I'll wait for tomorrow to post major spoilers, but one interesting minor point.

Russell commented on his loss last season. Which means at some point they must have removed him from the game to attend the reunion and then brought him back.

Accoridng to wikipedia, this season was filmed from August-September. The finale of last season didn't air until December. So unless wiki is wrong, something doesn't add up. I think they did a pickup shot or voiceover or something for that bit.

Meanwhile

That was awesome, but I think it was also her undoing. Because her strategy involved maintaining the illusion that Russell was in control to keep the heat off of her, she had no real way of backing that statement up, so it just made her look like a coattail rider bluffing at behind-the-scenes strategery. She was never going to convince anyone that she was in control of Russell. Her message should have been more about what she actually did (her answer to JT was excellent) and not about trying to knock Russell down.

I don't agree that she needed to get rid of Russell, but she needed to do something to demonstrate to the cast what we knew through the confessionals. Which surely can't be easy,a nd I totally understand why Sandra got the votes over her. As a coattail rider, Sandra was more likable. And she definitely played the best "bottom rung of the dominant alliance" game ever. But I do think if everyone had been a little more aware of just how active Parvati was, she would have gotten more votes.

I didn't watch the season, but how is Sandra a villain? As I recall the year she won, she mostly just sat under a tree.

Yeah, that was weird. I guess because she did some eaves-dropping in the bushes and was generally abrasive?

I think we've gotten to the bottom of the "did Russel know he'd lost already" mystery.

I mentioned it to a coworker, who said he thought that there were some confessional shots in which Russell looked a little more cleaned up than others.

If you have the episode saved on your DVR or have the patience to check it out on CBS's site, go to about 1:25 in, when the final 3 receive their feast and Russell starts talking about how he made it 39 days twice.

Total green screen. No doubt about it. Really well done, if you aren't thinking about it, you'd never really notice, but it is absolutely a fake shot, recorded later.

We checked it again and noticed that Parvati's "confessional" at that same point was also a green screen shot.

It's kind of ludicrous if you look at it - the backdrop clearly shows that they're on top of a freaking mountain with a vista of miles of ocean. No way they'd haul their asses all the way up there from the beach.

Good, we're not crazy...

So the official line is, no green screen and they often have contestants answer two sides of the same question. In this case one answer for "If you won last season" and one for "If you lost last season".

I've often suspected that the "Confessionals" are somewhat scripted to build drama with the producers tossing in questions like "If you were to vote xxx why would that be?" So that the editors can make what's obviously a slam dunk vote for yyy look like it's in question.