LAST EDITED ON 08-11-01 AT 05:06 AM (EST)

Bravo, dabo, you pulled the rabbit out of the hat!
I of course loved the born-yesterday-chickens and that a #6 finally escaped the Village. I also laughed aloud at the medley you gave us from the DK lounge. There was much more to applaud (and I listed some favorites on an earlier segment).

For those of you who've been mourning the nice guy's boot--a little bird tells me that Sir Erist wanted to go out in 6th place the same as Amber and will be romantically pleased at the outcome...

I should have replied earlier, but besides being (insert standard busy, company, blah blah excuses)--I was puzzling through the hidden strategy in this episode. In typical Burnit style, we were not allowed to see the alliances behind the votes this time as we did in Ep 9, so--it's up to the spoilers to figure out what was going on.

1) I stand by my logic on the vote thread that a BB had to go this week if the AA's were smart and loyal. Either Ice or Surv would lose a tiebreaker, but GT would survive one. When RR won immunity, the AA's SHOULD have targeted the big threat, IceCat. Last week they targeted Surv only due to Ice's IC win.

2) RR seems to have made a play and gotten the highly suggestible drugged DK to vote with him at the last minute. RR's choice of GT--the biggest threat to his own alliance with the 2 AA women--makes sense as a target, although he must have slipped on the tie-breaker rules if he thought it would work.

3)If the AA's agreed beforehand on a bootee, it must have been Surv, OFG's vote. Then RR pulled a fast one on the AA's (knowing OFG wouldn't vote against GT.)

4) The BB vote was aimed at DK (logical,immunity threat, forestall pro-cat bias by producers), but GT "apparently" defected and voted against her supposed ally, Surv, instead. GT broke her alliance with Surv, but what about with Ice? Did GT deceive him too, and ally with OFG and the AA's on this vote? With OFG--possible. With AA's as a tribe, unlikely.

5) The biggest question is why didn't the AA's target IceCat? Sure, Ice cleverly pretended to have lost interest in the game after he lost immunity; maybe he fooled someone about that, but not OFG. As she said, he's tricky. She should have wanted to take out Ice, yet she chose Surv. Why would she leave Ice in play when the AA's had a precious opportunity to boot him?

6) Unless--what if OFG, IceCat and GT have a secret alliance?
By voting straight BB, IceCat doesn't reveal a cross-tribal alliance. Similarly, in Episode 9, IceCat voted with the other BB's--after promising sleeeve the BB's would vote against DK, and that sleeeve's vote would provide the majority needed to break up the estrogen alliance.

In Ep 10, GT defects from her tribe and her vote suffices to boot her team member. Ice's vote is not needed in Ep 10 to oust Surv. Does Ice know full well that GT will vote for Surv--has he even suggested it or decided it with GT and OFG? In an episode where Surv and Ice are the two logical bootees, wouldn't Ice bend all his strategizing to get rid of the kid?

Whether the Cat knew about RR's plan I can't say. He has a way of hiding up in trees when people are plotting I believe...
In any case, Surv would lose a 2-way or a 3-way tie due to prior votes. But--so would IceCat, so the Cat must have had help from OFG in order to make it out of Ep 10 with no immunity and yet no votes.

OK, that's my analysis of how it might have played out. I didn't say anything about DK's place in all this due to her trip this week; her strategy at present remains fuzzy (at least to me). How has she regrouped from the sleeve fiasco? And RR, who does he want to ally with? Was the DK thing a 1-timer?

Another question: do any of these players know what happened in Ep 9, or do they think sleeeve just foolishly cast a lone vote for DK? And what about the odd votes this time? Can we expect some suspicion of each other? Do they recognize the handwriting and know exactly who voted for whom, or are they clueless? (I mean as to the voting history, not all the other ways they're clueless.)

And does anyone believe this lousy preview for one moment when it says all alliances have broken down? Sounds like typical Burnit crap to me--make em think alliances aren't a factor, yep, thing of the past...

Any thoughts on any of this from you spoiler folk? I'm not at all convinced I'm right, but I'm looking for the logic I KNOW dabo plotted out and then sneakily refused to reveal...

Edited to fix ridiculous typos...