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David, as usual, had a lot to say about the last exile.
David (Australia): I kinda figured the backlash was going to start, which is why I used one stone last week. And sure enough, when I read the Television Without Pity forums... "Justin Guarini has nightmares about Dave's bedhead." "He's a lawyer. Anyone else wanna count up how many times he's screwed over the rest of the team to get his stones?" And so forth. Depressing when that's the sort of thing your life depends on. 9 little players, sitting in the plane. One'll fall out and bash his brain. But that came later. First came Lisbon, Portugal and the mainland. Jacinto, as holder of home-field advantage, had first choice of whether to compete. He was given two hints as to the nature of the minigame: 1. It was for someone who liked making difficult decisions. 2. If he declined it, it would go to David. Neither he nor anyone else was told why. I knew, however: The challenge was designed to be for the person with the most Safety Stones- in this case David with 9. The 'difficult decision' was indeed difficult: Either not play the challenge and hold on to the existing stones, or risk them all in a double-or-nothing challenge. Now, since Jacinto had none to risk, my offer to him would be different: He could decline the challenge and forget the whole thing, or he could risk his VOTES. If he won, he would recieve no votes in the round- which would make him inoculated. If he lost, however, his votes would be doubled. After Safety Stones, if any were earned and used. (See, you always gotta have something for the player to risk.) Jacinto accepted the minigame, but since the game would not work on his computer, he was forced to decline the challenge. He was hoping to take it, but well, what are you gonna do? So off we went to Monte Carlo, where players were to bet on the doggies. There were 8 dogs a race, but you only pick 1. The players were going blind into this, as they were given no information about the dogs- no name, no previous record, no grade. But they were expected to pick winning dogs. Or at least better dogs than everyone else. It was a game of luck, which Jacinto certainly didn't have. Jacinto (Portugal): I am very shocked to still be around. I have had the worst luck in this game, forgetting to vote or voting when I wasn't supposed to. Getting the cop with the drugs not being able to compete in Portugal. And now I may be exiled. Some interesting picks: Royann selected dog #9 for race 13. In an eight-dog race. So unless the race #13 dogs REALLY suck... Nork picked #7 for every single race. And David was the only one to find the greyhound lineups. When even I could not... Highlights of David's picks: David: Race 5. #2, MVJ Sealabucci (how do they come up with these names?!) Race 14. #6, Perts Pepsi. He leaps, he runs, he violates trademarks like no other can! Everyone else seemed to just pick randomly and hope for the best. Which, according to the one who found the hounds, could be likened to Stephen's game strategy. David (Australia): Stephen... WHAT! ARE! YOU! DOING?!!!! You started off trying to get Colin kicked off. Fair enough. You two kissed and made up. That's cool too. Then you repudiated whatever dysfunctional relationship you had with Colin by voting me the Strongest Link and Colin the Weakest Link. This isn't like you, Steve. You don't seem to realize the incredible power you have in your hands, and you're throwing it all away. If you were to side firmly with Colin, you could throw me over the side and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. If you formed a faction with me, we could put away Colin for good. But once and for all, and I'm telling you this for your own good, PICK A SIDE! This aimless floundering is not generating any results, and you are going to lose if you keep it up too much longer. I genuinely would love to see you win, Stephen, but you are going to have to do all the heavy lifting on your own. Unless you start hustling, I fear you'll be out this week or next. And I'm not lifting a finger to help until you approach me, because at this point, you need me or Colin a lot more than either of us need you.
I was wondering about this too, so with David's provocation I went to Steve and asked point-blank. He had this to say... Aaron: I've been meaning to ask you for a while about your Weakest
Link and Strongest Link picks. That last line intrigued me. Steve never knew about an alliance? I had thought Colin talked with him about it. I thought they both knew full well. I needed to get to the bottom of this. Off to Colin I went: Aaron: How's the alliance with Steve going? You guys talk anything
over? Okay, what alliance? I got fooled. I'll admit it. In the meantime, David's finding the dogs paid off and he shoved 5 more Safety Stones into his bulging wallet before heading north to Paris, France- the site of the fourth exile. Which was likely a pleasant surprise to Royann, for while in Monte Carlo, she answered the confessional question "How likely do you think your country (in Royann's case, France) is to show up?" with "Probably not." Elsewhere in the confessional I hid the nomination question "Who besides you likes choo-choo trains?" Since it would be obvious by itself, I flanked it with questions about who likes skiing, and who likes cars that go vroom. So you'd know ONE of them was the nomination question, but which one? And nobody thought to answer the same person for all three questions. Instead, everyone who named a player put 3 different names down. And Cindy joined Colin by displaying HER knowledge of geography. Cindy (Egypt): We have just started hitting the African Continent, so I'm sure Egypt will come up soon. (This was stated while in Monaco, a European country bordering France.) Most important, though, was the Safety Stone question. David decided to use two of his, fearing an audience backlash. It wasn't as smart a move as you'd think: he once again took over the lead, but without Safety Stones he'd only have slipped to second place behind Chrissy. While David fretted about losing his lead, other players needed to
worry about losing the game. Specifically, Nork and Jacinto, and also
Andrew to a lesser extent. I had a helluva time figuring out whether
it was to be Nork or Jacinto that would be exiled. I tried to get the
audience into the act with this message on Labor Day: It takes thousands of votes to exile just one person. In the past three rounds, it took 39,194 votes (photo of Greyson appears on screen), 32,385 (James photo), and most recently, 34,948 votes (Toby photo). Over 32 thousand votes each time to exile just one person. And now we need to exile another tonight in Paris. Please call the number at the bottom of your screen (1-800-73255377687337). That's 1-800-RECKLESSMURDER. Let's go out to Hollywood and Jerry Lewis. Jerry: The cameras, they're blinkey with the red light goes blink, blink, blink, nice LADY!!! OYvenglavin!" After lengthy deliberation, I settled on Jacinto by a few hundred votes in the precount and let them fight it out. They didn't. Jacinto was gone. 8 contestants, 7 rounds.
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