Survivor 41 - week 9 results

Another great episode tonight and despite the little twist of separating the tribe into 2 groups for 2 tribal councils, I felt there was great classic Survivor strategizing and chess moves and keeping us in suspense right to the very end.  Here are the pool points:

• At the immunity challenge, Erika and Xander won individual immunities - 5 points for each of them.
• At the first tribal council, it goes to a tie between Heather and Naseer.  In the tie-breaker, Ricard and Shan turn on Naseer and vote with Erika to blindside him.  2 points each to Erika, Heather, Ricard and Shan for voting out Naseer who goes out with an un-played idol.
• At the second tribal council, the show really makes us think that one of the players in the power alliance is going to go home, but Deshawn stays true with his alliance and along with Liana and Danny, they vote out Evvie after Xander decides not to play his idol on her.  2 points each to the 3 of them for voting out Evvie.  Xander was the only one out of the surviving players who didn't vote for the people going home.
• 8 points each to all the contestants that survived tribal council #8.
• Erika earned the most points this week with 15.

In the pool, 35% of entries had Evvie, the 28-year-old PhD student, and 41% had Naseer, the 37-year-old sales manager.

• Jswizzle takes back 1st place and is now the only entry with 7 out of the remaining 8 contestants.
• Mitch takes over last place by 11 points and is the only entry with 1 pick left
• Sara D jumped up 7 spots into the top 10 from 13th to 6th
• Both Ezybilt and The Mexican fell out of the top 10 from 6th to 16th.

Next week: I didn't see a preview for next week... was there one that I missed?

My episode observations:

• Wow, Iliana really hated Xander's face during the immunity challenge!
• It was really funny that Liana tried to pull a Shan and tried to get Xander to temporarily give her his immunity idol.  Xander would have nothing of it.
• Even if Xander really did think there was a good chance that Evvie was going home, would he have played his idol on her to get one of the others out?  I don't think so... there's just still too many in that majority alliance and he would have then been extremely vulnerable.
• Like I'm sure many of you were, I was really puzzled at first why Shan would need to play her extra vote, and then actually split her two votes between Heather and Naseer, if the plan was to get him out.  It was only later on did I realize it must have been for insurance that Heather would still go home in case Naseer played his idol on himself.  But it must have hurt her to use up that advantage to vote out a loyal ally instead of eliminating the person she really wanted to get rid of.  Ricard really worked her over to make her go with his plan.
• What the heck was the answer to that rebus puzzle?  Finale?  Final Three?  I couldn't tell if the tree was part of the puzzle or just a border decoration.