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I'm a longtime lurker (since S1) and occasional poster. Thought I would add my two cents.

I do feel edgic is critically wounded by this and a few other recent seasons. If the editors can't see the importance of introducing the winner as part of the group of folks who get featured in episode 1, then they're not following fundamental story-line development patterns. The editors have basically killed edgic -- in its original form, and in most forms in which you could potentially create it. I think that's a shame, because there's no more die-hard group of fans than the folks on this thread every season.

I'm also pretty broadly unhappy with the final episode. I think Natalie is a deserving winner with a coherent strategy that she followed through with consistency and skill. But she decided to reveal it in the *recap* and to keep it mostly hidden before the jury. The whole thing about "I saw strong women get targeted" is crap. It may be true, but it's weak to the point of being offensive. There were indeed strong women on Foa Foa from the beginning. If you're in Natalie's position, and you see strong women having early doubts about Russell, and you realize Russell is a snake, do you want to ally yourself with the snake (who's word can never be trusted and who will get rid of you on a whim when it suits him) or the strong women who you might form a genuine bond with? Which is the moral choice -- if, let's say, you're a strong Christian who will vocally call on your Christianity to back you up in later phases of the game?

Natalie played a good game in part because she was like Russell in her willingness to be tough and even ruthless, because she used her social skills to gain trust at key moments from the folks she and Russell were targeting, and because she used those social skills to get everyone to relate to her and like her. Great game. But not presented to the jury. And, incidentally, not quite as good a game as Russell played, all things considered.

Part of what ruined the ending is that I think we basically had a bad jury, in this instance. You can sense how this jury went from a position of 8-4 dominance over Foa Foa to a highly improbable loss. They're just not an effective group of people. Some of them are smart, individually, but even then they used their smarts to talk themselves in to "clever" moves that were strategically obtuse. I heard a lot of anger from the jury and holier-than-thou moralizing, but the people they should be angry with the most are sitting next to them, because it was their own internal back-stabbing that brought them down. Focusing it on the opposing tribe is just one example of the weird patterns of thought for these guys.

Watching the jury, I realized that there was nothing I could personally think of that would be an obvious way to appeal to them. I don't have any sense what they "wanted" from the final three or what they valued or considered good or bad about their play. This wasn't a jury that could make a thoughtful choice about who to annoint sole survivor, even if their choice, Natalie, was in many ways a deserving winner.

Galu was just a bad tribe. Good at challenges, but epically bad in every other way.