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Getting Real, I enjoyed your Good vs Evil post very much.
Same goes for Astroline's post on overconfidence.
I know I misread the story about Corinne, I really thought that she'd own up her evil side in front of the jury and got hung up on the wrong side of Good vs Evil debate. But here's what I saw in the last episode:


As I wrote before, Kenny doesn't have the story of a winner. This week, his story was all about jealousy:
Looking at the progression of his scenes is interesting:

- He was part of the celebrations for kicking out Randy that offended Bob. In that scene, Bob served as the audience's conscience.

- Kenny then had a great scene catching fish but he soon spoiled it. When Sugar said that Bob was smart, here's what we saw on screen:

(Thanks Warrior for the vidcap)

Just like Alexis saying that Ozzy was the best competitor killed Erik's story, this quote kills Kenny's story because, immediately after that scene, we had Kenny's confessional about wanting to eliminate Bob. He wants to pull power into his hands as if he was jealous of the attention paid to Bob.

- The reward challenge was a showdown between Bob and Kenny as they tried to solve a puzzle. Bob won that handily and we again hear Kenny saying that he wanted Bob out.

- Next we had the family visit and suddenly Kenny told his sister that he wanted to eliminate Matty. What happened? Kenny, the guy who had been trying to "get the girl" ever since episode #1, saw Matty propose to his girlfriend while he was left alone with his sister. It leads me to believe that editors wanted to show Kenny acting once more out of jealousy.

- Finally, if you combine Kenny's last confessional ("It's a win-win situation for me…I'll be the biggest strategist in Survivor history") with his expressions at tribal council, especially when he encouraged Corinne to play the idol, you see that Kenny was outwitted. That's not how Survivor portrays the scheming winners. In that sense, showing the audience that Kenny used big block letters to write MATTY served the purpose of painting Kenny as a failed strategist.

Kenny will have a lot of damage control to do and he knows it. The last time we saw him during tribal, he was rubbing Matty's shoulder as if he was happy to see him safe.

Susie : She may be in a very good position, not having any targets on her back, but she looks like the contestant that sits in front of the jury with nothing to show.

Crystal has practically disappeared since the merge. This week, she had a short confessional about Andre but nothing else until after the immunity challenge. Then, her confessional went: "If their idol is real, Matty's going home but if they have a fake idol, Corinne is going home. I've been weighing who is better to take out and my heart tells me to take Matty out. Corinne isn't a threat to me in any shape or form. This is my only chance to get him out and this is wrecking my brain. The mental part of this game is kicking my ass."

That confessional showed that she didn't follow through on her plan which would have actually saved her alliance. (Crystal Cox outwitted Crystal Cox!) Matty is still in the game and her ally revealed his hand. Crystal even said she missed her only chance of getting rid of him (just like she missed her only chance of getting rid of Sugar's idol during their Fang days). Now, it would make sense that Sugar and Matty get rid of her.

Bob wasn't kidding when he said that he was starting to play the game. His story has picked up but, when you consider its lack of substance before the merge, he looks more like the character that the audience would like to see win rather than the winner. His story is too centered on the immunity idols. What happens when there aren't anymore idol tricks to play?

Sugar lost a lot of her sweetheart role in the last two episodes which isn't a bad thing at all for her chances but it came too late. Of course, we have to consider Corinne's talk that Sugar will never get the jury's votes as perfect irony if Sugar was the winner. We had Fairplay and Christy promising that Sandra and Jenna would never win. This could be more of the same. Sugar had a very complex story built around her but she was ignored in certain key occasions: Episode #1's introduction sequence, the episodes before she went to Exile Island, the reward in the local village.

Matty, as noted after the episode that saw Marcus get eliminated, has stepped up his game. This is an underdog story and, early on, no one looked to be in a more hopeless situation than Matty. In this episode, all the drama was between Corinne, Bob, Sugar and Kenny. Matty became a target only after the family visit and he was saved only by Crystal and Kenny's miscalculation. He could have been ignored but we still saw him trying to hold his group together and telling us he was aware of the dangers that Bob presented.

His proposal was a good TV moment and had to be shown but his confessionals about personal growth and digging deep built up nicely his character.

Matty certainly looks like our winner.