Two great episodes! Hope it continues the rest of the season.
Matt probably learned through school sports and it became second nature to shake hands with the competiton. Rob probably saw it as 1) a way to play up breaking up the “couple” 2) a fast pass to getting rid of his own personal competition and 3) Matt might have won brownie points at merge. The problem now is they’ve booted off two players that would have helped them win pre-merge challenges. Rob’s playing a game only for himself rather than keeping the numbers for the merge. Perhaps he understands he doesn’t have much of a chance to make it to the end so is merely looking to get past as many TCs as he can, but I don’t think that’s the wisest strategy.
Phillip is still an idiot. What a bozo having his little group speech and acting all big man on island. Of course, Jeff likes him - he makes good tv. No, Jeff, Coach was too b-o-r-i-n-g to be Phillip but they are brothers from another planet. Whew, the nation’s security is better now that he’s retired/fired/quit/vacationed out to the funny farm. If he can’t keep a little alliance secret for a couple hours how could he keep state secrets. Rob is just keeping him around as a pawn until folks start looking his way.
Glad to see Ralph found the II. Russell is going to get antsy when he can’t find it. Perhaps he’ll suspect his “girls” are keeping it from him... oh, that would send him into a tizzy.
What was Francesca writing in her journal? It looked like code or figuring something. I stopped the video but it was too blurry to read.
My thoughts on Rob's strategy at this point: I think he's figured out that he has no direct path that gets him from his tribe through the merge and to the final three. Too many weak players on his team, too many weak players attached to him. So I think his strategy has evolved to a plan to decimate his own tribe as far as possible, perhaps even voting out one member of his alliance if the gals don't like someone, then he himself falling upon the 'sword' of being voted out.
He's probably made the assumptions that Redemption Island challenges will be mostly puzzle based, which he excels at, vs physical challenges where producers would have no clue as to the makeup of either side, and it could easily be seen as being unfair. He's also got enough skills to survive well in such a situation, supplementing his rations of rice with food or fish, and keeping his strength in reserve for his return. He's also likely figured that his alliance might make it to the merge (especially if a tribe is so far down on members), and he'll have pre-stacked the jury with members of his alliance.
I'm sure he figures that coming back as the stranger in a post merge and likely Russel dominated game, he'll find it easy to peal off Russel's support and make it to the final three and possibly win the game.