“...... They’ll use the medallion next time, take the advantage, and pull off a victory. Least that’s my guess...”
The medallion is a two edged sword. Once you use it it goes to the other side.
Using it last night would have been a waste. With the extra bucket lead it looks like they still would have gotten beaten on the puzzle.
Any challenge where it looks like your team can beat them heads up you need to hold the medallion.
Do not be too quick to use power - and give it away.
I understand what you're saying, using it last night wouldn't have made a difference, in theory - who knows if it would have made those working the puzzle work faster had they gotten the pieces first.
I did miss something, if the medallion can be used at any challenge, and if that is the case, the youth would have used it at the next reward challenge, giving back the medallion for the next immunity challenge.
Plus, the other problem with not using it is that if a team loses, that's another floating target on the backs of everyone who said 'don't use it', and in a social game like Survivor, that can be the difference between staying and going home at tribal council.
As an aside, Survivor really needs to add an extra hour to the first episode. I'd really like to see more of the first three days, for both teams, than what they show now. Too often we only get tiny glimpses of how things are going, because they've only got 25 minutes to show us what's going on outside the introduction, the challenge and the tribal council.
Nothing has really matched that first episode of Survivor in the first season, where they didn't really know what they were doing, and yet turned out one of the best starts ever. That extra 40 minutes could break out from the formula they've fallen into and give us a whole lot more insight into how the tribes are doing, give us more characters to follow, and stop so directly highlighting who's going home at the end of the episode.
Won't happen, I know, as CBS needs that lead in to prop up whatever show's going to go off at 9pm, but I can still wish and want.
I read an interview of Probst regarding the Medallion. He said when they tested the challenge, they zig zagged the troughs back and forth, so filling the barrel took a lot longer. With that in mind, the medallion advantage was huge.
But both teams did the unexpected, and just ran the troughs straight down to the barrel, so it filled a lot faster than their test runs. So the advantage would not have been as great as expected. And there is really no way of knowing if they would have been helped by the advantage.