LAST EDITED ON 11-14-11 AT 00:10 AM (EST)

Well, I don't know. I'd argue we've seen just as much of Sophie so far as a winner like Vecepia, for example.

I know I'm picking the quintessential UTR winner, but it illustrates my point a little. I think when Vecepia won Marquesas, the editors realized that she didn't really create a big story for herself... So the only way they could keep her in the picture was to show her talking to Sean/Rob or Neleh/Paschal/Kathy about strategy and have her comment on other contestants (like her famous Ep1 comment about Sarah).

(I don't remember much of Guatemala, but I don't remember Danni really having much of a personal story until the merge either. Even someone like Aras during Exile Island fell into the background (in favor of the Casaya nonsense) in the middle of the season.)

We could just be looking at a case where Sophie just never creates drama or anything. Y'know, kinda like Rick this season. But, whereas Rick just falls into the scenery every single episode, they like to pepper small scenes of Sophie throughout the episodes. Remember, they established that Sophie/Coach connection really early on when they were speaking Russian (or German?) to each other in Ep1. It's a smaller moment, but so was showing Edna staying behind to help Coach (and then Edna has stuck around).

They didn't have to show Cochran talking voting strategy to Sophie last episode, right before TC. I'm sure Cochran talked about the vote to a lot of people.

We're getting into a definite editing analysis here (although I'm spoiler-free so it doesn't matter), but I'd argue that Sophie one of the few people left who actually still has an okay chance of winning (based on the editing). I wouldn't call her the front-runner or anything, but she's definitely a person to watch.

A 2003 IceCat original