Schadenfreude wrote:
Natalie, I feel, is immaterial at this point. She wins the final IC, she gets a vote from Alexis. Period.
The three faves women, though, let's hash that out...
Assuming a final three (which may or may not be a valid assumption to make...) I feel like on the surface, it's Amanda's game to lose. She has two votes in her pocket for sure: Ozzy and James. We've been beaten over the head with "Amanda can't lose, nobody can beat Amanda, everyone loves Amanda."
That, combined with the fact that we KNOW that she was unimpressive against the jury in China, makes me think, conversely, that Amanda may not win. If Amanda can't even beat freakin' Courtney in a jury vote... I suspect that Cirie and Parv can give her a run for her money in that department. I have heard rumors that Amanda figured out that she didn't win China because she didn't see any other winners on the favorites tribe and she didn't think she'd beat Todd anyhow. The question is this: Amanda has two guaranteed votes in her pocket. Can she seal the deal by vastly improving the jury performance that was a major weakness last time? James and Ozzy are not enough for her to win, and I'm not at all convinced that many of the fans or Eliza would be on her side.
Now, we look at Cirie. On paper, Amanda seems like the more formidable opponent, but I do feel Cirie's edit feels more of a winning edit to me. Why? She's been seen very strategically since day one, whereas pre-merge Amanda was in the background more, and she's simultaneously always involved with her finger on the pulse of the game but not seen as a target.
They've held out on Cirie, editing her carefully by showing us every move but also not putting her in the driver's seat since the merge. She's a mix of Chris, Sandra, Earl, and a little bit of Vee. The winning emphasis is on Parvati or Amanda. Then WHY show us as much of Cirie's strategy as they have and not even mention her possibly being voted out?I also have to think she'd be much stronger than Amanda in a final jury performance. Finally, I feel that she's probably going to get a lot of the fan votes... Alexis seemed hurt by Parv and Amanda, and Jason seemed to like her best as well. I also think Eliza would be on her side. Although it goes against intuition, I somehow feel Cirie's going to pull off an upset over Amanda in a close vote and win it all. Cirie's edit just fits better to me than Amanda's for the first female winner in quite some time... it would be SO easy to have given Amanda an over-the-top heroine edit since day one. She's the vague love interest of Ozzy! She's a mastermind! Instead, though, up until the last two episodes, we've seen Cirie and Parv strategizing instead. I feel Amanda is a last-minute red herring to distract us from Cirie. I must say that even though Parv's edit is intriguing, I fail to see where she'd get the votes she needed to win.
Parvati... she's played a heck of a game, but compared to Cirie and Amanda, she doesn't have the friends on the jury. Nobody save from possibly Natalie is going to rank her as the person they were really cheering for. I think she's going to get the blame and vitriol rather than the credit and the votes.
In a final two situation: the question is whether Parvati would stick with Amanda or take her chances against Cirie? Cirie would definitely take Parv... she's not stupid.
Well I do think that Amanda does have one thing going for her she didn't in china. She does have someone to work the jury for her in her favor. Now that doesn't mean she is going to win either. I could easily see Erik's Ozzy crush influencing his vote.
