By Joe R
The tribes merge, thank goodness, giving the Top 12 things to talk about other than how much Corinne and Phillip hate each other. Dawn is finding herself very nervous (i.e. weepy) because this is the point in her original season where Cochran flipped, she didn't do anything about it, and her game was doomed as a result.
As soon as the merged tribe is formed (named Enil Edam by Malcolm, slyly slipping his mom's name -- backwards -- into the game), Corinne bolts directly to Malcolm to bitch about Phillip. Luckily, he's already formed his little Dude Alliance, and Corinne has formed a bond with Michael based on how she demeaningly reduces him to an object on her gay charm bracelet while he kind of laughs nervously as she does so. Malcolm is really itching to get into the driver's seat of this game, so forming a new alliance and flipping on Stealth R Us sounds pretty good to him.
After the return of the Gross Food Immunity Challenge is won (with great, surprised fanfare) by Cochran, it's time for the real strategy to begin. Malcolm and Corinne figure they have a solid 5 (with Eddie, Reynold, and Michael) and that Erik is persuadable. But at 6 people, they want to wait for the tribe to be at 11 members before they make their move. To get to that point, they think they can sell Sherri as an "easy" vote to the Favorites' alliance this week. Except Phillip wants to get rid of a big dog, like Reynold or Eddie. (He also wants to split the vote between those guys, to flush out any idols, which should have been all the opening Corinne needed to stage a 5-4-3 blindside -- without even having to involve, say, Erik -- and vote Phillip out, but she completely fails to recognize the opportunity.) Corinne tries to make her case for Sherri to the group and then tries to sell Dawn on joining the plan to oust Phillip time.
Dawn (with history weighing on her mind) gets nervous about upsetting the applecart and tattles on Corinne to Cochran, who then takes it upon himself and Andrea to save the Favorites' bacon. So they tell Phillip, get Sherri on their side to vote out Corinne, and then send Andrea over to bat her eyes at Erik and tell him to vote for Corinne as well. Later, Malcolm wants Erik to vote for Sherri, and so Erik is the swing vote.
At Tribal, Sherri says flat-out that she doesn't see a scenario where a Fan can win, which sets my Ironic Foreshadowing alarms off at full volume. Reynold, massive preening dummy that he is, basically flat-out reveals that this week's vote will go according to plan but week, they'll flip. Finally, the tribe votes, and although the first five votes are for Sherri, the seven go to Corinne, who had a decent plan, was too blind to see an even better one, and ended up getting felled by DAWN, of all people. Here's hoping she finds plenty of gay men to infantilize at Ponderosa.