Survivor: Tocantins, week seven

We’re merged now. Everyone’s in brand new fanciful green buffs and are calling themselves Forza. As far as I’m concerned, the merge is when Survivor begins for real. The game from here on out is less about eating bugs and dodging twists and more about strategy, positioning, social skills and deceit.

This week we open on Coach doing a rain dance or Pilates or something. Apparently his game plan up to this point has been to try to not get on everyone’s nerves and keep everyone happy… but now the gloves come off and it’s all about him. This guy is so totally oblivious as to what his tribe actually thinks of him. His mind is so totally removed from the game that he doesn’t have the first clue what his place in it is. He’s feeling big and strong and invincible, and sees everything as a foregone conclusion. Players like this only make the merge if smarter players believe they can make use of them; in this case the smarter player is Tyson, Coach’s closest ally, who has every intention of cutting Coach loose the split second it becomes advantageous to do so.

So Jalapao comes into the merge with four members. Two of these members have an alleged Exile Alliance which — shock! amaze! — has apparently completely fizzled. Brendan and Sierra (the Timbira half of this alliance) don’t say anything at all to reassure Taj and Stephen (the Jalapao half) that there is still, in fact, an alliance. Good job, guys!

It looks as though the former Jalapaos are safe anyway; Tyson and Coach both want to take out Brendan first. Brendan has an extremely thick skull, so blindsiding him before he thinks to use his idol probably won’t take any special strategy beyond telling him, “Hey, Brendan, don’t use your idol.” Coach and Tyson both hit it off with J.T., whose closest ally is Stephen, who has Taj eating out of his cupped hands. Throw in Debbie (because hey, why not) and they have more than enough votes to completely cover their hind ends whether Brendan pulls the idol or not. Of course Coach thinks he’s the mastermind and takes all the credit for the scheme in a confessional.

Seriously, dude even calls himself “the Dragonslayer”.

It keeps coming back around to Coach, I know, but it’s just infinitely amusing to me how completely outclassed this guy is. It’s like watching a fat kid with a water noodle competing in the Olympic 100m backstroke. He has no idea Stephen and Tyson are laying track all around him. He has no idea J.T. lied to his face. He honestly believes he’s going to win the whole thing by being super honest and telling everyone else how disappointed he’ll be if he finds out they aren’t being super honest. My favorite big had to be when he said, “If you lie to me, you’d better be prepared to go to war.” Coach, this is Survivor, not gym class. By the time someone’s lied to you in this game, it’s already to retaliate. You don’t get the chance to “go to war” if Probst snuffs your torch.

In the end Joe (who has done more or less nothing worth noting the entire season) got an infected knee and was taken out of the game, which means it doesn’t matter who won immunity because there wasn’t a vote. Kind of boring, but now we get a few extra days of tension at camp while the alliance tries to keep their anti-Brendan plot afloat a couple more days.

Who’s gonna win? Stephen has an idol in one back pocket, a big strong country boy in another, is at the top of one alliance and the bottom of another, and has what it takes to finagle his way to pretty much any position he wants to be in. And he’s done all of this without marking himself as a serious threat. He’ll probably never win another challenge for the rest of the game, but I honestly don’t think he needs to.