This week, the game changed. We entered “conquest,” and that means the competition just got a lot more cutthroat.
Now, there’s no public vote. Rather, there’s a chain of safety that begins with the daily challenge winner. That winner saves a person, then that contender saves another person, and that sequence continues until three people remain.
Ed was lucky this week, he won and got to start saving people. And, as predicted, he saved his “friends” (the same people who were voting him into The Arena last week) and kept them all safe.
The vote was fairly predictable this week. In fact, everyone had it planned out hours before the ceremony.
This is another funky thing about this season. On paper, the conquest twist could be interesting, kind of like the dodgeball-style vote was on The Duel. Instead, the contenders have established strong relationships and we’re getting a vote similar to The Duel 2. It’s predictable, and any variance from the pre-determined order will be viewed as an attack on the alliance.
It also makes the game a popularity contest. If one person in your alliance wins, the whole alliance is safe, ensuring the opposite alliance is guaranteed to lose a number.
But, it might not be a bad system in the future. If you weren’t happy with the voting system in episode 15, it’s likely because you don’t want Jay’s alliance to win. But, if someone from Horacio’s alliance wins next week, it ensures that all of Horacio’s allies will be in the first half of the vote. Then, the elimination will only be comprised of Jay’s allies.
It wouldn’t seem so awful if that happened, and that might be the intent of the new voting style. This game has been so predictable that production needed a system that could, hypothetically, allow for a power shift based on one person winning.
Perhaps the conquest voting style will disrupt the flow of the season, but as it stands now, it just looks like a different format that will give us more of the same.
Stop Being Polite 