LAST EDITED ON 12-19-02 AT 04:19 PM (EST)

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NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE THREAD WHERE THE MESSAGE BOARD POSTERS
VOTE FOR THEIR 'OFFICIAL' PICKS. THAT THREAD IS HERE
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J/H/C/B

• Brian wins the Final Four immunity. The vidcaps seem to back this up.

• Brian decides to take Helen and Clay to the Final 3, figuring it's a win/win/win scneario for him in the Final 3 immunity (if Brian wins, he's in... if Clay wins, Brian's in... if Helen wins, he's in.) Therefore Jan is the first to be booted (no MamaKim threat this season.)

• The Final 3 immunity comes, and based on the Final 2 leaks, clearly Helen doesn't win it. It's also very difficult to envision the weak, lazy Clay winning an endurance challenge, so this one clearly goes to Brian.

• Brian, who is definitely more Richard Hatch than Colby Donaldson, takes this season's Keith -- namely Clay -- to the Final 2. Helen is booted is prevented from becoming the second Survivor winner from the SAME SMALL TOWN OF MIDDLETOWN, RHODE ISLAND (think there's something in the water over there?)

• Clay and Brian face off and Brian wins... probably 5-2.

• CBS and Burnett sneak off into the night hoping and praying that February's premiere of "Survivor 6" can somehow re-energize this franchise and repair all the damage that the uninteresting damage that this season's edition (capped off by a porno star victory) has done after all the great restoration work that "Survivor 4" had accomplished
  

As far the "strategies exposed don't win" theory, I refer folks back to S1's Dicque -- he was exposed (in more ways than one) all season and yet won big.

Also remember Burnett's comments when this season started that this season was going to remind the viewers of Richard Hatch -- of course it will remind us, because Burnett had opted to edit the series in the same manner as he edited Hatch's season! ...and also remember the outrage over the "in hiding" editing of Vee as last season's winner -- Burnett has learned his lesson from that and opted to take a more direct (perhaps overly-so) editing to this season's edition. Yes folks might be disappointed that the "obvious" winner won... but that's probably preferable to the alternative where the faithful viewers watch three months of television only to feel they were jiped and clearly not shown the "real" story.

Hope everyone had fun this season and we'll see you back soon (that's assuming you don't opt to stick around and discuss the fun that begins in January -- "The Bachelorette," "Celebrity Mole," and "Joe Millionaire" among others.)

Happy holidays,
SB