I have a photogenic memory

Paul provided my favorite quote of the episode. Much like The Amazing Race, I will name my posts by my favorite quote from each episode.

Ok, some general impressions from the ep:
The producers are trying to make it look like Paul is the mole. Everytime they do a who is the mole montage they focus on Paul. When showing us the quiz questions they showed us A LOT of Paul. Specifically during the question 7 and 8. And what is up with the death threats? This week Marcie threatened to hunt Paul down and kill him and next week Nicole threatens to kill someone in their sleep. Now to Marcie's credit she was trying to verify Paul's allegiance, which is something she should question. If I were married to a police officer, I would have mentioned that in my hunt you down and kill you threat. I mean Marcie hunting me down is not so plausible, her hubby the cop... now it seems likely he COULD hunt me down!



Player Impressions:
Let's start with Marcie. She made the first impression on me. She's not as bad at making choices as the players think she is. They were viewing her picks from the wrong angle. She picked The Young Guns minus the gay guy. If you factor in her predjudice then that makes sense. I feel confident in labelling her as her sleeping choices make it perfectly clear. She picked Ali to be successful, this is a clear choice since Ali is the person most like her. Clay is a black guy so clearly he's an athlete. Next she chose Victoria, again on the likeness factor. Then she chose Mr Competetive Mark. So all in all not bad choices. And using stereotypes in the first challenge does make sense since you have no info about the players yet.

That being said, her next decision was to punish the people least like her. When choosing people to sleep outside, I think 80% of us would choose the guys. Liz is outdoorsy, so I MIGHT see choosing her, but SHE'S 60! So instead of choosing the guys she thought would get the money she chose the old lady, the gay guy, the black girl, and the fat guy. OK moving on now.

Next we have Nicole. I get being angry about being picked to sleep outside, but with the likelyhood that there was going to be a mission she needed to buck up and do it. Not only could there have been a mission, there was also the probability that it would cause them to lose money from the pot for breaking the rules. I understand that SHE thought she found a loophole by not sleeping, but that's only her interpretation. It could have easily cost them prize money.
Her choices were much better. She chose the Scientist, the History Teacher and the Experienced woman to be the appraisers. Good call. Although I picked her as the winner, I'm hoping Nicole goes next week. The entitlement and egomania is over the top!

Paul is playing a good game. He's definitely garnering attention if not outright suspicion. He let Ali do the lion's share during the Crusoe mission. He's making false alliances to draw attention away from his real alliance. I think he'll go far in the game. Much like Boston Rob, I am both cheering for him and despising him simultaneously.

Alex is Paul's pawn. I'm afraid I didn't get much impression of him this episode. I'll wait and see how he deals with Paul's attempts to manipulate him.

I'm afraid Ali and Clay fell into the invisible category for me as well. I suspect they will both emerge next week as strong players.

I don't know if it's stubborness or a good gut feeling, but I'm sticking with under the radar Kristen as the mole.

Moving down the list, we get to Bobby. He seems like a shrewd analyst of the other players, but the boy is in worse shape than I am! I'm guessing he's asthmatic and I realize that at any moment a strong breeze might come along and snap him like a twig, but come on! Surely he knew there was going to be running! There were at least 2 guys in Austin who should have his spot. But then again I'm biased.

Liz held her own quite well. Although I have to say she looked like a dwarf running from the van before the first mission. I think Liz will hang in there for quite some time. Hopefully she'll forgive me for picking her as first out. She just seemed so nice in her preview video I expected her not have her head in the game.

Victoria seems to be a strong player. You go girl!

Craig was fairly invisible as well. I think he's likely to awarded a few exemptions because the other players are going to see him as nonthreatening.

Mark needs to chill out. Since that's not going to happen then I suppose I'll just have to hope he's going home soon. I was on the fence as I'm trying to be more tolerant of competetive people, ironically his tearful diary about his hard life pushed me over the edge into dislike.

I haven't been able to take the quiz yet, as ABC didn't anticipate the traffic it would generate. Even at 5AM it was still down.