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ULONG:
Ashlee and James should have been the first two gone from Ulong. They were the weakest and dumbest.

Even if Jeff hurts his ankle at the same spot, Steph+BJ+IB+Jolanda could have beaten Gregg/Tom/Ian in the "chase you around the wading track" challenge.

Kim was edited to look like the dumb, weak, lazy flirty girl, but she had a point when she said that a team of muscle doesn't do any good when you expend yourself working too much at camp.

When Ulong was at F5, they were dumb to TRY to vote out IB, and then even dumber to actually vote out Angie. James should have gone then.

And the last three IC's (rope tying/knots, sliding puzzle, word search) were no good for a tribe of dumb jocks. Jo, Kim, Jeff, Angie could have helped then.

GALU: (I expect over time we will be able to better dissect Galu's many flukes)
First, I don't blame Galu for winning all those challenges. I liked how they were able to show up to every challenge and basically hand-pick the ideal team for each unique challenge. Except for Monica, we saw that all the Galu women were really strong physical competitors. Monica makes up for this by showing that she was really good at puzzles and mental stuff.

Galu's issue boils down to really unhealthy social dynamics and having lots of big egos around. Dave, Laura, John, Shambo all have really strong personalities. This seems to be the reason Shambo and Laura didn't get along. Erik, while being very headstrong, showed in the recap that he was loyal to Russel, the elected leader. Yasmin tells us that she was really only close to Shambo and Russel, so she's outside the core group. Main clique is Laura/Kelly/Monica/Brett/Dave/John/Erik

Yasmin vote: We saw lots of bizarre tribal situations occur here. Shambo had become a social outcast by this point (Day 12). Monica had just blown the challenge lead, and thus the challenge for Galu. If Galu had lost earlier in the game, they might have taken out Monica, for physical weakness, or Shambo, for social rifts. Instead, they pick Yasmin (against Russel's judgment) basically for not working much at camp. Usually, that's the criterion for eliminating someone on day 3 or day 6, not after 4 rounds. Yas also tells us that she chose to do less in an ill-conceived strategy to not have an reason to receive backlash for screwing something up (like losing a snorkel or a chicken). Now, Yasmin was clearly out of her element, and really did nothing at camp, but after showing in several challenges how fierce a competitor she was, why on earth wouldn't you want to keep her around? With 9 other tribemates, it's not like Yasmin's laziness at camp is actually detrimental to their survival. Plus, I think Yasmin would have been easier to appease and fold into the tribe than Shambo, who made arbitrary decisions based on imaginary social situations.

After Russel got medevac'd, we again saw really weird social politics in Galu. The guys seemed to fear the Laura/Monica team, and elected Shambo as their puppet leader (then proceed to undermine her power constantly. See: Danger Dave Ball). Dave finally did admit later that there was really nothing to fear in Monica, that John was being too paranoid. They had thought about throwing the fishing/puzzle challenge to get rid of Shambo or Monica (one of the two), and it would have been BRILLIANT to vote out Shambo at this point, removing the loose cannon and keeping 7 Galu who were committed to their tribemates and the numbers.

Galu had a game plan at F12 to vote out Jaison, and blew it in a 5-minute deicision to change to Erik. All Galu has said in post-exit interviews that the night after Erik was voted out, they came back to camp and realized that John was the real Galu traitor, not Erik. We saw Brett try to disagree and get them to wisen up, but no go. I can't decide if this is a testament to Galu's stupidity or to Natalie's amazing social game to have influenced the women of Galu so strongly. Probably a lot of both. We also have learned outside the episodes that Shambo was never really "with" FF, just Russel, and only betrayed Galu when a) Erik was betrayed and b) if it meant getting rid of Laura somewhere down the road. By sticking with Jaison, Galu could have kept the numbers.

Kelly: This was brilliant gameplay on FF's part to target Kelly, rather than an obvious target like Monica, with the idol. Someone pointed out in another forum that tribes would be a lot more successful if they targeted the Edgardo/Kelly/arbitrary types early in the merge phase. However, Galu could have kept their numbers by NOT voting for Russel, like Monica suggested, just in case he had the idol. We saw Dave's "brilliant analytical mind" immediately dismiss this. Bye, Kelly.

After this, they were basically hopeless.

SUMMARY:
Galu was spoiled by having a strong team to win lots of early challenges, creating a janky social dynamic within the tribe, leading to dumb strategic moves. Ulong, on the other hand, were just a bunch of dumb jocks.