Survivor: Why last night's occurrences never should have happened...

Based on what happened last night, I'm not going to include anything but this preface in the main section. Instead, click on the "Read More" link below for my thoughts.

If we learned anything from last night's episode, it's that women are pure evil and men are friggin' morons.

The women have absolutely dominated this game (how that ended up happening, I am still not quite sure), which was incredibly evident following the votes of Ozzy and Jason in particular. The women completely manufactured both of those blindsides, making the person who would inevitably be voted out feel so safe that he wouldn't feel the need to play his hidden immunity idol. This was particularly impressive in Jason's case, as there was already a MASSIVE target on his back and he had just seen the exact same blindside occur at the previous tribal council.

Nevertheless, Erik had seemingly defied the odds by surviving through these women, and even miraculously won both the reward and immunity challenges. Erik now had the immunity necklace and would live to fight another day. Or so we thought.

Instead, the women completely manipulated Erik and convinced him to give up his immunity necklace (?!?!?!?!?!) for Natalie. How they convinced him that giving up his immunity necklace would result in one of the women getting voted off absolutely baffles me. I mean, they had somehow led him to believe that Natalie and Cirie would only vote with him if gave up the necklace, as if they had all these possible options. If Erik had kept the necklace, one of the girls were going home. Whether it's his top choice doesn't really matter in the long run, does it? The fact remains that one of his competitors will be voted off (and really, in order to avoid a tie, some of the girls would have HAD to vote with him, whether they liked it or not), and tension would develop between the women.

Arguably the most frustrating part of the entire episode was the fact that they convinced Erik that he had pissed off every single person on the jury. How exactly did he do that? Everybody on the jury recognizes that Erik didn't orchestrate any of their eliminations. On top of that, if memory serves, he was never even the swing vote! Additionally, at the very least Jason and Ozzy know that the women arranged for them to get voted off, so he would undoubtedly get both of their votes (especially when you consider that Erik is a male fan -- like Jason -- and that Ozzy sided with Erik over Ami). I believe that James would have voted for him too, considering his bitterness near the end towards the females. Eliza is a question mark, but I think she bears some ill will towards the women who didn't include her in their little club. And it's also entirely possible that the still competing women that inevitably get voted off may split their votes between whichever women remain (assuming there's a final three). If Erik wasn't an idiot for giving up the necklace, he was an absolute fool for not realizing that he easily had as many votes as the most popular girl still playing.

It also baffles me that he didn't consider the source. I mean, these girls are telling Erik that he upset EVERYBODY because of his double talk. The reason everybody else has been voted off already is because of the fact that they told people one thing and did another. He knows this. They know this. The jury knows this. How did he fall for this trap?

There's no question about it, this move WILL go down as the dumbest in Survivor....nay, television history! That being said, the actual voting portion of the tribal council was absolutely brilliant.

The biggest mystery this season, for me, is the fact that Cirie has had so much power. While the last few votes were seemingly due to Amanda and Parvati, Cirie maneuvered some of the earliest surprise eliminations. And she's continued to bestow her influence throughout the rest of the season. What has she contributed to this game? She hasn't won a single individual challenge, and she hasn't played a crucial role in any team challenge. She doesn't bring any special skills to the camp. Why does she have so much power?

At this point, I think I'd like to see Amanda win it all. Honestly, it was her game to lose last season. Hopefully she learned from her atrocious final tribal council performance.