LAST EDITED ON 08-15-09 AT 07:54 AM (EST)

Any word on what Chima's grandmother thinks?

Okay. Assuming this is accurate (which feels halfway safe for the moment), the producers have decided to preserve the faux drama of week-in-an-hour for the next go-round: a single quit can keep them on schedule. Chima's contract presumably says 'no media conversations without our supervision or we take your children', but she may be at the point where she doesn't care. ('No rules apply to me' has been in effect for a while now.) She may seek out any attention she can get while wrapped in the secure delusion which says a quitter is no longer under contract. Actually, someone check the new registrant list...

Keeping her out of the finale and jury really puts her in Nick's status: she's a non-hamster. It wouldn't surprise me to see her picture edited out of the opening credits.

America has voted on the jury once before this, acting through Eric. The only question here is who gets to turn America's key. (We could ask how rigged that vote will be, but why ask something we already know the answer to?)

Lydia and Natalie could destroy the show here & now: all they have to do is walk out behind her -- and it looks like they gave it no some thought for a few seconds. If that idea recurs, the producers are in major trouble as far as the timeline goes: bring up the fall schedule early, because we just lost a lot of cage time. Should either one think of that, today is going to make the last few hours look like a thumb wrestling match.

The first explosion may be over, but I think it's going to take the rest of the week for the fallout to finish settling. Minimum.