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Tell me we're not divided
The power play that Joel pulled off on tonight’s episode of Survivor was brilliant and perfectly executed. And it will probably cost him a chance to win the game, because everyone knows he was the one who manipulated the vote to get Mary out. Mikey B. thought he had it all figured out, but he made two mistakes. First, he got too close to Mary and made it obvious that they were a team-slash-alliance-slash-voting bloc. And second, he totally overthought the various scenarios and tried to neutralize situations that were unlikely to happen anyway.

He wanted to be sure that either Chet or Tracy went home, so he had the idea of dividing the votes, in case one or two Immunity Idols were played. Everyone knew that one Idol would have to be played (the one Kathy got on day one). Nobody knew whether Kathy would come back from Exile Island with a second Idol and hand it off to Chet. Nobody, that is, except anyone who had ever seen how Survivor is played, which means every single one of the so-called “Fans.”

If Kathy did get another Idol on Exile Island, the only intelligent thing to do with it would be to keep it for the next Tribal Council. As soon as you hand immunity to someone else, you become the biggest target in the game. They couldn’t have voted her out tonight, but they could have next time. They probably will, unless she has the second Idol. There’s another thing Mikey will have to ponder the next time the Fans go to Tribal Council.

Now that the Fans have revealed their internal alliances, we have three groups that will tangle for control. The three older members, all of whom had reason to be nervous about their position in the tribe, seem a little stronger with the fracture in the younger group between Joel and Mikey B. Joel got them to vote his way this time, but if Mikey is smart enough to devise a complex plan that confuses everyone, maybe he’s smart enough to see how simple it could be to turn Joel’s power play against him.

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