Survivor: Winners at War, Episode 4 "I Like Revenge" Analysis

"I almost punched myself in the face."

-Tyson Apostol

This season continues to be emotional and exciting with another great episode where I genuinely didn't know who was going to be voted out.  It's a bummer to see Tyson go, especially when it was a somewhat questionable move, but it's still a fun ride.

Who Played Well:

Starting on the Dakal tribe, the Unconnected Alliance of Nick, Sophie, Wendell, and Yul all made a great move in eliminating Tyson.  They didn't piss anyone off and kept their majority.  Nick may have been awful in the Immunity Challenge, but I really liked his move to throw a vote on Kim just in case Tyson played an Idol.

Moving over to Sele, Adam did pretty well on his apology tour and made the right call in playing dead.  I don't know how much good it will do him due to Boston Rob throwing him under the bus, but he's trying.  He also kept his tribe in the Immunity Challenge and gave them the chance they needed to win.

Rob and Michele were amazing in the Immunity Challenge.  That's one of the best comebacks I've ever seen.  Rob's lie to Jeremy and Michele was also fantastic and it seemed like they bought it.  Not a great look for Michele, but her challenge performance outweighs her possibly falling for a lie.

Who Sucked:

Back on Dakal, Tony, Sandra, and Sarah all made the wrong move in not getting rid of Tyson.  The edit presents it as Sandra making the final call.  I'll have some thoughts on that further down, but if that's the case, then Sandra made an awful move in going after Tyson and Sarah and Tony didn't have much choice but to go along with it.  Also, Sarah was awful in the Immunity Challenge.

On Sele, both Denise and Parvati were pretty pathetic in the Immunity Challenge leaving Adam to shoulder the entire key grabbing portion of the challenge.

Jeremy also seemed to fall for Rob's lie about Adan.  We'll see if that pays off or not.

Other:

And then there's Kim.  On paper, she should have gone with the plan to vote out Tyson.  Maybe she wanted to, but Sandra shut it down and she just went with the majority.  The other possibility is Kim wouldn't go along with it because Sophie has the other half of her Idol.  This is a big question mark for me and I would really like to hear her thoughts on this vote.

We really didn't get enough of Ben one way or the other.

As for Tyson, I think he was 100% right in his thinking and I won't be surprised to see Sandra, Tony, Sarah, and Kim be voted out quickly.  It all seemed to come down to that Sandra didn't trust him, and she shouldn't, but I think voting him out was a huge mistake.

Verdict:

The Best Player of the Episode goes to Boston Rob Mariano for throwing Adam under the bus and for his performance in the Immunity Challenge.

The Worst Player of the Episode goes to Sandra Diaz-Twine (don't @ me) for voting out Tyson.  She seemed the most on the fence about it and I have to assume she's the one who shut that plan down.

It's still shocking to me that Sandra, Rob, Parvati, and Tony are all still in this game, but I have a feeling we're going to lose one of them with the swap next week...