Coach right, he’s telling me the truth, a lot of this game is in his hands tonight. This is a game for a million dollars.”

JT told Stephen that Brendan and Sierra were going to vote against him. They arrived at the conclusion that they needed to split the votes so that Sierra would go home if Brendan played his idol.

Stephen “If Brendan plays his idol… one of the Jalapao is going home and it sounds like he is targeting JT which is disastrous for me. So, our solution is to split the votes. We have 4 or 5 votes on Brendan, the rest vote Sierra. If Brendan plays the idol, Sierra is going home and Brendan would be going next.”

Tyson liked the idea when Stephen explained it to him and he convinced Coach.
Coach: “At Tribal tonight, if it goes the way that I planned to, it will absolutely shake the hell out of the foundations that were Timbira.” Coach returned to camp saying that nothing was biting, adding: “I have no patience for sitting around holding a rod in my hand without anything working.” (Oh! Coach!!) The confessional went on: “Do you want to call me the orchestrator for orchestrating a beautiful move that does 2 things: 1- It keeps my original game plan intact, I don’t have to compromise and keep weak people around and 2- I get rid of one of the strongest, most manipulative and deceitful players to date. Or do you want to call me the Dragon Slayer? You can call me anything you want to because at this point in time I feel brilliant!”

That’s when Jeff walked into camp.
Taj asked Jeff to tell Joe that they loved him.
Tyson: “Brendan lives to see another day. I’m disappointed. The main thing about the plan working was keeping it quiet long enough to vote him out so that he didn’t use an idol. Now, I don’t know how much is going to leak or what is going to happen but…”

JT: “I can’t wait for the next tribal council even more so now because I had some plans in order and someone on Timbira bought himself 3 days now and they don’t even know it.”

Coach: “We have no Tribal Council tonight. That sucks because we got a game plan, I was ready for action. The Dragon Slayer has to wait another day to taste blood.”

The Story

If we follow the theme that Coach laid out about finding a worthy opponent, we clearly see two groups of people that fit into this theme:
- The ones that are worthy, namely JT the warrior, the intelligent Stephen and the partner in crime, Tyson.
- The ones that Coach see as unworthy, namely the sneaky Brendan, the cancer that is Erinn and the weak Sierra.

Determining which group contains the winner is up to interpretation. Will Coach be right, and the game goes to a deserving warrior or will he be forced to vote for someone he doesn’t feel deserving? I maintain that Coach cannot come out of this season with the feeling that he was proven right. Even in this episode when a “New Coach” emerged, we heard too many contradictions to believe he is anything but set-up for a fall and a bitter disappointment:
“This is about me now”
“Call me the orchestrator.”
“I feel brilliant.”
Also of note, Jeff called Jalapao a desperate tribe. Not the underdogs who will need to find a smart way out but a desperate one. Therefore, their move was one of desperation and it didn’t work which, from my point of view, means they missed their chance.

The Characters

As we have determined a long time ago, Debbie is only presented as a fun companion to have around. Images of her with the bottle of wine and kissing Tyson overshadowed her remarkable IC performance. If that challenge sucked as she said, I don’t imagine that she will find one more to her liking. There would have been more acclaim about her performance if the editors needed to sell her story to the viewers.

Taj: She didn’t prove to be the “best accomplice ever” that Brendan had imagined she would be. When she said Brendan didn’t talk to her that meant she didn’t talk to Brendan either. In her position we would expect her to make the moves, not follow those of others. Coach has yet to comment on Taj so we don’t know where she fits in that theme.

Coach: Letting us hear that he feels “brilliant” just as Jeff was on his way to camp was another way of saying “You’re forgetting something, Coach”. I was really intrigued by his words that he considered JT his last hope. As JT said, Coach had the game in his hands so why talk about last hope? Coach will soon find himself in need of hope and will want to rely on JT. What he doesn’t know is that his alliance with JT is based on a lie about Taj and her idol. Coach is standing over a precipice but he doesn’t know it yet because his head is in the clouds.

Coach’s Warriors

Stephen: From this group, the intelligent warrior has the strongest edit for possible winner. It’s not easy to be part of two alliances and keep both options viable. It’s not easy to get someone to give you an immunity idol. Admirably, Stephen has managed to do both without even trying. Everything just fell in his lap or, as he put it, he fell ass-backwards into it. His story, especially his friendship with JT has been beautifully crafted from the very first episode all the way to the merge. That means he would be seen as a very likeable winner but I still have reservations. Once more, very needlessly, we heard his hesitations about which way to go, even telling JT that he could go with an alliance that didn’t include JT. With so many options, Stephen should win but I think his edit has been tailored so that we see exactly where he missed his opportunity like Rob C, Ian and Rafe before him.

JT: The strong warrior was seen making an alliance with Coach just as Stephen had warned that it would still leave them in an inferior position. JT was heard saying he would trust Coach and Tyson even if he didn’t know them which is another warning we had heard previously. JT has been very closely associated to Coach so that should explain why he doesn’t win.

Tyson: He was finally shown doing more than just talking about getting rid of someone; he was actively putting votes together. The fact that it was all for not tells me he already missed his chance. Being given a confessional about how Joe’s evacuation hurt his chances tells me that he is close to the exit. That confessional set up his boot very nicely as I think it did for JT and Coach, the other two that spoke after Jeff left Forza. I wonder if those are the next three votes in order: Tyson, JT and then Coach? Coach did say that the alpha-males were there at the beginning of the merge, implying they couldn’t stay long. That boot order would certainly get rid of most of the alpha-males.

Coach’s Doghouse

Sierra: There wasn’t a lot to see from Sierra in this key episode. Worse was the fact that her question at the merge was presented as a big “faux-pas” and we heard that her shelter was really just a doghouse. I had taken it as a very good point in Sierra’s favor that we had never seen Timbira work on the shelter even if Insider clips revealed that Coach was continually fixing it. It meant that the editors wanted the viewers to think that she had done a remarkable job to redeem herself but, with one sentence, JT killed that impression. What’s left for Sierra? By ricochet, a lot of doubt was put on her shoulders but that seems hardly enough. She seemed oblivious to what was going on around her and we didn’t get a single confessional about what she thought. We heard that Sierra was awesome during the IC and she was the one on screen when Jeff mentioned the necklace. That’s not much for her chances.

Erinn: She served mainly to put doubt on Brendan’s future. Hearing her saying that she liked the “New Coach” was to make us think she could vote with him especially after we heard her say that she would vote out Brendan and Sierra for having the idol. She wasn’t portrayed as a very smart player when she said that she didn’t know where the idol was and it took Joe (Joe!) to show her the hiding place. Saying that she would start to “play for real” after the idols were removed isn’t very brilliant either. The only good things for Erinn were hearing her deflect the voting discussion away from Joe onto JT and Tyson needing her to make his move. She’s in the position she said she wanted to be: She made the merge and has some days to figure things out.

Brendan: He suddenly received a lot of doubts on his chances of surviving which, from an editing point of view, is great for his future. We heard him say that he could be in trouble, he was ready to use his idol and we even heard him say why he kept quiet about the Exile Alliance. That alliance was presented with too much care for it to simply fall by the wayside. The way the story was presented tells us that, not only Brendan will fight back (which we know from the previews) but that he will be successful. I mean, if Brendan was to be voted out in the next episode, what would be left to say? Just may as well call Jeff on the Jeff phone and get it over with!
Will Brendan win? Editing-wise, he is in prime position, all that had been missing from his story was a first impression during the opening sequence and some doubts about his chances. The recap may have served to repair the first omission while this episode took care of the second. Now, Brendan needs to get people to work for him and we have been told that’s what he does best.