My random thoughts while watching:

I feel like Shan made a mistake announcing to the tribe that Brad saw her as his #1 and that she was keeping his advantage info from everyone.

A reward challenge with three tribes and this many players left? Jeff!!

Baby turtles :heart: :heart: :heart:

I liked the turtles story more than whatever they were trying to construct with Heather being bad at the challenge. Her confessional after about it being a personal victory was nice and touching but who going on Survivor is gonna quit at that challenge anyway? But I get it. Pulling on those heartstrings.

Erika's confessional referring to Heather as a poor little thing was funny to me juxtaposed with the overdone sentimental music they did up for Heather's whole thing.

Deshawn's confessional referring to Erika as "sneaky" and cutting the head off the snake, not so great. Can we not. Find some different words.

I'm happy for Syd being tied up with two meat shields, but if this season ends in the fire making challenge she certainly didn't look great trying at fire. I hope they stop with that. I'm high key rooting for Erika to make the merge and actually be a problem for blue, but it feels like Deshawn and Danny are in it for the long haul.

Genie calls Ricard a mastermind and that Shan was just in on it. The edit really has pushed the viewer into thinking Shan is controlling everything. They're really shortchanging Ricard. This episode and what she does to get the advantage back off of JD is probably why. I'm guessing he leaves and that's why, but... voting JD here? It seems a weird choice after last week, siding with him over Brad, that seemed like a long term decision. First Brad trusted her, gone. JD is giving you his stuff, gone. Wasn't their first boot also heavily trusting her and said in exit press it was Shan not unbagging the puzzle pieces right that led to them losing the first challenge? :lol:

Fun episode! Biggest complaint for me is I want to see more Xandar. I feel like he's not long for the game, which is sad. I had some hopes he could be a contender but they rarely give him stuff.

Oh and I loved the wink JD did during tribal! So good.

Though Genie voting for JD makes everything he was saying at the time just the show lying to the audience, the whole him trying to convince Genie to not do the shot in the dark so she'll have a vote, implying he might vote with her, etc. the wink telling us he's voting Genie, her whole conflicted emotions and feeling like it's her the whole time. The question they give us: will Genie play the shot in the dark or will she vote for Shan or Ricard? Then she votes for JD. :lol: Survivor obfuscates so much. I wish we had a better idea of things. I don't think it would take away from the episodes if tribal dynamics and the scrambles before the votes were a little more clearly defined and fleshed out.