Survivor Heroes vs. Villains: Could Rob actually have won?

Although Boston Rob didn’t even make the merge in Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, we submit that if he’d made it through, it’s possible he could have won.

As someone who is not a Russell Hantz fan, this episode of Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains is one of my least favorite, mostly because I do actually like Boston Rob as a player. But this is the retro rewatch for Surviving Tribal, and far be it from me to skip an episode.

Things started out somberly for the Heroes, but they got to come back and play in a water-based game that involved tackling other people for a ball to shoot it and score points. They shut out the Villains and got to feast at a lovely waterfall. Candice found a clue, but shared it with the other four players.

The drama mostly centered on the Villains, though, with most everyone focusing on Jerri (and Coach) as the pair of swing votes in the eight-person tribe.

Ultimately, though, all of the politicking turned out to matter very much, because the Heroes won immunity on a puzzle. Jeff Probst spent a lot of time commenting on the same thing I just did, but running over a bouncy net and climbing for pieces proved just a bit too physical and gave the Heroes just a bit more of a lead.

Russell then pulled the kind of move that had Rob openly questioning his gameplay skills: telling Rob, in front of Courtney and Sandra, that one of those two women had to go home. Of course, Russell’s group tried to also put pressure on Coach to send Rob home. Rob made his last-ditch appeal to Jerri as well.

At Tribal Council, Russell and Rob squared off yet again, and to put it mildly, Rob’s face while Russell was speaking was rather … incredulous. Rob went home with four votes to three for Russell and one for Courtney (from Coach).

To break this down, Rob might have gotten his million dollars a little earlier than he did if Tyson hadn’t messed up his plan. Play it out for a second. Russell would have gone home, leaving Danielle and Parvati as the two easy targets, with Danielle probably going next. We could have had a Rob/Sandra/Courtney final three, since the two of them were closest to him, and Rob might have thought that they wouldn’t give a winner another check, and Courtney was, well, Courtney. It’s impossible to take it systematically, but it’s hard to say that a Hero could have cracked the final three in any permutation of the game.

(Although J.T. wouldn’t have had the ability to give Russell an idol, which might have helped.)

Quick notes:

• “I’m Not a Good Villain” was Jerri’s last line before the fateful Tribal Council.
• If the Villains are supposed to be the dark side, does that make Parvati’s alliance the darker side?

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It’s time for Sandra to get loud (too) in episode 8.