Keys to Survivor Worlds Apart Ep13

Penultimate Episode of the Season:
This is almost the end.  As the episode starts there are 6 castaways left.  By the end, we'll vote one out and be left with a final five.  These five will duke it out on Wednesday May 20th until a final three face off in the final tribal council.  But before all that, here are the highlights of last episode.

Reward Challenge:
Randomly chosen teams of 3 compete in a multi-part challenge.  There are two or three initial parts that each team gets through without trouble.  The final step is to take many wooden blocks, decide which ones have a letter on them and bring them along to use in a puzzle where the team must spell out a 6-word phrase.  Team A is Dan, Rodney, and Sierra.  Team B is Carolyn, Mike, and Will.  Both teams are working on the puzzle, trying to make words out of what they have for letters.  "Reward" "WITH" "WILL" "FIX".  Both teams realize that they should stand up their puzzle pieces and face them away from the other team to prevent cheating.  Time elapses.  30 minutes in and neither team has solved it yet.  Jeff starts subtly giving clues.  More time elapses.  60 minutes in, Jeff is hinting more.  Sierra isn't listening to Jeff, but Mike was paying attention.  Suddenly, Team B thinks they have it.  "A REWARD WITH ALL THE FIXIN'S".  They win!

Rodney puts another guilt trip on Carolyn.  Jeff plays out the pros and cons.  Carolyn decides to keep reward for herself instead of switching places with Rodney.

Reward:
Mike, Carolyn, and Will enjoy a helicopter ride that ends with a delicious feast.  Mike proposes that this be the final 3 in the game.  In Will's confessional, he indicates that Mike is still public enemy number one, so that probably won't be happening.  Carolyn seems to think that working with Mike might be something to consider.

Meanwhile, back at camp, Rodney is so upset at still not going on reward that he proposes the final 3 be himself, Dan, and Sierra.  Dan also finds some unknown fruit that looks like a melon.  The three of them enjoy their own little reward.

Immunity Challenge:
Use a grappling hook to retrieve 3 bags at different distances in the sand ahead of you.  Once you have all 3 bags, open up one and use the ball inside to navigate a hanging labrynth style game using two ropes with handles (this one has been used before).  Sierra, Dan, and Mike are the only players to get to the puzzle with time to work on it.  Dan tries to catch up to Mike, but makes too many fast dangerous moves.  Sierra does catch up to Mike and they're both at the final part of the puzzle, just trying to land their ball in the center recession.  In a close finish, Mike gets immunity.

Tribal:
The story going in to tribal is that Dan and Carolyn are both being brought up as possibilities.  Dan thinks that Carolyn is going home.  Carolyn thinks that Dan is going home.  Mike is trying to insert his own commentary since he is safe.  He's trying to get Dan thinking that his team is voting him out.  He's trying to convince Sierra and Carolyn that the other 3 guys are planning to vote one of them out - using the fact that Dan & Rodney are sleeping in the shelter as "proof" that they feel too safe.  Plus several people are thinking about Dan's advantage and if that will affect their decisions.

On to the voting.  We aren't shown anyone's votes since this one is so up in the air.  The votes are in.  Jeff says "I'll go tally the votes."  Dan decides to play his extra vote, saying he'd rather go down swinging.  Dan goes in and makes an additional vote.  Jeff then actually goes to tally the votes.  When he comes back, Carolyn decides that maybe she shouldn't hold onto her advantage, so she plays her hidden immunity idol, saying "I don't want to go home tonight."  The votes come in - 5 for Carolyn, none of which count, and 2 for Dan.  Dan is the 13th person voted out and the 6th member of the jury.

Best Moves:
1)  Carolyn plays her hidden immunity idol and stays in the game.  Excellent timing.

2)  Mike plants seeds of doubt in Carolyn and Dan, telling them their alliance is against them.  He might be right in both cases.

3)  Sierra sides with Rodney and Will, possibly setting herself up for an upset win next week.

Worst Moves:
1)  Dan plays his advantage.  My opinion is that this play actually caused him to be voted out by inciting Carolyn to play her idol.  From all the discussions I've had about this episode, there's only one scenario where this would have made sense, and that's if Carolyn & Sierra had voted with Mike and were expecting to intentionally cause a tie vote.  But seeing as how ties are extraordinarily rare these days, that wasn't likely.  If 3 or 4 people were voting with Mike, then an extra vote wouldn't help.  If he wanted to go down swinging, he needed to save it for one of the next 2 votes where it could either force a tie or maybe save him if he'd been willing to vote with Mike.

2)  Some might say that Carolyn not giving up reward to Rodney was a bad move, but I can't get behind that.  Sure, it resulted in him getting mad enough to be willing to vote her out, but switching with him could have just put that much more of a target on her back from the other contestants as she'd look like a nicer player trying to sway jury votes.  The reward was the right move.  Get some food, make possible connections, maybe even get a clue to another advantage or idol.

Top 2 players:
Last week, the top 2 were Carolyn and Will.  This week I'm trying to choose 2 of the people in the final 3.

1)  Will.  Nobody is voting out Will.  In challenges he performs worse than the stand-in challenge runners who test it out ahead of time.  Socially he started out likable, but with 3 former No Collar tribe mates and the personally attacked Shirin on the jury, he is no threat to beat anyone.  Obviously I'm not endorsing him for the win, but I'm sure we'll get the chance to see how Shirin will handle him in the final tribal council and it may be the most interesting jury interation.

2)  Sierra.  My guess is that once it is down to 4 players, we could see a tie vote where Rodney & Will vote together against Sierra and either Mike or Carolyn.  If it comes down to a fire-making challenge, we've seen Rodney fail over and over again in challenges, so I give the tie-breaker to Sierra.

Bottom 2 players:
Last week, my bottom 2 were Dan and Mike.  Dan was voted out.  This week, I'm trying to choose the 2 people who won't be in the finals.

5)  Mike.  I'd actually really like to see Mike make it to the end because at this point he seems like he's the biggest fan favorite left, so him winning would be good for the franchise.  But Will said it best last week - Mike is public enemy number one.  The only person left who might consider voting with Mike is Carolyn, but that's not enough to save him.  His only chance at the finals is to win both immunity challenges.  It's possible, just improbable.
4)  Rodney.  He's my best guess at who gets taken out in a surprise twist or if "the alliance" has to turn on themselves again.  If Mike goes first, but then Carolyn wins immunity, someone has to go and my money would be on Rodney.

Predicted Winner:
Here it is.  Based on everything up through now, who do I think walks away with $1 Million this Wednesday at about 10:05 EDT?
CAROLYN
I've had her in my top list of players every week other than this last week.  The only reason she's not part of my top 2 is because I'm going for the most likely finalists.  Carolyn is a slight underdog due to numbers right now.  I'm sticking with her because in the game of Survivor, even though you shouldn't trust anyone, you have to trust someone.  I'm trusting Carolyn to win the big one on Wednesday.

Let Me Have It - Comment:
What do you think of my final 2 and my predicted winner?  Can Carolyn make it through to argue her case?  Am I way off and will Sierra pull off an unlikely victory?  Am I really way off and somehow Rodney or Will argue their way to a million dollars?

Who do you think will win?  Who do you WANT to win?