From what I've noticed, a message of "Respect Your Leader" seems to be something prominent in this episode. Probst tells us right away all about how much experience both Rob and Russell have, and that they're invaluable to the tribe. Their experience should help the newbies, and that the newbies should respect these guys for what they've accomplished. Francesca immediately butts in and calls them both trouble-makers, seemingly an appropriate name for them, but I don't think it was meant to be appreciated. What's more, she got voted out this episode, so that always helps reinforce the notion that going against them isn't a valued idea. You need to respect their experience, not dismiss it. As well, Rob ends the episode by telling us how much he loves playing with amateurs right as he votes out Francesca, benefiting the theme that Rob has the experience necessary to advance.
With this in mind, I'm gonna categorize and highlight each character and tell you my thoughts on them based on what we saw in this episode. This is not necessarily a ranking on who I think has the best chance to win, but instead just a categorization of the 18 contestants.
Due to my current re-newed Bright Eyes obsession, the category names all come from them:
~The Missing~
The players whom we never really saw or heard from, that somehow got lost in the fold and left to the wayside. These are people that didn't even get up to Natalie White-esque levels of visibility in the first episode of the season. Not good for any of them.
Grant: Nothing. Worse is that his tribe went to tribal council but we still saw nothing of him. We can assume he's in with Rob just based on the vote, but that's it. I think he was left in the worst position of all the players in this category just because he's the only player from the tribe that went to tribal council to get nothing.
Julie: We literally saw nothing of her. She's hardly shown in any of the scenes. Her tribe didn't go to tribal council, but it's still not a good thing to be left out for an entire episode.
Steve: The guy was most shown when he became ecstatic to greet Russell into the tribe at the beginning of the episode. Otherwise, not much else.
Krista: Nothing really to say here either. Just another player who wasn't shown, although her tribe didn't go to tribal council either.
~The Barely There~
This is a group of players who weren't invisible, but still didn't have too much going for them in the midst of everything. They oftentimes contributed to another's story, or just didn't have too much to speak of yet.
Ralph: Shown to be a worker-bee who enjoys knowing more about this sorta stuff than other people. He received a winners quote, but nothing more was told to us about him. Barely there, but there.
Sarita: She had one moment in the episode where she spoke with David and Mike about dissenting away from Russell. Given that Russell has shown to be duplicitous once more (to the audience), I'd say this may bode well for her if Russell continues with his current edit. She's going to be a part of the rebellion alliance against Russ if one is to ever form (which I'm sure it will). Otherwise though she wasn't shown much at all.
Natalie: The character who received the most screen time in Rob's alliance, she was told to be smitten with him in a personal way. Young and much a follower, she was as well mentioned to be the weakest on the tribe. Her physical weakness may be a reason she leaves pre-merge, if any.
Andrea: A character who's on the right side of the votes, she makes up a part of the Camp Harmony alliance, lead by Rob. She hasn't said or done much, but from what was shown we can see that she's just gonna let players like Phillip do their thing while she keeps going. She was bunched in with the 'young girls' we kept hearing about, but that's not a bad thing as of yet.