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The reaction I had when I saw the new tribe makeup was something like "Yep. Everything makes sense now."

I think we are in for a near-Ulonging/Pagonging of Manono. All of the real complexity is sitting at Salani right now and almost none of it at Manono.

At Salani we have...

A four person alliance with the girls laid out (Kim/Sabrina/Chelsea/Kat). We are also aware of their direct tie to Alicia on the other side.
Within that four person alliance, Kim/Sabrina/Chelsea make up a core, with Kat/Alicia seeming to be 4/5.
Within that three person core, we are aware of a clear pair in Kim/Chelsea.
Further, we have Jay and Troyzan, two of the better-developed males. They allude to vague connections with the other tribe and explicitly name Mike as an outsider within Salani.
To tie it all together, we have seeds of a connection between Jay/Troyzan and Kim that are made clear.

The dynamics of Salani are well established, well explained, and provide long term drama to be resolved. Who will Kim side with? Will the girls of Salani replace Kat and Alicia like they had been thinking about before? How will the idol connection between Kim and Chelsea play out? And what about Mike - will he really be cast out as the most expendable?

Manono pales in comparison...

Colton, Colton, Colton. It's all about him, for the most part.
We have a hierarchy, but it's not very well established. It seems to be Men + Alicia vs. Christina now, but Colton is trying to play both sides. Sometimes he says he's going to stick with the girls, sometimes he says he's just playing them. The true structure is unknown.
Within the bloc of "men," Lief and Tarzan are just characters - mostly OTT (waffler and weirdo, respectively). Only Jonas offers more - he's riding Colton for as long as he remains useful. Where do these three connect to each other, though? That's where a lot of the complexity on Manono is so weak.
Christina, as a clear outsider, still doesn't have much going on for her story. She's not even a super underdog.

I think a Salani-dominated endgame is a slam dunk prediction, now. Those dynamics are the endgame payoff - they've been brewing since the start and they are only getting more complex over time. "The Colton Show: Colton's World" is another long term arc but not a particularly meaty one - each episode seems to function independently, with a new adventure for Colton to navigate (Not fitting in, eliminating the head rooster Matt, eliminating Bill with a crazy move, eliminating Monica as a blindside because she's a threat). There's no long term arc in this - just distraction-esque TV gold. Jonas's role in the Colton Show seems promising, but I'm not sure we can ride into a Manono endgame on the "Jonas Riding Colt-tails" story alone.

That said, I can see about 7 possibilities out of the remaining 13 players.
- Kim/Sabrina/Jay/Troyzan are all right in the mix. I could see any one of them build momentum and end up with a winner's edit by the end.
- Chelsea has the endgame ties and is central enough to the game to be important down the road, but is falling behind in terms of connections to the game itself. She needs to reemerge and take a stronger role in the story of the game to remain viable. Given that we hear she isn't really involved in the game, though, the editors can't show what didn't happen. Dropping back into the background, then, is probably a better sign than remaining some OTT camera hog (which may be the only other option).
- Jonas is the only hope of Manono. If he wins, he will need to snake his way through a very unfavorable endgame, I think. I can see him making the merge by riding Colton but his connection to the most likely endgame players is very lacking. This is especially damning when you consider he has been in an alliance with one of them (Troyzan) since very early, eventually got paired up with another later (Jay), and lived on the same beach with the rest. I would expect him to have a little more than just being connected to this season's Russell.
- Mike is probably a good player with decent insight but he's being wasted on the sidelines. He is failing to show up in spots where his thoughts are valuable. His alliance crumbled before the first TC and we heard nothing about where he was going to go instead (whereas Jay got to speak about it). After the swap, he is doubly on the outs (males vs. females, not even in good with the other two males), yet does not comment. When he gets screentime it is generally important and high quality, but I am concerned that he is not getting enough of it. However, there may be some explanations for these things (comments would have given away first TC outcome so it had to be hidden, unaware of his position at Salani and don't want to make him look foolish) so it's worth keeping him on the razor's edge.

Of the rest...
- Christina just isn't picking back up. There's a lot more they could be doing with her character and story but it's being left on the cutting room floor. From a technical standpoint I can still see it working. Logically, though, the story isn't flowing the right way.
- Kat isn't getting enough meat to her story. Like some others, she is merely a number in other people's games with an OTT personality (dumb blond).
- Leif is in the same boat as Kat. Just a number to other players, simplified persona (wishy washy).
- Tarzan is just like Kat and Leif. Used as a number, big personality (weird, a bit foolish and abrasive).
- Alicia is still primarily a villainess, even with the more calculated and rational portrayal this episode. Her early portrayal has already sunk her.
- Colton is a Russell. He may make it to the end but he's playing for another casting at this point (and I expect him to succeed at that).

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All in all I think there is still a long way to go and the vehement push to sit Kim on the throne already is perhaps premature. Aside from Earl I cannot remember another season where it truly was this incredibly easy to identify the winner. Mid-to-low visibility, comfortable complexity, complex tribe, surrounded by distractions (Colton, Chelsea, Sabrina) - yeah no doubt it fits the statistical model very well.

At the same time, something smells a bit fishy to me. No one says the game is this easy, this early. People point to Rob as someone who said the game was easy and that's just plain incorrect - he spoke constantly about the work he had to put in just to keep everyone in line. At one point I think he described it as "exhausting." He was always talking about threats to his game (Matt, Phillip), why they were a danger, and how he planned to deal with them. Sophie's statements near the end bordered on overconfident (saying that tribal was not surprising, much to Jeff's chagrin) and that's about as far as I've seen it taken. Even in my recent Borneo rewatch, I found that Rich wasn't nearly as overconfident about the endgame as might be expected - oh he was cocky about the midgame for sure (and he had a right to be)! But even when he had a near airtight endgame with Sue/Kelly's fight, I recall a much more calculated response - "This plays right into my hands."

Anyway, I'm not saying Kim is necessarily coming across as too cocky to win. I'm just saying it's making me a little wary. She describes her position as advantageous because she has many options. I see her position as very risky because she is going to have to betray someone now. Given the vindictive playstyle of the season, which has been a big theme, I can see that coming full circle accordingly.

On the other hand, I wonder if the timing of her idol find is portrayed accurately? I found it weird that no one happened to find the thing after such a long time. They seem to spend a lot of time splicing in shots of the men walking around while Kim/Chelsea talk about it but this could very easily come from a time much earlier in the game. If so, what implications could the timing of showing it have? Anyone notice any evidence in the shots that indicate whether the timing is portrayed accurately?

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I hope to participate normally this week now that I'm back to a normal schedule. I'll try to work it in along with my recent Mass Effect 3 obsession I agreed with all of the close call decisions on Rating - I would have probably gone OTT on Leif.