Extended family
If you like to see an overwhelming underdog beat the odds, you had to love tonight’s Survivor Samoa. After the tribes merged, with the former Galu members outnumbering Foa Foa eight to four, it would have seemed inevitable that Foa Foa would be picked off one by one. As always, though, Russell took matters into his own hands and with John’s help engineered a consensus that was going to vote out Laura and keep the Foa Foa four intact.

Then came the first underdog comeback, as Laura (along with John) won immunity. Russell tried to steer the vote toward Laura’s close ally Monica, and John worked with him. But, as Shambo bluntly informed Russell, that was never going to happen. She said that Erik and Laura would decide who went home, and the plan, a perfectly logical one, was to vote out Jaison but keep Russell in the dark in order to flush out his hidden Immunity Idol.

When John and Erik spoke about John’s plan to get out Monica, Erik knew he was in the minority, so he got John’s permission to vote with Laura against Jaison, to maintain his alliance with her. In return, he tried to strongarm Natalie, Jaison and Mick to vote out Monica, without telling them how his own tribemates were going to vote. “What you need to know, you know,” he told them, and that didn’t sit well with them, especially with Jaison.

That’s when the worm turned. Jaison got his Foa Foa mates to agree to vote out Erik. Natalie then went to Laura and Kelly and convinced them that keeping Erik was dangerous to the women who wanted to make it to the end. With the groundswell of opinion moving against Erik, Russell got paranoid. He thought it was too easy, and he didn’t trust it, so when the time came he played his hidden Idol, squandering a key weapon because of his own misplaced fear.

If there was any doubt before Tribal Council, Erik managed to cement the sentiment there by proclaiming that Foa Foa had nothing to offer Galu, and that all but Russell seemed to have quit on the game. He made a particular example of Jaison, questioning his “résumé,” and he said that although he respected Russell’s resolve, Russell would have to change his alliances soon or be voted out himself. Erik spoke like someone who believes he is in total control.

Russell’s response: “I ain’t gonna stop playing.” By playing the Idol tonight, he proved that he’s still playing hard, but he also proved that his judgment isn’t always as sound as he thinks it is. Still, I think he believed the Idol’s value to him was as a bargaining chip, and now that so many people knew he had it, that value was diminished. In his eyes, mitigating the risk of being voted out tonight trumped any further use of the Idol to him in the game.

Erik, who had considered playing his own Idol, was totally blindsided by the 10-2 vote at Tribal. The only votes that weren’t against him were from himself and Shambo, both against Jaison. Whatever happens next, Foa Foa has done something that seemed impossible, getting out one of their strongest opponents before they lost any of their own players. Overconfidence and paranoia both played their parts tonight, and both are likely to be factors from here on.