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The article is pretty spot on I think. I can't totally fault CBS even for the editing, because they were dealing with a pretty thin story in terms of the people playing. Galu's spectacular failure is kinda odd because it occured with very little drama. Normally an 8-4 alliance blowing up has some true dynamism but this was really a case of people just outsmarting themselves. It is true that other Shambo being at the bottom we didn't really get a good sense of the dynamic of who was really on top of the Galu alliance but maybe answer really wasn't all that clear because they kept winning. The Russell-centric editing was pretty annoying, this is true. In my own opinion the comparison that comes to mind is with Season 5 in the sense that it was really a ride along with one player type of an edit. The difference was that Brian was skillful at keeping his cockiness to himself - Russell was not. And even at that Brian almost lost to Clay (of all people) but a big factor in that was that he was able to get people he backstabbed to vote for him (only to find out later what he did). Btw I'm not comparing Russell to the great one - I just think that's the sort of season edit they were going for here. Russell was the midget king in a land of pretty bland characters (I think a ton of screen time wouldn't have made Brett even remotely interesting.)

I agree with the article that Russell didn't really lead a lot of the decisions - his style actual was one where he set up 2 options that he felt were favorable for him, but he didn't get his way a good chunk of the time. If he really coulda swung the vote so that Shambo stayed instead of Mick that was a huge blunder IMO. Jeff probably picked the one combo of opponents (Shambo and Jaison) that he may have had a chance to win against (via a 4-3-2 split type of deal).

It's funny that it never occured to Russell that he was the only one who seemed to think that nobody wanted to go to the jury with him. The fear of Brett was obvious and sensible by the others - he was the one "true" Galu that people could hang their votes on. But when left with 3 people who literally voted all of the jury out, well, it's much easier to pull the strategy equation out and get into the personal.

One last random thought - who'd a thunk that Erik of all people would've actually put together such a compelling little speech there at the end? I do think the jury was plenty decided ahead, Dave's question seemed to actually be designed to build up Russell before they knocked him down.

-QG

Shred wrote:

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Natalie should have hot bumped up screentime in the first 3 episodes

That may be the best freudian slip I've seen on this board in quite awhile :)
-QG