BunkoSquad

Treemail! It says something about using your brawn, so Camp Whitey starts doing ridiculous stretching exercises. The survivors gather at the beach, Yul returns from his successful jaunt to Exile Island, and Jeff orders everyone to remove their buffs. Sounds hot, you'd think, but no, they're still just the bandana things. Then, in case anyone just fell off a turnip truck, Jeff announces that the tribes are integrating. Guess he finally got to the part where Brown v. Board of Education overruled Plessy v. Ferguson. (And people don't think I do research.)

Jon, Parvati, Brad and Cecilia are randomly chosen to be captains; guys draft guys and girls draft girls. Then two of the four groups are randomly thrown together (in an ancient Cook Island ceremony involving a paint-filled egg), the upshot of which is that we now have two racially-mixed, gender-equal tribes.

Raro consists of Brad, J.P., Nate, Adam, Parvati, Jenny, Christina, Rebecca, and Stephannie. They all go back to camp and start hugging one another.

Aitu now consists of Jon, Yul, Ozzie, Cao Boi, Cecilia, Jessica, Sundra, Becky and Candice. (Candice, by the way, did not throw herself into the sea when she realized Billy went adios). They go back to camp and start scheming.

And since the scheming is mildly more interesting than the hugging, let's look at that. Yul and Becky are a solid alliance, as are Jon and Candice. Cao Boi and Jessica are starting to bond, because, hey, who eats just one Corn Flake? Yul and Jon throw their lots in together, and Yul quietly tells Becky that he has the Immunity Idol. Sounds like we've got ourselves an unbreakable alliance!

Cecilia also spills the beans to Candice about Billy's being hit by the thunderbolt at the last Challenge. Candice says she liked him, but she didn't like him like him. Everyone giggles. Meanwhile, Billy's somewhere trying to write a heavy metal song that disparages Ozzie, but trying to make it clear that he doesn't mean Ozzy.

At Raro, Pavarti marvels at the four slabs of beefcake that she won at the reshuffling party. She's already got her claws in Adam, she's working Nate hard, and the worst part is that she self-awaredly makes some kind of spiderweb reference. You're the Queen Bee, sweetie. Let's keep our Phylum Arthropoda specimens straight. Anyway, Nate bags an octopus (Phylum Mollusca), shattering the stereotype that black dudes can neither swim nor catch octopi.

The hunks bring the octopus back to Queen Pavarti for her approval. She's impressed with the number of suckers, and that's before she gets a look at the slain beast. Now the only question is who among them gets to be the first to put their tentacles all over her. And who speaks the International Language of Love?

Reward/Immunity Challenge! Jeff unveils a secret note to be opened after the challenge, which I have a sneaking tiny little wee suspicion might involve Exile Island. The challenge is fiendish in its simplicity; everyone's tied together with a 15 pound sandbag, chasing each other around a big oval through two feet of water. Jeff says you'll get tired quickly, and you can bow out, but someone else on your team has to take your sandbag.

Well, I don't like to throw the word "stampede" more than I have to, but really. The women all...OK...stampede to the sidelines, leaving Jon carrying 45 pounds of sand, and certainly some uncharitable thoughts about postfeminism (even if he did go to Sarah Lawrence), at one point. The Raro hunks catch and bring down Cao Boi, meaning Aitu's off to Tribal Council. The secret note is about (wait for it) Exile Island; Raro picks someone who will be there for the Tribal Council and thus can't be voted out. They confer for a moment and say Candice, which makes about as much sense as any of the other choices would.

The practical application of Candice's absence means that the eternal Yul/Jon/Becky/Candice alliance might not even last an hour. Yul tries to work on Cao Boi, and Jon tries to work on Jessica. Ozzie, realizing that he's the captain of the Also-Rans, forms an anti-Becky alliance with Sundra, Jessica and Cecilia. Then Jon adds Jessica to their alliance.

If you're keeping score, you may have noticed that both alliances feature Jessica. This is not a misprint.

See, she's one of those people that agrees with the last thing they heard. She's the reason people wave signs outside the polling place on Election Day. Jon, and Ozzie, and Cao Boi, and everyone else seemingly, explain their great strategies to her, and she sits there, smiling and uncaring, like a dog in an algebra class. Jon's a particularly crappy salesman; he pitches his plan to her, she says "Well, I don't know", and he immediately pitches it again. And it sounds different than last time - even to me, and I ostensibly know what his plan is. This tribe has trouble written all over it.

So we know three solid votes for Becky (suspected of weakness), and three for Cecilia (whose only crime was being there). Cao Boi and Jessica are anyone's guess. Jeff asks some humdrum questions, gets some humdrum answers, and they vote. Ozzie votes for Becky, saying "You made no effort to get to know me." So....your feelings were hurt? Grow up, Ozzie. Jessica, true to form, stares at her blank piece of parchment for a few long seconds. Jeff tallies the votes. Cecilia, in the wrong place at the wrong time, is gone: the first non-fat-lazy-guy voted off the island.