@avclub-858b67085072a6f2403cf500871f4068:disqus My theory is that Brenda is overcorrecting.  Last time she schemed a lot and got booted.  This time her plan seems to be to hang back and don't rock the boat until absolutely necessary.  This is okay to an extent, but she seems to be taking it too far.

For me it was not that hard to watch for the very reason you give @avclub-c1fe85b855c6d045b827f74a1e2c3fd7:disqus .  When a movie is just endless misery, breaking all bonds with reality or dramatic interest, I tend to disengage.  I know that the worst possible thing will always happen and none of it will feel remotely…

As soon as that happened I became worried for Brenda  Sad that it's come to that.

There was a quick shot of Phillip leaning over and saying something to Brenda just before she mentioned Andrea - my assumption was that the idea came from Phillip.

@avclub-a5fdfa672284da6bf4f4326e2b3698bd:disqus I think Andrea is a solid player (I even picked her as one of my players in the mini-game), but I think this was not her best week and I find the arguments you are making for her here unconvincing.  She should have been thinking about the idol all along, as the favorites…

Also: Entertainment Weekly's Must List of the mustiest people in showbiz.

You could definitely be right.  Rob does like to play it coy about things he knows.  There was a lot of delicate stepping around the fact that this season would be Fans vs. Favorites.

So your argument is Andrea is a great player because she didn't account for an idol until Eddie told her to?

It's been a couple days and I only listened, but my impression was that they said they would be happy to work together.  Is there awkwardness in the video to the question that isn't really in the audio?

All it proves is that Reynold thinks they are in an alliance.  This would all have been brilliantly played by Malcolm, except for the fact that he went to Sherri and Dawn and tried to get them to flip.

@avclub-a5fdfa672284da6bf4f4326e2b3698bd:disqus There will always be a possibility that an idol holder will catch a vibe and play their idol.  By your logic you would almost never vote for someone with an idol (which has happened a lot recently - Rob, Coach, Malcolm last season).  The fact is that the counterexample…

@avclub-a1967e6de4ca99fb2635d94b99453928:disqus So you saying he's Schmidt from New Girl?

My recollection is that Dawn thought about flipping with Cochran, then won immunity and decided she shouldn't.  After he did it, I thought she was pretty forgiving and understood why he did it.  The rest of that tribe though…

My theory is that Corrine had no real connection to Reynold, Eddie, or Erik (as confirmed in her post-boot talking head) and wanted someone other than Michael in this new alliance that was with her instead of Malcolm.  That way when they get down to it, she would have more ammo in a battle for control with Malcolm.…

Erik could be that oblivious or it could be that editors were trying to maintain a shred of mystery by not showing us definitely that Erik and Sherri were voting Corrine.  Who knows!

When she was talking about needing to make moves I was concerned that she would start something just to be active.  Glad to see that her actions turned out to be necessary.

@JudgeReinhold:disqus Congrats on the early weekend!

Obviously exploitation can happen, but my problem with the story was the way it portrayed that exploitation as common and frequently used misleading statistics to do so.  For example, after listening to the program one would probably walk away assuming that the number of children on disability has gone up…

Disappointed to see the extremely misleading episode of This American Life on The Best this week.  The weird slant they chose to take has been thoroughly debunked in many locations, but Media Matters seems to get the most play:  http://mediamatters.org/res…

While the post-merge is where Fans vs Favorites really shines, I agree that the pre-merge stuff was decent.  The disarray of the Fans was pretty enjoyable, especially with Joel being so disruptive for apparently no reason (I've since heard an interview with him where he says he was more like the older players since he…