I had to go back to the point where I missed the connection.I remember thinking that maybe Ashley and Ralph were semi-finalists waiting while Phillip and Natalie had their face-off.
This is where I had it ...
Because Rob and Grant draw each other for a first round, one of them will be out of the running and there won't be a match of the Titans at the end. If the short bench theory is correct, they are first, because no one is on that bench.
If the line-up is an indication, Steve and Ralph will go against each other, next Andrea with whoever that shoe belongs to, and then the last two -- Ashley, Natalie, Phillip are the other three. Natalie and Phillip may be the only gender-mixed pair.
With the Phillip and Natalie match, we see Ralph and Ashley sitting behind, and I wonder if they are on the short bench. How does that angle look to the rest of you, and the tree in the background?
The thing is, Ashley in semi-finals would likely mean Andrea is not,
Where I lost it was we had Andrea up front somewhere at the end, so I went with her beating Ashley. As Ashley was sitting by Ralph, then Ralph must have lost to Steve. It all went wrong with the assumption that Andrea won her first round.
But we had the information. We saw that Ralph was sitting between Steve and Phillip later, not next to Ashley. Why would he move? He would move because he competed again after sitting next to Ashley. Actually he competed twice. When he lost the finals, he went and sat next to his buddy Steve. When Ashley lost the semi-finals, she went and sat next to the other girls (IIRC).
The only missing piece was why was Andrea up there (probably eating), if she had not done well in the challenge? I figured the winner chose two to eat (and posted that somewhere here, that Rob was not on the bench because he had gotten chosen). But ... I did not think Grant would choose Andrea over Ashley or Natalie. I hit a wall there.
I wish I had followed the Ralph and Ashley on the short bench idea further, to see where it took me -- to Andrea losing her first round. I am not that good at spatial relationships, so I couldn't tell which bench they were on when viewed behind Phillip.
I hope they give us some good challenge footage this week! And I hope I/we explore all the angles instead of being quick to accept one explanation, because that is how we can get from "almost" to "nailing it."