I don't think they ask Rodney back. He's entertaining in small doses, but his misogynistic viewpoints came off really, really poorly.

Outside of challenges, Joe has completely dropped off the map.

Mike's an odd player, because he shows a lot of those outwardly dumbass qualities, but he's also repeatedly shown an ability to read people. He has much more self-awareness than somebody like Dan.

That's a great point on how they should have allowedTyler/Carolyn to dictate the NC vote, rather than just automatically going Kelly. Alliances don't use that tactic nearly often enough when trying to woo swing votes. I wonder why.

I imagine it's difficult for somebody like Sierra to switch alliances when she doesn't know any of the people from the other tribe. Devil you know is better than the Devil you don't kind of thing. Unless you're Will. Then, sure, I don't know that Devil or where any of these people have formed relationships, but count…

Even stranger than the Luc Longley pull is that there have now been two unconnected references to the mid-90's Bulls this season.

Will thinks he's in an alliance with Rodney, Carolyn and Kelly, when Carolyn and Kelly already have strong alliances with Tyler and Mike respectively. Even if Jenn's voted out tonight, that thing was never going to work for more than a few votes.

That was fun. It's still going to be tricky for Jenn and co. to pull off a complete turnaround, but I imagine the dynamic duo of Rodney and Will are going to help them out by doing something stupid next week. Regardless, I hope Jenn/company see that Carolyn and Tyler are a pair here. It should be very, very telling to…

More Phil/Carol, less Phil-hopelessly-pining-after-Melissa/Phil-being-jealous-of-Todd. The Phil and Carol dynamic is the most interesting on the show. It's more or less been pushed to the back-burner to develop those other relationships, but I really hope it gets built back up again.

That may ultimately be the case, but I need more than one episode to buy the Shirin redemption arc.

To be fair to me, the way she worded it in the confessional was not the way she worded it on Twitter. Had she worded the confessional differently, I would have included that information in my joke about murdered siblings.

You axe Joaquin in case he has an alliance with the WC's you don't know about that might come back to bite you at the merge. You know Rodney has no such possible pre-existing alliance because you've been with him the whole time.

Jeff generally doesn't like to interfere with the game in terms of plots playing out. Like when Tony had the TP idol and claimed it still worked even when it no longer did. Jeff did nothing to interrupt that at Tribal that we saw.

My guess: They knew he was talking, but they probably couldn't hear what he was saying and just assumed that it was Mike being Mike, mumbling some sort of gibberish.

Joe started out strong but has more or less disappeared since that vote-split thing. We almost never hear from him in confessional anymore. Does not bode well for him.

I think that Carolyn is going to kill Rodney in his sleep after one day around him. It's difficult seeing somebody like her aligning with Batman.

Mike's a much, much better player than his worst moments.

That was a short-lived bromance. Subtly interesting decision by Mike to axe Joaquin instead of Rodney. Not only did he break up Batman and Robin, he insured that if there's a White Collar alliance he doesn't know about, it has almost no chance of flourishing without major help. Rodney is left floating out in the…

Had a "They make HOW much?" moment a few months ago when I found out that Judge Judy pulls in over $45 million a year. That is fucking insane. More insane: She makes that for just 52 filmed episodes per year.

Had no clue whatsoever about FJ, wildly guessed Michelangelo, was rewarded for my ignorance. Thanks, universe!