BunkoSquad

This year there are two new wrinkles. First is Exile Island, off the shore of Panama, where one castaway will spend each episode cooling their heels and digging around for an Immunity Idol that Jeff promised them was hidden somewhere. Second, the contestants are divided into four, not two, teams: in this case, the Girls, the Boys, the Men and the Women.

First order of business is selecting a patsy to spend the first night on Exile Island. One member of each tribe sprinted to a pile of skulls, and then smash the skulls until they found one of three amulets hidden within. The one who didn't come up with a lucky skull sentenced one of their teammates to solitude. No, they weren't real skulls. The Girls' sprinter, Danielle, finished out of the money, so the Girls rock-scissors-papered it until Misty, the former Miss Teen Texas USA, was left behind. Misty made a few half-hearted digs in the sand, then decided to just BS and tell everyone she found the Immunity Idol.

So now we have 3.75 tribes trying to get a good start on the mainland. Two tribes (the older ones) decided it might be nice to get a fire started and a shelter built. The Boys played stickball for a while, then put their hopes in the hands of yoga instructor Aras, whose cunning plan was to fuse their energies or something by holding all their hands close together. OK. But it's still a bit better than the Girls' plan, which was to pooh-pooh a number of potential campsite locations, then watch bemusedly as Courtney, the fire dancer from (wait for it) Los Angeles, held an impromptu memorial service for a dead turtle they saw on the beach.

Meanwhile, the Men had a roaring fire going, much to the chagrin of Shane (possibly named, certainly modeled, after hard-living Pogues frontman Shane McGowan). See, Shane decided that being stuck on a beach in Panama was the best time for him to quit smoking. While he was twitching, Terry and Dan whipped out their....resumes, revealing that Terry was once a fighter pilot and Dan was once an astronaut. (They're both New Englanders and Sox fans, so I'll lay off 'em for now.)

And the Women. Well. While Tina, the lumberjill from Wisconsin, was building the hut, starting the fire, coming home with a fresh fish for dinner, and setting up a crude but effective satellite dish, Ruth-Marie and Melinda were standing around inneffectually and Cirie was revealing her deep-seated, crippling fear of...leaves. I wish I had made that up.

Which brings us to the immunity challenge, an obstacle course whose details are too hard to remember. Misty uttered some cryptic words that might have made you think she actually found the Idol, had you literally just fallen off a turnip truck or arrived on this planet. (I think the Girls believed her.) The Boys all got cuts and bruises, but still looked ready to pose for the J. Crew catalog, and the Women finished last, meaning they were bound for Tribal Council and a culling of their herd.

Enter Cirie. She told the camera that Tina scared her, what with her competence and work ethic. So Cirie was going to form an alliance to jettison Tina. Ruth-Marie and Melinda, apparently not realizing that they might actually have been eaten by honest-to-God bears if not for Tina, fell in line. Now knowing that Tina was doomed, we got to watch her perform a little private ceremony on the beach in honor of her son, who was killed in a car crash just before Tina headed to Panama. Yikes. So the only capable member of the Women, who was battling through her own pain, is gone, so Cerie doesn't have to worry about her seven moves from now. Remind me to play chess with Cerie sometime. Sadly, on the way back from Tribal Council, the three remaining Women fell into a crude pit-trap and were eaten by bears. I bet Tina would have spotted it.