Oh man, what a night for me – first Mojo gets eliminated and then Chris Daughtry on AI. (At least Lost was good!) My experiment with numbers didn’t really pan out. Michel,
you warned me that numbers don’t seem to mean as much in the editing process at they do in Survivor. We can still see where the hippies and the frats end up, but I don’t think their comments last week meant much to the end story. Michel, you were right that Mojo’s story was about their experience. I had forgotten that I had missed the episode where Monica had her breakdown over the fish, maybe I would have seen them as a weaker team and that her next breakdown would be their downfall.

I watched the episode again with an impartial view to the three finalists and tried to look for specific visuals of each team. To me all three edits were fairly even. Last week, I was full of opinions, this week I could see any of the three teams winning. There was genuine good will and positive camaraderie among them. They are all likeable and are all having fun. (I loved the side comments by BJ, Tyler and Ray during the cricket eating.) They all made snide asides, but they also helped or encouraged each other. I would still guess Ray and Yolanda win because I’ve never disliked them via their edit, but I wouldn’t be surprised and would be happy with any of the three winning.

You gotta give it to the hippies – what a comeback. I’m not as big a fan of BJ and Tyler as the general public, but they have certainly shown a lot of perseverance and joie de vivre! They stayed calm at the Darwin Airport, and commented, “It looks like today the nice guys finish last,” when they couldn’t get on the flight to Bangkok. On the airplane they commented they didn’t have much clothes, but they had “a lot of soul and a lot of heart.” They ended up in first.

Eric and Jeremy are not the same frat boys that started the race, but they are still goofy. Jeremy said, “If we win a million dollars, we’ll be monkeys,” and then they proceeded to play with the monkeys. Not as positive an image as the others, but it was still pretty funny and they weren’t as obnoxious as earlier in the race. They also donated sandals to BJ which I wouldn’t have expected them to do.

Ray and Yolanda had great visuals – they were shown laughing, discussing strategy and were much more relaxed. Ray was much more affectionate than we’ve seen before towards Yolanda. Yolanda even gave help to Mojo in the temple, “(the clue box is) deep in the back.” Their edit has taken a positive arc more so than the other two teams.

In the closing comments, E/J said that Rayo do their own thing, but that the hippies follow (how many times have they commented on the hippies following?). BJ and Tyler concentrated on the frat boys and didn’t mention Rayo. BJ said, “If we can get the advantage over Eric and Jeremy, we can win first place.” We shall see if Ray and Yolanda can slide into first!