LAST EDITED ON 09-30-09 AT 05:55 PM (EST)LAST EDITED ON 09-29-09 AT 10:44 PM (EST) Survivor 19: Samoa
State of the Spoiling – Episode 3
 Welcome to the SOTS where we try to one-up EPMB and accurately predict the results of Survivor before it airs... sometimes we are right, and sometimes we are not. But, we will eternally try! If you are new to these boards, please take a look at our Community Guidelines. You will find them helpful in navigating your way around SurvivorBlows. If you missed last week’s show, you can read Pepe’s excellent rendition of the show here. Last week was the second installment of the Russell show where he decided another strong woman who was trying to stop him had to go, saving the young, strong, hothead Ben to potentially screw up another challenge or just to keep them up at night sharpening his machete (shades of Matthew there!). Meanwhile, over at Galu, the height of excitement was when Shambo tries to go fishing, instead has a bath and loses the snorkel mouthpiece and then happily exclaims, “good news there’s thousands of fish in the reef!” Now let’s get to this week’s show. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Episode 3: "It's Called a Russell Seed" After spoiling the boots for the past two weeks, CBS is surprisingly quiet this week but in an unprecedented third week in a row, the title is about, wait for it, Russell! Michel brought us the title, "It's Called a Russell Seed." We know from the show preview that Russell H. (AKA RussHell) says this:
 The big question this week is: Can Russell continue to control his tribe and play his evil games? The CBS press release reads:
RUSSELL STRUGGLES TO MAINTAIN HIS CONTROL, AS THE TRIBE TURNS ON ONE OF HIS ALLIES ON "SURVIVOR: SAMOA"
A clever lie turns a tribe against one of its most harmless members.
Meanwhile, at the reward challenge, the chief of one tribe makes a controversial decision that lands him in the crossfire back at camp Let us turn to the second clue as this is the only mention of Galu this week. We know that “meanwhile, at the reward challenge, the chief of one tribe makes a controversial decision that lands him in the crossfire back at camp” refers to Russell S. (AKA RusSWell) because Galu wins the reward challenge. He gets to choose between a tarp and comfort according to a pre-season interview from Jeff Probst and he chooses bedding. We see Kelly carrying some pillows in the vidcap below. It sounds like RusSWell catches grief for his decision and the weather hasn’t even turned bad yet. 
Love the look on RusSWell's face and they're not even back at camp yet! Returning to the headline, Flowerpower suggests that “Russell struggles to maintain his control” could refer to either Russell, and it adds to the ambiguity this week! However, TV Guide tells us that it is referring to RussHell. “Jaison attempts to gather support to oppose Russell, who struggles to maintain power at Foa Foa.” A voice-over in a promo says that Jaison tries to recruit an army. Since the meanwhile indicates the second part of the clue refers to Galu, “a clever lie turns a tribe against one of its most harmless members,” must refer to Foa Foa. As Brownroach points out, the harmless member most likely is Natalie since she said in an Insider Video that she gets along with everyone on the team. There is no indication of what that lie could be. Michel conjectures that Russell’s preseason strategy to have a love affair could happen here, but its unlikely that the tribe would turn against Natalie if that were the case. Or perhaps Ben starts a lie about Natalie to try to get the target off his back. The lie about Natalie is probably the misdirection for this week. Discussion on the vidcaps and press release clues can be found here. Thanks to flowerpower and emydi for bringing that info to Blows. Reward Challenge: Sea Crates First the Good News: The survivors get bathing suits! Yay, no more RussHell and his stinky underwear! Over the years, the castaways have received their bathing suits or sneakers in tree mail before a challenge, so I assume that is what occurred here. This is the only challenge we see footage from. The survivors must run into the water to retrieve cubes:
 But you can get tackled on your way out before you actually get to the cube:
 
Once the cubes are on land, the teams must open them and solve a puzzle. That is the end of the information that CBS has provided us this week. In all the SOTSs that I have written, this is by far my hardest one. I’ve never had to stand out on a limb quite as far as I have to now with this boot choice! It is very possible that Galu could be going to tribal council this week. Jeff called them overconfident in one promo. The first episode set up John in a negative light. Last week, the negative spotlight was on Yasmin. This week we see RusSWell making a poor leadership choice. I think, though, because the title is about RusHell again and he’s all over the promos, that we will see Foa Foa going to Tribal Council. The stories are being set up on Galu for their first boot, but I think we have to close the story on Russell the puppet master first. Late-breaking idea: Michel has started a thread to discuss the possibility of no IC but a double boot. OFG commented that there's never been a double boot without some hype around it and there has been none. But I can't rule out the possibility. As I said earlier, there is some ambiguity surrounding Galu. The silence from CBS regarding the second half of the show this week has been deafening! A voice over in one of the promos asks, "Can yoga lead to victory?" and Dave is seen saying, "we're going in lean and mean." It's not enough for me to say they are going to tribal council this week though. We can continue this discussion in michel's thread and if any new information comes to light, I will include it here. Back to Foa Foa, in the show preview last Thursday we saw Russell boast about creating the Russell seed to control everyone’s mind. In the web preview we saw him boast about making them zombies under his control. Mick and Liz are featured in black-and-white to emphasize this (much like Marissa and Betsy were featured in black-and-white in earlier weeks to emphasize that they disagreed with RusHell) and RusHell was featured in black-and-white with boss written by him to emphasize this control. But we know that Jaison recruits his army. We hear Mick saying that he's loyal to Jaison and we see Natalie saying 
Natalie is talking to Ashley, but Jaison is right there in the shelter. Natalie could be saying it's me or "him" as the boot choice tonight trying to get Ashley to sever her alliance with RussHell and vote with her, Jaison and Mick. As the sports promos progressed over the weekend, the questions that were asked about Russell changed. A five second sports promo asks, “Can Evil Russell continue to dominate the game?” But I think the 10 second promo sums up the boot this week the best. First we see RussHell, the puppet master in action, but then we are asked can anyone stop him? And then we see Liz, Mick and Ashley in black-and-white: 
Note the addition of Ashley in black-and-white in this promo after can anyone stop him? We now have a majority voting block of Jaison, Natalie, Mick, Liz and Ashley. Usually the bootee gets some promo time, but in this case, the bootee is the one that we don't see strategizing with anyone: Ben. (However, Ben is the one person to get a lone shot in the press release photos this week. The picture is below.) There is some other circumstantial evidence that might point to a Ben boot also. In Jeff’s episode one blog he said that Ben might be a nice guy, he didn’t know; he didn’t know him that well (indicating that Ben could leave early before he got a chance to know him). Last week there was a fair amount of editing emphasis on why Ben should be the boot. Ashley was shown waffling on whom to vote against. It wouldn’t take much for her to vote for Ben this week. At the end of the show we saw quite a lot of animosity from Betsy towards Ben. However, in her interviews she said that she loved Ben. For such a dramatic shift to happen they would have had to get to know each other at Loser Lodge. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Other fun reads on on-going topics: Samoa's weather: Snidget notes that it was rocked by a tsunami this week. Jeff said that the survivors have a tough time with the heat and dehydration this time around. OFG reported medical evacuations tied to the weather. OFG started a thread to discuss Russell finding the HII and if he can lay claim to it Immunity Idols, Clues and Strategies. Snidget keeps us updated with the latest exit interviews here. This week we hear from Mike and Betsy. Squidproquo is keeping us up with Jiffy’s EW Blog here. Survivor Blows is famous for its the Players, the Game and Editing thread. Check out how michel thinks that Russell may have had help from Jasmin and/or Jaison in finding the HII! And lastly, don’t forget to vote for the Survivor you think will get the boot this week!
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To Summarize:
Reward Challenge: Galu
Immunity Challenge: Galu?
Visiting Castaway: ???
Bootee: Ben
The Tribe has Spoken and this outlaw must leave: 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thanks to Survivor Phoenix for their photos and to Burrito taco at Survivor Sucks for the gifs. Special thanks to all the peeps for their insight this week. And a big Yay to CBS for posting their videos on youtube this season! ETA: voting link 
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