I love how they were promoting "big moves" for this episode, yet they vote out a complete non-entity.
Why did the Brawn's all trust George in the first place, when he'd already betrayed them once? Can't believe he is still around. Fools.
There definitely were big moves in this episode. Not all big moves have to work though. They just didn't pay off for Dani & Emmett. It was a smart play from George as he couldn't be 100% sure whether it was going to be Dani/Emmett. All he could guarantee was that the brains would trust him as they didnt really have any options. As you classed Gerald as "non-entity", it made him the perfect target to make a blindside. Perfectly executed. But I know what you mean, Gerald is the perfect goat to bring to the final 2 and definitely isn't the threat that George made him out to be. But with Gerald gone you now have 3 brawn who will no longer work with each other and an idol flushed out. If George voted Dani out you'd still have strong 3 in Emmett/Flick/Gerald. He couldn't vote for Emmett as he knew flick would play the idol for him. So there was only 2 options left in Gerald/Flick. I'd say it was definitely a big move.
I think Brawn chose not to believe Hayley and side with George as he's been voting with them everytime more out of necessity than a choice. Despite that explosive last tribal when Hayley blew up George's game, they still needed him as a number to keep a majority. You just have to look at the numbers and voting him out wouldn't have given them a majority.
E.g If they had voted George out.
Original Brawn: Emmett, Gerald, Dani, Flick
Original Brain: Andrew, Laura, Wai, Hayley, Cara
Cara would 100% flip back to brains if Geroge was voted out. Therefore I don't see an option where voting George out helps the original brawn group. I might not like the guy but gotta give credit where credit is due. His game has definitely been great ever since the tribe swap.
Dani had the right mindset in voting Emmett out. Making a random alliance of 5 though out of the blue from the reward challenge wasn't smart. You just need to go back to original tribe to see that Gerald/Flick weren't even on the same side as Dani and for her to put that much trust in them was very naive. I think her losing her no.1 in Chelsea definitely has effected her game. Like she did pre-merge in voting Simon out early, I think she needed Emmett for a few more tribals like maybe final 7 and then make the move on Emmett. She now doesn't have the numbers and is very vulnerable.