Coming into Episode 6, the alleged competition between the two tribes in Survivor 20: Heroes vs. Villains had been almost entirely one-sided. In the first five episodes, the Villains had won immunity four times, and Tom and Colby were only both still on the Heroes tribe via the flukiest of outcomes (Tom found an idol, then found an enthusiastic flipper in JT, giving him the numbers to idol out Cirie).

But Episode 6 forced both tribes to attend Tribal, which presented Russell with a golden opportunity to play the idol *he* had just found, and he *also* somehow baited a blindside-enabling flip from Tyson on a vote split, and suddenly Boston Rob's 6-3 supermajority was down to 5-3. That's not problematic on the surface, but it turns out to be that the next episode, when Coach's "you're the man!" plaudits are suddenly up for grabs, what with Boston Rob's firemaking skills having fallen by the wayside due to the recency bias of Russell's idol machinations. Add in Jerri even more enthusiastically also deciding Russell's alliance was the place to be, for, uh ... reasons (?), and all of a sudden, Boston Rob's 5-3 majority was a 3-5 minority. Uh oh. After that, despite all of Coach's (logical!) entreaties to keep the tribe strong and ditch Courtney, Russell refused to even consider it, and set his sights squarely on Rob.

This is, of course, the same gameplan Hantz had in S19: Samoa: Surround himself with inexplicably loyal women, and take out anyone who opposed him, tribe strength be damned. It's not really clear why Tyson was targeted in Ep6, but he was their best all-around challenge performer, with the possible exception of Russell's next target, Boston Rob. After Tyson's boot, the Villains go on to lose five out of the remaining six challenges, including both immunities after Rob leaves the game. Russell thought the merge was near - a reasonable guess since Rob left on Day 18, the traditional spot for the merge - but the Villains ended up having two more Tribals to attend before the actual merge. Obviously he got away with it, but that really only turned out the way it did because JT was desperate to somehow further tarnish his legacy.

How did the Villains completely fall apart after avoiding Tribal for so long? It was a process. Jerri and Coach being wishy-washy in the middle played a big part. Tyson own-goaling himself out of the game helped. The Rob-affiliated Villains' bizarre disdain for idol hunting did them no favors, since there should have been one re-hidden after Hantz played his. Rob's dictatorial tendencies apparently (it was never explained) drove Danielle into Russell's arms, followed by Jerri (also not really explained). There's a lot of murkiness, in part because there was a lot going on (three Tribals, a reward, and three challenges in two hour-long episodes). If any season could really benefit from a re-cut into 90-minute episodes, S20: Heroes vs. Villain is possibly the foremost candidate for that treatment.

Plan voodoo up in flames

As the Villains are finally forced to vote someone out due to the Double Tribal in Episode 6, Boston Rob comes up with a very simple, straightforward plan to dodge the idol they're pretty sure Russell has now found: The six Villains not part of Russell's alliance just split their votes 3-3 between Russell and Parvati. Whether Russell plays the idol for himself or Parvati then won't matter, because it will either be a 2-way or 3-way tie, and on the revote, the majority group just dumps all their votes on whoever isn't immune out of Russell or Parvati.

Even Russell sees this very obvious move, but he cautions: "That's a genius move. I don't know that they're that smart." But they are that smart! We just Boston Rob explain why it's guaranteed to work! It's foolproof!

Unless...

Unless...

I mean, come on. Nobody in the majority would be a big enough fool to switch their vote, would they? Maybe someone who wasn't assigned one of the three votes for Parvati, but REALLY really wanted her out? Would they?

Oh, okay. Phew. They're heading off to Tribal now. I was worrying for no reason. [Several minutes later ...] Oh no.

Watching this back, I remembered Russell having a much more active role in convincing Tyson to change his vote to Parvati, but it's possible that perception grew from post-show things like Tyson's exit interviews and (more likely) Russell Hantz's own, sometimes fantastical claims. Even knowing the outcome going in, there was just the barest hint at what was going to happen in the actual show itself. Russell tells Tyson "it breaks my heart," but he's going to vote for Parvati. Tyson then says in confessional that he wants to avoid a revote, because he wants to get the vote over with quickly so he can "get some hot dog in my mouth," and the fastest path to that outcome is to "flop" his vote to Parvati, whom he really wants out. Just like Russell - the guy who's holding an idol - says he's planning to do! What could go wrong?!

From a modern perspective, it's really difficult to remember back to these early days of idol plays, when people didn't routinely bother to split votes whenever an idol was in the mix. It's wild to think that this was the first vote split that actually went forward (even though Cao Boi had dreamed up the concept seven seasons earlier). Even crazier, there had only been seven *total* idols played, period (under the normal idol format from S14: Fiji on) heading into Heroes vs. Villains! Two of them were by Russell Hantz, even. This season almost doubled that total, with six more idol plays.

Tyson did explain his thinking the next day to Dalton Ross: Russell's trio knew about the planned 3-3 split (although presumably not how each person was voting). Tyson was fine with Russell sticking around - he was deeply unpopular, and already had no shot at winning. But Tyson *really* wanted Parvati out, because she was a much bigger threat, and still had two Micronesia allies and one Cook Islands friend over on the Heroes. Tyson was worried that if Russell really did vote Parvati, then Danielle and Parvati would put their votes on Russell, which if the vote split had gone forward as planned, would have ended up 5 votes Russell, 4 votes Parvati. So he tried to sneakily make it 5-4 Parvati instead. (I'll point out here that Russell playing his idol for himself would have produced Tyson's hoped-for outcome, and he still didn't need to change his vote.) Obviously, none of that actually happened.

Please sir, I want some more (or less in some cases)

Again, Heroes vs. Villains is so good that it deserves to be re-edited in a more balanced way. That's because it's clearly one of the best seasons of Survivor ever, and also because the existing editing choices made through the first seven episodes were ... really poor? It tells a particular story, and hits the major plot points, sure. But there are some clear areas of waste and inefficiency. Most of which could be remedied by just forcing some of these first seven episodes to get in the ocean and wash their ass.

Looking at the confessional charts from this season, it's remarkable how little we have heard from the women through the first seven episodes. There was a major shift in the Villains' fortunes across Episodes 6-7, including Russell taking out a key member of Sandra's alliance and targeting another. Since she's the eventual winner, surely she has some thoughts about it, no? Nope, none that the editors bothered to share with us. Sandra had four confessionals in the premiere and exactly ZERO since then. Six straight episodes of silence. That's just editing malpractice.

It's the same story (but even worse!) for Danielle, who had just one single confessional in the premiere, and zero since then. For some reason, she is now fully locked in with Russell (although she and Parvati seemed bewildered by Tyson's idoling out in Ep6). Danielle is originally from Boston, grew up there, was a high school track and soccer star there, graduated from Northeastern, huge Pats and Sox fan. You'd think she and Rob would be two peas in a pod. So why did she flip to the opposing alliance? It's not important, the editors assure us.

Courtney's confessionals have been absolute perfection every time we've had one (small sample size, N=3 across seven episodes). She'll be leaving the game in two more episodes. She'll have one more confessional in Ep8 and none in her boot episode. Why? Were they all about Russell being a bandy-legged woodland troll? Please, sirs, I want some more?

What about Parvati, whose decision to stick with Russell was never really explained in the first place, but at least now has a logical basis, after he saves her and idols out Tyson in Ep6? (Again, we get no reaction from her about it?!) She's a relative blabbermouth with a whopping NINE confessionals across the first seven episodes (none in Ep2 or Ep4, though). But it's clear someone put some effort into the ones she did get, because my god, just look at the composition in one of the few confessionals we have had so far. This is art:

Candice? Eight confessionals. Jerri? Also eight. Both barely cracking the confessional-per-episode mark. Amanda is a bit of an outlier, with 16, but she had three zero-confessional episodes, and of the 10 in Eps. 4-6, a good chunk of them were about her now three-season castmate James.

In contrast, who HAVE we been hearing from? The men. It's always the men.

Boston Rob, who was just booted? 20 confessionals. Colby, who has barely played until stepping it up a bit in Ep7? A paltry 10 across the first five episodes, but a little mini-spike with seven over Eps 6-7, putting him at 17 total. Then there's Tom, who was out of power on the Heroes and left in Ep6: 22! JT, who has been the main (or co-main) narrator on the Heroes, has 21. Rupert, who you may have heard broke his toe? ("In at least two places!" - perhaps you hear that a lot because he hasn't really done anything else.) Rupert clocks in at a hefty 17 confessionals (only five or so about his toe). Even Randy, who was barely a blip on this season and has been gone for four episodes now, has six - two more than Sandra, three more than Courtney, five more than Danielle. The same number as Tyson, who lasted twice as many episodes. Randy?! (Stephenie also had the same number as Randy and Tyson, and two more than Sandra so far - did the editors just hate joy?)

But there is of course one guy who tips the scales dramatically, sucking up airtime despite not really doing anything relevant to the storyline for the first four episodes: Russell Hantz. A massive 28 confessionals. Twenty-eight! He did make a big idol play in Episode 6, to be fair. But we barely got any explanation from him about why he was trying to get Tyson to vote Parvati. Did he do this with everyone? Was it just Tyson? We may never know. I can't even remember anything of note Russell has said, just a lot of repetitive fluff about him being the greatest player of all time, or playing against tougher competition this time around, or does Boston Rob know who he's dealing with? That sort of thing. It's all filler, mostly designed to fluff up Russell Hantz.

If Russell's confessional content could be reduced to almost exclusively talking about the game, rather than himself, it would free up a massive amount of time to better explain what's going on. Why is Danielle with Russell? Why are Courtney and Sandra sticking with Rob? Were there any other alliances on the Villains we didn't see? Over on the Heroes, we missed out on a lot of Cirie content. Why were people like Rupert and Candice happy to work with Cirie, when JT and Tom were not? What did Cirie's alliance think about the Tom vs. Cirie divide, and why were they reluctant to work with Tom? Because he was a former winner? Because he was bossy and standoffish about the actual game? Because he was tight with Stephenie? All of the above?

We're halfway through the season, and more than half of the cast is virtually invisible thus far. That's not great editing. I'm aware of the time constraints, and this season would absolutely benefit from longer episodes. But a lot of the choices made with the time they had were poor on the first go-round. If you can re-do the Coach vs. Rupert "Sumo'an Mud" bout for the most frivolous of reasons, surely a dedicated team of Survivor can get a special 20th anniversary "director's cut" or whatever re-edit of Heroes vs. Villains ready by 2030. Please?

The land of tepid takes

- We have to watch this three times? - The Ep6 RC/IC (well, ICx2/RC, more accurately) is "Rope-A-Dope," originally seen in S18: Tocantins, where Tyson beat JT in the final round. It's a very basic ropes/obstacle thing, which in modern Survivor would be part of a challenge, but here it's the whole thing. And it's very unexciting to watch, because (1) You can't really tell how far ahead or behind anyone is, because they almost exclusively show close-ups of one person at a time, but more damningly, (2) it's just kinda boring watching people follow ropes around a fence, and (3) it's nearly impossible for whoever gets out to an early lead to lose it. We saw two heats followed by the final course, and the early leader won all three, which was especially excruciating in the much longer, final, three-level hero-challenge matchup between Boston Rob and Candice for hot dogs. It wasn't even that fun hearing James repeat his "Colby got beaten by a fat man and a cripple" summary multiple times. (Pro tip to future contestants: In the real world, you can repeat a joke to different audiences, and they will be none the wiser, and you'll probably get a laugh each time. On Survivor, the editors will include every instance where you tell the same joke, to make you look like a hack, and the audience will dislike you.)

- Spoilers directly from Probst - In the "Previously On..." segment from Episode 7 (after Tyson's blindside), Jeff Probst claims that Russell's three and the majority alliance were both trying to woo "The Dragonslayer and his lady." If this actually happened, it either did not happen in that episode, or it was edited out. (Russell did try to woo Coach at the Ep5 reward, but there was nothing in Ep6, and zero effort to pull in Jerri at any time.) But then, like clockwork, the opening scenes of Ep7 are: (1) Boston Rob feeling like "something is off" and maybe "some of" the five people left in his alliance aren't really with him (Jerri and Coach), and we see Russell's three actively recruiting Jerri, then Jerri and Coach. On the one hand: Yes, that's the split in the tribe in Ep7. On the other: That is brand new information! You don't dump that in the "Previously on..."!

- "I've been the target of every single vote!" - This is Parvati's complaint to Jerri when they're recruiting her in Ep7. Again, the Villains went to Tribal exactly once in the first five episodes. Parvati received one vote, from the departing Randy. And the four votes against her in Ep6 were wiped away, as planned, by Russell's idol. So Parvati's horrific total of votes against across six episodes is: One. Methinks she doth protest too much. (Nobody votes against her in Ep7.)

- What if...? - How close did we come to avoiding the Tyson blindside in Ep6? If the medical team had simply pulled James when he was originally injured, or the next day (as with Kyle in S50), there probably would not have been a double Tribal in Ep6, and maybe we get "Beach Brawl" or something else instead. If Colby's still pouting about Tom's boot, maybe the Heroes don't win that. Maybe Tyson is a better shot than airballing Coach (Tyson scored in "Schmergen Brawl"). And if Russell has to wait another episode for his idol play, maybe something else changes? It really feels like production said: "We really need to let Russell play his idol, but the Villains keep winning! We can't do a swap because of the theme, and under NO circumstances can we tolerate a medevac. Let's give him a guaranteed Tribal."