Celebrating the new year with a San Juan del Sur rewatch! I really haven't had too much to say because the pre-merge is watchable but nothing special, but now that I'm in the merge stage everything is starting to ramp up. The Julie quit is a hilarious showcase of Missy coaching Baylor on how to be fake to everyone else, followed by her telling Julie that "I'm your loved one now
" in the most fake tone and expression imaginable
Somehow, this actually propels Julie to quit even more quickly than she was already planning on
The Josh boot though was a very great episode mainly because of the emergence of JACLYN SCHULTZ. Jon went to Exile Island for two days and Jaclyn was completely appalled and dumbfounded that the boys weren't talking to her when
they knew she was the swing vote and
they knew that Jon was going to do whatever she wanted. How dare they!!! Wes spent this entire episode with bad gas after the taco reward, Keith ordered Baylor to do some work around camp and explicitly called her lazy and told Missy her daughter does jack **** and he would've given her seven whoopings by now, and Alec fantasized about making Baylor smell his farts and burps and then treated her like a slave by making her throw out his trash. Of course, then Jon comes back from Exile Island and Jaclyn firmly digs her heels in the ground and REFUSES to work with the boys, leading to a 6-5 Josh boot and a full season of Jon, Jaclyn, Missy, Baylor, and Natalie
Surprisingly enough the biggest glo up on this rewatch is from Baylor? I used to think of her as good but not great and definitely the weak link of the endgame cast, but she's just soooooo effortlessly irritating and immature and annoying in the best way possible. It's not that overt and highlighted in the edit, but if you look closely enough you can clearly see why everyone barely tolerated living with her and why she received so many votes at nearly every Tribal Council
Reminds me of during the exit interviews when each boot would do word association and "young" was the nicest word anyone ever used to describe Baylor
EDIT: There was a scene this episode where Josh went on a walk with Baylor and literally told her that she really owes him at least one vote after all he's done for her pre-merge (including voting for her in the first TC?) and Baylor followed it up with a confessional about how Josh is blackmailing her and that's not very Christian of him and he should be giving gifts without expecting gifts in return, and I couldn't think of a better scene that captured both of their characters in the best sense. They both are audaciously self-righteous but at least Baylor does so in a way that's laughable and entertaining. Josh is just kind of a boring whiny drip.