Brenda's boot episode was pretty awesome, I must say. It had a similar literary build up to Rupert's boot in Pearl Islands, albeit on a much smaller scale,
and it actually affected the tribal dynamics greatly unlike the Marty boot, which was very straightforward even in spite of the show placing Marty on some absurdly high pedestal. Holly got the ball rolling and then NaOnka just spread it like wildfire and then it got to the point where the entire tribe was on board except for Purple Kelly
The episode in isolation is a great one, but there still are some gripes I have with how the editing of previous episodes affected where we're at right now. First of all, a lot of Brenda's "black widow" power was told to us rather than shown, which makes me wonder how legitimate it was? I know Brenda talked a little bit earlier on about how people just want to align with her even when she doesn't do anything to approach the matter, so I'm going to assume that her rise to power was really just by circumstance but the edit didn't make it fully clear. The random Chase/Benry UTR distrust is another minor B-plot of the episode that was spontaneously presented to us without any background. I know that back when they swapped tribes there was one confessional when Chase was debating between getting rid of Dan or Yve where he mentioned that he's a little worried that Benry could link up with Dan to get rid of him, and at the time it seemed like a random concern since he and Benry never had any televised interactions at all. I guess we got a continuation of that "storyline" because Chase was laser-focused on getting Benry out for reasons that I don't really understand. It ultimately didn't take anything away from the episode, but I wish we had more insight into Chase's motivations. There's a lot of talk all season about how Chase just wants to get in Brenda's pants and will do whatever she says, but I don't think that's entirely true since their relationship peaked in like... episode 2. We did hear Chase talk about how their relationship really disintegrated through the tribe swap, but we never get any insight as to what Chase's end goal in the game is other than the fact that he's playing with his heart rather than his head.
Brenda wasn't even in the episode that much herself, but her exit was just so perfect by her standards. I just find it so fitting that someone who stumbled into a power position possibly on accident ended up going out in such a lackluster way. One of her closest allies leads the charge to blindside her, she catches wind and gets very bitter about it, but then she ultimately does nothing to help herself. I could at least understand her point during her confessional about how people are much more willing to work with you if you remain calm rather than freak out, especially since that's the exact behavior that has been taking Chase's game, but then she lost me when Jeff goaded her into her speech at TC about how scrambling's not her style and she's above it because if you're scrambling then you're already screwed. Holly's voting confessional was perfect as usual: "You just thought things were gonna come too easy to you. You should've scrambled." It was just a really lame exit that proves that Brenda's not that good of a player because it was her first moment of adversity all game and she just crumbled (I don't count the first La Flor vote because even though Brenda was a target, she didn't really have to work that hard because she already had four or five of the ten votes and Shannon's outburst at TC swung more votes in her favor.)
Last paragraph I promise, but I just need to talk about my favorite Jane moment of the episode, which is where she declares that she doesn't associate herself with
villains in real life or in this game and Brenda's become a villain so she has to go. Jane's voting confessional isn't aired in the episode but it's in the DVD special features and it's Jane going on a diatribe about how Brenda is trying to bust up
original alliances between her and her Carolina homeboy Chase and that ain't going to work. This is hilarious when you remember hat Jane and Chase met for the first time on Day 19 while Brenda and Chase were on the same original tribe on Day 1