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May 03, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.12: Like Lenin Said: Look For The Person Who Will Benefit

Night 30 at Bula Bula. Alex and the rest of them come back to camp after Alex's Operation Stab Mookie In the Back was successful. Alex has ill-deserved confidence that he can weasel his way into another three days. Earl is alarmed that the split-the-vote strategy he was against worked. Dreamz sees something shiny and wanders off.

For some reason, Stacy goes over to talk to Alex. She tries to butter him up, which is stupid because (a) why bother?!? and (b) it makes the rest of her Alliance nervous. So nervous, in face, that they send Boo over to break up the conversation, which will go in the Hamhanded Hall of Fame. Boo: "Stacy, they want to talk to you." Stacy: "Who does?" Boo: "Um, everybody except for you and Alex." Hurley on Lost is a better liar than Boo.

Alex says he's going to be "a ninja", and fake sleeping in so he can spy on people. Which makes him sound a little more like a slacker than a ninja, but whatever. He also says he's armed with nothing but "a smile, velvet gloves and a dagger in my pocket", which makes him sound a little more like a Byronesque fop than a ninja, but whatever.

The Alliance of Six is trying to decide who among them will become the Alliance of Four once the Alex unpleasantness is behind them. Everyone distrusts Boo, but Earl and Cassandra want to keep Dreamz in the quartet, while Yau Man feels more comfortable keeping Stacy along for the ride. Maybe Alex could exploit this, if he were spying on this conversation, as a ninja might do.

Reward Challenge! In a PETA-approved challenge, the Survivors have to rip into hunks of pork with nothing but their teeth and assemble the biggest pile of meat in five minutes. Yau Man rips off a couple of big chunks, but when Jeff does the measurements, Boo comes out a couple of pounds ahead of everybody else. It's a proud day for the South.

So Boo, along with Yau Man and Dreamz (silver and bronze), gets to go on a helicopter/whitewater rafting adventure. Earl gets to go to Exile Island (which is stupid because you don't really want to leave Alex alone with anyone at this point - not Kate-last-night on Lost stupid, but not brilliant). Boo also gets a mystery bag which will help him in the Immunity Challenge.

The adventure looks pretty freaking cool. They ride the chopper (or is it huey now? Who can tell?) around some majestic island scenery and raft through some spectacular landscapes with waterfalls. Only problem is, Boo won't shut up through the whole trip, which understandably pisses off Yau Man and ironically pisses off Dreamz.

Boo at some point says riding on the raft makes him feel like a giddy little girl. I don't even have a comment here.

They finish their tour with a picnic lunch, where a friendly Fijian delivers them all letters from home. Yau Man reads off his son's report card (he got a B in Algebra; Yau asks why it couldn't have been in Spanish). Boo learns that the horses and the family are all eating well. Dreamz gets an inspirational letter from his sister that actually seems to inspire him. Not bad.

Back to Bula Bula, where Alex is trying to figure out how he's going to stir things up. A ninja would know already.

Immunity is up for grabs! It's a 2-stage process, where the Survivors have to dig in the sand for some climbing tools. The first two to find them go up against Boo (for his climbing tools were in the mystery bag) and...well...climb a pole for Immunity.

Alex starts digging like a madman. Cassandra halfheartedly flops around in the sand without really trying. Alex, getting more desparate, starts chucking his sand into Yau's area. Not cool, man. Not cool. But it works, as he and Dreamz advance to the second round.

In the pole-climbing portion of the challenge, Alex tries to skip using the climbing tools, and gets 80% of the way up...and stops. Boo wins. Alex is in a world of trouble right now.

So now it's time for him to use his Harvard Law negotiating skills and get people on his side. He decides he'll wait for the others to come to him, since it makes perfect sense for people who aren't about to be voted off to make nice to the guy who is going to be voted off. And so here comes Cassandra. Alex starts telling her that he wants to help her vote for Yau Man (who won't be expecting it and thus won't play the Idol) to help her down the line. And not at all because it keeps Alex alive for another week. Like Lenin said...look for the person who benefits.

It's a dopey idea, but some of them are at least mulling it over. Cassandra has to look at the Earl/Yau alliance as a big obstacle in her future. Dreamz misses the point entirely when Earl winks at him as Alex is babbling away. Just let's not be stupid, Cassandra and Dreamz. Please?

At Tribal Council, Yau Man admits he's feeling a little bit of pressure, which is exactly the kind of weakness you don't want to voice in front of Cassandra and Dreamz right now. Jeff asks everyone, in turn, if they feel very worried right now; Alex is the only one who says yes. Earl sits back looking simultaneously smooth and devious. Can you tell I'm rooting for Earl?

They vote, and it quickly becomes obvious that Alex's Save Alex Plan didn't get a lot of traction. Looks like he'll have to be a ninja up at the Statesville Prison from now on. Anyone who put $5 on Dreamz to be the Last Remaining Horseman at 75:1 odds is feeling pretty good right now.

Next week: Axes are thrown! Yau Man wheels and deals! Alex's parting shot is that now the Alliance has to turn on itself. Alex, I think they all know that, and just decided they'd prefer to do it without you hanging around.

Posted by Michael at 09:44 PM | Comments (1)

April 29, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.11: Donny, These Men Are Cowards

Sad times at Bula Bula, as the Four Horsemen have been routed. Edgardo's been given the boot, and Dreamz has jumped ship to join Team Earl. Or, more accurately, to bounce around like a pinball and ally with whomever he's talking to at that exact second.

Shorter Team Alex postmortem. Mookie: "We're screwed." Alex: "Ya think?"

Dreamz, who for some reason is feeling a little bit of mistrust and suspicion wafting in his general direction, is talking to Team Earl, trying to figure out why they didn't all vote exactly the way he was expecting him to. He thinks it's because they think he's a liar; they patiently explain that they wanted to make sure the whole lot of 'em weren't triple-crossed. Now that's language Dreamz can understand. He doesn't go away mad, but he does go away. Win-win.

Now that it's 6-2, Stacy can revert from helpful, agreeable Stacy to the Ice Queen of Northern Vermont. She says Alex and Mookie, being in the minority, will be lucky to be offered any food. And she will never get her comeuppance! You hear me? NO COMEUPPANCE!

Dreamz goes on an ill-advised goodwill mission to the tattered remnants of his old alliance. "We got outplayed" he tells Alex and Mookie. They nod politely, rather than turn him over to the Brute Squad, which might have been my instinct were I in their shoes.

The Reward Challenge splits them into two teams. Orange: Yau Man, Mookie, Cassandra and Boo. Green: Earl, Stacy, Alex and Dreamz. One of them will slingshot balls out into a sea of mud, where the rest try to catch said balls with lacrosse sticks. I think they're lacrosse sticks, anyway.

There's a lot of pushing and shoving. There's a lot of yelling by Mookie at Yau, as Mookie doesn't think Yau is understanding Mookie's secret signals of where to fling the balls. There's a visit from the medical team, as something in Boo's legs pops and snaps audibly, and he grunts and groans in the mud for a while.

What there isn't is a lot of blurring out of body parts. Without any minx like Parvati or Danielle around, there's no point having this challenge in the mud, as it's mostly an ugly all-male production. Rest assured, I shall be sending a letter to Mr. Probst.

The Green Team wins (Dreamz wins MVP of the challenge). They get a seaplane ride to a spa, with showers, beds, food and many many products from one of the program's fine sponsors. As SurvivorBlog is a non-profit (hint), I won't mention them. They also tab Boo to go to Exile Island, since he's lived at Luxury Beach for most of the game, and he's too hobbled to mount a serious run at the Immunity Idol.

Boo frumps around Exile Island. He reads the first clue to the rehidden Idol, which indicates it's near a tree. He moans and complains, but his heart doesn't really seem to be in it.

The spa trip is pretty boring. Again, the hot tub scene with Parvati and Ozzie last time set the bar pretty high, so we have to be content now with some scenes of them lounging around in robes. Stacy, as gracious as ever, sniffs that it kind of sucks to have Alex around, since he's the prey and she's...well, not the predator, but one of those little birds that flutters around the predator because there's a steady supply of food.

They come back to camp. Alex is fired up! He's ready to bring it! Whatever it is!

Mookie decides the time is right to play his hunch, that Yau Man found Moto's Immunity Idol. He rifles through Yau's bags and his suspicions are confirmed. He and Alex giddily romp into the forest to play Sneaky Petes and discuss how this ill-gotten information can make their Alliance of Two into a full-fledged powerhouse. What I didn't mention earlier is that at the spa, Alex tried to appeal to Earl by talking up his sense of integrity and honor.

The two of them decide that their wisest course of action is to blackmail and strongarm Yau. They'll tell him, either you tell everyone you have the Idol, or we will. Um, OK. Meanwhile, their whole conversation is being sort of overheard by Cassandra and Stacy. The ladies can't hear much of what the dudes are saying, but the dudes are spooked by their audience.

So Mookie and Alex have to get to Yau before the girls do. They find him, tell him they found his Idol while searching his bag, and what is he gonna do about it? Yau cowboys up and says, OK, tell everyone. Mookie and Alex are nonplussed.

Somehow, Yau gets back to camp first and tells everyone what went down. Earl is full of righteous indignation that Yau's pack was searched; Dreamz misses the point entirely and starts ruminating about how the alliance of two can now take charge by possessing information that most of them had already guessed.

Commercials: Is there really a new pirate-themed reality show coming up? Should I blog that? Yarrrr.

The Immunity Challenge is a modified eight-way game of Battleship. Dreamz and Cassandra mistakenly participate in the sinking of their own ships, and Stacy wins by being in the right place at the right time.

Alex and Mookie decide that one of them is certainly doomed, so they're going to raise a little hell at Tribal Council before they go home. It's always a little amazing to watch people conspiring to overplay their hand.

Team Earl is trying to decide which of the Two Remaining Horsemen will go first. Dreamz misses the point entirely and says that Alex is better at collecting firewood, so he should stay. There's support for kicking Alex off now, since he might win a challenge down the road. Boo (!) comes up with the idea of splitting the vote, in case one of them stumbled on the new Immunity Idol or (more likely) picked Yau's pockets.

At Tribal Council, Alex makes a dopey speech about the importance of fair play and trust. Mookie then admits that he and Alex were playing "Amateur TSA" with Yau's packs. Jeff, who didn't just fall off a turnip truck, sees through their Grade-A baloney and calls them on it.

This, I'll remind you, is when Mookie and Alex were planning to "raise a little hell" at the Council. "A little" hell would be a very, very generous assessment of what happened. Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the hamsters of war.

Alex, possessed of a highly-tuned skin-saving gene, must have figured out that Team Earl will be splitting the vote, so he votes for Mookie to tip the scales. Looks like Mookie will be rummaging through sacks at the Statesville Prison from now on.

Next week: Alex is a ninja! There's meat!

Posted by Michael at 09:56 PM | Comments (2)

April 23, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.10: Certain Things Have Come To Light

We start on the set of Three Men and a Bonehead, where Alex is ruing the fact that Mookie has clued Dreamz into their possession of the Immunity Idol. And Mookie is ruing the fact that Alex remembers that they have the Idol, since Mookie's entire strategy seems to be predicated on using the Idol without Alex (and, to a lesser extent, Edgardo) realizing it. There's a lot of ruing going on. So Mookie hollers at Dreamz while Dreamz watches a bug.

Among the former Moto-II's, Boo is submitting an audition tape, trying to become a valued member of Team Earl. Earl doesn't seem completely sold, even when Boo throws in a glitter bag with scented soaps.

Let's go right to the Reward Challenge!

It's one of the best challenges in Survivor's arsenal: the Slam Book. Jeff makes everyone fill out a questionnaire regarding the loathsome and obnoxious habits of people's loathsome and obnoxious co-contestants. This is the challenge that broks Courtney two seasons ago, so let's get started. Each person who correctly guesses the consensus answers gets to smash a...well, thing, and help knock someone else out of the challenge.

First question: Who's the most trustworthy? Team Earl rallies 'round their captain, and he wins. All three Survivors who guessed right smash Stacy's thing and she's out.

Second: Who would you least like to take to dinner? Boo is the correct answer, and I can imagine Dreamz is beaming as everyone goes and smashes Boo's thing. He's out.

We then learn that Alex has a false sense of entitlement, that no one plans to hang out with Stacy after the show is over, that Dreamz smells the funkiest (Edgardo endearingly assumed it was himself), and that Stacy's the one who's most wasted this opportunity. I don't know which opportunity they mean, exactly, because if they mean the opportunity was to be a snoot about coffee, Stacy got her money's worth and more.

In the end, Cassandra guessed every answer correctly, so she gets to send someone off to Exile Island (bye, Mookie) and gets a feast on a yacht with three other Survivors. She disperses her Golden Tickets to Dreamz, Boo and Yau, figuring that Yau needs a good meal and she can make sure the other two realize the benefits of joining Team Earl. Even though Earl himself wasn't invited.

On Exile Island, Mookie fumes and steams and bitches and moans about Cassandra. Who does she think she is, punishing someone who's clearly working against her? Mookie reads over all the Idol clues, then throws them aside, pronouncing them "useless". Which is at least as ironic as anything Alanis Morissette came up with. He (half-correctly) guesses that Earl has the other Idol, and wishes there were some way to get word to the others in his Frat Pack.

On the luxury yacht (pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove), Boo is slamming margaritas. Should make him easier to butter up. Yau's salute - "proceed carefully" - is straight out of the Toastmasters' Handbook. Cassandra and Yau are doing something that falls somewhere between buttering Dreamz up and breaking him down like the POW's in The Manchurian Candidate.

When they come back, we see an interview with Dreamz, where he seems to have come to the sad realization that, although he's in good shape to become kingmaker, kingmakers never become kings. I think he thinks that, at this point, he's going to be a vital and instrumental part of either Earl or Alex winning a million bucks.

So here's how he handles that. He tells Alex that Team Earl has Alex in their sights (including making a sloppy Lord of the Rings analogy), then goes over and starts excitedly yelling something to Earl and Cassandra. When Earl tells him to slow down and enunciate, Dreamz announces that Mookie is holding Ravu's Immunity Idol. This has the effect of scraping a needle across a record (you kids may have to look that reference up) and Earl is silenced. Dreamz is either the worst spy ever, or he's lying, or both.

Now to the Reward Challenge, which involves the Survivors balancing on little tiny footholds while holding their weight up with their arms. It looks about as exciting as it sounds, and you can tell that it's killing Jeff that he can't really shout out updates.

Yau Man wins. He is a freaking Jedi knight.

Now it's time for scheming, and all hell is breaking loose. Stacy, who I thought was a reliable patsy on Team Alex, gets totally convinced by Yau to flip to Team Earl. Mookie actually parts with the Idol, figuring that Alex would be Team Earl's first target.

Then Dreamz runs over to Team Earl and tells them this. OMGWTFBBQ. He's like counter-counter-counterspying at this point. Stacy says (and my regard for Stacy shoots up from zero to an actual integer) that since Team Alex is planning to defend Alex, Team Earl should whack Edgardo instead. I had to watch this twice to make sure it was actually Stacy, and not Sun Tsu.

So Dreamz goes running back to Alex, and does not tell him about this shakeup. Oh, Dreamz is gonna be popular tomorrow! So we're heading into Tribal Council. Team Earl is planning to vote off Edgardo, though Team Alex thinks it's Alex. Team Alex is going after Cassandra to satisfy Mookie's bloodlust.

At Council, they all admit that this was the most chaotic day ever. Yau, wearing the Immunity Necklace of Shark's Teeth, says that this is the first time he's come to a vote not thinking he was going to be kicked out, which is really cute for some reason. Dreamz sayz it'z time to separate the snakes from the rats, which means that (1) he's been doing his homework, and (2) I'm not sure he's thought through the ramifications of his playing Agent Saboteur.

The votes are cast. Jeff asks if anyone wants to play the Immunity Idol; Alex steps forward and turns it in.

The votes are read, and it's never been more obvious that a staffer arranges them in the pot for maximum suspense. The first three are for Cassandra, then one for Mookie (which was cast by Dreamz, who I think either has 11 plots going at once or has absolutely no follow-through at all, and I'm not sure which it is), and then the gloves come off and five votes in a row come through for Edgardo. Ciao.

Team Alex looks appropriately stunned and saddened. Jeff announces that the Idol will be reburied and new clues will be written. Rocky, on the Jury, looks around like he's never met any of these people before. And Edgardo's torch is snuffed; looks like he'll be failing at archery up in the Statesville Prison from now on.

Edgardo's Two Minute Hate is that he gambled and lost (spoken like a true European playboy) and that he thinks Cassandra is evil. Next week: Dreamz learns about consequences! Mookie seaches Yau's stuff and finds the Idol! Jeff might get a new hat!

Posted by Michael at 07:22 PM | Comments (1)

April 19, 2007

SurvivorBlog Will Be Delayed

This was perhaps the most complicated episode ever. Plus, after the show, I went outside for a walk to take advantage of a bizarre meteorological phenomenon where cold water wasn't plummeting out of the sky. Freaky. Might be a sign of End Times. Review'll be up soon.

Posted by Michael at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.9: I Wouldn't Hold Out Much Hope For the Tape Deck

Previously on Survivor: Mookie gets up pretty early in the morning! Lisi snoozes! Lisi loses!

We open on a suspicious Camp Raro, where Edgardo and Alex are having concerns - well-founded concerns - about the wisdom of letting Mookie have physical possession of the Immunity Idol that the Three Musketeers dug up together. Mookie swears up and down that he'll never turn on them. Somehow they believe this.

Then a panoramic look at the Stately Moto Mansion: its luxurious bed, its fully stocked china cabinet, its ample toilet paper. Not that this is foreshadowing or anything.

Treemail! Everyone gather up your personal belongings - no rewards, no flints - and fill your canteen, because you've got a ticket to Exile Island! Kind of defeats the purpose of the "Exile" bit, but what are you gonna do. Everyone seems to think that this has something to do with a merge.

At Ravu, they immediately make plans to make their 4-6 advantage into a legitimate majority. They decide that Dreamz will win over Cassandra, and Mookie will win over Michelle. I don't think the guy from Numbers can come up with an equation that will make this plan work.

They all row out to E.I. and are a little miffed that Jeff isn't there with instructions and a hat. They wander around aimlessly griping, which is totally different than what they usually do because it's on a different island. Alex wins back some major BunkoSquad points when he asks, "Is this where the cannibals come in?"

At the top of Exile Island tower (Careful! Don't slip in Lisi's tears!) they find another note, instructing them to paddle back to Moto. Mookie is psyched, since he's the only one left who has never known the singular joy of using a bed or a toilet. Well, presumably in the last three weeks only.

Moto's been robbed! They wander around aimlessly (I sense a theme) and note that the bed, the food, the china cabinet, the Wii, the jetpack, the wine cellar, and the toilet are gone. So are the tape deck and the Creedence tapes. Mookie, understandably, looks particularly crestfallen.

The good news is that they have a new flag to paint, and get to pick a new tribe name. They come up with Bula Bula, which either means "Hello" in Fijian or is a sign that Yale's dastardly Skull and Bones Club has stuck its pernicious tentacles even into ridiculous game shows.

The Survivors mull over the new dynamics, since the 10 castaways seem to be in a total of 4,542 rock-solid alliances (I counted). Stacy and Michelle are convinced that the boys will probably turn on one another before they touch the girls. If only Totally Hetero Rocky were still around to disprove that theory.

Everyone's feeling good. Mack Daddy Earl knows his ducks are in a row. Alex and Edgardo feel confident that Stacy hasn't flipped. Dreamz knowz he'z on the "outskirts" [sic] but he thinks that's a good place to be. And Boo is ready to lie in the weeds for a while, then reclaim his position of leadership. Which means he must have been Assistant Manager of a Sizzler at one point, and they're saving his old apron, because I haven't seen him in a position of leadership once since this whole clambake started.

Every alliance except Boo's Army of One seems to be pretty united in thinking that Boo's going to be first to go. Alliance #562 (Yau Man, Dreamz, Cassandra, Mookie) announce that Stacy will be next, which leads Mookie and Dreamz to conclude that the Moto-II alliance is stronger than the Ravu-II alliance (maybe they took off their shoes and realized that 6 toes are more than 4 toes) and that doesn't bode well for either of them.

Now people are going to debate this next bit for years to come. As tactical maneuvers go, it ranks somewhere between a pissed-off Crash Davis telling batters which pitch Nuke is about to throw, and Nixon authorizing the Watergate break-in. Mookie tells Dreamz about the Idol. You may recall that three people found the Idol, and Dreamz was the fourth remaining Ravu-II. Which means they never told him about it when it was just the four of them. Which means Mookie just admitted that Dreamz wasn't part of their club, they were going to vote for him next if they had to, and they're blatantly only telling him now because Mookie fears what Dreamz will do with the information that Mookie revealed to Dreamz in the previous sentence.

Then consider that Dreamz has a big mouth, is as volatile as [ed. note - look up a volatile chemical here to make us look smart], and already is suspected of having ties to one or more Moto-II's, and it's clear that Lisi sprinkled some Stupid Juice on Mookie before she left.

Smooth move, Ex-Lax. Alex and Edgardo start to wonder about this wisdom of hitching their wagon to the star of a guy who made friends with Rocky.

Immunity Challenge! Jeff, as cunning as a weasel, splits Bula Bula in two, and says that even though we're merged, there will still be a team element to this challenge. Winning team gets steaks, losers get a note read to them by Jeff. In orange: Edgardo, Yau, Earl, Cassandra and Boo. In green: Dreamz, Michelle, Stacy, Alex and Mookie. They have to paddle canoes, untangle puzzle pieces, assemble puzzle.

Yau Man rocks the untangling part, making this frail little old computer geek the most Challengeworthy Survivor since Terry, and Orange gets out to an insurmountable lead. Jeff reveals his little note, which says that the Green Team will not go back to camp, will not collect $200, but will take the Short Bus Railroad directly to Tribal Council. No scheming, no plotting, no mercy.

The Orange team eats steaks (Boo actually looks like a hell of a competent chef) and speculates about who's not going to come home. Earl, understandably, is worried about Michelle; Edgardo is worried because the whole rest of his alliance is out there somewhere. Boo shows enough self-awareness to say that he's very lucky not to be out there himself. I make a mental note to go get a steak as soon as the show ends.

It's nighttime, and the Greens are arriving at Tribal Council. Was it a five-hour walk, or were they put in Isolation Chambers, like in the lightning round on Family Feud?

***FAMILY FEUD TANGENT***
I was watching some blooper/hilarious-TV-moment show the other day, and there was a scene of (possibly Australian) Family Feud where the question was "Name a place where you would toast somebody". One of the contestants buzzed in and yelled out, "A grille!" Everyone laughed, the host cracked up, the contestant looked mortified. Finally the host composed himself, called out "Show me a grille!" and of course it was the number five answer. People. Don't know whether to love 'em, or hole up in the Idaho mountains to escape 'em.
***TANGENT ENDS***

At Tribal Council, Jeff starts poking at the wariness and the unpreparedness [ed. note - that can't be a real word] of the five people sitting before him. He finally lays it on the line: "Dreamz, tell me why people should vote off Stacy". He diplomatically answers, "'Cuz it ain't me". Damn good answer, actually. He tries to get everyone to name names, and everyone diplomatically says nice things about the others.

Then Alex.

JEFF: Alex, tell me why you might vote off [Dreamz/Stacy/Mookie]?

ALEX: I have no reason to vote off [Dreamz/Stacy/Mookie].

JEFF: Why might you vote off Michelle?

ALEX: Because she must die.

I paraphrase a bit, but I hope I accurately conveyed what a cold-blooded assassin Alex turned into there for a second. Frankly, I rewrote this section nine times just to make sure I didn't include anything that would make Alex come after me. Mookie and Dreamz gulp, seemingly having gotten the message.

So it's Michelle. Guess she'll be using her eyeglasses to start fires up in the Statesville Prison from now on.

During the commercials, I quickly tacked up some posterboards and drew charts of who's left. There are two three-person alliances (Yau/Earl/Cassandra and Alex/Stacy/Edgardo) that seem pretty solid. Dreamz and Mookie are free agents, and Boo is just biding his time waiting for Team Boo to assemble. This is going to be some kind of ride.

Next week: Dreamz and Mookie fight! Cassandra makes a mistake! The front-page story in the Bula Bula Tribune: MOOKIE HAS AN IMMUNITY IDOL!

Michelle's exit interview is very bubbly and self-affirming, then she realizes she has three days of hanging out with Rocky and Lisi coming up, and she stabs herself in the throat.

Posted by Michael at 10:24 PM | Comments (1)

April 05, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.8: They're Gonna Kill That Poor Woman

I've met a lot of people in my life. Some of them have delusions of grandeur. Some of them think they're something they're not. Some of them have wild mood swings. Some of them laugh at inappropriate times. Some of them have either no self-awareness, or a self-awareness that's so far from reality that you wonder if they're actually aware of a whole 'nother person, possibly 400 miles away.

Meet Lisi. She brings it all to the table.

When we rejoin Ravu, they've kicked Rocky out, and are now openly tanking the season for draft picks. Mookie, Edgardo and Alex have risen early and are planning to use the given clues to dig up the Immunity Idol. These are the clues that were given to Mookie by Lisi, who on Exile Island was given every clue under the sun, possibly including a GPS tracker. The only way they could have made it easier for Lisi would be to wrap the Idol in the clues and put it in the clue bucket.

Lisi and Dreamz slumber on.

Meanwhile, I'm a little confused by the dynamics of Ravu-II. Edgardo, Mookie and Alex seem allied pretty well - they are digging for the Idol together, after all - but they sort of seem like they consider Lisi a trusted member of the alliance, and sort of seem like they think Dreamz fits their fratboy posse a little better. Which, if you're keeping score, means that this tribe of five has a loose five-person alliance. That may have won the game for Aitu last season, but I don't think these knuckleheads can pull it off.

They find the Idol. They agree to keep it between the three of them, and they'll use it at the exact right time with a well-thought-out consensus. I can't possibly see how this could go wrong. Mookie, alone with the camera, invokes the "Possession = 9/10 of the law" law that was established in Finders v. Keepers (1964).

Lisi, the defective detective, wakes up to see Mookie smoothing out the ground where he'd been digging. "You diggin' for the Idol?" asks Lisi, who clearly wasn't just forcibly and bodily ejected from the turnip truck. "Uhhhhh....yyyyeah...." replies Mookie, who then gets to listen to Lisi talk about how she's going to look for the Idol too, real soon now.

Lisi interviews that she's not going to let them slip one by her, saying - and I want you to read this next bit carefully - "you've got to wake up pretty early to fool...me". If you're just joining us, that is pretty much exactly what happened, down to the nanosecond.

Finally we switch over to Moto, where the idle rich are awakened by the arrival of some authentic native Fijians, who don't even for a second totally and completely remind me of the Molombo Tribe that Ted Striker and Elaine taught basketball and Tupperware to. Boo and Michelle greet them with a culturally-aware "¡Ola!"

The native Fijians have come to dance. Or at least teach the Survivors to dance, since the Reward Challenge will involve...well, dancing. One of the Motos will have to sit out, and Yau Man can't physically volunteer fast enough. The lessons go pretty well; Earl snickers at Boo's white man dance, which may be a little myopic on Earl's part, but then again, put a beer in Boo's hand and he'll look ready for a Phi Kap kegger, the way he's dancing.

Ravu is undergoing similar preparations. It's Lisi and four guys, and for a second, I wish Rocky was still with us, because seeing Rocky dance with four guys would lead to a magnificent Rocky soliliquy on the depths and purity of Rocky's heterosexuality. It's a shame.

Lisi interviews that she doesn't really take challenges all that seriously. I see a career as a motivational speaker in her future; at least, I can see her living in a van down by the river.

They trudge into the outdoor Fijian dance hall, adorned in war paint and palm fronds. There Jeff explains that the teams will be judged on their appearance, technique, and spirit by three Fijians. I can't help but think that the three are an accountant, a baker and a seamstress by day, rather than authentic native dance interpreters, and I can only hope that CBS is paying them in cash. BRING IT ON!!!

Moto's dance, led by Earl, is solid. Ravu's dance is OK except for Lisi, who's an utter train wreck. Dreamz even punctuates it with a backflip. Not bad. The judges confer (or maybe they're talking about Jeff's hat - they're speaking Fijian) and say that both teams were equal on appearance and spirit, but Moto wins on technique, possibly because, if you're just joining us, Lisi was a train wreck.

Moto wins a Fijian feast, and the joy of sending Lisi back to Exile Island. Which is too bad, because I think what Ravu needs to hear on their way home is Lisi telling them that she doesn't take challenges too seriously.

On Exile Island, Lisi jibber-jabbers for a while. I think they probably edited it, since it seems like the sun rises and sets twice during her speech.

Back at Moto, Earl and Michelle are having their morning breakfast meeting, which features coffee, muffins, and a little strategy discussion. They've decided they like Boo a little; Stacey, not so much. They think that she's going to glom onto Edgardo and Alex if they merge, so they should get rid of her before that happens. Michelle says that Boo's been helpful, and that she and Stacey are carbon copies of one another who "serve the same function" at Moto. Whatever that is. I realize she's right, and there's a 40% chance that I'll have to edit this paragraph and switch all the names around.

Treemail is an arrow, and a note suggesting that the Immunity Challenge might involve...an arrow. Mookie offers loads of archery tips, and Edgardo says that archery's where he's going to shine, so obviously no one on this team has heard of the word "hubris".

They arrive at Reward Challenge Beach, where Lisi dances her way in from the Exile Island Shuttle. Bet they wish they were given the arrows before she arrived, huh? Jeff explains that they'll actually be firing blow darts, spears, and then, finally arrows, at some targets. The blow-dart challenge is close, but Boo..well, blows...better than anyone else. The spear challenge is a fiasco; only Yau Man puts it anywhere near the bulls-eye. Moto's got a lead.

Moto (courtesy of Yau Man again) puts them close to winning the bow-and-arrow challenge, then Edgardo of Locksley steps up to the line. Music swells, Maid Marian fans herself, the Sheriff looks on nervously...and Edgardo's shot comes nowhere near the target. Here's where I would have played the music on The Price Is Right when someone effs up Plinko. Wrong network, sadly.

Now comes the scheming. The strategizing. The shifting of alliances. The volatile negotiations. And this week, it's all coming from (wait for it) Lisi.

First, she tells Alex she's ready to go. She's lived on Moto, she's lived on Ravu, she's lived on Exile Island. What more could a girl ask for?

Thirty seconds later, she's talking about who she's going to ally with after the merge.

Forty seconds after that, she's trying to foment an ouster of Dreamz, because he's not part of the alliance that Lisi apparently thinks she's still in.

Twelve seconds later, she interviews that she doesn't really feel like she belongs on the team, because they're all a bunch of losers. I spend the next minute and a half nearly choking on a Pringle.

One minute after that, she tells Alex she's having "second thoughts" about being ready to be voted out. Honey, I've been watching. Your "second thoughts" left the station a long time ago. My unofficial count says these are your forty-seventh thoughts. Lisi puts the "tease" in "multiple personalities".

Tribal Council! The Jury comes in in the form of Rocky, who's a sadder and wiser man. We hope. Lisi tells Jeff that for some reason, this group can not come together. Wait till the votes are counted, toots. Dreamz says he's noticed that Lisi isn't trying, that she wants to be voted off, that she told everyone she probably wants to be voted off, and he's happy to vote her off.

Lisi counters with "I never give up! You give up!"

They volley a few more times, then Dreamz sticks in the dagger. He asks Edgardo, Mookie and Alex in turn: "Do you still want to be here?" They all say yes, they do, thank you for asking. He then asks Lisi the same question. Eleven hours later, she's still on her first sentence, but hasn't answered the question.

Jeff breaks up the contretemps and tells them it's time to vote. Dreamz votes for Lisi: "I've been waiting for this a long time." Lisi votes for Dreamz: "You're a grown man! Consider a name change!" I hope Lucy Van Pelt comes along someday to teach Lisi some people skills.

And suprising zero viewers and only 11 of Lisi's personalities, she's voted out. Looks like she'll be doing her totally-insane-person act up at the Statesville prison from now on. Or maybe she'll show up at camp tomorrow as if nothing happened. God only knows. Her Two Minute Hate is to call the rest of Ravu losers again, and to point out that the kettle is black.

Next time: A big shakeup!

Posted by Michael at 10:17 PM | Comments (3)

March 29, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.7: Man, That Creep Can Roll

(Prenote: I choose this season to give each SurvivorBlog entry a Big Lebowski quote, and this season, there's bowling. I mean, how cool is that? If, next week, the Survivors slam White Russians and someone loses a toe, I'll know the producers are reading this.)

Previously on Survivor: Rocky and Anthony bitch and whine! Yau Man digs my earth! None of them know along the line what any of this is worth! (It would sound a lot better if Hendrix was singing it; trust me.)

Yau Man and Earl have settled into Moto Camp, and it's time to christen the road show of "Earl Creates a Diversion While Yau Man Digs For the Immunity Idol". Hey, it worked twice when they were blowing up the Death Star. Earl leads everyone off to try to recover a boat which apparently ran aground near the camp (did you know about that boat until tonight? I didn't). Yau Man finally uncovers the Idol, almost literally does a happy dance, speaks in tongues, and basically acts with the same restraint as that kid in the commercial who opens up the robot on Christmas morning.

Then Yau clinches his position as the Smartest Castaway by actually covering up the hole in the ground. Pretty nice subterfuge, there.

Lisi, showing more self-awareness than I'd have expected, says she knows her freakout at the last challenge was a bad idea, but she's been thinking some deep thoughts on Exile Island. Whatever that means. And she's looking forward to hanging out with the dudes, even though she knows it's going to be a "sticky situation". Anyone who wants to send me a printable joke here, I'm all ears.

Back to Moto, where Yau gives the camera all of the insight on race relations and harmony that they were hoping for last season. He and Earl are tight as can be, for two guys who come from the same state. And they seem to trust each other implicitly. "I never expected to ally with a big strong black man," he interviews. Word is bond, Yau.

Reward Challenge! It involves flamethrowers, but I dare not hope that Rocky and Lisi have a medical emergency in their future. I'm at the point now where I don't just want to see them voted out; I want a Nightmare on Elm Street thing where several of the Survivors die grisly and ironic deaths before plucky Yau, Earl and Cassandra kill Freddy Krueger, or at least shelve him till the next sequel.

Moto keeps just missing their targets, and Ravu wins its first challenge ever by setting stuff on fire. If the reward challenge is "smash the department store window", we might have a game here. Earl gets sent back on the Exile Island shuttle. Rocky and Dreamz exchange the most long-awaited man-hug since Roger Dorn suckerpunched Rick Vaughan, then pulled him back up to his feet.

Ravu's reward is a chance to experience authentic Fiji, assuming that authentic Fiji involves hot dogs, billiards and bowling(!). At least there's an authentic Fijian there to welcome them. Rocky challenges his teammates to see who can "put the most food in their piehole", then bows himself out of the challenge, since his piehole is badly needed for shouting and complaining purposes.

They eat, they drink beer, they bowl, they play some video golf simulator (I'm no Tiger Woods, but Rocky's drive posture makes him look like a bit of a sissy). Lisi says she feels more comfortable being around a bunch of guys; thankfully the producers edit out the part where she enters their burpin' and fartin' contest. Rocky, continuing his quest to look more masculine than a mustachioed, leather-chap-clad cowboy, says of his bowling stance, "Everything about me is pretty". Lisi laughs that laugh that makes blood vessels pop in the back of my eye. Mark it zero, Dude.

A perfunctory look at Earl, who's dubbed Exile Island "Earl Island". That was going to be my joke for this paragraph, jerk. Earl does spend his time sketching a pretty cool Earl Island logo in the sand.

Back to the Fiji Fun Center, where most of Ravu is feeling glutton's sorrow. Mookie and Alex beat feat for the gents', while Rocky, who as you remember decided talking was more important than eating, berates everyone for eating so much. I'm now trying to decide if it would be more fun to see Rocky offed by Freddy Krueger, or by Kevin Spacey in Seven.

Time for another pop-in at Moto, where for some reason, Boo is convinced that Yau Man will be first to go. Let's see, one one side you have Earl, Yau and Michelle. One the other side, you have Boo and Stacy. Then there's Cassandra, who's been treated like crap by the latter two and has been getting friendly with the former three. Yeah, Boo, those numbers add up.

While the other Motos snooze, Yau Man starts creating a false idol, which would get him in big trouble with the ancient Israelites, but could throw a sock in someone's soup if they're dopey enough (Boo) to fall for it. Hee hee.

Immunity Challenge! Five of the six teammates will be blindfolded; the other one has to guide them, one by one, into a penned-in area where they have to whack a skull (real? Jeff only knows) with a club, then recover puzzle pieces. Michelle decides to be the yeller for Moto, Lisi for Ravu. The tiebreaker is that they have to call a square dance.

Ravu quickly switches to Alex yelling, because the sound of Lisi' voice is that enjoyable. Boo famously reveals that he may not know his left from his right. Mookie keeps slamming into things. Michelle, at one point, gives orders so enthusiastically that she goes flying off the platform. Boo takes over, possibly already having forgotten that he doesn't know left from right. Despite this not inconsiderable handicap, Moto solves their puzzle first and wins!

So now the only question is whether the BunkoSquad "See Ya Rocky" Party or the "Adios Lisi" Party is scheduled for tonight. Alex and Edgardo, showing some actual brainpower, figure that Rocky is slightly more annoying, much more abrasive, and has a 1-13 record in challenges. I think their decision is made.

Dreamz is exhibiting a mild case of Stockholm Syndrome, saying Rocky really isn't as bad as he thought, and maybe he should jettison Lisi. Rocky says Lisi has to go, because all of Rocky's decisions who to vote out have been good decisions. Mookie just wants to do whatever will keep Rocky from hollering at him. Lisi's socks feel dirty, so she goes to the sea to wash them off. This tribe is a piece of work.

At Tribal, Jeff mostly is hoping to poke Lisi's brain wounds until she snaps. She's wearing a cloak of sanity, though, and says that coming back to the game recharged her. Rocky says the group is tight, and really looks like a man (well, a doofus) who doesn't know he has minutes left to live. They vote.

And nobody since Clubber Lang has gotten such joy out of saying that Rocky has hit the mat. Looks like he'll be pissing everybody off up at the Statesville Prison from now on. Unfortunately, Jeff announces that he's the first member of the Jury of the Damned, so we'll be seeing his sorry puss trotted out every week from here on out.

Jeff's Words of Wisdom show that he has no idea what's actually going on at camp: that Rocky was totally taken by surprise, and it could happen to you. Well, if you're a callous, loud buffoon, maybe. Rocky's postgame interview is a little more shouting and bitterness.

Next week: Lisi sobs! Boo dances! Ravu digs! No Rocky!

Posted by Michael at 09:31 PM | Comments (2)

March 22, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.6: Without Batting An Eye, A Man Will Refer To...

Morning on Ravu! Rita's gone, and the rest of them are being eaten by flies. Pestilence! Famine! Next week on Survivor: the massacre of the first-born!

There's treemail, and the Survivors tramp down to the beach. Jeff asks one member of each team to step forward, so Edgardo and Earl do. Jeff informs them that early focus groups indicate that this show is about as popular with the public as "A Panda Bear Slowly Bleeds to Death" on FoxNature, so he orders everyone to drop their buffs. That always sounds like it should be more interesting than it ever turns out to be.

Because they're shuffling the tribes! As fun as it would be to bring back Sylvia to screw everything up again, everybody gets to pick someone - but it has to be from the other tribe. There's a touching moment as Rocky picks Dreamz to be on his team, then they run towards each other for a 25-mph head-butt. Which may not be the last time tonight you hear "Rocky", "butt" and "head" in close proximity.

The new teams are: Earl, Boo, Michelle, Cassandra, Yau Man and Stacy on this side, and Edgardo, Mookie, Alex, Rocky, Dreamz and Anthony on the other side. Lisi, the odd girl out, will go to Exile Island and come back to whichever team has to vote someone out, making this Immunity Challenge about as important as the battle of Gettysburg.

Lisi goes on a soliliquy about how maybe this would be a good time for her to be out, since no one picked her. Jeff asks if she's ready to leave; she talks for about 20 minutes (or did it just seem that way?) while Jeff keeps needling her, playing out the rope for her to hang herself. Boy, some tribe's going to be pleased when she shows up.

Edgardo picks a buff out of a bag at random, and the first team I mentioned gets to go to Camp Moto (Easy Street) while the second team goes to dismal Camp Ravu. Everyone has a surprise waiting for them at camp; I hope the new Camp Ravu's surprise includes a tape measure.

The new Motos go as berzerk as you might expect. Earl, in particular, is pleased as pie with his new team, that he created. He lounges on the bed, eats cheese (that was part of their surprise), and perceptively notes that Cassandra was on the outs at Moto-I, so she may be an easy person to swing over to vote with the Ravu-I-Moto-IIs. If that's confusing to you, you're still way ahead of Boo, who sits there and considers all the ramifications of the shakeup. The look on his face is exactly the same look he'd have if he showed up unprepared for a Trigonometry final in only his underpants.

Meanwhile, there's no tape measure at Ravu-II, but the testosterone is so thick you could whack it with a broom. Rocky, trying to bond with the manly men, says he loves the ladies, but he's really happy to be with all guys. Rocky, that is the gayest-sounding thing in the history of Survivor, and I haven't forgotten about Brandon the bartender.

Meanwhile, Anthony interviews that he's having horrible flashbacks to the high school locker room, and thinks that maybe being a kind, sensitive soul is not a good long-term positive when you're rooming with the Duke lacrosse team. If I were Jeff here, I'd forcibly switch Boo and Anthony, then make all the challenges crossword puzzles.

Back to Moto-II, where Cassandra is not wasting any time showing that she knows which horses to back. While Earl and Yau Man fish, she brings them cups of coffee (which they hadn't had much of in the Black Hole of Fiji, and thankfully there was some coffee left that Stacy hadn't dumped on Dreamz' head).

Somewhere in all this, we go back to Exile Island. All of the snakes have left the area thanks to Lisi's presence. She babbles for a while, but it seems to have sunk in that it might be a good idea for her to develop some sort of mechanism between her ears and her mouth, that might filter some of the things she says. Something called...let's say a "brain".

At Ravu, the presence of the Moto-I's seems to have a salutary effect on the situation. Dreamz and Mookie go fishing just as the Great Underwater Sponge and Fish Migration of the South Seas occurs; they're hauling in nasty-teethed specimens by the bagful. Rocky, Alex and Edgardo are catching crabs (quiet, you) by the bucketful. And Anthony is tending the fire. I'm honestly surprised that Rocky isn't making him wear a pink apron. Alex says he's loving the manliness! Just like the Village People!

Rocky says, "On paper, we're a superpower!" Unfortunately, you're playing on sand, not paper.

Immunity Challenge! It's actually a pretty good one, as everyone's strapped into some kind of deal with long sliding sticks, and they have to use communication and teamwork to negotiate said deals around a maze. It's mostly communication and teamwork at first, but every time they round a corner, Stacy winds up all in Ravu's business, and there's entanglement and pushing and shoving. I think Dreamz actually gets bisected at one point. Moto wins!

Which means that Ravu gets to vote someone out, then welcome Lisi. Astronauts have gotten into spacesuits, immediately after a cabbage dinner, with more enthusiam than I'd be feeling right now.

So the politicking begins; will they kick out Anthony, who's reserved and polite and thoughtful (which translates into Ravuian as effeminate), or will they kick out Rocky, who's boorish and bullying and sounds like he's played football for 10 years without a helmet? What the hell do you think they'll do?

There are some fireworks at Tribal Council, and Rocky tells Anthony he's got to stand up for himself and not let bullying pricks like Rocky push him around. You heard me right. Anthony finally snaps (in a somewhat reserved manner) and points out that in a tribe that loses and loses and loses, there is some reason to keep your mouth shut, conserve your energy, and concentrate on doing something other than losing, as opposed to shouting your way through the day.

Rocky won't let it go - he knows that if Anthony goes, he has no one to bully, and if he himself goes, he'll be shouting at the chambermaids at the hotel, which isn't as satifying. So he gets in every ounce of venom he can, while the other Ravu-IIs bury their heads in their hands and start actually looking forward to the Lisi era.

They vote, and it's Anthony in a landslide. Looks like Anthony will be tending the fire and tending the sorrow in his heart up at the Statesville Prison from now on. Next week: something happens. I wasn't paying attention because I had high hopes for Anthony's Two-Minute hate, but was disappointed there too. I love this game!

Posted by Michael at 06:28 PM | Comments (1)

March 20, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.5: Sittin' Here, Enjoyin' My Coffee

Two weeks later.... (sorry for the delay; I had bracket fever)

Previously: Rocky's a jerk! The comfortable are afflicted! Lisi's a bonehead!

We start off at Ravu, where Yau Man is starting to panic because the Immunity Idol is so close and yet so far away. He says, "I sort of know where it is and I don't know how to get to it!" Sounds like me at 14 when I first realized about girls. He talks to Ladies' Man Earl, who has received some of the clues as well; they agree that Earl will lead the other Ravus on a pointless expedition to get Yau Man some quality digging time, and they'll go into cahoots to figure out how best to use it.

Earl takes Anthony on a character-building hike to the top of the mountain, where they take in the majestic view and Anthony realizes that even if he's hungry and miserable, and his self-esteem has taken a repeated beating at the hands of simpleton Rocky, that at least he got a nice majestic view out of the deal.

Yau Man's exploration for the Idol goes about as well as my quest for a date in middle school. The less said the better. (Though if you're over 18 and email me, I'll send you the joke I was tempted to use here)

Treemail! The tribes receive a catalog of what they can play for at the Reward Challenge. The landed gentry at Moto go through it like it's the Robb Report, finally settling on the flatscreen TV and the 24-hour valet. Ravu thinks some potatoes would be nice, then eats the catalog.

Earl says, "They [Moto] are the Fresh Prince of Bel Air; we [Ravu] are Good Times." It actually looks more like Sanford and Son to me, but I'll defer to Earl's judgement where African-American sitcoms are concerned.

Reward Challenge! Moto's playing for toilet paper and a coffee set; Ravu wants potatoes and fishing gear. The winner takes all, so Moto can probably supplement its income by renting out some of their superfluous fishing gear to the natives. 'S'good ta be the king.

The challenge is a series of one-on-one giant pillow fights with the loser being knocked into the mud. Rocky and Dreamz start trash-talking, and then take their contretemps into the ring. I dare hope for a second that the scrappy Ravus will turn their lean and hungry fire into a victory. It's come to the point where Moto is so irritating and smug that I'm actually rooting for Rocky.

Nope. It's a freaking massacre. Jeff almost has to invoke the mercy rule, as the fat-n-happy Motos win 7-1, with the one Ravu triumph being Yau Man against flimsy little Stacey. If it's any consolation, Ravu, there might be some nutrients in that mud you'll have to lick off yourselves. Earl goes off to Exile Island.

Moto's back at home, basking in their undeserved wonderfulness. But no idle rich they; there's coffee to make. And here's where I completely lost it; Stacey and Lisi give Dreamz crap because he doesn't know how to make coffee with the French press they won. I know how to use a French press, but I worked at Starbucks for two years. Dreamz was HOMELESS. When you're homeless, you don't always pick up on some of the little tricks that yuppies use to convince themselves they're getting the authentic unfiltered taste of Sulawesi (again, I can say that; I worked at Starbucks, and Sulawesi is the best).

Lisi and Stacey are so annoying and patronizing, in fact, that even the frat boys at Moto notice and are alarmed. Now THAT is annoying and patronizing. I don't know if the producers purposefully made Stacey and Lisi look like the Heathers or what, but I'm praying for Christian Slater to stroll into Moto with a bomb strapped to him.

Stacey and Lisi, blissfully unaware of how....inhuman is the only word...they're being, are just sittin' there enjoyin' their coffee.

Earl's Idol clue is "Still right under the cave, dummy". He correctly points out that if they don't have a shovel, that doesn't help.

Ravu is having its 45th straight post-loss rally session. Actually, Rita and Michelle are yapping away about lip gloss and other banalities. Rocky says he wants to take a shirt and hang himself. He's so perturtbed, in fact, that he seeks out the company of Anthony without kicking sand on him.

Back at Moto, Alex is trying to explain to Lisi and Stacey, in one- and two-syllable words, that they're being stupid by excluding Dreamz and Cassandra from their reindeer games. He doesn't try to appeal to their sense of decency (he's smarter than that), but tries to make them see that after the merge, Dreamz and Cassandra will flip and stab them in the back. Edgardo groks him, but I don't think it's sinking in with the Heathers. So Alex makes a team speech trying to bring them all back together. And it's a sad day when the Harvard Law student is the one injecting a note of decency and humanity.

Dreamz, unfazed by the ostracizm, zayz he'z engaged in a genozide against Ravu. Is it too late to hope for a localized tzunami?

The Immunity Challenge is a big game of Memory. The underfed and fuzzy Ravus falter early. Lisi screws up her turn (and almost plants her face into the dirt while hopping off the bench, like how sweet would that have been). But Rocky screws up last, and Moto wins again. %$#&.

Ravu comes back to camp, defeated and dejected (I just copy and paste that sentence now.) Rocky offers a mea culpa for blowing the challenge, but everyone else agrees that it's hard to think straight when everyone is yelling out instructions at you. Somewhere, Erika is nodding grimly. Anthony seems to think he's off the chopping block, but there's still some conspiring in his direction. Rocky starts going around telling everyone that Rita's talking too much and should go next. Who died and left Rocky kingmaker? Oh, that's right - everyone who allied with Rocky in the past.

At Tribal Council, the area seems to be decorated with actual skeletons. Maybe Erika wasn't nodding at that last scene. Rita tells Jeff that she keeps morale up by telling interesting stories, causing Rocky to nearly projectile vomit. When asked if he trusts his tribemates, Yau Man says his philosophy is "love many; trust few". Never would have thought Yau Man sees life the same way as Hugh Hefner.

They vote, and Rocky's "The Person I Hate The Most At This Particular Moment is Rita" campaign pays off. Looks like she'll be talking about lip gloss up in the Statesville Prison from now on. Jeff tells Ravu he admires that the tribe is showing a little bit of a will to win, like he expected no one would show up for Tribal after a Jonestownian suicide pact.

Next week: Major shakeup! I can only hope it involves Lisi, Stacey, rope, and fire ants.

Posted by Michael at 09:20 PM | Comments (2)

March 08, 2007

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

SurvivorBlog may again be delayed a day or two. It is not - I repeat, NOT - time to panic. I'll be out for a while; the state has asked for a massive volunteer effort to administer emergency pregnancy tests to every woman who's been within 15 miles of Foxboro in the last six years.

Posted by Michael at 07:14 PM | Comments (1)

March 05, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.4: Oh, No No No...He Has Health Problems

It's the dead of night at Camp Ravu, and the tribe is returning from another in a string of depressing events. At the Tribal Council, they screamed at Anthony...questioned his manhood and integrity...broke his spirit...and voted out Sylvia. But whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right?

Anthony continues to get made stronger when they arrive at their filthy camp. Rocky's shut off what internal filter he has and is laying into Anthony. Anthony sobbingly interviews that he's always sort of hated himself and this isn't helping. I don't know -- I think if you're going to hear your faults enumerated, the voice of the internal critic has nothing on Rocky's "yo"- and "bro"-peppered oratory.

Rocky says he'd only put up with Anthony's "whining" if it was coming from a broad. That's a broad, not abroad; he probably won't put up with whining Belgians either.

At Camp Pleasant, Lisi and Stacey are basking in their luxurious surroundings, their wonderful food supply, and their general Motoan awesomeness, as if there's any reason they're in this tropical Eden other than Sylvia pointed their way in Episode One. It's not like either of you gals has carried a challenge yet, is all I'm sayin'.

But there's trouble in paradise. Gary's still having trouble breathing and seeing and smurfing and thinking. He's also being eaten alive by bugs. Lisi interviews that she doesn't want to have to babysit him through the day, as that would cut into her badly-needed idling time.

Reward Challenge! The prize is a lot of fish and rice and exotic spices, and hopefully ginger and saki. The teams line up on balance beams, and have to wriggle around (or over, not to spoil the surprise) one another to get everyone onto a platform. Lisi starts flinging Motos into the water one by one, until someone tells her to go over them while they crouch.

Despite an early lead, Ravu manages to settle back into their comfortable position of screwing everything up. I think the blame here is 20% Anthony, 20% Mookie, and 60% Total Lack of Communication. Rocky might see it differently. Moto decides to send Yau Man to Exile Island. Maybe they figure he'll find the Idol, since he's proven he's the only Ravu who I'd trust to find his own ass with a map of his pants.

Another loss, another Rocky Freakout! "Is this your farewell speech? Farewell to the troops?" Rocky's post-traumatic tirade is about a 8.2 on the meter. This tribe needs a motivational visit from Alec Baldwin...Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. Earl and Anthony go foraging; Earl says he's going to try to get Anthony's back.

At Moto, with all the creature comforts taken care of, they're ready to take a step up Maslow's pyramid. Liliana is giving back rubs to all the men; Lisi is skeptical about Liliana's "little diabolical Mexican mind" and how she might be using her sex as a weapon, despite the warnings from Pat Benater.

Back to the Papa Smurf deathwatch. He re-recounts his symptoms. So Moto has a choice. Pull a Weekend At Bernie's stunt to keep their number advantage, or bring in the medical team. The medics go to work on Gary as Dreamz worries that he's losing his only friend on the island. Remember the old Smurf Atari game? It was meant for little kids, so the smurf never got killed in the game...he just got tired. Well, Papa Smurf just got tired. The medics smurf him away to the medical boat and out of the game. And here's where today's Big Lebowski headline quote comes from.

Alex thinks this is bad news for the tribe. I guess in the sense of "it's a no-hitter in the 4th, and the batter just hit a long ball barely foul", it's a bad omen, but Moto still has all their pitches working. It will take a monumentally bad decision to shake up Moto! (ed. note: find an mp3 of an ominous chord to stick in here somehow)

Rocky's pregame pep take for the Immunity Challenge involves total nudity. So if you're scoring at home, that's total frontal Survivor nudity from Richard, Shane, and Rocky, if you don't count Parvati, Yul and Ozzie's hot tub escapades last year. If you're not scoring at home, this show probably won't help stir things up.

Jeff breaks the news about Gary to Ravu, who try to look seriously sad. The Immunity Challenge involves locking people up in cages, hopping over lilypads, and rowing a boat to form a human pyramid and rescue one more person. Now this would have been a cool Atari game. There's also a little sealed mystery bottle to be opened by the winning team.

Ravu starts failing early. Rita gets herself hung up on the lilypads for an awfully long time. But Mookie and Earl get the boat going, and it's actually shaping up to be a close race. Lisi, on the sidelines, cackles.

On the final lock, Stacey fumbles and stumbles with the keys, but they unlock Cassandra and get to the finish line. Moto 154, Ravu 0, if you've lost count. They open the little sealed mystery bottle which gives them a dilemma.

They can (a)switch to Ravu's dank cave but keep Immunity, or (b)stay in the stately pleasuredome but go to a Tribal Council. Considering they are up against a team they've beaten handily and repeatedly, early and often, and they only have a one-man advantage, I have to seriously think about keeping Immunity if I'm Moto. If they go to Tribal Council, they lose their advantage, they expose whatever cracks in the tribe have been hidden by their winning streak, and they maybe make Rocky show up at a challenge with no pants on. I don't take that risk if I'm Moto, but then again, I'm not in a position where I have to sleep in a dank cave if I pick wrong, so it's easy for me to say. But I think this is a Bad Decision.

Dreamz gets down to brass tacks, and says it's obvious that either Lisi or Cassandra has to go. "There's two people we can afford to lose, and I'm not pointing fingers" he says, in possibly the most self-negating sentence ever. Alex says he likes Lisi and wants to kick off Cassandra. Dreamz says he's all about fairness, which is charmingly naive, since he's not aware that there's a five-person clique forming around him. Liliana and Cassandra have a tete-a-tete, where Liliana says that she likes Cassandra a lot, but she doesn't want to make waves.

Then we're treated to a long - LONG - shot of a snake puking out a mass of ectoplasm the length of its entire body. I am so glad I don't have Hi-Def.

The Moto Brady Bunch meets and says that either Cassandra or Liliana(!) should go. Alex is pushing hard for Cassandra, Lisi is pushing hard for the diabolical Mexican Liliana. Edgardo, who is apparently one of the in-crowd, doesn't say a word. Boo, by the way, hasn't hurt himself yet this episode.

Jeff's in his glory; he gets to make his "ritual of tribal council" speech one more time. The Tribal Council mourns Gary a bit, then Lisi goes on a soliliquy about Dreamz' soliliquy, then Dreamz says no one interrupted his "shaquilla". Liliana says she's strong and should stick around; Alex nods and a very relieved Cassandra says some very nice things about Liliana. Liliana is completely missing the handwriting on the wall.

Boo doesn't impale his hand with the pen, so that's good. Lisi holds up Liliana's name and snarls, "The Alliance is five...not six". Man, I've turned on Lisi; I can only pray her destruction is legendary. Liliana watches the votes pile up in her direction and is shocked. "I'm so shocked", she says as she gathers her torch. "If you didn't get rid of me now, I was gonna beat ya", she says on the way out. Well, yeah, toots, that's why they voted you out.

Next time: Misogyny from Alex! Snippiness and yelling from (you'll never guess who!) Rocky and Dreamz. Liliana's Two Minute Hate is that everyone who voted her off is a liar and a weaking. I guess she'll be doing her diabolical Mexican backrubs from now on up in the Statesville Prison.

Posted by Michael at 10:01 PM | Comments (1)

March 01, 2007

Forestalling the Inevitable Panic

Going to the Bruins game tonight. SurvivorBlog may thus be delayed a day or two.

So my one TV note of the day is this: What does it say that I feel light-hearted and refreshed, just because of the fact that Jack didn't appear in last night's Lost?

Posted by Michael at 03:48 PM | Comments (1)

February 22, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.3: The In-N-Out Burger is On Camrose

Last Week: Ravu's licking leaves! Moto's living large! Sylvia's little liked!

So here we are at Day 6 of Survivor: Fiji. And it's starting to look like a weekly showdown between the Bill Walsh/Joe Montana/Jerry Rice 49ers and the Rod Rust/Marc Wilson/Hart Lee Dykes Patriots. It really is that bad.

Rocky of Ravu sums it up when he says that his tribe "might be the biggest group of losers Survivor's ever seen". Maybe he can take comfort in the fact that his group of losers is getting smaller, at regularly-spaced intervals. They come together for a huddle, and Rita tells the group they have to start thinking of team before individuals. Good call; if you can't rally 'round a bunch of snippy starving people, you clearly have no team spirit at all.

While Ravu is on the verge of trying to catch ants for their six molecules of water weight, Moto is having a different problem: ants keep crawling up through their hardwood floor and nipping at them in their luxurious beds. So they paint the floor to close off the cracks. They have paint. Wouldn't it be easier to have Art Garfunkel come by with his compressor, and create a total vacuum outside the camp, and blow the ants out the front door? If only they had an inanimate carbon rod!

Back at Schaefer Stadium, Earl comes back from Exile Island. The Ravus - the ones who are able to stand - surround him and ask him if he has any water or fire or chocolate, but Yau Man fortunately doesn't give him the full pat-down.

Then Michelle, the miniature little lady on Ravu who I haven't really liked from the beginning, saves the tribe's collective butt by using her eyeglasses and the sun's rays to start their first fire. Now they can start torturing ants!

Reward Challenge! Ravu proudly admits they have fire; Jeff tosses them a flint as a present. I'm surprised Jeff just takes their word for it. Moto does some patronizing congratulating, then tells Jeff they've managed to cobble together a PC and a crude Wi-Fi network.

The challenge itself is pretty cool; the Survivors have to squeegee their way down a giant Slip-N-Slide and grab a numbered ball, which they then have to reenact the Pop-A-Shot at their local bar or arcade. It's Best-of-9, so let's go round by round:

Moto has their choice of reward: fresh fruit, more fishing gear, or their luxury items. They take the fishing gear, and presumably Jeff and the camera crew eat all the fresh fruit, then are killed by a maniac with a pointed stick. They also elect to send Sylvia back to Exile Island, figuring she can boss around the sea snakes for a little while.

Moto gathers for another parade down Broadway. Dreamz says they're not going to take any prisoners, not even women and children, which could mean Fiji will experience another coup d'etat before the season is over. The only ant in the ointment is Gary, who's hurting after his fall-down. He can't breathe, he can't stand up, he can't think straight. Sounds like it's time to trade him to Ravu for a draft pick. But instead they summon the medics, who look him over and say it's not a cracked rib (which was the Moto consensus) but probably some muscular injury. They pronounce him fit to continue. Alex the Harvard lawyer, trying to look deeply concerned, says that Gary should put his health over the game. I think Alex has computed that 1/16 gives him a better chance than 1/17.

Immunity Challenge! We haven't seen the nasty food challenge for a long time, so Jeff has assembled a collection of unpleasant Fijian foodstuffs, and the Survivors prepare to chow down. Not quite the In-N-Out Burger, huh? Again, round-by-round, with the Iron Chef ingredients of choice:

So Ravu goes back defeated, again, and Sylvia's worried she'll be kicked out, again. And rightly so. Someone actually has the bright idea that, just in case she has the Immunity Idol, they should have a couple people vote for someone else they don't like, so Sylvia's one vote won't turn around and bite them. They make Anthony their designated patsy, because he apparently whines a lot and didn't eat all his pig snouts at dinner. Rita, for one, says she's going to vote for whoever she wants, regardless of tribal consensus. This is the same Rita, you'll note, who started the episode by preaching teamwork.

Sylvia, who's decided that the Immunity Idol is buried right in Ravu's cave, starts idly digging in the sand right in front of everybody else. No one seems to notice. You'd think Earl at least, who's been to Exile Island and has seen the clue that the Idol's near camp, would keep an eye on her.

At Tribal Council, Jeff eyes the raggedy Ravus like he thinks bringing in Norv Turner might be the only answer. He starts asking about trust and strength, and Ravu takes this golden opportunity to start bitching and moaning about Anthony. Mookie, in particular, was furious that Anthony didn't seem to be trying his all in the challenge, so he's beasting Anthony about that, and his work ethic, and everything short of his hipster engineer hat.

The voting is tense. Anthony and Sylvia trade votes until it's 3-3. Then a vote for Earl! (I suspect Rita.) That means the final vote will be a tiebreaker...and it's Sylvia. Who doesn't have the Idol. Looks like she'll be doing her bossing around and overorganizing from now on up at the Statesville Prison. Jeff's Words of Wisdom are that maybe a little honesty might unite Ravu. Honesty. It's such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue.

Next week: Gary's dying! Liliana's turning on the sexy! Ravu gangs up on Anthony!

Posted by Michael at 09:41 PM | Comments (2)

February 15, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.2: So You Have No Frame of Reference

Ravu is hurtin'. It's only Day 4, but they have no fire, no water, no brains, and no prospects. They're licking leaves to stay hydrated. They're moaning and complaining. Yeah, Jeff, this idea will fly.

Meanwhile, Moto is living the life of luxury. And in the ennui of the idle rich, insanity is breaking out in the form of Lisi. She's making a strong bid to inherit the Courtney/Flicka "wacky punk rock chick" crown. She's making Munchkin voices and saying things like "so vicious, it's delicious". Her tribemates are laughing, at the moment, with her.

Back to miserable Ravu, where they're trying to break open coconuts for the two fluid ounces of water contained within. Rocky eats a raw clam, then makes a big speech about eating a raw clam. I'm more than a bit surprised that Rocky's not trying to drink seawater yet. Ravu looks like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays of Survivor.

So back to Yankee Stadium, where Boo, the construction worker, from (wait for it) the South, is having problems. He's got something in his eye, and you know how I feel about eye things, so let's pluck a random paragraph from a random Wikipedia page while they sort this out.

Written records for Ford begin after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the introduction of the manorial system, when the manor of Ford was held by the Heron family. A substantial stone castle was built at Ford in 1287, in order to protect the Manor from the constant border warfare waged between the Scots and the English during the medieval period.

OK. The thing is out of Boo's eye, so he immediately starts chopping wood with an axe. His depth perception is messed up, his eye is still almost swollen shut, and he's swinging an axe around. NONE OF THE OTHERS SAY ANYTHING. And they're still surprised when he plants the axe into his hand and bleeds. Dreamz is giggling as he recounts all of Boo's injuries, like Boo's the Black Knight or something. For good measure, Boo's hammock collapses as he recuperates. This man is on the wrong team.

Back to Hell On Earth, as Sylvia arrives to find the Ravus dying a slow death. The camera zooms in on Sylvia's canteen, as if we're supposed to hope that the Ravus will descend upon her like a colony of vampires. Instead she gives a couple of hugs, and...

Yau Man frisks her! He's subtle, I think, but he definitely gives her the full once-over. He must be from the Italian part of Borneo, what with those Roman hands. He also sneaks a peek into her satchel, but he doesn't see the Immunity Idol because she doesn't have it. He also ascertains that she is not the player brainwashed into killing the Queen. Play Ball!

Sylvia interviews that she's a little worried being the odd man out on Ravu. She thinks coming in late might hurt her chances of being part of the group. Um, Sylvia, they're licking leaves and lying around 22 hours a day. Not exactly a juggernaut. I think you have time to catch up. Of course, she starts suggesting activities, which is just what the rest of them want to hear.

Back to Moto and a Personal Glimpse of Dreamz, his shattered childhood and how he feels like this is much easier than anything he's had to overcome in the past. Are we watching the Olympics?

And because Moto is well-fed and dull, back to Ravu. Erika, Earl and Rocky are leading a fruit-finding expedition to the top of their island's highest hill. Which is different than Tim Hardaway's...never mind. They find some inedible baby mangos and trudge back to camp, where Erika almost literally stumbles over a patch of pineapple plants. They all eat pineapple, Earl says he wants to marry Erika, and they're set to go to the Challenge doing their best Carmen Miranda impressions. Good times all around.

Treemail! It basically says "A RACE AND A PUZZLE", and I'm starting to think that Jeff and the Reward/Immunity Challenge Committee have run out of ideas. The tribes prepare for the challenge: Moto with some face-painting and a round of mimosas, Ravu with desperation, particularly Sylvia, who figures she's the Ravu with the most to lose. She has no frame of reference. She's like a child who walks in on the middle of a movie.

The challenge is, surprisingly, a race and a puzzle. Specifically a kayak race and building a flagpole. Ravu gets an early lead, but they choke on the puzzle (Erika is particularly unhelpful, shouting at the others that they're doing it all wrong) and they lose. Their prize would have been fire and fishing gear, but Moto is on a higher level, so they win an espresso machine and some waterskis. Earl is dispatched to Exile Island, to be torn apart from his new fiancee.

Everyone at Ravu pretty much knows Sylvia's a goner. Sylvia knows it; the rest know it. It's a done deal. So, naturally, Rocky and Mookie start figuring out who should go instead. Erika's name comes up prominently; all the pineapple karma she built up was cashed in by her puzzle freakout. Anthony and Michelle are leaning towards kicking out Sylvia (Michelle particularly seems to be sharpening her knives), but Rocky somehow seems to get at least tie-worthy numbers on his side.

On Exile Island, Earl kills a sea snake, then apologizes.

Tribal Council. Jeff, looking concerned that they'll have to merge 9 Motos and 2 Ravus, starts trying to figure out what Ravu's (ahem) strategy might be. Erika says her puzzle freakout was just her way of trying to help. Sylvia says that they should wake up tomorrow morning and pick a leader, and I wonder who she'll recommend. They vote. We see Rocky voting for Erika, saying "she's the biggest threat".

I'd like to explore that for a moment. First of all, your tribe has no fire, no water and no plan. Planning ahead at this point is like the guy falling off a 50-story building plotting which balcony he'd like to bounce onto once he hits the ground. Second of all, you may recall (if you're not Rocky) that last week he started a 3-person alliance with Jessica and Erika. Jessica got voted off last week, and Rocky is now voting off Erika. So to recap, people who ally with Rocky have a 100% fatality rate.

Anyway, Erika is voted off, and I suspect Michelle may murder Sylvia in her sleep before they start horsetrading on who the King and Queen of Ravu will be. Erika's shocked, and interviews that she hopes they win, but if they don't, they better remember voting her off, and they better start ruing the day. She herself is not ruing her panic attack at the Challenge.

Next week: Ravu starts a fire! A member of Moto is down! Boo probably cuts his ear off!

Posted by Michael at 09:32 PM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.1: Keep Your Ugly...Goldbricking Ass Out Of Our Beach Community

PREREVIEW NOTE #1: This season, I aim to give each episode's writeup a title taken from The Big Lebowski. Why can't there be a castaway named Larry?!?

PREREVIEW NOTE #2: This is going to be hard for me to write tonight. I have a heavy heart, trying to imagine what this country will be like without Anna Nicole Smith. Say what you want, we'll miss her...um....acting? Singing? What the hell did she do?!? Well, we'll try to muddle along.

Survivor Fiji is underway! Exile Island has sea snakes! There are two immunity idols! One contestant bailed out before they even got to the island!

So nineteen castaways row their little skiffs towards what, frankly, looks like a stunning beach. They're all a little miffed that Jeff isn't there to greet them with a wave and a cryptic welcome. They stumble around a bit and introduce one another. Let's meet some of the players.

There's James/"Rocky". Everyone says he looks like Sylvester Stallone. He does, a little. He also talks like a guy who's still recovering from a 2x4 blow to the head, so it's remarkably apt. He also has a "BOSTON" tattoo on his arm, which worries me, since after Boston Rob, the Mooninite scandal and the 06-07 Celtics, our civic pride is on thin ice.

There's also "Dreamz", a cheerleading coach(?) who used to live on the streets. So living on a beach in Fiji ain't no thing to him.

We also meet Yau Man, a Yodalike Asian man who immediately starts field-stripping some coconuts. He mentions he's from Borneo; some lady asks "Oh, what's that near?" He should have answered "Switzerland", because I'd have loved to see the knowing nod in reply, but he just says it's kind of like Fiji. Let the man open the coconut!

They've all formed a nice little Jeff Probst cargo cult, so they're delighted when Jeff whizzes by in a little plane and chucks a box into the ocean. Rocky and some other lunk (possibly named "Boo") try to smash the box against a rock. I hope it's 36 days' worth of eggs. Yau Man finally gets the idea to slam the box at its corner, which reveals a scroll. No eggs.

The scroll has directions to a treasure trove of lumber, furniture (including a toilet seat) and stuff, along with plans to build a remarkably large shelter. Thanks for keeping the surprise, CBS, so we don't have any inkling that one tribe will get to build the shelter and then have to go sleep in a ditch. Nice poker face.

They build the shelter. One castaway, named Sylvia, is an architect in real life, so she takes charge. Which is good, in that the shelter gets built, but not so good, because there are few more vulnerable than a Survivor who displays competence and initiative.

Luckily, some of the Survivors are already looking at the big picture, which is more important than shelter. A Macy Gray-hairdo'ed lady named Erica starts fishing for an alliance, among people she's known for 15 minutes. A Eurolunk named Edgardo gets flummoxed when someone uses the word "askew". Naps are taken. We're underway!

They don't get the shelter done before nightfall. The roof still isn't attached, so of course it rains all night, and they all have to huddle together. Here's where Dreamz reveals an interesting strategy. Keep talking all night, while everyone's trying to get to sleep. He's just trying to get the Dreamz name out there, y'all. Branding. So Rocky gets up and the two of them start shouting about whether or not they're shouting at one another. I didn't expect an existential joust from Rocky and Dreamz this early, to be truthful.

Morning! Jeff finally does a popin, and asks them if anybody's stepped up as a leader. Yeah, Sylvia, everyone says. Jeff says, great, Sylvia, get over here and pick two teams. Don't worry so much about spelling at this point...

The Moto tribe: Cassandra, Liliana, Stacey, Lisi, Dreamz, Boo, Gary (Papa Smurf), Alex and Edgardo. The Ravu Tribe: Michelle, Erica, Rita, Jessica, Rocky, Earl, Yau Man, Anthony, and Mookie. Feel free to clip this paragraph for future reference, but please, don't take scissors to your actual monitor.

Jeff says that Sylvia, having established leader cred, gets to go lead her own tribe of sea snakes on Exile Island. But it means she gets immunity, and will join whichever tribe muffs the first challenge. She's whisked away, and Jeff says the tribes will race for Immunity...but wait! There's more! The winning tribe gets to go live in the Malibu of Fiji (where more accoutrements are even now arriving), while the losers get to start over on a new beach, with nothing but an axe and a dream. Didn't see that coming, CBS!

The challenge is to drag a chariot across the sand, picking up puzzle pieces, then building the puzzle. The two teams trade the lead for a while, but Jessica fumbles Ravu's puzzle and Moto wins. Winners jump and hug, losers hang their heads.

(Commercial Interlude: The Dennis Hopper retirement commercials annoy me, like you might have guessed. Telling Baby Boomers how they're going to redefine retirement? Yeah, like they ended corruption in Washington and war and rewrote the book on everything. Why shouldn't the Baby Boomers be playing shuffleboard? Don't they got to get themselves back to the garden by now?)

Sylvia gets the first clue to the hidden Immunity Idol, which is that it's hidden back at camp. The camp she won't be going back to. Awesome.

Ravu starts plotting against people they've known for an hour. Jessica, Erica and Rocky form an alliance that they immediately declare unbreakable and unstoppable, and announce their intentions to go after Rita for no particular reason. Earl and Yau Man correctly note that Jessica botched the challenge, and that should be reason enough to give her the boot.

The Tribal Council appears to be held at the summit of Big Thunder Mountain. Jeff asks the vague questions you'd expect him to ask of people who haven't really had a chance to work up a good hate for each other yet. A couple of them say they wouldn't be surprised to be voted out; a couple of them, including Jessica, say they would be surprised. Get ready to be surprised, Jessica.

NEXT WEEK: Dehydration! Boo cuts himself (a Boo-boo-boo?)

Posted by Michael at 09:30 PM | Comments (1)

February 06, 2007

SurvivorBlog 14.0

Too soon. After all the Survivor commercials during the Superbowl, I feel like I'm already spent. Wasn't the last season over just yesterday? Aren't Sundra and Becky still hacking away at their flints?

Anyway, I will do my best to keep the torch burning (see what I did there?). I'll also note that this season takes place in Fiji, which just had a coup d'etat led by a strongman named Frank Bainimarama. So I'd like to ask everyone to get their "Cruel Summer" jokes out of the way right now.

Posted by Michael at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2006

You Know Where To Ask For A Refund

You know what? I just can't bring myself to do a Survivor recap for the last episode. It was pretty boring. Yul was cool, and deserved to win. Ozzie was cool, and would have deserved to win. I had a personal $take in Becky winning, but she sat there in the Final Three, useless, like Michigan being honored at halftime of the Ohio State/Florida game. Half the jury didn't even acknowledge her when they asked their questions.

When the thing you remember most from an episode is that it took two Survivors two hours to start a fire (and the second hour, they had matches), it's probably not worth it.

So....um. Sorry.

Posted by Michael at 05:21 PM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2006

You Can Stop Hitting F5

I didn't take a lot of notes the first time around, so the final installment of SurvivorBlog 13 might take a couple of days. Just think of it as a prolonged session of watching me try to start a fire.

Posted by Michael at 11:38 PM | Comments (1)

December 17, 2006

Welcome, Perverts

Just checked my stats. My careful placing of the words "Parvati" and "nude" close together is doing wonders for my Google traffic. And whoever was looking for "Parvati pees"....um. Get help.

Posted by Michael at 01:24 AM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.14: The Sickeningly Sweet Science

In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade,
And he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down
And cut him 'til he cried out in his anger and his shame
"I am leaving I am leaving", but the fighter still remains
- Simon & Garfunkel

The boxer. The most maligned, yet romanticized figure in sports. A purveyor of sheer, unbridled brutality, yet capable of incomparable grace and dexterity. Rocky. Raging Bull. Howard Cosell and Muhammed Ali, turning boxing chat into a metaphor for the entire Sixties. It's right at the junction of primal rage and ordered civility.

Which leads us to Parvati.

Not just a boxer - a Foxy Boxer. As Television Without Pity describes it, boxing of the "'I throw a punch and -- oops, I lost my top!' variety". You think Mike Tyson was misunderstood.

Actually, Parvati's pretty easy to understand, as we begin day thirtywhatever on Survivor Island. She and Adam survived the ouster of Jonathan, and they're talking strategy. "We need to get one of the four Aitus to join us." It's breathtaking in its simplicity.

Treemail! Yul brings back a bad poem and a bucket of mud, which leads everyone to guess that the Reward Challenge involves...well, mud. "Naked mud wrestling", suggests Yul, which probably gives Parvati an experiential advantage over, say, Becky.

It's not quite naked mud wrestling. It's "cover yourself with as much nasty-ass mud as possible and squirt it into a bucket", which I believe is the state sport of Arkansas. You're not allowed to carry mud in your hands or arms, so the Survivors improvise, carrying it in their hair (Ozzie), back (Yul), cleavage (take a guess), or not really anywhere (Sundra). Ozzie, adding "yak" to his Manimal resume, blows the field away by transporting 45 pounds of mud in ten minutes. He can't be beaten.

So Ozzie wins, and the two runners-up (Parvati and Yul) get to join him for a spa weekend. Ozzie also gets to send someone to Candice Island; he picks Adam, of course. "Sorry, bro," he says. The spa-bound three do a group hug; covered in mud, they all kind of look like Oscar statues.

Becky and Sundra, still covered in mud, trudge back to camp just ahead of a torrential downpour. You'd think they would stay out and wash some off, but they huddle in the tent. The Becky-shaped mudball tells the Sundra-shaped mudball that she's getting really scared of Ozzie, because he wins almost every challenge and is currently singlehandedly leading the NBA's Atlantic Division. She starts to muddily speculate it might be time to shave him off the Alliance. Sundra, I think, tries to respond, but only mud comes out.

Ozzie, Yul, and Parvati will get hosed down when they get to the spa, so they're flying in a plane, crusting in mud, sitting on plastic seat covers. Think about that the next time you bitch about the accomodations on Southwest. They shower (not together, but don't go anywhere), get massages (not that kind, but seriously, hang on), and pig out on food and booze. Things are leading up to...

Adam on Exile Island. Damn. You know when someone's really clever and sharp, sometimes you say "No flies on him!" Well, Adam literally has flies on him at Exile Island. That's all I'll say about that.

ool.jpgBack at Rancho Relaxo, the massage, the food, the fluffy robes, and the liquor have all combined to melt the cares away. And away with the cares goes Parvati's bathrobe. To the hot tub! Three nude Survivors lounge around, and Parvati says being there with two boys makes her so excited she pees her pants - "except I'm not wearing any pants!" Read the sign (left), tootsie.

Meanwhile [insert clumsy segue here - ed.], Yul is pissed [awesome! - ed.] that Parvati's so blatantly flirting with Ozzie. He's worried about him going over to the dark side. Probably at the exact same second that Becky's wondering the same thing. Not that these two have a bond. Yul's trying to figure out how to get Ozzie to keep his eyes on the prize.

Finally, the three come back to camp. Becky says she missed Yul (O RLY?), and the two of them get together and verbalize their unspoken common uncertainty about Ozzie. Yul agrees, but also says that he's underestimated Parvati; she's working Ozzie hard, and in the immortal words of Bell Biv Devoe, that girl is poison. Never trust a big butt and a smile, Oz.

The Reward Challenge is a balance beam walk followed by assembling and manipulating a giant simple Labyrinth board. Would it spoil the suspense to say that Ozzie wins in a landslide? No? OK.

So now, common sense dictates that either Adam or Parvati has minutes left to live. Adam, to his credit, goes to see Don Yul and lays it on the line. "I know it's either her or me; I'd like to nominate her." No subterfuge there. Parvati says she knows she's in trouble because she's a threat, but Adam's kind of a threat, too. I'm not sure if this strategy is remarkably clever or incredibly stupid, but I sure have my suspicion.

Ozzie's lounging in the tent with the two worried ex-Raros. Adam gently and subtly asks if there's any way he'll switch. Ozzie says he'll do whatever it takes to win. Adam chooses to interpret that as a maybe. Yul, Becky, and Sundra start to fret that the stupid-sell actually might be working, so Yul goes in the tent and basically reminds Ozzie not to be stupid.

Now, because there's been so little stupid pointless controversy this season, Yul wonders if he should bring Jonathan's hat to Tribal Council, since Jon asked for it back on his way out. They get there, Jon picks up his hat -- which he DID NOT KNOW Yul brought. Jeff immediately makes a thing out of it, asking if Yul's starting to try to butter up the jury, particularly Jonathan, who was so innocently and cruelly stabbed in the back before he got to stab Yul in the back. Yul's all like, don't make this a thing, Jeff. But then some of the other Survivors start making it a thing, accusing Yul of playing to the jury. Yul probably feels like the guest of honor at the wrong roast. The Jury giggles. I think if you're going to play to this Jury, you'd do well to bring your best Senor Wences impression; it's that level of intellectual discourse.

The only suspense is 1% whether Ozzie will flip, and 99% whether it's Adam or Parvati going. The first vote (which is, of course, the one we saw already) is for Sundra. The second is for Parvati, and that's the ballgame. Looks like she'll be doing her Foxy Boxing from now on up in the Statesville Prison.

Boring Words of Wisdom, boring Parvati final shot. Still, a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest. Lie-la-lie, lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, la-la-la-la-lie.

Next: It's Over!

Posted by Michael at 09:45 PM | Comments (1)

December 07, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.13: Someday, And That Day May Never Come

The Seven Against Probst trudge back from a traumatic Tribal Council, only to face the far greater trauma of unflattering night lighting. Jon says he's OK with being the bad guy and not being trusted, which is good, because it's not like he has a choice.

The next morning, Parvati is gamely trying to help in the kitchen. Since she learned last week that fish have to be converted from cute Finding Nemo cast members into tasty Gorton's filets, she cleverly deduced that there's some work involved turning a raw coconut into a pina colada. So she's axing away at a coconut...whap...whap...thhhwwwwwwwp. Which is the best onomatopoeiatic word I can think of for an axe slicing through Parvati's thumb.

She sits down, dazed - well, a little more dazed than usual - and Becky and Sundra wrap a buff around her injured thumb. The fishermen return, and Adam admits he's a little creeped out by fingernail injuries. You may be aware that I freak out and puke when confronted with eye trauma. Some people faint at the sight of blood. Adam can't deal with a split fingernail. Jon is openly hoping that Parvati will either have to be Medevacced to New Zealand or bleed to death, but the Survivor medical staff lets her off with one stitch and a bandage.

Reward Challenge! Jeff says the challenge is to use a small bucket to fill a large bucket, which sounds about as exciting as a challenge of hopscotch. But there's more! The loved ones are here! Jon's wife (wait - Jon's straight?!), Parvati's dad, Adam's dad, Becky's sister, Yul's brother, and Ozzie and Sundra's respective moms emerge from behind a tree and come over for hugs and banter.

And the challenge suddenly gets a bit more interesting: it's a wet T-shirt contest! Well, it turns out that way. The Survivors are blindfolded and have to fling water at their loved ones, who are in charge of the large bucket. So it's pretty wet and wild, and Jon's wife gets the good idea of wringing the water out of her shirt, but Parvati and her dad wind up winning. I think Ozzie scoops up a flounder in his bucket at one point.

So Parvati gets to pick someone for Candice Island (it's Jonathan; quelle surprise) and Paparvati gets to pick two more Survivor/loved one combos to join them for their adventure. He picks, without any help, Sundra's mom and Adam's dad. Ozzie, Becky, and Yul bid adieu to their family members, and a strange group heads back to camp.

They putter around camp for a while. Parvati shows her dad that she's surviving; Adam and George throw the old pigskin around; Sundra and Mom collect firewood. Ozzie bitches that Adam and Parvati are having a good time, and in fact still alive, because of the food he's brought them. As a waiter, you think he'd be used to being treated like crap by the customers, but what are you gonna do.

So he and Becky and Yul make a pact that they'll hide some of the food and not continue to be servants to the slackers. I love these guys so much.

The others visit a native village where they dance, get lei'd (quiet, you), and go to an underground cavern with a pool. The natives explain that they used to sacrifice virgins here; Parvati looks around nervously then jumps in. Sundra makes the Survivor producers very happy when she interviews how cool it is to learn about other cultures. She also realizes that Adam and Parvati are OK people without Captain Jonathan Bringdown around.

Then they pig out on fried chicken, corn, and biscuits. They don't call 'em the South Seas for nothin'. Pass the grits!

Ozzie's "Hide the Food" scheme takes a little bit of a hit when Parvari, Adam and Sundra come back with takeout. It seems the waiter has become the waited. Becky has the good sense to look a little sheepish, though 50 bucks says the takeout was Sundra's idea.

Jonathan returns from Exile Island with his literal feather in his cap. No one says hi. The Immunity Challenge is a convoluted nautical obstacle course; Ozzie takes form of Mountain Goat and gets out to a huge lead (quelle surprise encore), the girls flollop over some wet barrels, and no one really makes a serious run at Ozzie.

At camp, Jonathan is lingering around with a giant target planted on his back. Sundra tells him - not a bit convincingly - that their original plan to take out Adam is still on. Jonathan doesn't quite believe her. Since she's the only one who even says a word to him. I almost kind of feel bad for Jon.

Adam tries to sell Yul on the idea of Jonathan going home instead of Parvati or himself. Yul interviews that he kind of feels like the Godfather, being asked to perform a hit on someone. He tells Adam that what he asks for is not justice, and if Adam had shown him respect from the beginning, he would have nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, he doesn't slap him and yell "You can act like a man!". That would have been awesome.

Jon comes to Yul for his audience. He does everything short of Sallozzo's "I'm not that clever" speech; luckily, Sonny isn't around to tip the family's hand. Yul wishes Jon good luck, as best as his interests don't conflict with Yul's.

Jon tries to rationalize to himself, or the cameramen, that it would be a bad idea to vote himself off.

Tribal Council! Adam says he doesn't think Jon deserves to stick around; Jon asks why, and Adam (Adam!) delivers the line of the episode. "It's your integrity. You don't have any." I'll beat the dead horse one last time, and say that Adam has had any number of chances to get rid of Jon; the multitude of ex-Raros on the jury can testify to that. Jonathan starts talking about trust and debts owed and all that crap.

The votes come in, and as soon as the third Jonathan vote is revealed, he knows his goose is cooked. His exit line - "I want my hat back at some point" - is not quite "'Tis a far, far better thing...", but oh well.

Jeff's Words of Wisdom - well. He says that trust is an issue, because Jonathan trusted in them. HOGWASH, Jeff. No one trusted Jonathan. The Superfriends trust each other, and rightly so. Adam and Parvati have no choice but to trust each other. Jonathan never fit in, he screwed everybody over at least once...and Jeff says there will be lingering trust issues? Hogwash, I say.

Next Week: Will Ozzie flip out of the Superfriends? Will Yul and Becky cut him off before he gets the chance?* Can Yul trust that fat Clemenza?

*Note to Yul and Becky...you do NOT want to go into the Finals against Adam or Parvati with the jury full of ex-Raros. You don't want this. Promise.

Posted by Michael at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)

November 30, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.12: No Cure For Cancer

And then there were eight. First we have the Superfriends - Yul, Becky, Ozzy and Sundra. Nothing's gonna stop them now. Secondly, we have what I've taken to calling the Moronage a Trois - Parvati, Adam, and Candice. What they lack in intelligence, work ethic, and competence, they make up for in winning smiles.

And of course, Jonathan. The lone wolf. The man without a tribe. Beholden to no one, barely tolerated by all.

We begin with them coming back from the Tribal Council where Jon turned colors again and glommed onto the ex-Aitus. Candice is seriously mad at Jon; her opinion of traitors is notably malleable. Parvati says she's so mad at Jon she wants to throw up on him. Adam sits there like a bobblehead doll.

Jon sits and takes the verbal abuse. He says, well, what if Yul had the Idol? Then we'd vote for him, and they'd bounce it to me. Law of the jungle, baby. Kill or be killed. And the nitwits say, no way Yul had the Idol. Jonathan says, he did. I saw it. And the nitwits still don't believe.

The next morning (Day 29 on the island), Sundra is cluing Parvati into some of the facts of life. Namely, that fish don't turn from cute, aquarium-ready fish into delicious, edible fish just like that. Someone has to...well, gut them. Parvati says she wants to throw up (Is this episode Parvati's cry for help?) Sundra thinks it's funny that Parvati has never gutted a fish; Jonathan sets his OutrageMeter to 11. He goes over and complains/sucks up to Aitu a little more, just in case they'd forgotten he existed in the last 15 minutes.

Reward Challenge! And it's one of those fun ones, where every Survivor is issued $500 American cash, and Jeff auctions off several items. For some reason, I had a flashback to an old Dungeons & Dragons game (weren't there some auctions of mysterious items?) and so I will attempt to tell the story of the Reward Challenge as if narrating a D&D adventure.

Jonathan bids $100 on a mystery foodstuff; it is a Hot Dog of Many Toppings, along with a glass of stout mead (well, beer). I should point out that Survivors are allowed to share money, but not food. Jonathan fails a dexterity check and fumbles some of the beer onto Parvati the Tooth Queen. She calls a party foul, which does no damage to Jon. Parvati then bids 360 gold on a piece of cake and a Bubble Bath of Infinite Comfort. She strips to her bikini, which raises her armor class, as well as Adam's...interest, and sinks into the healing waters.

The next item is a mystery envelope. Becky, with a loan from Yul, goes deep into the bidding. Jeff says that, within the envelope, there's an item of significant power. Please, be a vorpal sword, please, be a vorpal sword.

(I can't keep this D&D thing going anymore. If you want the whole episode told this way, sign up for BunkoSquadPlus. It's $9.95/month.)

No, it's a note, saying that Becky can pick somebody to go to Exile Island, and take all their money as they leave. No one on the planet is shocked that it's Candice, and Becky gains 1,200xp and promotes to 2nd-level thief (sorry). Candice storms off to the boat she knows so well. Parvati angrily loofahs her back.

The next item up for bid is the use of a soft-serve ice cream machine for a few minutes. Jon bids $400, all he has left. Ozzie bids $420. Jeff grins and says, "The magic number." OK, suddenly now we're in a Cheech & Chong movie? This episode is moving way too fast. Ozzie stumbles over to cure his munchies, and Jeff throws on "White Rabbit".

Jon wins a pizza; Sundra wins a sea cucumber (you knew there was going to be one dud prize); Jon wins some personal hygiene items. I don't know where he came up with the extra money; I hope he plucked it from Adam while Adam was leering over either Parvati or Jon's french fries. Somewhere along the line, Yul reveals to one and all that he has the Immunity Idol. Adam and Candice still don't believe him. Jeff calls the auction closed; Jon gargles us into the commercial break.

Everyone but Candice comes back to camp. Jonathan burps a cloud of pepperoni in Becky's general direction. Classy with a capital K. He stalks off and everyone starts complaining about him. Adam says he's a dirty, dirty rat. Possibly the longest coherent sentence Adam's put together in a while.

Cut to Candice, boo-hooing on Exile Island. She says she's mad that she's realized that Jon is going to last longer than she will. I think she's really sad because she's all alone and wasting valuable Adam-cuddling time. What are he and Parvati up to?

Immunity Challenge! It involves math, memory, trivia, and strength. I won't even go into detail because it was pretty boring; suffice it to say that even though it involves math and trivia, Adam wins. He's happy. Candice looks sad, and pensive.

Now begins the horsetrading. The Moronage A Trois approaches the Superfriends with what's actually a reasonable request: just kick Jonathan off. Seriously, that's all they want. They admit that they're OK with being picked off after that; they just want Jon to go first. They appeal to Yul's long-term interests by saying that they'll soon be on the Jury of the Damned, and what Yul does with Jonathan now will impact the decision in the Final Two.

While they're plotting (and the ex-Aitus all admit that they don't like Jonatham much either), Jonathan is stalking around camp like the Grim Reaper, if the Grim Reaper were not a skeletal, black-clad, ominous figure with a scythe, as usually portrayed, but rather a pudgy, shirtless Jew in a scuba mask.

Jon makes a final pitch to the Superfriends, coming back with a couple of fish and hinting that the five of them should have a meal, while Adam, Parvarti and Candice canoodle in the tent. The smell of fish wafts in their direction, and Candice storms out in a rage. She yells at them (Jonathan) for not sharing, she accuses them (Jonathan) of being inconsiderate louts, and she says she hopes they (Jonthan) are happy with their rudeness. She tries the desperate gambit of trying to get Jon to think Yul was talking smack about him. It looks like Candice is going down, so she doesn't want to leave anything in the chambers.

They get to Tribal Council, eyes blazing like a hundred suns. The Jury trots out; Nate looks not unlike Rudy from the Fat Albert gang. Candice, finding a little more firepower, lets Jon have it. She (and occasionally Adam) call him a rat, a cancer, a cancerous lab rat, a ratty lab cancer, etc. They tell Jon that nobody likes him. The Jury giggles and nods. Yul tries to make the peace. Nobody wants peace. It's pig-pile time, and everyone's got Jonathan-related grievances to air. He's the most hated person on the planet!

So Candice gets voted out. That makes sense. She gives Adam a long, wet kiss goodbye. Somewhere in America, Billy's writing a monster ballad. She waves toodle-oo and probably heads back to Exile Island, since it's hard to sleep in an unfamiliar bed. Jeff is too overwhelmed to offer any Words of Wisdom.

Next week: The Jonathan tumor spreads! Parvati cuts herself! It's not a tumor! Yul's the Godfather!

Posted by Michael at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.11: Shut Up, Jonathan

It's the morning after at Raro: the morning after the double elimination of Rebecca and Jenny, and the morning after Jonathan, who by any rational analysis would be long gone, somehow survived. So he tiptoes out in the morning to catch fish. When he comes back, the cast of the Real World is just stirring, and when Jonathan gently suggests that fire and water would sure make his fish taste better, they start working. Jonathan interviews that he can't believe he's doing all the work for them. Jonathan, it should be pointed out, loves talking more than anyone else on the planet; he gets more interview time per episode than Becky and Sundra have had throughout the series.

Nate's all like, don't tell me what to do, Jonathan. Because he clearly resents Jon's outsider status. Though not enough to save Brad, Rebecca, and Jenny before getting around to kicking out the interloper. (Note: I realized after I wrote this that Nate didn't vote for Jenny, but the point stands.)

Aitu, the Superfriends, are showing some evidence of mortality. Sundra has a gaping knee wound, and even Yul is fatigued and feels crappy. If they keep wearing down like that, they may only slightly beat Raro next time around.

But there is no next time around. Jeff summons everyone to the beach and tells them the merge has come. Boo. Aitu's still outnumbered, but they no longer have the advantage of kicking Raro's ass at challenge after challenge. They don their new joint-tribe buffs and head to the former Raro camp, where the coconuts are plentiful and the rats not so much.

And how do they get there? A luxury cruise! Take that, Jenny! They sail in a fully-stocked dining room, with complimentary beer and wine. Adam, showing the kind of determination and will that will surely mean success in life for him, drinks too much and starts heaving over the railing. Nate's hammered, too. There goes the "stupid frat boy" stereotype. Jonathan is disappointed about this behavior, and lets us know. There goes the "talky neurotic Jew" stereotype. This show is breaking down barriers.

Nate's getting to be pals with Ozzy, but he still tells us with a straight face that the original Raros will stick together. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that Brad, Rebecca and Jenny all slipped his mind. Ozzie's starting to look a little like Johnny Depp, if you're interested. Adam and Parvati snuggle; Adam flashes that annying grin. Yul and Becky start discussing whether to start letting people know Yul has the Immunity Idol.

Now, I have mixed feelings about this decision. Jonathan, clearly, will go where the momentum is, so waving the Idol in his face might work. But he also has betrayed the ex-Aitus, so he thinks the only way to keep around is to stick with the ex-Raros. And since the facts actually back up the sad fact that the game is centered around Jonathan at the moment, Yul doesn't tell Jon he has the Idol (though he drops enough painfully obvious hints). The good thing about springing surprises on Jon is that he can't keep his mouth shut while considering anything, so you really know where he stands.

Yul and Becky do tell Sundra and Ozzie about the Idol. They're pleased, but not too surprised. The cheerleaders (Parvati and Candice) want to kick Yul off, because he's really smart and capable. No one comes to Raro Beach and starts thinking, dammit!

The Reward Challenge (the individual immunity necklace looks exactly like what Mola Ram wore when he ripped out that guy's heart in Temple of Doom) is simple. Cling to a pole for as long as you can; last one to fall wins. The beefcake guys drop right away, then they all fall off except Candice and Ozzy. Ozzy, drawing on his rhesus-monkey animal power, hangs on for the win as Candice slides off. Imagine this paragraph stretched out to 10 minutes, with Jeff narrating.

How does Parvati have polished toenails at this point in the game?

So this clears everything up for Aitu. Ozzy's off the chopping block, so one of two things happen.

>1) Ex-Raros think Yul probably has the Idol so they vote for Becky or Sundra, or 2) Ex-Raros don't think things through, so they all vote for Yul, leaving the second place person kicked out when Yul shows the Idol. My money's on the Raro's-not-that-smart option.

Option 3, of course, is that Yul tells Jon about the Idol, assuming that Jon will flip right back over like the frontrunner he is, and then he can pick which ex-Raro (probably Nate or Adam) to jettison. The risks of this, of course, are that Jon will tell everyone, or that Jon will realize that joining ex-Aitu clinches fifth place for him. Yul even tells Jon he wants to be against him in the Finals, but knowing Yul, he'll keep his alliance with Becky right up to the end and let fate take its course.

Jon goes to the Raro brain trust and mentions it's possible that Yul has the Idol, and how would we handle that? Adam and Candice figure that since their combined brainpower couldn't find the Idol in twelve days, there's no way Yul could have found it in only one. Jon starts to think he's a little too smart for the Raro Moron Alliance.

Adam tells Candice that Nate is thinking too much. Adam and Candice agree that thinking is hard, and changes people. Then they smooch.

Jon goes back for a clandestine meeting with ex-Aitu (well, clandestine enough that Raro doesn't notice). They say that if he joins up with them, he can pick which of Nate and Adam goes. Jon tells Candice nothing happened. Jon, who is the center of the entire universe, interviews six or seven or 47 times that he doesn't know what he wants to do, and every choice he could make would make him an enemy somewhere. Hard to believe, since you're so likeable, Jon.

Tribal Council! Jeff asks Parvati what's up with Adam and Candice; she says, "They love each other! And they want to make babies!" I can't tell if she's being silly, or if that's really what she sees. God, I hate Raro.

Sadly, Jon gives a big farewell speech, but he's probably not leaving, so he'll get to give another one before too long. The votes start coming in: four for Nate, four for Yul. One left to see which way Jon thought the wind was blowing.

And it's Nate. Nate has the scowl to end all scowls as he stomps off the beach. Jon looks pained. Candice, Adam and Parvati look like it's penetrated their thick heads that this is bad news. Yeah, with Jon not on your side, and Yul still with the Idol, I think maybe it is bad news for you guys.

Jeff's understated Words of Wisdom are that this vote significantly shakes things up. Nate gets his money's worth on his Two Minutes' Hate, ripping Jon up and down. It's pretty good material, and I hope to see a few more people cursing Jon on their way out.

Next week: Aitu isn't sharing food! Candice suddenly doesn't like traitors! Everyone hates Jonathan!

Posted by Michael at 10:56 PM | Comments (1)

November 16, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.10: Instant Karma's Gonna Get You

Everyone at Raro is recovering from the mutiny and the kicking-off of Brad. Jonathan's recovering by imitating Ozzie, trying to bring back lots of fish. You might say he's the sole provider, but I won't. I also won't call him the Wandering Jew - he does that himself. I missed that tribe, back in the ethnic-division portion of the season. Candice and Adam are recovering by talking strategy, and how they're together till the end. Adam, if he's thinking at all, has to be thinking that he would be a guaranteed winner if he gets into a final with Candice, since she has four blood enemies over at Aitu. That's giving Adam a lot more credit than I probably should. And Parvati (deposed as Queen Bee) is having a little Girl Talk with Jenny, about how Adam and Candice are all kissy-kissy and want to be together and have babies. Beautiful, treacherous, not terribly bright Aryan babies.

I'm sure they have nothing to worry about, though, as the next scene features Adam and Candice lying in the tent, as Candice tells him all the places she's hurting so he can kiss it and make it better. Finger...thumb...lips...Credits! Thank God.

We come back to Aitu (henceforth referred to as the Superfriends, assuming I remember). Treemail arrives, and it's homework! They have to learn all of the nautical flags, and the Superfriends - who are strong and smart - immediately have a cram session. Ozzie makes particular note of how to signal the letters "F" and "U" for when they all get back together again.

They gather at the beach, and Yul is bummed to find out that Brad got kicked off. How can he forget the mutiny, when there is always something there to remind him? He will never be free; Jonathan will always be a part of....he.

The challenge involves a compass, some digging, some chests, and a puzzle. Raro starts screwing up right away. Aitu's method is to go where the clues tell them and dig until they find the chest. Raro's method, admittedly unorthodox, is to have Jon and Jenny flail around in the sand while Adam and Candice yell at them to hurry up. Phase two is having Adam and Candice flail around in the sand while Jon and Jenny yell at them to hurry up. Now that's a plan. Nate sits on the sidelines, like a guy watching his car getting towed.

The Superfriends steamroll to victory. Ozzie literally kicks up his heels in excitement, since the reward is a plane ride to another island for a lavish South Seas feast and celebration. Candice's reward is that Exile Island may soon be named after her. Everybody's where they belong.

Back from commercial (and seriously, only in America can a commercial combine Eastern meditation and American Express class warfare and not laugh itself into a coma) and on Candice Island, the guest of honor is close to the brink. She's cold, she's lonely, there's a dull ache that Adam's too far away to kiss, and she's having trouble processing the fact that "four people I like [but not so much that I wouldn't sell them up the river first chance I got] want to see me suffer". A traitor is never beloved, sweetie. She sniffles back some tears and eats a hideous-looking sea cucumber.

The Superfriends (Ozzie is Aquaman, Yul's Batman...the rest may come to me) arrive on a populated island, where CBS money has convinced the islanders to put away their TVs and video games for a night and don ceremonial palm fronds and other native garb. We learn that the traditional Cook Island welcome and greeting looks suspiciously like a call to massacre. The Aitus sit on litters and are carried into the picnic area. The whole thing looks a little...well, a little Ewok Village, truth be told.

They eat, they watch a warrior ceremony, they watch two robust island woman tackle Yul and get him to dance. The Batdance. Ozzie thinks it's awesome that Yul, so brainy and shy, has come out of his shell. I've gone beyond wanting Aitu to win challenges; I want them to be on the Supreme Court.

Raro, minus Candice, is fraying. Jonathan continues doing yeoman's work, and muttering that the kids could learn a thing or two from him about work ethic. He'll lead by example, he says. Now that is an absolutely ironclad and backfire-proof plan, my friend. Don't hold your breath.

Treemail, and more homework! Today's category is geography, as the tribes have to learn where various Pacific archipelagos (there's a word I don't get to use nearly enough) are located. Out of nowhere, Jenny starts bitching and moaning that it's time Rebecca started pulling her weight at challenges. Now I want you to go back through the archives, and count the number of times I said "Jenny gets Raro out to a huge lead" or "Wow, Jenny's really doing well in this challenge". When you're back, please note that Nate turned his wrath on Brad last week, and now Jenny's all up in Rebecca's thing. Whitey somehow is above reproach.

Immunity challenge! Candice ought to have scurvy by now, but she puts on a good face before the challenge, which involves swimming and a puzzle. First leg is Ozzy vs. Nate, and it's not too hard to figure out which of them gets a big lead. Nate flounders in the water for a minute. Geez, if only Brad were here for this challenge. Leg 2, Yul vs. Jonathan, Aitu's lead holds steady. Parvati makes up some ground - Becky, for all her plu$$e$, is not a strong swimmer - but Rebecca can't make up any more, and Aitu wins.

Now what I forgot to mention is that Jeff sprung a surprise, in the form of a sealed little mystery bottle. Whoever loses the challenge, he says, takes the sealed little mystery bottle back to camp, but is forbidden to open it. Then they take the sealed little mystery bottle to Tribal Council, where it will be unsealed after the vote. Jeff looks particularly pleased as he hands the s.l.m.b. to Raro. Maybe he's sending out an S.O.S. to the world.

While they fret about the s.l.m.b. (merge? bad news?), Raro circles the wagons and points all the guns at Rebecca. Jenny takes a few more ill-deserved shots at her for being bad at challenges. Adam interviews that he's breaking up the alliance because he can't vote Candice out. What a putz. Nate interviews that he's still thinking about kicking out Jonathan, because he doesn't want to take Jon's side over **coughBradcough** his old tribe family. The sad part is, he honestly sounds like he thinks he's sincere. Jon feels like his quiet **coughbullshitcough** example has made him an indispensable member of the tribe.

Tribal Council! Brad comes out as the first jury member, looking sharp. Jeff starts asking questions; Rebecca's midanswer when Quiet Leader Jonathan butts in and starts talking about all the fish he's caught. He's doing lots of work, and attention must be paid. Adam says he's ruthlessly going after the person who's underperforming at challenges (not that Adam used words that big); Jenny helpfully reminds everyone that Rebecca's the person Adam means.

They vote; Rebecca's a unanimous choice. Unfortunately, she exits stage left instead of immediately joining the jury. Jeff, looking malicious and gleeful, says it's time to open the sealed little mystery bottle. Raro admits that they think the note inside is about a merge. Parvati cracks the seal, and - WHOA - they get to immediately vote off another member! No politics, no caucusing, just gut reaction. Jon looks terrified, but Jenny gets the boot. I'd have loved to see the look on Rebecca's face when she gets to the Kicked-Off Compound, then sees Jenny trudge in five minutes later.

Jeff's Words of Wisdom: the tribes are 5/4 now, and maybe this is a wake-up call. I can't help but think Jeff must have had two sealed little mystery bottles. If, say, Ozzie had broken his leg and Aitu came to tribal council, I can't imagine they'd make two of them leave, after setting up the ultimate battle of good-vs-evil. But who knows what evil lurks in the heart of Probst. Jenny's mad; her parting words are that she wishes she'd known about the doubleheader so she could have a chance to set someone else up.

Next week: Jonathan's mad at the lazy kids! Yul spills the beans about his Immunity Idol! Adam and Candice get to second base!

Posted by Michael at 09:55 PM | Comments (2)

SurvivorBlog 13.9: Never Trust Whitey

Ozzie's sleeping the sleep of the good provider. While he rests, Jonathan is hamhandedly plotting kicking him out; he yaps and yaps to the rest of his pseudoalliance. I think they mostly agreed to include him because once you agree, he might close his mouth for a minute. Jonathan is rivalling last season's Shane for the winner of the coveted "Survivor I Don't Want to Take A Long Car Trip With" award. Candace interviews that she doesn't like being in this alliance, and she'd rather be back with Adam and Parvati. You know - from the Caucasian tribe at the beginning.

Back from commercials, a rainbow shines over the island. You'd think this would be good news for Brad.

Candace and Jonathan are chatting, figuring out the best way to get back together with their pigment-deprived brethren at Raro. You know, because white people stick together. Jon yaps and yaps about when they have to sell out their teammates; Candace nods and nods (good policy) but says that she doesn't really trust him. Also a good policy.

Over at Raro, Nate's still fuming about Brad not giving his all in the last Reward Challenge. While Raro is speculating about the merge, Brad says "it's every man for himself", then grabs his (fishing) pole and wanders off. Nate says there's no I in team. True, but there's an M and an E.

Reward Challenge! Bombshell! Jeff, clad in his bright orange ballcap, says he's giving everyone ten seconds to decide if they want to "mutiny". Now, if this were an actual mutiny, the Survivors would keel-haul Jeff and institute mob rule (probably under Parvati or something dumb like that), but it's just a gussied-up way of saying they can switch tribes. You'd think Brad would be all over this, but no. Candace shoots Adam a meaningful white look, then hops to it. Jonathan, with one second left, jumps ship as well. Now there's a candidate for a keel-hauling.

Aitu is stunned. "I'm stunned" says Yul. Ozzie looks like he's about ready to break Candace's neck and bring her home to dinner. In a salute to the great city of Milwaukee, the Reward Challenge is to stuff two Survivors in a beer barrel, roll them over land and sea, grill some bratwursts, sing the "Laverne and Shirley" theme song, and then top it all off with a giant tailgate party at a Brewers game. Well, some of that's true, anyway.

The prize isn't a trip to the shores of Lake Michigan, but a bed, a feast of muffins and pastries, and some letters from home. Raro+2 gets all excited and huggy and bubbly. Aitu-2 looks grim and determined. Place your bets, gentlemen.

They roll their barrels (Candace and Jenny in Raro's barrel, Becky and Sundra for Aitu), over some tracks and through the sand. I'm getting barrelsick just watching it. Ozzie becomes Challenge-Mode-Ozzie, finding all their flags instantly. Raro drifts away (more on this in the next paragraph.) While they're floating the barrels through the water, causing (I imagine) some serious nausea, Jeff sails around in a little skiff, not unlike Jabba the Hutt surveying the feeding of the Sarlaac Pit. God, I'm a nerd.

Anyway, seeing Raro helpless at sea reminded me of something. First of all, we knew from the flashback episode that Candace and Adam already botched one fishing expedition and almost lost the boat, so among the terms I'd use to describe them, "able mariners" doesn't crack the top ten. Now for a Personal Glimpse(TM). Over the years, we took quite a few family vacations, and there was sort of a running theme that whenever my Mom and I got in a boat together, trouble ensued. Whether it was getting pulled away from shore in a paddleboat, almost swamped in a rowboat, drifting off to the St. Lawrence Seaway in a barge, or our ill-fated cruise on the Achille Lauro, it sort of became a running gag. Not that I'm saying I have sympathy for Raro, just illustrating a point of some kind.

So Aitu wins handily. Ozzie, filled with righteous fire, yells "Mutineers are the first people to die!" They group-hug, everyone in America suddenly realizes there's true good-vs-evil shaping up, Aitu sends Candace to Exile Island, Sundra sobs, Jeff sends them off to Muffinland. Excellent (and automatic) move, by the way, to exile Candace. Now she misses out on valuable bonding-time, and Raro gets the full brunt of Uninvited Jonathan, so they'll probably vote him off, if not ouiright slaughter him.

Commercial break: I'm already completely sick of these Russian-loudmouth credit card commercials. More "Alarm Clock Catastrophe" please!

Aitu arrives at brunch, loads up on muffins (I would have smuggled two back to devour in front of Jon and Candace, but I can be a vindictive prick). Sundra, ready to sing "We Are Family", says that her tight-knit Aitu tribe has made her the happiest she's ever been. Ozzie's recharged and furious. Have I mentioned I've become a huge Ozzie fan? They all look at letters and pictures from home. Yul, who may be the smartest contestant ever, says that this experience, and the bonding, and the chance to indirectly meet each other's families, has really made them more than a random tribe in a cockamamie game show; they really feel close. It gets a little dusty in the Breakfast Nook, and a few tears are shed. I'm thisclose to buying an Aitu buff, I'm so on board right now.

At Exile Island, Candace is suffering from Traitor's Remorse. She realizes that all of NewAitu hates her, she's puzzled that Jonathan jumped (he must have crazily thought they actually had an alliance), and she's sad that Jon's bonding with Raro. She really overestimates Jonathan, who's quickly bonding, but in the sense that Krazy Glue bonds to your fingers and aggravates the hell out of you and makes you regret ever being born. Thus the complete Jonathan Experience.

Jon, to his credit, realizes he's dealing from a position of stupidity. He tells Raro he's loyal (yeah, right) and doesn't want to rock the boat. Nate says that Jon will never fit in; even Brad, who commited the unforgiveable sin of being better at puzzles, at least didn't jump ship. Lucky for Brad he never mentioned mashed potatoes. Jon works like a man trying to keep his job.

Next is the Immunity Challenge, where the Survivors have to maneuver a boat and drop cannonballs onto targets. This naval warfare theme is going pretty well, huh? Raro jumps out to a lead, but Yul realizes that he can spot the targets more easily than they thought, and Aitu storms to another win. Now, I'm no chump. I know that the producers blatantly and obviously want us to be on Aitu's side, much like we all became Cleveland fans in Major League. But dammit, Aitu is just so likeable. Yul's super smart, Ozzie seems like he could actually survive on a real desert island, Sundra's super nice, and I win $400 if Becky takes the whole thing. Manipulate away, Probst; you had me at "mutiny".

So now Raro has to figure out who to boot. The girls (with Candice as the ringleader) all like the idea of kicking out Jonathan and the guys are still steamed at Brad. Nate posits that they can string Jon (whom he calls "Lord-Knows-What-He's-Thinking Knucklehead") along, because he can't go home again, whereas if Brad's still around at the merge, he'll buddy up to Aitu. Nate also says some things that make me think he's contracted Mad Octopus Disease, and I shan't reprint them here. Candace is talking smack about Jon to Adam, as if Adam needed any reason to dislike Jonathan. Adam's ready to go whale on Jon in the parking lot. Cooler heads (well, Nate) prevail, and Operation Kick Brad Out is underway, despite no evidence of the two factions ever speaking.

At Tribal Council, Jonathan, looking like it's dawned on him that he's utterly friendless, says he wouldn't be shocked if he's voted out. Nate says Jon may be trying to be a leader, and Raro is made of lone wolves who refuse to be led. Brad says he doesn't trust anyone. Hard to believe, since let's not forget that this is the tribe that kicked Stephannie off for longing for mashed potatoes. Parvati frowns, perhaps setting up a wrinkle 20 years from now.

Brad is unanimously voted off. Thanks for nothing, rainbow. Jeff slips in that Brad is now the first member of the Jury of the Damned. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Jeff's Words of Wisdom are that the game is full of surprises.

Next week: Adam and Candace snuggle! Jeff has a mystery bottle!

Posted by Michael at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.8: Manimal

Everyone's still recovering from the double-tribal-council whammy and the clip-show fakeout. At Aitu, they've lost Cao Boi and gained Nate - a bargain in anyone's book - but all is not happy. Jessica's really sad and confused that nobody told her that Cao Boi was going to be voted out. She's saying she would have been on board if anyone had just told her that was the plan. My suspicion: someone told her the plan, clearly and concisely, possibly using hand puppets, and it got lost in the humming, or buzzing, or calliope music, or whatever it is that runs through Jessica's head at all times.

Aitu sit around the table at Ozzy's Restaurant and pepper Nate with questions. Somebody asks him, "Are you a good swimmer?", which I thought was a somewhat racially loaded question, but then I remembered that this season of Survivor is about bringing people together, and the question was merely about gameplay and strategy. Or at least I thought so, until they asked Nate if he was a good dancer and liked watermelon. Well, the racial harmony thing was a nice idea while it lasted.

Treemail! It's a catalog! The tribes get to pick out their own rewards for the Reward Challenge. Aitu sensibly picks peanut butter and potatoes. At Camp Raro, which is starting to look like a Hooverville, they're thinking about bread and peanut butter (too bad Christina's gone; I bet she could have come up with a doozy of a recipe with those ingredients). Brad's against that, since bread is perishable. Like it won't all be eaten in four minutes. Parvati looks a little bummed that mascara and conditioner aren't available in the catalog.

The challenge is as convoluted as ever. The Survivors will swim out to a platform, leap off the platform, smash a box, release a key, dive to find the key, swim the key back to shore, use the keys to unlock a chest, open the chest to reveal pieces of a puzzle, and put the puzzle together. I miss rasslin'.

Rebecca's the first swimmer for Raro; she gets to the platform, jumps, and....well, that's it. She flollops in the water for a minute, hauls herself back to shore, and collapses on the mat. Operation Shutdown in effect. Ozzie, who I used to only speculate might be Aquaman, swims like a man possessed, summoning a flounder to retreive Aitu's keys, and a million barnacles to form a bridge so Candice doesn't have to get her feet wet. It's really something.

With Rebecca down for the count, it's up to Adam and Parvati to do all the swimming. Brad would be a logical choice, you'd have thought, but he declared himself to be better at puzzles, so he's on the puzzle team. Which will never even get tested, because Aitu wins handily. Interestingly, Jeff spends the entire challenge barking out updates, but never updates whether Rebecca might actually be dead or not.

Sans Adam (sent to Exile Island), Raro trudges back to camp, looking like they kind of hope the producers have left a loaded gun or a half-dozen nooses they can use to escape the next challenge.

Aitu's having a little peanut-butter orgy. Candice and Jessica give each other a little Jiffy kiss, and Candice says "I love everybody right now!" Somewhere in America, Billy just kicked his amplifier.

But as tantalizing as the possibilty of girl-on-peanut-on-girl action might be, they swing us back to the grim Raro tribe. Nate (who was ineligible for the Challenge, still technically a pseudo-Aitu) is pissed at "nancyboy" Brad for touting his puzzle prowess at the expense of having a strong, fit tribe member out there swimming. The sentiment is echoed on Exile Island by Adam. Just before he battens down the nonexistent hatches for a vicious monsoon, he says, "It's hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys." Adam - dude - when you're surrounded by turkeys, the chances are actually pretty good that you, yourself, are a turkey. Just sayin'.

Speaking of fowl matters: the next morning, Ozzie wanders into camp with a bird in the hand. Not in any cliche way, he's actually holding a bird that he just picked up somewhere. If Ozzie keeps this up, they'll be eating Loch Ness Monster fillets before the merge. Candice marvels that Ozzie is like a half-man, half-animal, which has been done, but he has the climbing skills of a monkey, the tracking skills of a leopard, the swimming skills of an eel, the chinny-chin-chin hair of a little pig, and the bird-catching skills of a - well, whatever animal catches birds. So some of the lesser Aitus start thinking about ways they can vote him off before he gets to be too helpful and successful.

Immunity Challenge! Adam, still quivering and shivering from Exile Island, rejoins the tribe. Jeff sympathizes with the awful night he must have spent out there, as if he (Jeff) didn't spend the whole storm being fanned with palm fronds, trying on hats, and nibbling peanut butter off a sexy intern's stomach. The challenge involves setting up poles to build a ladder-type-thing, then sliding down one of those cool rope things that nobody I knew ever had in their backyard, then hauling more puzzle pieces back through the water.

Brad, wisely, elects to swim this time.

They set up their ladders, and at one point - well - if you ever suspect that I embellish or make up some of the facts on SurvivorBlog, if you believe nothing else you read in this space, know that this actual quote actually comes out of Jeff Probst's actual mouth.

"They're building it from the bottom up while the guys debate which is the longest log."

Let's just move on.

Aitu, led by the dolphinesque Ozzie, jumps out to a huge lead, but somehow the Raro puzzle crew (which, it should be noted, does not feature Brad) somehow gets their act together and wins. Raro wins Immunity!

Everyone at Aitu has a different tactic for strategy. Jessica's playing Cub Reporter, going around interviewing everyone to see the vote breakdown. Right now, in her mind, it's a 54-way tie. Her choice is Jonathan. Becky and Yul are ready to throw Jon overboard from their alliance; Yul realizes that Jonathan never actually helps them win anything, whereas Ozzie is to the Aitu Tribe as Michael Jordan was to the '92 Bulls.

Candice and Sundra are sitting on the beach when Jon comes up. They say they had to get out of the camp because everyone's scheming and plotting. Jon plops down and starts scheming and plotting. Jon interviews that he's playing the game so fast and so hard that he might overreach and get taken down from behind. Yul says he never saw Jon being really sleazy, but everyone else thinks so, so it must be true. Let me reiterate that: Yul doesn't see what everyone else sees, and he DOES NOT assume that he's right and everyone else is wrong; he considers the possibility that everyone else might be right. How the hell did he get on this show?!?

Before they break camp, Jessica gives a poignant farewell-to-the-troops speech. Then she interviews that nobody really knows what they're going to do. That's called projection.

When Tribal Council started, I assumed it was coming down to Ozzie (too strong) and Jonathan (too annoying). In the Q&A, Jeff is shocked that people on Aitu are friends even though they come from different ethnic groups. Jessica is asked who gets along with whom; her answer is all-encompassing and vague. From some people, I'd think this is strategy and politics. With Jessica, I think it's what honestly is going on under her dreadlocks. Ever seen those pins that say "I smile because I have no idea what's going on"? That's her.

They vote, and shockingly (to me), everyone but Jessica votes for Jessica. I really didn't see that coming. Happily, though, she's pretty cool with it. Jeff's Words of Wisdom indicate that he thinks Raro has all the momentum now.

Next week: Brad's freaking out! Ozzie hauls down a rhino! No more election commercials!

Posted by Michael at 10:03 PM | Comments (1)

October 26, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.7: SurvivorBloggus Interruptus

Damn you, Probst! Tonight's Survivor was a clip show of the first six episodes; I guess the network didn't want to go up against the ratings juggernaut that is the 2006 World Series. I'd have watched Survivor anyway; I hate to say it, but I would. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver are actually making me start to hate baseball a little.

Rather than comment extensively on the deleted scenes (Sekou flips a canoe! Candice and Adam abandon ship! Parvati struts around in a bikini!), I decided to take a page from the Book of Probst and do a little recapping of my own. So here is the Best of BunkoSquad SurvivorBlog, from seasons 12 and 13.

Episode 12.1: 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.

Episode 12.2: At Tribal Council, Jeff resists the urge to strangle the Casayas. Shane says that even though he was begging and pleading to be sent home, he didn't really mean it. Cerie and Melinda express their disappointment with being on the chopping block for no reason. And Bruce looks around like a guy who's just been drafted by the Washington Generals.

Episode 12.3: Bruce, the new Casaya arrival, took charge, showing the tribe how to filter water, keep a fire going, and not be attacked by bats. So of course Shane and Courtney got pissed; after all, they were firmly in control of this tribe until Mr. "I Have Wilderness Survival Skills" shows up and starts teaching them how to do stuff, and why they shouldn't drink sea water. Light dawns over Marblehead, and Aras starts to openly wonder if hitching his wagon to the star of a bipolar junkie and a tempestuous fire-dancer was really his wisest decision.

Episode 12.4: Casaya arrives to find its brand new [outhouse]. Some of them debate storing the wood there to keep it dry; Bobby has other plans for it. He wakes up, burps, grabs Reader's Digest, and off he goes, which is weird, because I thought that animals' digestive systems shut down while they're hibernating. Then Shane goes off on Danielle for not doing any work, leading her to grab a shovel and start whacking the beach. Cirie, who's fully completed the 180-degree turnaround to likeability, just giggles as she thinks about how pathetic the Dipshit Alliance turned out to be.

Episode 12.5: Casaya takes the feast back to camp, where apparently a 10-minute deluge has ruined everything. Their stuff is scattered; their fire is out. Sushi time! Cirie wonders openly if eating raw fish is healthy (she's standing in fetid stagnant water at the time) and Bruce whines that it's not the same without wasabi and ginger. Also, somewhere along the line here, Bobby opines that Courtney is "one of the 2 or 3 most annoying people in the history of the planet". Let's see: Hitler, Courtney, Pol Pot. Sounds about right.

Episode 12.6: Dan takes the news [of his impending eviction] in stride. This is La Mina, remember, home of the Camazotz-esque hivemind. If it were legal, he'd vote for himself. All he can do is go on and on about how the puzzle beat him. You get the feeling that 10 years from now, Dan will be sitting in a diner somewhere, babbling about how the puzzle beat him, with a comfortable 3 empty stools on either side of him.

Episode 12.7: Terry is determinedly, if stupidly, trying to flip some of the lesser Casayas to even out the numbers. He comes to Shane, then Cirie, then Bruce, with an offer they can most definitely refuse. "Why not leave your team, which wins all the time, and join this sinking ship that looks good on paper but constantly screws up when it counts?" Unfortunately for Terry, none of them are Adam Vinatieri.

Episode 12.8: Oh, incidentally, one suprise from the challenge: of all the people on the show, you'd think Danielle would have a little more experience hauling coconuts around.

Episode 12.9: Shane, Danielle and Cirie stomp back to the beach, rationalizing that the Reward wasn't so great anyway. To take their minds off things, Shane decides to announce that the humidity and the lack of laundry have caused Li'l Shane to itch and burn. So he drops his trousers to give Cirie and Danielle a look, and give the CBS censors years' worth of psychiatry bills. Cirie, a professionally trained nurse, responds the only way possible: laughing her ass off and telling him it's a variation of diaper rash.

Episode 12.10: [Shane and Courtney] are both severely ticked that they weren't chosen to go to the resort. Bruce, meanwhile, is miserable because his stomach pains have intensified. He's trying to take a nap, and is literally writhing around on the ground from the pain. Having to listen to Prince Doom and the Dutchess of Despair can't be helping; he looks like the woman in Airplane! who vomits when the nun starts singing "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" to her.

Episode 12.11: Cirie decides that now would be a good time to contribute something to her fellow castaways, and goes fishing. Incidentally, I may not have showered enough praise on Cirie; she's awesome. The Greek chorus of sanity among the Bonehead Brigade. I think CBS would do well to cut to interviews with her in future seasons. I think ESPN should have her as a sideline reporter for Monday Night Football. I think some fishing show could hire her, since she actually catches a damn fish!

Episode 12.12: [Shane]'s genuinely and utterly shocked when he's voted out. Terry puts his hands over his face, realizing that everyone he's bringing to a reward winds up dead in a ditch right after. That will certainly help his popularity. Shane yells at everyone else that he'll be eating chocolate ice cream in a minute (I guess it will take him 58 seconds to massacre a cigarette first), and off he goes.

Episode 12.13: Terry could slip the idol to Danielle (this is the last chance he has to use it), wait for Aras and Cirie to vote for her, then she can whip out the Idol and it's goodbye, Cirie. But you know, and I know, and Jeff knows, and Danielle knows, and random sailors in the Panama Canal know, that Terry's not the type of man who leaves his ass out in the wind. He's not giving her the Idol.

Episode 12.14: Now that it's too late to help anyone, Terry reveals that he's had the Immunity Idol all along. Cut to more reaction shots of jurors, who look like Steve Martin and Martin Short in Three Amigos when Chevy Chase empties his completely full waterskin. Thanks for nothin', Terry; this will certainly be a feather in your cap if you make it in front of the jury.

Episode 13.1: So in the first fifteen minutes, we saw the Latino tribe saying they should win because they're used to living on tropical islands and fleeing places on boats, we saw the Asian tribe saying they're lighter and more mobile because of all that rice, we saw the African-American tribe talking about how they have to "represent", and we saw the white tribe stealing chickens from the oppressed minorities. I think I just heard the UN disbanding.

Episode 13.2: Cao Boi's sense of humor is grating on the other Asians at Camp Puka. He's still plucking evil spirits out of the others via the bridges of their noses, but when the lights are out, he likes to tell Asian jokes. Not like Zen riddles, but like "How many Bhutanese does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" And the others think he's not funny, and he's perpetuating the stereotype of Asians as unserious-minded goofballs. Or something.

Episode 13.3: [Jessica]'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.

Episode 13.4: At Camp Raro, we get a charming portrait of Princess Parvati and her minions. She's mad at the boys for sitting around eating while the girls weave (maybe she's conveniently forgotten the male/female ratio of the last Immunity Challenge), but she can't be too mad at the boys, since she needs them worshiping her and groveling at her feet. So she flashes them her huge...teeth, and quietly seethes to the camera about how domineering and manipulative J.P. is. I'd assumed J.P. was just your garden-variety chump, but he's gotten under Parvati's skin. If nothing else.

Episode 13.5: Adam uses the new fishing gear to somehow come home with an octopus wrapped around his shin. Not as titillating as having Nate wrapped around his torso, perhaps, but what are you gonna do. Christina leaps up and announces that she's got the perfect recipe for octopus, crabs, and coconuts. I believe it's called "Octopus, Crab, and Coconut Soup".

Episode 13.6: Yul shows an amazing poker face, considering (a) Cao Boi never thinks for a second that Yul has the Idol (which he does) and (b) stabbing Cao Boi with a spear right now would probably constitute self-defense in the eyes of any jury.

Episode 13.7: Joe Buck and Tim McCarver are actually making me start to hate baseball a little.

Posted by Michael at 09:06 PM | Comments (3)

October 19, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.6: Feeling Up Destiny

It's the long dark night of the soul at Camp Raro. Well, a long dark night, anyway. Stephannie has just been given her walking papers after expressing the opinion that not sleeping on logs might be a nice change of pace. Now the tribe has to deal with the fact that Christina got beasted at the Tribal Council. She basically got a cruel, malicious farewell speech without the actual farewell. How anticlimactic.

Christina's taking her non-heave-ho in stride. She figures she's been shot at and survived, so she can handle a little fire and brimstone from a yutz like Adam.

At Aitu, Ozzie, who I think might actually be Aquaman, is harvesting fish out of the sea like nobody's business. Which leads me to observe that this season, there's no one starving like usual. There's chickens and crabs and octopi and pounds of fish, just chillin' in easy spearing distance. If you're going to get stranded on one tropical beach this year, get stranded in the Cook Islands.

So Ozzie, who I thought was Dead Waiter Walking three weeks ago, has completely rattled Jonathan. Jon's babbling like it's Ozzie that's in the rock-solid (?) alliance and not him. Jon takes his confusion out on Cao Boi, in a spirited debate about whether or not Aitu should bring the Immunity Idol to the reward challenge. Jon says (correctly) it's kind of like rubbing it in Raro's face; Cao Boi says that the spirit of this squat little statue gives him strength or peace or something. I think Cao Boi's unravelling a little.

They don't bring the statue. Cao Boi instantly became Mr. Passive Aggressive, which says little about the Idol's healing powers. They arrive at the Reward Challenge, where Jeff is waiting in an orange-yellow hat. Just wear a cheesehead already, Jeff. Survivor: Green Bay.

Jeff springs some serious shakeup on everybody. Both tribes will have a Council and kick someone off. But the tribe that wins today's challenge gets to (a) eat lamb and drink apple cider, while (b) watching the other team's Tribal Council. Dinner and a show! Not only is food plentiful on the Cook Islands, they have a damn supper club! Where's the misery and deprivation? Next up, Survivor: Branson, Missouri! Jeff also promises another twist, which I figured meant Exile Island.

The challenge is, in a word, AWESOME. A Survivor clings to a pole, with all of his/her might, while 2 opposing Survivors try to wrench him/her free and drag him/her across the beach to a finish line. First team to drag three wins the whole banana.

This promises to be good, and it is. There's groping, there's squeezing, there's blurring of body parts, there are hands put where strangers' hands have no business going. I think Jenny might have grounds for an assault charge against Becky. Candice, grappling with Rebecca and Parvati, proves the feistiest, and Aitu takes a big lead while they drag the woozy Jenny to the line.

Now it's the guys' turn; Jon and Yul try to take Nate, while Adam and Brad go after Ozzie. I'll tell you, if this season wasn't all about promoting racial harmony, some of those Nate scenes would be a little uncomfortable to watch. Ozzie's spry, but light, and Raro makes up a little ground.

Becky and Jessica (they could qualify for the Italian tribe, with those Roman hands) start working on Christina, who's a difficult perp to subdue. There's choking (mostly by Christina), there's pants-pulling-down (maybe Christina just wanted to see where else Jessica was tattooed), and there's a lot of bad blood. Not literally. Parvati and Rebecca are still not all that physical, and Christina finally gets rolled over the finish line. Aitu wins!

Meanwhile, Cao Boi has been sitting on the sidelines, stewing. Or meditating. Or becoming one with Jeff's hat. Or something. He's not talking, at least, and we'll take that any day.

My sense of justice, since you ask, is a little exercised at the fact that Aitu has to kick someone out even though they keep winning challenges. But then I realize that I'm not emotionally involved (except for my $trong rooting intere$t in Becky), so forget it.

Put in this unjust position, Aitu starts scheming. They're a little rusty, except for Cao Boi. He kept his mouth shut during the whole challenge, so he pours his heart out to Yul. He has this plan for the non-whites (and Jessica) to split their votes among Candice and Jonathan, figuring that one of them probably has the Immunity Idol, and whichever one doesn't will go home. Cao Boi knows this because he had a lengthy dream involving dragons and credit cards(?), which he tells Yul in excrutiating detail. I think Cao Boi may be unravelling a bit.

Yul shows an amazing poker face, considering (a) Cao Boi never thinks for a second that Yul has the Idol (which he does) and (b) stabbing Cao Boi with a spear right now would probably constitute self-defense in the eyes of any jury.

At Camp Raro, they're feasting on octopus once more. And Christina, knowing her back is solidly to the wall, is wheeling and dealing, trying to get any possible ally that will help her kick out Jenny instead. She has a bit of a willing audience in Rebecca and Nate, who are worried that the merge will reunite the entire Asian-American group, who will then have numerical superiority. And here I thought the Yellow Peril conspiracy went out around 1920.

(Commercial side note: What the hell is with these Charles Schwab commercials where they make cartoons out of real people? I expect commerical cartoons to be funny. Cartoons that aren't funny (and I emphatically include anime and most graphic novels in this) leave me unfulfilled and alienated. I'm talking to you, Roy Lichtenstein. And you too, Mallard Fillmore.)

Back to the show. While Jonathan's freaked out by Ozzie, Sundra admits she's a little freaked out by Jonathan, thinking he's a little too nice to be real and he's probably playing everyone all along. Jon doesn't think he's going to be voted off, but if he does, it will mean he was "outplayed" by a "bigger conspiracy" than he thought. Yeah, Jonathan, the Freemasons' tentacles extend even to the Cook Islands. And Ozzie's just pleasantly surprised that the huge bulls-eye on his back has faded.

Tribal Council #1! Cao Boi has brought the Team Immunity Idol to the council, hoping it will confer good tidings onto his dubious "take out Whitey" plan. Jeff asks Aitu if anyone has emerged as a leader. Aitu says, yeah, Jonathan has. Jon says he's not trying to be a leader, then says "I don't patronize these people." Now to me, referring to people who are sitting next to you in the third-person is textbook patronizing, but Aitu doesn't call him on it. They vote, and it's clear that whatever alliances have been made, they all pale in comparison to the overwhelming desire not to listen to Cao Boi anymore.

Jeff brings out the halftime spread (lamb shanks, bread, napkins), and Raro trudges out to be the evening's entertainment. Jeff asks how Christina handled her slam-book session; she admits she didn't handle it well. Candice makes kissy-faces across the aisle at Adam; somewhere Billy just broke a guitar string in anger.

Jeff then springs the October surprise: Aitu gets to "kidnap" a Raro member! Someone will sit out the vote (de facto immunity), get a meal, go home with Aitu, and get to eat one of the 453 species of fish that Ozzie has in the freezer. Now, knowing what we know, the obvious choice would be Christina, since we know she's doomed, and pulling her out of the race would splinter the hell out of the rest of them.

But they don't know how foregone a conclusion Christina is, so they pick Nate. Not a bad choice; he's strong, his malaprops are good for a laugh, and he's the most likely Raro to make it to the merge, so butter him up a little now. He crosses the divide, and Raro votes. Brad suprisingly votes for Jenny. Cracks in the Asian alliance!

Raro votes out Christina, surprising exactly nobody.

Next week: Nate's making Aitu nervous! Ozzie catches a coelacanth! Someone's bumming on Exile Island!

Posted by Michael at 09:34 PM | Comments (1)

October 12, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.5: Mashed Potatogate

We begin at Camp Raro. J.P. has just been whacked, and the gender battles continue. Now it's the guys who are making a concerted effort to do most of the work while the ladies sleep in. "I'm not a hater, but what do they do all day?" asks Nate. Oooh, feel the hate. In between brushing their teeth with palm fronds (I guess the palm frond oil makes a nice substitute for Pepsodent), the boys do get quite a bit done. Nate collects a lot of firewood. Brad catches a bunch of fish. And Adam pokes a stick at some rocks, which somehow results in him catching crabs (quiet, you). Adam's not exactly Aquaman, as we'll see later.

A similar division of labor is happening at Camp Aitu; the guys are out doing stuff, while the girls are trying to figure out which one of them has the fastest-growing armpit hair. I now choose to believe that this is why women often go to the ladies' room in groups.

Reward Challenge! Does Jeff recycle hats, or does he get a new hat for every challenge, which he then tacks up to his wall like Willie Mays Hayes' batting gloves?

The challenge is actually a good physical one, if as exciting to watch as "which tribe's paint dries faster". Pairs of Survivors are bound together and given slowly-increasing sandbags to support; the last pair to drop their sand wins their tribe a bunch of fishing gear and a couple bottles of (hopefully white) wine.

Aitu tries to load up Nate and Adam, but they hold on strong. Yul is the first to fall out (!), but soon it's 2 Raro pairs against Jessica and Ozzie. Jessica talks big, but then immediately craps out, and Raro wins. But not before Nate and Adam strike a few Mapplethorpian poses, or before Nate (I kid you not) belts out a line of "Ebony and Ivory". We've learned much about the state of race in America - well, the Cook Islands - and yet I don't think we've learned a thing.

Adam/Poseidon uses the new fishing gear to somehow come home with an octopus wrapped around his shin. Not as titillating as having Nate wrapped around his torso, perhaps, but what are you gonna do. Christina leaps up and announces that she's got the perfect recipe for octopus, crabs, and coconuts. I believe it's called "Octopus, Crab, and Coconut Soup". The tribe visibly grumbles when she starts vocally assembling her kitchen staff.

So Christina and Jenny are prepping down on the beach. Adam comes over with a helpful tip: "You need to be careful". This from the guy who stepped into an octopus. Jenny wanders off. Christina spills a bunch of octopus chunks into the ocean. Christina blames her sous-chef. Raro's review in Zagat's is going to be awful:

If you can brave the "rustic setting", dinner at Raro "disappoints". Expect "few variations on the same three ingredients", a "surly staff", and a "meager wine list". Defenders say "it's a nice alternative to fine dining."

Meanwhile, Aitu's splitting up, temporarily. Cao Boi, Ozzie, and Jessica want to sail around to other islands and see if they can find more food. One wonders whether Ozzie's firing on all cylinders if he wants to join this merry band. They ask if there are any more takers (Did I mention Jon's on Exile Island again? No? Oh.), and Yul, Candice and Becky say, "No, we want to work on Sundra and make sure she's a loyal fifth wheel in our alliance. And we'd prefer to do it without you three around, since you're the three we're allied against." So off go the three musketeers.

Ozzie, Cao Boi and Jessica reach another island. There's food! There's aloe! There's...Raro! Yep, they wander right into the enemy camp. And while I hoped this would play out like Captain Cook in Hawaii (killed by the natives) or Cortes in Mexico (a small band of interlopers wipes out the natives), it doesn't. Isn't history supposed to repeat itself?!?

Raro's a little nonplussed about the unwelcome guests. Particularly when Cao Boi launches into an impromptu soliliquy about Chinese mythology. It's edited to look like Cao Boi talks for 14 hours straight. At least, I hope to God it's edited to look like that. At this point, I don't think anyone would begrudge Raro killing and filleting Cao Boi on the spot (especially when he asks Raro if they have any spare spices lying around), but the three intruders head home uneventfully.

On Exile Island, Jonathan digs a huge hole in the sand. He then says, "Either the Idol's been found, or I'm a complete moron."

The Immunity Challenge is yet another convoluted series of small challenges. The teams have to build a set of three stepping-poles (listed under Pøvvër in your Ikea catalog), use them to help two people step from one platform to another, then everyone jumps into the water and climbs up on top of a tiny little platform. Think people cramming into phone booths and you've got the idea. Not that phone booths exist anymore.

Raro gets a big lead, because Jenny and Parvati are actually pretty skilled at hopping on the platforms. But Becky makes up some lost time for Aitu, and it's almost neck and neck as they try to fit everyone on the tiny platforms. Cao Boi falls into the water for Aitu (wouldn't have blamed them if they'd pushed him to pull a Billy), then everyone falls into the water for Raro. Aitu wins!

Raro has to pick someone to go home. It's pretty obvious that it's going to be Christina, since everyone's sick of her vocal competence and willingness to take the lead in stuff. Or so you'd think.

But Stephannie can't leave well enough alone. Remember last week, she cracked and almost begged to be kicked out. This time, she casually mentions to Nate that she wouldn't mind kicking back with some mashed potatoes and gravy. Nate's alarmed, and rushes to tell the others. They're all over this news like Republican Congressmen on a high-school quarterback. There's still a little support for kicking out Christina, but the nnews of Stephannie's hannkering for spuds is too much. They slowly come around to the idea that she's gone.

At Tribal Council, Jeff is in Cook Island formalwear: no hat, nicely pressed khaki pants. You clean up well, Probst. Jeff asks Raro if anyone stepped up as a leader since the coup on J.P. last week. They say, yeah, Christina's really bossy and annoying. Christina looks around completely stunned, and says she's sorry she came off this way. This tribe just can't handle a strong proud Latino, if you ask me.

So Christina probably figures she's gone, and is probably really confused when the vote is 7-1 to oust Stephannie.

(Incidentally, this is really starting to gnaw at me. We always see a couple of Survivors hold up their votes. We always see only the ones who we know how they're voting. And those are always the first ones Jeff picks out of the urn. Does that bother anyone else? No? Oh.)

Next week: Raro keeps beasting Christina! Cao Boi still won't shut up! 2 people will be voted off!

Posted by Michael at 11:57 PM | Comments (1)

October 06, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.4: Rats, and Birds, and Nitwits, Oh My!

Before the titles, before the theme music, we see rats running around at night. What are they meant to symbolize? The fact that weaker members of the tribes have to scurry around in the shadows? The fact that food is scarce, and the Survivors have to forage for every scrap? Is it a shout-out to the late great Paul Lynde, who voiced Templeton in the cartoon version of Charlotte's Web? Or is it just some interesting footage?

Sadly we'll never know, as we quickly shift the scene to the two-legged variety. Specifically, Ozzie, who wears a haunted look, knowing that Cecilia just departed and the old Aitu tribe is dwindling. Ozzie interviews that he feels like he's doing most of the foraging and cooking and cleaning and ironing and sock-darning and getting none of the credit. If he leaves, he figures, someone else will have to do it. I can see his frustration; he's a waiter back on the mainland, and waiting on people is what he's probably hoping to get away from. They don't make real-life systems analysts actually analyze systems out there on the island. Ozzie's threatening to go into Operation Shutdown.

Candice returns to Aitu after her stay on Exile Island. They tell her Cecilia got voted off, and she looks surprised that they had a Tribal Council without her. They ask if they have any idea why she was chosen to go to Exile Island, and she said she never really thought about it. Candice, dude, you were on a freaking island by yourself for three days; what in God's name did you think about? We know you couldn't get the Immunity Idol, since Yul already did. We can't really imagine you spending three days working on it. Were you trying to remember all the state capitols? Mooning over Billy? Repositioning your jaunty hat just so? WHAT?!?!?

At Camp Raro, we get a charming portrait of Princess Parvati and her minions. She's mad at the boys for sitting around eating while the girls weave (maybe she's conveniently forgotten the male/female ratio of the last Immunity Challenge), but she can't be too mad at the boys, since she needs them worshiping her and groveling at her feet. So she flashes them her huge...teeth, and quietly seethes to the camera about how domineering and manipulative J.P. is. I'd assumed J.P. was just your garden-variety chump, but he's gotten under Parvati's skin. If nothing else.

Reward Challenge! Jeff invites Raro to get their first look at the Cecilia-less Aitu tribe. Reaction shots from J.P. and Christina ensue. Shocking. The challenge is an obstacle course involving ropes, swimming and a puzzle. Becky gets stuck under a log, prompting Jon to yell out, "Let's not kill these girls!" He'll be humming a different tune in three weeks, no doubt. My Mom points out that Jon has the exact same voice as Alan Alda, for whatever that's worth. Also, I can't tell whether Jessica's wearing leggings or has tattooed everything below the knee. Anyway, Aitu wins the challenge, winning some blankets and pillows. They pick Adam to go to Exile Island, figuring (probably correctly) that he'll spend as much time there strategizing as Candice did. Raro trudges back to camp, pillowless, wondering how a team with four buff dudes lost a physical challenge.

Nate, Buff Dude #1, and Parvati are spending a lot of time together. And the night lighting isn't doing a lot for her appearance. They're concerned about J.P.'s power play, and Parvati wisely(!) says "Let the king sit pretty"; i.e., don't let him know that there's a coup d'etat bubbling up from the peasants, insofar as Queen Parvati can be considered one of the peasants. Nate chimes in, but his use of metaphors is quaint, almost as if he's translating them word-for-word into Dutch and back. "The ball is in [J.P.'s] pocket," he says. It sure is.

The next morning, Aitu has gathered around and is looking at boobies. The bird, you sick freaks. Cao Boi gets bird fever, and shimmies up a tree to whack a stick at some big bird. Real smooth, since the bird is really angry. Maybe because Cao Boi knocks the nest off the top branch, spilling its contents, which consists mostly of a freshly-hatched baby bird. Jon picks it up and tries to soothe it, nonplussed. Cao Boi stays up in the tree, apologizing to those above and below him. The yolk's on him, it seems. They reassemble the nest and Cao Boi places it back from whence he whacked it. He said the experience really humbled him, though I sense he's the kind of guy who would get real competitive at the Most Humble Award ceremony. Oh, and somewhere along the line, Ozzie catches enough fish to get his picture on the New York Islanders' jerseys. Weirdest Operation Shutdown ever.

The Immunity Challenge is a team effort to "rescue" a team member from some waterborne stocks; they have to build a raft, swim out to the stocks, "rescue" the "victim", then try to "build" a fire quick enough that their "tribe"'s flag gets raised first. Candice and Parvati play the Damsels in Distress. Shocking. Ozzie, the swimmer, makes up a huge Aitu deficit in seconds. Has he really shifted from "petulant twerp" to "dark horse pick to win the whole thing" in thirty minutes? Interesting. The fire building squad is Jenny (who may or may not have lost a thumb in the firemaking), Rebecca and Stephannie for Raro, and Cao Boi for Aitu. Cao Boi wisely chooses not to whack the fire with a stick, instead waving about and dancing. Somehow this works, and Aitu wins. Raro trudges back to camp, immunityless, wondering how a team with four buff dudes lost a physical challenge.

Stephannie makes the tactical blunder of telling the team that she lost the challenge, she's the weakest member, and she probably deserves to go. Nate's all, OK, if you don't want to be here, that's good enough for me. But Rebecca and Jenny have a different idea; they realize that it's 5 women to 4 men right now, and if they let the dudes pluck Stephannie, the womens' position becomes weaker. Stephannie realizes she'd like to stick around long enough to see this happen, Christina's on board. Now we think it's 3 votes for J.P., 4 votes for Stephannie, and 2 undecided. Jenny pitches the male/female plan to Parvati; Parvati totally misreads her and starts getting worried that less dudes means less influence for Her Majesty. So she's probably voting with the guys. But Brad comes over and they point out that no one really likes J.P., and he wasn't helping them win challenges anyway. Brad's immediately on board.

Nate finds time to throttle a few more metaphors, including something about "If I come out of my shell, it might bite me in the butt."

So we know that J.P. is probably for the axe, and Jeff's questions don't really get anything out of them, except J.P. admits that Stephannie didn't exactly lose the challenge all by herself. Still, when Jeff tallies the results and announces J.P.'s departure, J.P. does an audible Keanu Reeves impression and looks around beffudledly. As Nate might say, he was taken out back and shot from the blind side.

Posted by Michael at 12:42 AM | Comments (3)

September 28, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.3: Thus Endeth the Gimmick

So much for revolutionizing television. The "grand experiment" of separating all the Survivors by ethnicity lasted exactly 2.1 episodes. And we learned a lot in those 2.1 episodes: Asians don't like Asian jokes, even when told by Asians. Latino culture isn't as strong a bond as heavy metal. And white people are really, really lame.

We get 2 glimpses of the four tribes at the outset, though. The Aitu tribe doesn't seem to be wracked with guilt about throwing Billy under the bus. And Puka seems pretty grim, as everyone has to sit around and listen to Cao Boi tell stories about growing up in Vietnam, while wearing an onion 'round his belt (which was the style at the time). The ferry cost a nickel, which in those days had pictures of bumblebees on them. Brad openly wonders if Cao Boi needs a dose of Western medicine (I think he's thinking Quaaludes).

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.

Posted by Michael at 09:33 PM | Comments (2)

September 21, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.2: Desperado

I really thought the theme song for Episode 2 would be different. Seeing the Hiki tribe, minus Sekou, trying to ignite their flint on the beach, I was all set to start making up lyrics to "We Couldn't Start the Fire (feat. Nate and Stephannie)" with Billy Joel samples.

But no. Tonight's episode was all about Billy. The Desperado. Although he probably thinks the Eagles are wuss rock, so let's assume "Desperado" was covered by...let's say Dokken. Because Billy only stops the rock twice an hour. Unfortunately, each of those breaks is 27 minutes long. The Survivor life expectancy of big dudes who like to take rests isn't good. Oh, he's a hard one, but I know that he's got his reasons.

The food-gathering seems to go better than on previous Survivors. Aitu is deep-sea fishing with spears and goggles (did they win those in the last challenge?), and I've never seen a bunch of people so happily announce that they've caught crabs. Puka's scooping up chickens left and right, and although Cao Boi's sense of humor could be more refined, at least he stays away from making the henweigh joke (would that I could say the same).

Aitu's also got a chicken, for a little surf-and-turf action, and while they're having their pesco y pollo, Cristina casually reveals that she used to be a cop. And got shot. And almost lost her arm. Billy is moved by this story, and goes off to have a nap and think it over. His prison is walking through this world all alone.

At Camp Raro, Jonathan returns from Exile Island and is a little nonplussed that the camp is in the exact same condition he left it. I'd like to think it's because Adam's been left alone with Parvati, Jessica and Candice for three days, but this is a family show, and it turns out they're just lazy. Or they were waiting to pay Aitu under the table to build their hut for them. Jon's all like, dude, we need a floor to sleep on. And Adam's all like, dude, what's the point, just because we've been sleeping on dirt for four nights we need a floor?!? Jessica, to her unexpected credit, pitches in, perhaps to atone for her hen fiasco last week.

Cao Boi's sense of humor is grating on the other Asians at Camp Puka. He's still plucking evil spirits out of the others via the bridges of their noses, but when the lights are out, he likes to tell Asian jokes. Not like Zen riddles, but like "How many Bhutanese does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" And the others think he's not funny, and he's perpetuating the stereotype of Asians as unserious-minded goofballs. Or something.

Billy's still out riding fences, so the other Aitus are thinking about pulling a 1919 Black Sox, and tanking the next challenge so they can get Billy ousted. 'Cause you know how well things turned out for Shoeless Joe Jackson. Luckily, they have time to plot, since Billy's snoring keeps them up all night. Ozzy's the Chick Gandil of the scheme, J.P. the Eddie Cicotte, Cristina the reluctant Buck Weaver, and Cecilia is whichever of the Black Sox liked to wear tiny bikini tops (probably Happy Felsch). Let's pray Jeff has the guts of Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

The reward challenge involves shackling the teams together, running them through an obstacle course, then answering questions based on a 30-second biography of Captain Cook that Jeff reads off. (Questions like, "What islands were named after Captain Cook?") Each of the non-Hiki tribes has to pick someone not to run, to make the teams even. Billy volunteers to sit out - very very eagerly - but the rest of the tribe tells him he's going to run the race. Somewhere in New York, Arnold Rothstein nods knowingly.

There's a tie! Puka and Raro each finish the trivia game at the same time, and jump onto their mats at the same time. Jeff looks back and forth, bewildered, then awards the win to the University of Oregon. Aitu lollygags their way to furth place. Ladies and gentlemen, your World Champion 1919 Cincinnati Reds!

They select Yul to go to Exile Island, where he shatters all the myths about Asians by efficiently, methodically locating the Immunity Idol.

Now we have to watch the great suspense of Aitu trying to figure out (Billy) who is going to be kicked out (Billy) at Tribal Council. Billy. At least he got to wink at Candice on the way home from the Challenge; I guess he figured out he'd better let somebody love him before it's too late.

At Tribal Council, Jeff asks Aitu if anyone has emerged as a leader. Ozzy says, no, we have no leader; I just suggest great ideas and the others implement them. J.P. lets Billy have it, calling him useless and stupid. Billy says that doesn't matter, because he and Candice are in love. Jeff does an honest-to-God double-take, and the other Aitus bite fingers off to keep from laughing out loud. Billy says if he goes, he's OK with it, because he likes the way he played the game. Outsnore, outeat, outslack. Survivor.

Next week on Survivor: Parvati's a slut! Aitu gets some sleep! Candice kills herself when she finds out Billy's gone!

Posted by Michael at 09:34 PM | Comments (2)

September 14, 2006

SurvivorBlog 13.1: Gimmick City

I wasn't going to go there. I had read and seen, of course, that the new season of Survivor was going to feature the wrinkle where the contestants were divided up along racial lines. Part of me figured "Oh, good; easy jokes", but the larger part of me thought that would be wrong. Then I realized two things: (1) this is the Internet, so nothing's wrong, and (2) the Survivors would make most of the jokes before I got the chance to.

So in the first fifteen minutes, we saw the Latino tribe saying they should win because they're used to living on tropical islands and fleeing places on boats, we saw the Asian tribe saying they're lighter and more mobile because of all that rice, we saw the African-American tribe talking about how they have to "represent", and we saw the white tribe stealing chickens from the oppressed minorities. I think I just heard the UN disbanding.

(Side note: next time, we need a Polish tribe, a Jewish tribe, an Indian tribe and a New Jersey tribe. I don't ask this; I demand it.)

Let's run down the first impressions:

Latino Tribe
Billy, the portly metalhead who opines that his people are best at floating from place to place
Cecila, who's in the early lead for "Most Likely To Pop Her Top"
Ozzy, who has a mop top
J.P., who is apparently a volleyball pro
and Cristina, who barely appeared in this episode.

Asian Tribe
Yul, who has a thing on his nose
Brad, who gets a thing on his nose (more on this later)
Jenny, who hasn't done much yet
Cao Boi (pronounced "Cowboy"), the Vietnamese hippie
and Becky, who was quiet, but I'm rooting for to win the whole thing for $ome $ecret rea$on.

Whitey
Jonathan, a fairly pompous writer/actor
Parvati, the sorority girl
Adam, the heartthrob
Candice, who didn't do much and
Jessica, proving that every season of Survivor needs a loopy performance artist with funky hair who pisses everyone off right away.

(Side note: I may have mixed up a couple of Survivors on Team Whitey. They all kind of look alike.)

African-American Tribe
Rebecca, who is out to prove that black people can swim
Nate, the dreadlocked waiter
Sundra, who keeps pretty quiet
Stephannie, who keeps even quieter
and Sekou, who (I kid you not) says "I have a dream" that his tribe will win.

The first fifteen minutes are standard Survivor. Twenty people, not one of whom spent a minute practicing making fire without a lighter. Arguments over how to build a tent. Chickens, which were salvaged from the boat (along with bananas - luau!), carried on a raft by the Asian team, and swiped by Jonathan from Team Whitey. Really off to a good start.

It's probably too early to make assumptions about Jessica, but she's a professional "roller girl" (Did anyone else start getting Melanie's "Brand New Key" running through their head?) who says she's her team's "alternative option", and then lifts the box to peek at the chickens, so they run away. On the other hand, maybe it's not too early.

We don't spend a lot of time with the Latino tribe, so it's pretty safe to assume none of them are going away the first night. Meanwhile at Camp Asian, Brad wakes up with a headache, and so wisely consults the wacky hippie guy who calls himself Cowboy. Cao Boi (for that is how it is spelled) does some freaky hippie thing where he yanks the hell out of Brad's nose; Brad's headache goes away, but now he has an unsightly red dot between his eyes. The Asian girls giggle at him.

At Camp Whitey, Jonathan's perturbed that Jessica has released the chickens that he so rightfully acquired. But they have bigger problems; a chilly night is setting in (there goes every mental image I had of the South Seas) and the three girls are fighting over who gets to snuggle with Adam. Candice is the early favorite in that derby, by the way.

And at Camp African-Americaney, things are getting a little tense. Sekou has plenty of ideas about how to set the camp up. But ideas are pretty much all he has, except for regularly scheduled break times. Actually, his breaks seem to go on a lot longer than his actual bursts of activity. The others are grumbling a little, and if you believe in Survivor foreshadowing, things don't look good here.

There was a commercial break before the Immunity Challenge, and I don't normally comment on commercials, but it's not like I was going to flip to the Sox game. I ain't that masochistic. But I'm also not masochistic enough to think that the commercial I saw was a good idea: a new pill for women that will shorten your period to three days, but side effects may include stroke, blood clots, and heart attacks. Remind me to send a thank-you note to each and every one of my Y chromosomes.

Immunity Challenge! Puzzle, boat, puzzle, climb, fire. (These things are getting too convoluted to really summarize.) The first three teams to finish get immunity and fire; the last gets Tribal Council. There's also a hidden wrinkle, which Jeff waves around, but it's securely protected by a sticker until the challenge is over. The Asians finish first, then the Latinos, then the Caucasians. Uh oh; trouble in the Cook Island hood.

Jeff and a team of experts get to work cracking open the sticker and reveal that the African-Americans get to send someone to Exile Island (as surprises go, this is right up there with the Christmas present that's wrapped up to resemble a football). In a remarkable show of minority solidarity, Nate and Sekou say that since Jonathan stole chickens from the Asians, he gets to spend some time alone. We don't see a reaction shot from Adam, which is too bad, because the female-male ratio at Camp Whitey just shot into the stratosphere. I just hope none of the gals are suffering from stroke, blood clots, or heart attacks.

Jonathan stews on Exile Island; he gets a clue to where the Immunity Idol is hidden, but it doesn't look like he finds it. Terry from last season probably already swooped in and dug it up.

Now the pre-Tribal Council scheming is underway. Nate and Sekou think that, since it's 3 sisters to 2 brothers, they're endangered species. Stephannie is their only nut to crack, since Sundra and Rebecca are already pretty tight. They try. Sekou says, "Are you going to be able to make a fire without me?" Stephannie shrewdly responds, "We don't have fire yet." Heh heh.

At Tribal Council (held on the pirate ship from The Goonies), Jeff asks how things are going uptown. They say they're all pretty friendly. Jeff asks Rebecca what her voting rationale will be. With a straight face, Rebecca says they're going to vote off their weakest member. They vote. 2 votes for Sundra, 3 votes for Sekou. He gets to take one hell of a long break now.

Posted by Michael at 09:23 PM | Comments (3)

May 21, 2006

SurvivorBlog XIV: Finale, Finally

We begin with the Final Four.

Cirie, who started off afraid of leaves, but grew to be competent, sassy, snarky, plus had to endure the sorrow of examining Shane's chafed bits. The sentimental favorite.

Aras, a yoga instructor and all-around amiable boob who allied himself with the completely mad Shane and Courtney, but somehow rode it out to make it this far.

Danielle, the bountiful Bostonian who got this far basically by not being quite annoying enough to kick out.

And Terry, the former fighter pilot who's carved through challenge after challenge, leaving a trail of dejected ex-Casayas wondering how he did it.

At the end of last episode, you may remember, the vote was 2-2 to oust Cirie or Danielle. Jeff Probst is surprisingly subdued as he explains to the ladies that they will be given all the tools to make fire, and whoever's fire gets high enough to burn through a rope will move on to the Final Three.

There's a lot of tension as fires go out and restart, and some reaction shots from the Jury of the Damned, but in the end Danielle's fire gets a little higher, and Cirie's non-pyre means she's required to expire. It was down to the wire.

There's a Reward Challenge for the final three: climb up an inclined wall using pegs. Winner gets a hearty meal and a comfy bed to prepare them for the final Immunity Challenge. Terry wins and gets all up in Aras' face. Well, good for you. The next morning, Terry describes his night of luxury while Aras angrily chews a nasty-looking piece of fish. Aras says that everyone and his mother expects Terry to win the last Immunity Challenge, so he's getting all existensial and nihilistic.

That morning comes the great Survivor tradition of remembering all the losers who've gone before them. Tina, we barely knew ye. Melinda. There's Misty eating a worm. Ruth-Marie, getting as much screen time in this vignette as she got all along. There's Bobby, chopping his fish. Dan; it's emotional for Terry, whose only soulmate on the island was an astronaut. Nick; Terry takes an opportunity to mock 24-year-olds. Austin. Sally. Bruce. The trio are getting a little emotional over these people they haven't seen in 12 hours. Courtney - no one can find the words. Shane - Aras says he will always have a place for Shane in his heart, and will for the rest of his life have a yardstick to say that someone might be crazy, but not as crazy as Shane. And Cirie. America's sweetheart.

They collect the torches of all the dearly departed, then have a bonfire at the skull on Exile Island. It's sort of like the Burning Man, but there are only three stinky, mentally unbalanced people.

Nobody really wants to spend the afternoon talking, so they wait it out for the Immunity Challenge. Everyone's psyched for the final Terry-Aras showdown, so of course the challenge is based on balance and patience. They have to stand for 15 minutes on a series of smaller and smaller platforms and not fall into the pool. Danielle, perfectly equipped for balance and flotation, gets off to a good start. On the third platform, Terry can never really get his feet under him, and goes down. Aras is struggling mightily. He looks to Danielle, who nods - either a nod of encouragement, or a simple hi, but probably not with the subtext that Aras reads into it - and he falls off too. Danielle wins the last, and her first, challenge.

So now she's got a decision to make: in her words, "one of" the toughest decisions she's ever had to make. One wonders what the others were, and if they involved how many buttons to leave unbuttoned. The boys go to work on her. She says she's indecisive because she's a Gemini. This is two hours long?!?

Terry thinks he should go to the Finals with Danielle because they had the alliance in the Final Four. Aras thinks he should go to the Finals with Danielle because she nodded at him just before he fell into the pool. They go to Tribal Council. Now that it's too late to help anyone, Terry reveals that he's had the Immunity Idol all along. Cut to more reaction shots of jurors, who look like Steve Martin and Martin Short in Three Amigos when Chevy Chase empties his completely full waterskin. Thanks for nothin', Terry; this will certainly be a feather in your cap if you make it in front of the jury.

Which he doesn't. Danielle sends Terry off into the wild blue yonder. The curse of the free car strikes again.

Aras and Danielle spend their last day on Hellhole Beach. Breakfast is served, with champagne. They go for a long walk along the beach, and Aras slips on a rock and cuts himself in several places. Danielle looks a little giddy, like she might win a million bucks thanks to the two greatest words in the English language (DE! FAULT!), but the Survivor M*A*S*H Unit shows up, applies some stitches, and Aras is healed. Danielle openly hopes they give him some mind-altering drugs, so he'll go all Jim Morrison on the jury and they'll reject him. I don't think she's reading the jury all that well.

The two face the jury and make personal statements, both of which boil down to "I played the game the best I knew how, and I feel confident with my integrity and honor." Now the Jury of the Damned gets to make statements and ask Danielle and Aras questions to make their final verdict.

Sally asks, who of the other Survivors helped you the most along the way? Both answer Cirie, which is possibly true, but certainly good politics, since nobody dislikes Cirie.

Bruce calls D&A "samurai warriors". If Japan just had an earthquake, it's due to countless actual samurai warriors turning over in their graves. He then asks what they would do with the responsibility of $1,000,000. Aras says he'd move out of his parents' basement and make himself a better person. Danielle wants to go around the country inspiring children. Presumably not just 14-year-old boys.

Terry says he doesn't think Danielle has honor or integrity, then asks them to rate themselves 1-10 on how well they performed in the challenges. Despite the fact that "Second Place" is now referred to as simply "Aras" in many parts of the realm, he gives himself a 9. Danielle says 8.5, since she fell for the cheeseburger gambit way back when.

Austin asks them to cite an example of a strategy they're proud of, and one they're not. Danielle's glad she picked Bruce over Bobby, and not so proud (inexplicably) of voting Courtney off. Aras is proud he was upfront with Melinda about her imminent demise (thus completely spoiling one of the six days she spent out there), and not so proud (inexplicably) about stabbing Shane in the back.

Courtney says she's dropped her guns in the sea of forgiveness, and even though both of them stabbed her in the back, she's a bird, and she's still gotta fly. I wish I had made ANY of that up. No dice. She asks the two what they've learned about themselves. Aras said he had his ego smashed; Danielle learned that she's tougher than she thought. Courtney eventually shuts up.

Cirie, showing why she should have won the whole damn thing, asks each of them for a compelling reason why she should vote for the other. Danielle says Aras is strong and honorable. Aras says Danielle was really sweet and helpful when he maimed himself that morning.

And finally, Shane. Who better to get the last word? He tells Danielle she was useless at camp and constantly contradicting herself. He tells Aras that he's a freeloader who broke the sacred vow he made on Shane's son. He says everyone had good intentions, but "if I'm judged on my intentions, I'm President of the planet." Go take a walk around the block and thank your lucky stars that Shane is not President of the planet. He says he wishes he could vote for Terry, since Terry deserves it more than either of these kids.

Then his question is one of those BS, I-don't-care pick-a-number things. Attaboy Shane. He sits down, Courtney grabs his shoulder, he visibly recoils. That, right there, made the whole thing worth it.

Jeff gets the urn, walks from Panama to Manhattan (I guess it could just be clever editing), and awards the million bucks to....

Aras. Congratulations. I guess.

Posted by Michael at 11:35 AM | Comments (1)

May 11, 2006

SurvivorBlog XIII: A [Angry] Man! A [Backfired] Plan! A Canal! Panama!

We begin in the dead of night. Shane's just been stubbed out into the Ashtray of the Damned, and the Final Four (Aras, Cirie, Danielle and Terry, if you're just joining us) are tramping back through the darkness to camp. As they arrive back at camp, Cirie chucks her (unlit) torch right into Terry's path. So Terry takes this as a chance to give a seemingly hour-long lecture about torch maintenance. The speech touches on discipline, possibly child abuse, and the crumbling of societal mores. But the really important thing to remember is that Aras interpreted the oration as being disrespectful to womyn. And that Terry is making himself oh so attractive to future members of the jury.

The reward challenge is diabolically confusing. They have to navigate some ropes, go to a bunch of locations where there's a bunch of stuff (poles, rocks, iguanas, etc.), count the stuff, navigate the ropes back to a puzzle, put in the numbers of items, open locks, and press a button every 108 minutes to keep the island from exploding (whoops - crazy island show crossover strikes again).

Now, you know Terry has won basically every challenge since the merge. And before every one, and after most of them, and at other random times, he's identified Aras as his biggest threat. Which has always sounded a bit like Bill Belichick saying, "We know the Jets are 2-11, and they've lost their last three games by a combined score of 107-3, but this is seriously going to be the toughest game we've ever played." But Aras is seriously overdue. And he takes an early lead. And Cirie freaks a little when she sees the iguanas.

But in the home stretch, everyone gets kind of tangled up. There's sweating, there's cursing, and Terry takes a swing at Aras! Sort of. It's less of a swing than Parish decking Laimbeer, but more than A-Rod's little girly slap at Arroyo. Everyone misses a number, and has to go back and recount something. Terry freaks because Aras made two stops on one trip and he wasn't sure that was allowed. Aras yells: "Call the Waahmbulance!"

Then Aras wins. To conclude my series of Boston sports references, Terry looks like Billy Crystal in the Bronx at the end of Game 7. And since Terry's taught everyone here to be a gracious winner, Aras rubs it in, saying he was trying extra hard because Terry's been disrespectful to womyn. Um. Terry goes off about how he's not going to be lectured by some kid.

He gets to pick someone to take a luxury cruise down the Panama Canal - he takes Cirie. Terry and Danielle get to be awkward and uncomfortable together on Exile Island for a while. Once again, we have two tribes.

Cirie and Aras marvel at the Panama Canal. I like to think that Teddy Roosevelt, and the 45,000 men (I didn't look up the exact number) who died of yellow fever during the excavation, knew someday it would build up to this.

On Exile Island, Terry's psychoanalyzing Aras, and Danielle, who you'd think would be all "I miss Courtney and Shane" at this point, is ready to go into the final four allied with Terry. The key to their plan, of course, is that one of them wins the next Immunity, so they can bump Aras now and Cirie next week. Which, frankly, is a pretty decent plan for them.

Cirie and Aras come back to camp. Aras greets the beach with a loud and merry toot, which somehow inspires Cirie to start a fire. She caught a fish all by herself, and now she starts a fire all by herself while he naps. Cirie's really blossomed here, to the point where I can't even make fun of her. I mean, 35 days ago, she was afraid of leaves.

The Immunity Challenge! Dig bags out of the sand, empty the bags to reveal puzzle pieces, solve the puzzles, find more bags, find the crazy French woman to lead you to the Others (whoops, there I go again). Cirie's out of the running so early that she might as well build a sand castle. Danielle gets flummoxed on one of the bags. Sawyer starts selling extra puzzle pieces (damn you JJ Abrams! Get out of my head!) And Aras wins. Take a minute to let that sink in.

Aras puts on the Immunity Necklace, wrinkling his nose at the old-man smell it's acquired. Jeff snickers as he sends the Survivors off to strategize. It's pretty clear that Aras and Cirie will vote for Danielle, and Danielle and Terry will vote for Cirie. The only question is whether Terry is willing to take a leap of faith, and give Danielle the Idol, figuring that everyone will assume he has it. But we'll get to that in a second.

First, Terry has a score to settle. He gets all up in Aras' face. What do you mean I'm disparaging womyn? Who do you think you are? How dare you insult me personally? He's built up a righteous head of steam; he's ready for a fight! Aras says, yeah, I was stupid to say that and I apologize. You've heard the expression "take the wind out of their sails"? Terry almost deflates as his rage dissipates. Well, carry on, then.

Everyone is gearing up for the upcoming tie vote. Like I said, Terry could slip the idol to Danielle (this is the last chance he has to use it), wait for Aras and Cirie to vote for her, then she can whip out the Idol and it's goodbye, Cirie. But you know, and I know, and Jeff knows, and Danielle knows, and random sailors in the Panama Canal know, that Terry's not the type of man who leaves his ass out in the wind. He's not giving her the Idol. So it's going to be a tie, and everyone assumes that the tiebreaker will be a fire-building contest. So we see a few minutes of Terry coaching Danielle, and Aras coaching Cirie. Good thing this episode started off with a seminar about gender relations.

Bring out the Jury of the Damned. Shane looks like a relaxed man, with access to Camels and topical cream. Cirie interviews about how she's completely changed and is proud of herself even if her game ends now. Danielle says something about trust, and we immediately cut to Shane and Courtney making faces. I swear they're going to reenact Heathers before this is all over.

And the vote. No surprise. 2 votes Danielle, 2 votes Cirie (Incidentally, this is the exact moment when Channel 4 decided we need to know that Joyce Kulhawik is hosting a pre-finale show on Sunday. And of course it had to scroll across the screen twice, slowly enough that someone learning English for the first time could puzzle it out. Sorry, I completely lost my train of thought. Let's start this paragraph again.)

And the vote. No surprise. 2 votes Danielle, 2 votes Cirie. Does either of them have the Idol? Of course not. So here's the tiebreaker. Jeff says they each get a cauldron and a firestarter kit (which doesn't come with a cherubic pint-sized Drew Barrymore), and the first to get the fire high enough to burn a rope moves on. Everyone takes a deep breath. Everyone leans in. I'm breathing into a paper bag at this point.

And we'll find out on Sunday.

Damn you, Probst.

Posted by Michael at 09:41 PM | Comments (2)

May 04, 2006

SurvivorBlog XII: Role Reversal

If you've been following this space (or the show) from the beginning, you may have noticed a pattern: all along, I've thought Shane was the bad guy. He's mercurial, moody and the rope holding his sanity together is one micrometer thick. And Terry's been the good guy: fighter pilot, American hero, savior of La Mina. It was pretty clear who we should be rooting for.

No more, brotha.

We begin with a shaken Shane returning from the Tribal Council in which Courtney got the heave-ho. He's confused, he's mad, he's confused about who he should be mad at. A good combination, to be sure. We leave him spending the night trying to break the Da Vinci code of who voted for who, and skip right to the next morning for the Immunity Challenge.

Jeff hints early on that the reward is going to involve some face-time with the castaways' loved ones. It's hard to believe, and frankly I wish Jeff had brought them out before the challenge, since I'd be curious to see what superhuman feats of strength Shane might have been motivated to, with his son actually watching. But, no, it's a hodgepodge of any number of previous obstacle courses, and it doesn't exactly take the Oracle of Delphi to prophecy that Terry's gonna win.

Bring on the loved ones! Terry's wife Trish (looking exactly like the fit blonde wife of a fighter pilot), Aras' mom, Danielle's mom, Cirie's husband (thankfully sans Yankee hat), and then, finally, Shane's second cousin Roland.

Ha! Just kidding! It's the Golden Child, and Shane falls to his knees, sobbing tears of joy. Actually, it must be a little dusty on the beach, because everyone's gotten a little choked up, except for Jeff, who's an Audioanamatronic figure.

Terry has an interesting dilemma. Two Survivors get to spend a night with their loved ones at a Panamanian resort. One gets to bring their loved one back to Hellhole Beach for the night. One gets a big hug. And one gets to wave futilely for a minute, then gets sent to Exile Island.

Terry picks himself and (thank God) Shane for the luxury package. Cirie's husband gets to visit camp. Aras gets a hug. Danielle gets squat. This couldn't have anything to do with Danielle breaking her Alliance with Terry last week, could it?

Anyway, Cirie's husband H.B. treks with Cirie and Aras back to camp. He's blown away by how spartan things are there. Cirie and Aras show him how they build the fire, how they catch the fish, and how they collect firewood. Then they send him to do it. H.B. mumbles, but correctly realizes that he's fresh and fit, so he's able to do a little work. Aras never seems to indicate any awareness that he's very much a third wheel.

Terry, Trish, Shane and Boston arrive to find a stocked fridge, lots of bacon, alcohol and luxury beds. They make nice, but Shane interviews that he can't believe Trish is more competitive than Terry. I can't believe anyone on the planet is more competitive than Terry, but there you go. They turn in, and let's just be thankful that they don't have the nightvision cameras on, because, frankly, America's not ready to see Terry and Trish competing once the lights are out.

Danielle sulks on Exile Island.

The boat comes to pick up H.B., but not before both he and Cirie marvel at what's happened to her on the island. Cirie is beaming as she talks about how he was struggling with things she now takes for granted, and how she never felt challenged in her life until now, and how she's so much stronger now. You go, girl! Aras, meanwhile, still hangs around as if he's unfamiliar with the concept of alone-time.

But what's on Aras' mind is Terry. And when Terry and Shane come back, he stirs some serious crap up with Terry. See, Terry won, and Aras could accept that, but when they're reunited, Terry makes it a point to tell Aras that his (Terry's) bond with his (Terry's) wife is much stronger than Aras' bond with his (Aras') mother could ever possibly be. We get it, dude. But Terry's still pounding the hell out of this particular equine carcass, saying that he would pick his (Terry's) wife over his (Terry's) mother any day of the week, and that Aras, a bachelor, could never understand. WE. GET. IT. DUDE. Honestly, you'd think Terry would be a little less tense and irritating this morning. I guess Trish won.

This week's Terry Deitz Immunity Showcase has the Survivors standing on tiny little platforms, scooping and pouring water into a tiny little pipe to raise a tiny little flag high enough that they can grab it and hold it over their tiny little heads. Shane's an utter and complete non-factor, so he starts bellowing at Jeff and the heavens.

Danielle and Aras give it a tiny little run for their money, but Terry wins. At this point, I actually slammed my little notebook on the arm of my chair. To paraphrase what someone once said about the Yankees, rooting for Terry is like rooting for the house in blackjack. He's gone from "sympathetic hero" to "insufferable prick" faster than anyone since this past MLB offseason.

And the scheming begins, a little half-hearted. Shane's pretty sure he's got the numbers to oust Danielle. Cirie and Danielle are openly just trying to get into the final two with Mr. Popu-Terry-ty. Aras is leaning towards the Cirie camp. And Terry has no one to scheme with, since nobody wants to talk to him and have their Immunity Challenge failure analyzed to death.

The Jury of the Damned come out, looking the same as last week. Jeff starts asking the Survivors about trustworthiness. Danielle hems and haws (we get a great reaction shot from Courtney), but Shane says that he's the most trustworthy person on the island. And here's where light dawned on me. He's right. Shane's a complete and utter nutball, but he's a genuine nutball. Or to put it another way, he may not be wearing pants, but he wears his heart on his sleeve.

so he's genuinely and utterly shocked when he's voted out. Terry puts his hands over his face, realizing that everyone he's bringing to a reward winds up dead in a ditch right after. That will certainly help his popularity. Shane yells at everyone else that he'll be eating chocolate ice cream in a minute (I guess it will take him 58 seconds to massacre a cigarette first), and off he goes.

Next week, Aras and Terry come to fisticuffs. Unfortunately, it looks like it's part of a challenge, and thus supervised.

Posted by Michael at 09:17 PM | Comments (1)

April 27, 2006

SurvivorBlog XI: Ah, Treachery

Finally, the moment we've all been waiting for on Panamania: Casaya turns on itself! Since we're never going to see footage of Sheffield and A-Rod in fisticuffs in the Yankee clubhouse, this is the best we're gonna get. Everyone in the Western Hemisphere (except Aras) knows that Terry has the Immunity Idol, and even aliens in the Crab Nebula know that he's going to win all the challenges, so it's time to figure out who's going to be the first from Team Turmoil to fall.

The first candidate for "Too Weird to Keep Around" is (wait for it) Shane, who's found an interesting piece of wood in the jungle and is now pretending it's a Blackberry (which may or may not be a cell phone; my knowledge of technology is still 1992ish). He's talking about it, and into it, and to it, and the Survivor Medical Emergency Team is consulting the rulebook for the Institutionalization Policy.

The Reward Challenge features two teams of three, clipped to a long cable that they have to follow along a long obstacle course. It's Aras/Cirie/Shane vs. Courtney/Terry/Danielle, and it doesn't take Mel Kiper Jr. to predict how this is gonna play out. C/T/D makes it to the finish line after A/C/S spends six hours trying to untangle a tricky knot. Aras heads back to Exile Island; Shane and Cirie trudge back to Hellhole Beach.

Courtney, Terry and Danielle are off to a barbecued picnic, but wait! There's a subchallenge, where the three of them fire slingshots at ceramic boards to try to win a major prize from a beloved sponsor. Sadly, it's not a gam-shaped lamp. Terry shocks everyone by winning, and they head off to retrieve his brand new [your product here: $1500] and take it to their feast. Terry might not win the million, but I bet he could be President of Panama by the end of this thing.

Exile Island. Aras has finally realized that the Immunity Idol is long gone, and sits forlornly on the giant skull, a sadder and wiser man.

At Barbecue Beach, Terry, Danielle and Courtney pile into the [your product here] and drive off to the grub. Now that they've got him outnumbered 5-to-1, the girls are finally ready to talk Alliance with Terry. They all agree that they'd make a splendid Final Three, and make tentative plans to boot Aras this week, then Shane. Somewhere on the mainland, Shane's son feels a sharp chest pain as the alliance forged on his soul starts to crumble. With a jaunty toast, the new King and Queens of the Universe finish their meal.

And back on Hellhole Beach, Shane and Cirie are spending some quality time. Shane, thank God, keeps his pants on. Cirie decides that now would be a good time to contribute something to her fellow castaways, and goes fishing. Incidentally, I may not have showered enough praise on Cirie; she's awesome. The Greek chorus of sanity among the Bonehead Brigade. I think CBS would do well to cut to interviews with her in future seasons. I think ESPN should have her as a sideline reporter for Monday Night Football. I think some fishing show could hire her, since she actually catches a damn fish! Somehow she extracts a snail from its shell, somehow she attaches it to a fishing line, and somehow she hauls one in. I'll be really disappointed if some CBS flunky ran in offscreen and planted it. Not shocked, mind you - just disappointed.

So she comes back with the fish and Shane's overjoyed (it's apparently his birthday). Then the Masters of the Universe return from the cookout. Terry doesn't get to bring his awesome new [sponsor's product], but at least they get to make some condescending noises about how cute Cirie's little fish is; oh, our second appetizer was fish!

And now to the Terry Deitz Showcase Hour, formerly known as the Immunity Challenge. If you've ever read Stephen King's The Long Walk, you may be starting to see Terry as the Stebbins character - the Rabbit - who's just in there to make everyone else work a little harder. It'd be awesome (if highly improbable) if Terry's in this to get revenge on his Dad, Jeff Probst.

But I digress. The Challenge is a forced march through Maine...sorry, a strength and endurance challenge in which they have to hold on to ropes which Jeff will keep adding weight to. They have a weigh-in, and off they go. Cirie, amazingly, doesn't go first (Shane does), and the final two are Courtney and the Rabbit. Both of them look pained. Both of them are struggling mightily. Courtney lets go. Terry wins. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Now the fun starts. Terry clearly wants to go into the final two with Courtney, which is why he's setting up an alliance with Danielle and Cirie. Shane doesn't realize that no one cares about his son, so he's sticking with his doomed Aras/Courtney/Danielle quartet. Aras thinks everyone's going to go after him. Cirie doesn't want anything except for Courtney to be gone. Danielle cannily realizes that Terry's stacking the new alliance in his favor. Courtney sulks.

A new cabal has formed: Danielle and Cirie enlist Aras to kick out Courtney. If this holds, it means no one's in control. It's anarchy! Who would have thought that Casaya would one day devolve into anarchy?

Tribal Council! The Jury of the Damned come in...Austin...Sally (looking not unlike Stevie Nicks)...and Bruce! He's OK! He gets a round of applause, then the remaining Survivors all voice their feelings of mistrust and betrayal. The votes come in. And it's Courtney! One of the three most annoying people in the history of the planet, and she's out before the Final Five. Shane looks more pissed than Courtney. Terry looks pensive. Courtney stalks off the beach, her frolicking days behind her, a sadder and wiser fire dancer.

Posted by Michael at 09:00 PM | Comments (2)

April 20, 2006

SurvivorBlog X: All Unhappy Families Are Different

The moment we've all been waiting for is here: time for the old Casaya gang to fall apart! The insanity's been put on hold for a few weeks as they've picked off the remaining La Minas; now all that's left is Terry, with an immunity idol, feeling like the proverbial you-know-what in the punchbowl. And now that he's outnumbered 6-to-1, he's seriously thinking about strategy. Um. Kind of like Baldrick's plan for escaping the guillotine...wait until your head's chopped off, then leap into action.

Bruce has a unique problem on the beach. While the rest of his survivors are only figuratively full of crap, Bruce's digestive system has gone into total Operation Shutdown, and his gut is in agony. I guess it kind of makes sense: Bruce seems fairly level-headed and smart, so I can imagine why his stomach is turning at the thought of spending another month on Knucklehead Beach.

Shane, showing a vast range of medical knowledge and empathy, asks Bruce, "What; ya can't poop?"

The Survivors have homework to do before the Reward Challenge! They each get a simple rag voodoo doll that they have to decorate with their clothes and hair, and some paint that's apparently lying around. I'm kind of hoping for a voodoo-doll knife-fight, but no such luck. Instead, they get the best challenge yet: a middle-school slam book carefully crafted to make all the Casayas hate each other more, as improbable as that sounds.

Each one fills out a questionnaire. Then Jeff announces that they're trying to figure out who the most popular answers were for such questions as "Who's the least helpful?", "Who's the most annoying?" and "Who thinks they're in charge of the game but really isn't?" Any time you correctly identify the most popular choice, you get to cut a rope which leads an opponent's voodoo doll closer to a fiery death.

It sounds a little complicated, but it gets fun fast. After killing off voodoo-Terry, the Casayas have to politic about whose ropes to cut, and also deal with the fallout of finding out who really likes whom. Which is bad news for Shane (who can't believe everyone thinks he thinks he's in charge but really isn't) and Courtney (who wins every other bad award). When the dust settles, Cirie cleverly guesses that she won the "Least Likely To Actually Survive in the Wilderness" superlative, and wins!

Now it gets interesting. Cirie has to pick someone to go to Exile Island (Terry's already halfway to the boat before she names him), and gets to pick two people to join her for a day of luxury, libations and laundry. First picked is Aras, because apparently she promised him something at one point. Shane stalks around like a little girl who didn't get a pony for her birthday. Cirie hems and haws, watches her teammates beg and plead, and inexplicably picks Danielle. Shane looks like a little girl who got a pony for her birthday, then watched it processed at the glue factory before she had a chance to ride it. Up, up and away in a helicopter for the three of them.

Cirie, Danielle and Aras eat well, get mud massages, and live high on the hog. The less said about them, the better, except they all agree that Courtney has a crush on Shane.

Back on the beach, Shane, Courtney and Bruce are miserable. Shane and Courtney are miserable because they realized they're not well-liked. Shane thought he and Cirie had an unbreakable bond. Courtney went from frolicking to crushing depression in about six minutes. They're both severely ticked that they weren't chosen to go to the resort. Bruce, meanwhile, is miserable because his stomach pains have intensified. He's trying to take a nap, and is literally writhing around on the ground from the pain. Having to listen to Prince Doom and the Dutchess of Despair can't be helping; he looks like the woman in Airplane! who vomits when the nun starts singing "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" to her.

Finally, enough is enough, and we get our first look at the Survivor Rescue Team. They stick an IV in Bruce, worry about appendicitis, and determine they have to get him off the island. Shane, meanwhile, has removed his pants to minimize his chafing. I don't know exactly what sins Bruce is atoning for, but having crippling gut pain in a forbidding jungle, then being carried off in a stretcher by a nude Shane, has gotta be indicative of some deep, deep circle of Hell.

The rich folk return to the beach and learn of Bruce's departure. No one's sure what his status in the game is, so they all make appropriate "We-don't-care-about-the-million-bucks-we-just-hope-Bruce-is-all-right" noises. Shane is in full spin mode, threating to kill Courtney, then making Cirie swear on her kids (which is probably less of an oath than swearing on his kid) that she's still got his back in the game. You'll remember that this is the guy who protested when he won the "Thinks He's In Charge But Really Isn't" award.

A boat on the horizon! It's Terry! And Jeff! Jeff gathers everyone round with some grim news, but he still has that Jeff Probst smirk. He tells everyone Bruce will survive - his bladder and colon were completely shut off (and so's my appetite!) - but he's out of the game. Thus no Tribal Council and no voting this week. Bruce will come back and serve on the Jury of the Damned as soon as he's out of the hospital. A detached, alienated, postmodern ending, to be sure.

(Read all SurvivorBlog entries)

Posted by Michael at 10:50 PM | Comments (4)

April 13, 2006

SurvivorBlog IX: Li'l Shane Edition

The problem with my recent Lost binge is that it colors Survivor. Obviously, they're both set on creepy jungle islands, they're full of crazy people with mysterious pasts, you know. I kept expecting Shane to be attacked by a polar bear, or see Courtney have a flashback to her career as a bank robber. No such luck, sadly. Instead, I get to see six ex-Casayas mumbling about how Terry always kicks their ass at Immunity Challenges. Cirie even mutters she'd like to break his arm. It wouldn't help you win a challenge, honey.

So let's go straight to the Reward Challenge. Jeff shows each castaway a snippet of a video message from their family, promising a reward of the uncut version, along with some peanut butter sandwiches. I hope it's not pretend peanut butter, like Charlie and Claire shared on Lost. Let's run down the snippets:

The Survivors are split into two teams (Aras/Shane/Cirie/Danielle vs. Terry/Sally/Bruce/Courtney) The challenge itself is to swing the lightest member (Danielle vs. Courtney) around on a bunch of ropes and bungee cords, and stick a series of flags in appropriate spots. It's very close for a while, but Team Danielle keeps knocking the flags out, and that's that. Team Courtney hands Aras a ticket to Exile Island. Like Kate on Lost, Aras looks sad, and pensive.

On Exile Island, Aras starts trying to figure out the clues for the Immunity Idol. Since Terry pocketed it weeks ago, this is a fool's errand, but Aras isn't your everyday fool. He stares at the clues like me trying to do a Hungarian crossword puzzle, flips some rocks around, and gives up.

Shane, Danielle and Cirie stomp back to the beach, rationalizing that the Reward wasn't so great anyway. To take their minds off things, Shane decides to announce that the humidity and the lack of laundry have caused Li'l Shane to itch and burn. So he drops his trousers to give Cirie and Danielle a look, and give the CBS censors years' worth of psychiatry bills. Cirie, a professionally trained nurse, responds the only way possible: laughing her ass off and telling him it's a variation of diaper rash. Shane turns his shirt into a skirt, and the CBS censors head off for a drink. An owl watches this sorry display, and replies:

iloled.jpg

The Rewarded return with full bellies and luxury items. Sally and Bruce have notebooks, Terry has an American flag, and Courtney has some weird dancing sticks. Sally and Bruce start writing and drawing (Bruce is freaking talented), Terry puts up the flag to honor his father and father-in-law (both Korean war vets), and Courtney frolics with her dancing sticks. I've never seen anyone in my life frolic like Courtney frolics.

Terry's still trying to sell ex-Casayas on his plan to form a new alliance. They're still selling about as well as Knicks playoff tickets. Sally looks sad, and pensive.

The Immunity challenge is a combination of diving and pattern recognition. Oh, by the way, Jeff says, if you're feeling confident you can bag the challenge and eat cheeseburgers instead. There's an instant Shane-Cirie-Courtney-Bruce-and-Danielle-shaped cloud as the five of them teleport to the cheeseburger table. Leaving Immunity between Sally (who's desperate), Aras (who's correctly surmised that he's got the most to lose with the Idol) and Terry (who would beat up a koala bear cub if it meant Immunity).

Aras is the first to get back and solve the puzzle...incorrectly. Terry (surprise!) gets it right first, and the custom-fitted Immunity necklace goes back around his neck. The burgermasters look sad, and pensive, as they remember what happens to Survivors who starve for a week, then cram down handfuls of meat.

So Terry once again has three choices. Keep the Immunity Idol, which means the guillotine for Sally. Give the Idol to Sally, which would mean the end of Aras, but would also mean Terry has to win every challenge from now on (which, frankly, ain't that far-fetched). Or try gamely to flip two Casayas, setting up (they hope) a Final Four. They work on Bruce a little, they work on Courtney a little, but it never really looks like anyone's flipping. Clearly, Sally's only hope is that Terry slips her the Idol, which ain't happening.

At Tribal Council, the Casayas clearly are frustrated by Terry's dominance. I know how they feel, since every commercial I've been flipping over to the Sox-Jays game, and wondering why the hell we can't hit Ted Lilly to save our lives. They vote...Sally 5, Aras 2....Sally....doesn't have the Idol. Shocked, I tell ya. So now it's one against six, and Terry can use his Idol to assassinate any one of them at any time. Or still try to flip someone over to Team Terry. We'll see.

(Full credit for the "sad, and pensive" lines goes to the excellent Lost reviewers at Television Without Pity. I recommend their Survivor reviews, which are longer but aren't posted instantly.)

Posted by Michael at 09:14 PM | Comments (2)

April 07, 2006

SurvivorBlog VIII: Terry Flunks Strategy

They say about a great salesman, "He could sell ice to the Eskimos". I'm starting to think Terry couldn't sell a glass of water to someone who just drank a shot of Tabasco sauce. After his plan to strip away a Casaya or two failed, he changed tacks and...tried to strip off a Casaya or two. I don't even know where to start.

His protege Austin is feeling a little survivor's guilt and a little moron's remorse after Tribal Council. Once he admitted that he failed the last Immunity Challenge on purpose, getting Nick axed, he's pretty much branded himself as the next victim. Yeah, we're at the point where we have to wait three weeks until it's slightly unpredictable again. And even then, it's obvious everyone wants to be matched against Shane in the Final Two.

Let's skip right to the reward challenge, where three teams of three have to load up their opponents' boats with coconuts, then paddle their (hopefully light) boats out to get a flag, come back to shore, and haul all their coconuts to a bin. The teams are

(1) Bruce, Aras and Sally
(2) Cirie, Danielle and Courtney
(3) Shane, Austin and Terry.

Aras, showing a little flair, gets the bright idea to encourage Team 2, which has Kansas City Royals-like chances of winning, to load up Team 3's boat with extra weight, giving Team 1 an edge. 1 does edge out 2 - I don't think 3 even got their boat launched. So Aras, Sally and Bruce get a breakfast in bed as a reward, and get to ping two losers off to Exile Island. It's Austin and Danielle.

Oh, incidentally, one suprise from the challenge: of all the people on the show, you'd think Danielle would have a little more experience hauling coconuts around.

So now we have three groups to keep an eye on. Austin and Danielle are on Exile Island, huddled in the cold relentless rain, as miserable as two people can be. We don't even get any teasing shots of the two of them (who are the show's only remaining eye candy) making out. Though they claimed the experience bonded them, we have to use our imaginations.

The reward winners are a little nonplussed that their bed is basically just a bed. With a canopy offering flimsy protection from the downpour. But they snuggle in, and are soon presented with croissants, muffins, bacon, OJ, and coffee (Shane's Starbuck sense probably started tingling from miles away). They're happy.

And back at the mainland, Terry's desperate to make something happen. He tries to get Shane to list his predictions for the Final Four (it's Shane, Aras, Courtney and Cirie - but notice Shane doesn't swear this on his son) with all the grace and savoir faire of someone looking over your shoulder trying to guess your ATM PIN.

The missing-presumed-fed trio returns and starts regaling the others with tales of bacon. Cirie's having hungry person's remorse, but life sucks sometimes; her only hope of winning any kind of reward is if the challenge is "Stand on the sidelines cracking on all your tribemates".

The Immunity Challenge, sadly for Cirie, is a grueling obstacle course. Give her credit for not just swearing and taking off down the beach when she saw it. It's pretty cool, but the upshot is that the three finalists are the three ex-La Minas, and Terry wins again. Which means he gets to go back to work on his hamhanded strategy. He senses a bond with Bruce (they're both over 40) and a bond with Danielle (the rainy night with Austin), and tries to convince both of them that Shane and Aras are about to throw them under the proverbial bus. Terry even tells Danielle that he'll give her the Immunity Idol if she leaves her alliance. He even manages to tell her this in the same breath as a speech about honor and trustworthiness.

Thanks to the marvel of television editing, both Bruce and Danielle look intrigued by the offer.

Meanwhile, the Casayas are exhibiting their typical class and decorum. Courtney and Aras scream at each other. Shane stalks around like the Not-Quite-Grim-But-Really-Annoying Reaper. Danielle realized that she has a source of power and influence, apart from the two obvious ones. And Cirie chuckles to herself. I haven't seen camaraderie like this since the cast of Clue.

And off to tribal council. They really make it look like Bruce and Danielle might switch - we even see Bruce writing an "A" - but no soap. Austin's gone, Terry didn't give him the Immunity Idol, Austin doesn't seem to realize that he's been totally submarined by Terry's "leadership". Get a good last look at Sally next week, is all's I'm gonna say.

Posted by Michael at 12:59 AM | Comments (1)

April 01, 2006

SurvivorBlog VII: Evil Cements Its Hold Over Good

I missed the first few minutes of the latest Survivor, and arrived just in time to see Bruce attending to a cut lip. I'll be very disappointed if this is the medical emergency that the commercials have been promising us. But no, he's OK, and sets off to design a flag for the new tribe, now that the merge has happened. To recap, there are four surviving members of La Mina/Team Good (Terry, Nick, Austin and Sally) and six from Casaya/Team Evil (Shane, Cirie, Danielle, Courtney, Aras and Bruce). A strict numbers game would indicate that evil and stupidity are going to keep winning out over good and intelligence. Draw your own parallel to the current political zeitgeist.

Of course, the fragments of La Mina aren't demonstrating a hell of a lot of intelligence. Terry is determinedly, if stupidly, trying to flip some of the lesser Casayas to even out the numbers. He comes to Shane, then Cirie, then Bruce, with an offer they can most definitely refuse. "Why not leave your team, which wins all the time, and join this sinking ship that looks good on paper but constantly screws up when it counts?"

Unfortunately for Terry, none of them are Adam Vinatieri.

So we come to the Immunity Challenge, which you'll note is for individual immunity now. The prize is the same necklace that Mola Ram wore in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and to get it, they have to perform the visually-arresting task of hanging from a long bar. The survivors belly up to the bar, and the waiting game begins.

Cirie goes down first, shocking exactly 0 of 300,000,000 Americans. Surprisingly, the second to drop is Aras, the yoga instructor. Sign me up for classes! Eventually they all tumble (Shane gives up when he learns that there's no food, cigarettes or cash for the winner) and it's down to three ex-La Minas: Nick, Terry and Austin.

Now, Terry has an interesting dilemma here. He has the Immunity Idol from his stints on Exile Island. Which means he can tank this challenge and let one of the boys win. This would mean that the ex-Casayas, correctly identifying him as the greatest threat, would vote for him. Then he could whip out the Idol, and banishment would fall on the person with the 2nd-highest number of votes, presumably Shane. The numbers would be closer to even, the insufferable Shane would be gone, it's a win-win situation.

Terry hangs on and wins the challenge.

On the beach, the mood is tense. Terry's still selling, but nobody's buying. The ex-Casayas hold a group meeting, blatantly and thoughtlessly (with Shane, is there any other way?), to decide who is going to go. Austin's convinced it's him, but the wind seems to be blowing Nick's way.

At Tribal Council, Austin makes the interesting tactical decision to announce to the whole world that he let go sooner than he could have at the Immunity Challenge, so the ex-Casayas would judge him weak and not worth voting out. Never an unspoken thought with this one. Austin's the kind of guy who would tell you what your birthday present is just before you unwrap it.

Jeff pulls a serious fakeout on us, and reads all four ex-La Mina votes first. All are for Shane, and for a moment, we dare hope that the Casayas rose as one to jettison their nicotine-addled Nero. No such luck. Nick gets the heave-ho (but in his closing thoughts implores the youth of America to get off their butts and....something. I'm almost 32 and not the youth of America anymore), and evil stalks away, holding all three branches of government and a huge numbers advantage in the Jury of the Damned. Blecch.

Posted by Michael at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2006

SurvivorBlog VI: Only The Good Die Young

Episode Six starts in the midst of the world's worst slumber party. Shane, who would sooner leave a cigarette unsmoked than a thought unspoken, is babbling about alliances and gamesmanship and God knows what while the rest of Casaya's trying to rest up for the full day's bickering ahead of them. While Aras tries to snooze with a lady on each arm, like some cut-rate Hugh Hefner, Shane says he wants out of the Alliance, but only if the Alliance will give him his son's name back.

See, the focal point of Shane's existence seems to be evenly divided between Joe Camel and his son. No bond with Shane, however ridiculous, is legitimate unless Shane's son is sworn on, regardless of whether the other person has ever or will ever meet the kid. I get the feeling that Shane might be as insufferable in real life as he is on the island: "Boss, I swear on my son that I'll have the Henderson projections ready for Thursday's meeting." "I swear on my son that I ordered the pickles and mayo on the SIDE!"

But the next morning, the Casaya ladies have a good giggle over his babbling. They seem to have realized what the rest of us knew from 11 minutes into Episode One: he's an unpredictable lunatic, and the sooner he's gone, the better. Courtney, unexpectedly showing her Madame Defarge side, says it's off to the guillotine with him. Apres Bobby, la deluge.

Over at La Mina, Terry finally gets a crack at some of the beans that laid Austin and Nick low last time. Austin's hurting; remember the old cartoons when two guys would be stranded on a desert island, and one of them would look at the other and his body would suddenly turn into a pot roast? That's Austin right now.

Then there's a suprising montage of Dan. He's sitting on the beach, talking about his career as an astronaut, and I start thinking "uh-oh". This is like the main cop's buddy talking about the boat he's going to buy after next week's retirement party. He tells Austin and Nick about his career (Terry either knew or deduced it), and suprisingly, the two jaded Gen-Yers are visibly awed. Nick says, "Makes me wish I'd done something in my life." Austin says "I'm really John Grisham", then spits out a paint-by-numbers potboiler about an evil lawyer in El Dorado, Arkansas. I think I'm starting to like Austin.

Austin also calls Dan a pimp. It's hard out there for a pimp.

Back to Casaya, where the fallout from Shane's midnight soliliquy is starting to settle. Shane tells everyone he's seriously out of the Alliance (cunningly setting up a 1-vs-5 scenario) and asks them all if he can have his son's name back. They all look at each other and go, "sure". Meanhwile, Aras seems to have learned the old adage: better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, then to open it and confirm it, over and over and over again. And Bruce tends his Zen rock garden, hoping a volleyball will wash up on shore that he can be friends with.

Treemail! Challenge! This one's for all the marbles: Immunity and Reward (an expedition to the mainland for a wild Panamanian BBQ). Also, the winners get to send a loser to Exile Island during the Tribal Council, so they're picking someone to be untouchable for a week. Jeff Probst. You magnificent bastard. Where do you come up with this stuff?

The challenge itself is pretty mundane: run to some puzzle pieces, untie them, haul them back to base, where two teammates try to assemble the puzzle. La Mina gets their pieces back first, but Dan completely vapor locks on the puzzle, and Casaya pulls another win out of their hats. Correctly figuring that Sally is the odd girl out on Team Testosterone, they banish her, meaning that the barbershop quartet is about to become a trio.

So the Casayas are off to town to mingle with the locals, which has "international incident" written all over it. Hope the producers have the ambassador's number on speed-dial. But it's congenial. They give gifts to the local urchins, feast on chicken and soup (with no apparent ill gastrointestinal effects), and then it happens. The One Thing that can lend equilibrium to the troubled tribe. The One Hope for peace and sanity.

Shane spots a guy with a pack of cigarettes.

In a candid interview, he admits (paraphrased): "If they wanted to trade, I'd do it. I'd have given my shoes, my shorts, my buff - if they wanted my underpants for a smoke, I'd walk around nude the rest of the day." Fortunately, the Panamanians aren't ruthless hagglers (or have some taste) and Shane is reunited with his own personal Holy Grail. The first drag? Picture Westley and Buttercup's reunion, times 14,000. It was that poignant.

Casaya seems to put on a show for the locals, each showing off their own talents. Bruce does a terrifying karate routine. Courtney fire-dances. Danielle unbuttons a button. Socrates pantomimes how much he loves baseball, billiards and San Dimas. And Shane, his chemical balance restored, starts gladhanding his tribemates, saying how sorry he was for his actions. Oh boy.

Back to La Mina, and the difficult decision to break up the guys. It looks like it's headed for a 2-2 tie, since the old guys bonded from the start, and the kids seem a good pair. But Austin and Nick plead with Terry that Dan has to go. He botched the last challenge, he's shown some weakness, he can't really go out in the sun for more than 12 seconds. Terry nods grimly, then goes off to tell Dan not to fear the Reaper.

Dan takes the news in stride. This is La Mina, remember, home of the Camazotz-esque hivemind. If it were legal, he'd vote for himself. All he can do is go on and on about how the puzzle beat him. You get the feeling that 10 years from now, Dan will be sitting in a diner somewhere, babbling about how the puzzle beat him, with a comfortable 3 empty stools on either side of him.

At Tribal Council, Jeff probes (heh) for any sign of bitterness or dissent from the four guys. Nada. This is a united front; when they go to vote, Jeff honestly has no idea who will be unanimously kicked off (well, until Dan raises his hand). Off he goes, into the wild blue yonder. And we all get to watch Shane for another week.

Posted by Michael at 10:21 PM | Comments (3)

March 04, 2006

SurvivorBlog V: Fish and Chumps

Casaya's on a roll. They've somehow managed to solve the Survivor energy crisis: they're generating power and success out of pure, unadulterated disrespect and hate for one another. At the center of the circus, of course, is Shane, but another short fuse is lit. Bruce spends a long time building a Zen rock garden on the beach, and Aras (who's a yoga instructor with no time for frippery) freaks out. A Zen rock garden doesn't mesh with his idea of the perfect camp, so he lets Bruce have it. Aras says he wishes he could go to Exile Island to get away from his tribemates.

Across town, Sally, who was spared the noose last time, knows she's got one foot in the grave in the La Mina Boys' Club.

No time is wasted getting to the Reward Challenge. They have to ferry some rice, beans and fish to a designated point by throwing them all around. The last guy in line has to chop the heads and tails off the fish; it's bloody, but the winner gets to keep all the chow (Plus a bottle of wine. More on this later), while the loser gets a consolation prize of a little rice or a few beans.

We're reminded of Seattle's Pike Street Market as fish fly through the air. We're reminded of Indianapolis' overrated offense as Dan keeps throwing the fish everywhere but into Sally's hands. We have a stereotype shattered as Bruce proves unable to really hack the heads off. But Terry (surprise!) proves a pretty competent fishwhacker for La Mina. But Bobby steals the show for Casaya, slicing through the fish with skill and ease. One wonders if he names each fish after a tribemate just before he slices: "Courtney! Shane!" It would explain the ruthless bloodlust. Casaya wins; Terry looks like he's going to plant the knife in someone's (Dan?) back. Casaya sends Terry back to Exile Island, where he only gets stronger.

Casaya takes the feast back to camp, where apparently a 10-minute deluge has ruined everything. Their stuff is scattered; their fire is out. Sushi time! Cirie wonders openly if eating raw fish is healthy (she's standing in fetid stagnant water at the time) and Bruce whines that it's not the same without wasabi and ginger.

Also, somewhere along the line here, Bobby opines that Courtney is "one of the 2 or 3 most annoying people in the history of the planet". Let's see: Hitler, Courtney, Pol Pot. Sounds about right.

That night, we hear giggling coming from Casaya's outhouse. Seems two of them have cracked the last bottle of wine and are living it up while the rest sleep. No surprise, except that it's Bobby and Bruce. The unlikeliest pairing since Dustin Hoffman and Pauly Shore's buddy-cop movie. (I made that up. Please, God, say I made that up.) The next day, the two of them are pissed in the British style, but Courtney and Aras are pissed in the American style. Aras doesn't even drink (neither does Shane, apparently - a shocking revelation), but the firedancer and the yoga instructor thing that bogarting the last vino is a major bummer. Dude.

Meanwhile at La Mina, Nick and Austin apparently never saw Blazing Saddles. Because beans, beans, may be good for the heart, but they're hell on a digestive system that hasn't had any solid food in days. The two of them make more round-trips into the forest than the Grizzly Bear Shuttle, and let's really not dwell on that any more than we have to.

Here comes the Immunity Challenge! They have to fish a bunch of skulls out of the ocean and build a little pyramid out of them. Not too exciting. La Mina pulls out a victory, and it's time for Moron Nation to come up with an eviction.

And it is fun. Watching morons try to think under pressure is entertaining enough, but these particular morons are a godsend. Shane hates Courtney. Bobby hates Danielle. Bruce hates Courtney. Shane hates Bruce. Cirie can't believe that everyone forgot they're supposed to kick her out. Aras hates Bruce. Danielle hates Bobby. Shane hates Shane. Courtney hates Bruce. Most importantly, everyone hates Shane, and everyone hates Courtney, so of course, it's between Bruce and Bobby for the eviction. Though it could turn out to be the first seven-way tie in show history.

Shane is determined to kick Bobby out. Nothing will stop him, nothing will change his mind, nothing will deter him. So of course the next scene is Shane pledging to keep Bobby around. Shane swears on his son that he'll stick with Bobby, then makes Bobby swear on his (Shane's) son to do the same. Bobby, who presumably has never met and could give a rat's ass about Shane's son, agrees, probably to get Shane to go away.

At tribal council, Jeff pokes all the right wounds. Aras makes a speech that I forgot as soon as he finished, Bruce and Bobby are forced to make a public, insincere apology for drinking the wine. The first four votes are for four different people: Courtney (Bobby's vote), Bruce (probably Courtney's vote), Bobby (Aras' vote) and Aras (Shane's vote, for some indefinably stupid reason). But two more votes come in for Bobby, and his time is up. He looks a little like Charles Oakley getting his 5th foul, but leaves without incident. Casaya schleps back to camp for another night of hatred-bonding.

Next week, I'll be back to Thursday updates. I swear on Shane's son.

Posted by Michael at 09:47 PM | Comments (1)

March 02, 2006

I'm On Exile Island

Missed Survivor tonight. Some grateful and loyal readers of the site (so grateful and loyal, in fact, that they let me crash at their place for the first 80% of my life) recorded it. So the review will have to wait till the weekend.

Posted by Michael at 09:08 PM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

SurvivorBlog IV: I Think I Know Who's Going to Win the Whole Tomato

La Mina's starting to look like the Yankees after Game 4. Outwardly confident and ready to go. But inside, they're wondering. Wondering how the Sox could possibly have gotten to Mariano Rivera. Wondering how strong the gentlemen's alliance will stay. Wondering if Schilling's going to be at full strength in Game 6. Wondering if they'll have enough food to make it that far. Wondering if the thought of A-Rod shivering and hungry in the rain makes this slightly-tortured analogy worthwhile (For my money, yes.).

Sally, in particular, wears a haunted look on her face. Her buddy Misty got whacked last week, and she figures she's next. She's got to prove herself valuable somehow, by winning a challenge, if not coming up with a fat fish barehanded.

Over at special-needs camp Casaya, the four who locked themselves into an unbreakable alliance before they even knew each other are starting to hate one another. Shane (who seems to have temporarily stopped chasing the dragon) and Aras come back from a long day of snail-catching, and are nonplussed to see Courtney frolicking around on the beach. As a professional fire dancer, one might think that she might have some insight into starting a fire - apparently in LA, she buys it in a can. Bobby's snoozing (he may be in Operation Shutdown; it's hard to tell), Cirie's shuffling some sand around, and suddenly Shane and Aras morph into stern parental figures. This is the tribe that keeps on giving, man.

The Reward Challenge is a mix of strength and luck: swim out to fetch a bunch of giant puzzle pieces, then hope you've thrown them into a big ring in close enough approximation to the solved puzzle that you can finish it. Casaya proves surprisingly adept, giving the camera additional time to focus on the only two things about Danielle worth mentioning. And they win! The prize: a fully assembled outhouse, a lifetime supply of Charmin, and some cute little bath soaps. They also get to tab a sucker for Exile Island; somehow they dimly remember that Terry is La Mina's leader, and so off he goes.

Casaya arrives to find its brand new one-seater. Some of them debate storing the wood there to keep it dry; Bobby has other plans for it. He wakes up, burps, grabs Reader's Digest, and off he goes, which is weird, because I thought that animals' digestive systems shut down while they're hibernating. Then Shane goes off on Danielle for not doing any work, leading her to grab a shovel and start whacking the beach. Cirie, who's fully completed the 180-degree turnaround to likeability, just giggles as she thinks about how pathetic the Dipshit Alliance turned out to be.

La Mina could be reeling from the loss of their leader, but they're not. Terry is apparently giving them signals telepathically; how else to explain the hive-mind that takes over and starts redesigning the camp? Austin wants to take a nap, but even that gets worked into the plan. This tribe would have a fully functioning Swiss Family Treehouse up and running, if they didn't have to take time out for pesky challenges. Except that they're completely out of food. Nick couldn't catch a fish in an aquarium. And Sally is desperately hoping that they'll forget her faux pas; if they'd had fishing equipment all along, La Mina would probably already have the third-strongest economy in Central America.

On Exile Island, Terry takes about six minutes to find the Immunity Idol. Now he's sittin' pretty; after the merge, presumably what's left of Casaya will take one shot at him, fail, then probably forget to vote him off.

Bring on the Immunity Challenge! It involves balance beams, water-hauling and ropes and pulleys. To balance out the numbers, Casaya sends Bobby to the sidelines. Probably a wise move, as Bobby's already gotten all the exercise in this episode that he needs. Dan botches the balance beams. Austin mismanages the water pouring. Sally runs a perfect race. And Casaya, improbably, wins its third challenge in a row. It's time for Game 7 in the Bronx.

La Mina's getting interesting. Dan promised Ruth-Marie he'd keep her alive till the merge; Austin thinks that it might be a better idea to keep Sally, who rocked at the Immunity Challenge, around instead of Ruth-Marie, who he's not sure he's even met. Austin makes a point of order: Dan swore his allegiance to Ruth-Marie, not the Alliance's. So he can vote to oust Sally and keep his word, while the rest of the tribe throws Ruth-Marie overboard. This tribe's all about exact words; no one came out and asked Terry point-blank if he found the Idol, so he never answered. They've already formed a legal system!

And now it's time for their next execution. Jeff almost asks Terry point-blank about the Idol, but not quite. We see both Sally and Ruth-Marie casting their votes for the other, but really sad to do it. The idea of trying to crack the Alliance and blind-side, let's say Nick, never occurs to them. This edition of Survivor isn't doing a lot for the feminist movement. The bell tolls for Ruth-Marie, and La Mina circles the wagons tighter. Till next time.

(Incidentally, in case you've forgotten, the Red Sox came back from a 3-0 deficit, erasing 86 years of humilation at the hands of the Yankees. The offensive stars of Game 7, Mark Bellhorn and Johnny Damon, are now Yankees. Make what you will of that.)

Posted by Michael at 09:15 PM | Comments (1)

February 16, 2006

SurvivorBlog III: Blind Squirrel Finds Acorn, Film At Eight

Episode 3 started somewhat as expected. La Mina was living it up, bonding as a unit and living the high (if protein-challenged) life, while Casaya was stuck in the Third World. Bruce, the new Casaya arrival, took charge, showing the tribe how to filter water, keep a fire going, and not be attacked by bats. So of course Shane and Courtney got pissed; after all, they were firmly in control of this tribe until Mr. "I Have Wilderness Survival Skills" shows up and starts teaching them how to do stuff, and why they shouldn't drink sea water.

Light dawns over Marblehead, and Aras starts to openly wonder if hitching his wagon to the star of a bipolar junkie and a tempestuous fire-dancer was really his wisest decision.

But Bruce's skill wears off on Casaya, and they march into the Reward Challenge confident and proud. So proud, in fact, that they announce to Jeff (and La Mina) that Bruce has been the best thing that's ever happened to them. Sort of the Survivor equivalent of announcing that you're invincible...as long as you're not wounded in the heel. But no matter. The Reward Challenge, in which some Survivors fling balls into the sea and other Survivors try to catch them, goes La Mina's way. They win a tarp, a rope, some jugs, etc.

They also get to pick which of the Casayas goes off to Exile Island. Showing the savvy and short-term memory that's made them Vegas' 29:28 favorite to win out, they choose Bruce. Off he goes again for three days of Shane-and-Courtney-free relaxation.

'Cause Shane and Courtney are, if you'll pardon the expression, crazy as ####. Bruce is probably relieved to be out of their hair. Shane declares a stump to be "Shane's Thinking Chair" and has a twelve-minute full-force nicotine fit when someone asks him why it's his stump.

There's a little foreshadowing at La Mina. The two pretty boys (Austin and Nick) are still in an Alliance Tug-of-War between the Macho Men and the Girls. Ruth-Marie continues to emulate Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film, while Misty bravely fights off some kind of pox to give Austin a backrub. Clearly, the Boys will have a tough decision to make if La Mina ever loses an Immunity Challenge.

Speaking of Immunity Challenges...the tribes have to dig up bags out of the sand and get them to home base. But Jeff wisely gives the Survivors a chance to release some aggression; they get to beat the hell out of each other while trying to retrieve the bags. First up is a little girl-girl fight. Three chicks in bikinis (and Cirie in a pink jumpsuit-esque ensemble) go at it, which of course reminds everyone of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine asks why guys like cat fights so much, and Jerry says, "Because there's a chance they might kiss at the end?". There's hair-pulling, there's bra-snapping, Cirie sits on someone, and Casaya improbably comes out with the first bag.

Then the guys race for the second bag (better tackling than seen at the Meadowlands any time this season) and then various combinations of men and women scramble for the last points. I think Shane almost starts biting Dan at one point. When the dust settles, Casaya improbably comes out on top. La Mina is off to Tribal Council.

Jeff tries to find some dissension or conflict in La Mina, but they're a united front. Even pockmarked Misty and Ruth-Marie, the two most likely sacrificial lambs, nod grimly when Jeff asks if they're still all on the same page. The most telling thing is when Austin refuses to name names (Sally) when Jeff asks what happened to their fishing spear.

It's hard to tell exactly who voted for who. It seemed like Ruth-Marie might be the odd one out (no one can actually remember her being on the island), but it turns out Misty is voted out. She waves a jaunty farewell to the rest of the La Minas, then races back to base camp for some topical cream.

And Shane just rolled and smoked Cirie's pink jumpsuit.

Posted by Michael at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)

February 09, 2006

SurvivorBlog II: A Villain Emerges

You know, the word "scoundrel" has sadly fallen into disuse. But not any more.

The second installment of Survivor started with an overnight monsoon. The castaways huddled in their makeshift huts, shivering and miserable. Shane, the guy who started the adventure the same day he quit coffee, cigarettes, whiskey, heroin and crack, starts to fall apart.

The next morning brings sunshine and a radical realignment of the tribes. Two survivors are randomly selected to start picking teams, backyard-kickball-style. The two new teams are Casaya and La Mina, and with an odd number of contestants (and a number of odd ones), the misfit turns out to be Bruce, the Japanese guy, who is summarily hustled off to Exile Island. He'll join whichever tribe ends up at the next Tribal Council.

Then starts the immediate reward challenge: haul a bunch of wooden snakes through an obstacle course and win a bunch of fishing equipment. La Mina beats Casaya (get used to that), and off they go.

The tribes immediately start forming alliances. The four Abercrombie models on Casaya (Aras, Courtney, Danielle and jittery Shane) decide that they're in it together, come hell or high water. At La Mina, the two guys' guys (Dan and Terry) enlist the two younger guys (Austin and Nick) into a solemn oath, to the point where I think Austin might wind up with a horse's head in his bed if he crosses Terry. Then Sally and Misty try to lock Austin and Nick into their alliance, too. If you think you're confused now, you're still ahead of Austin.

Meanwhile on Exile Island, Bruce is dedicated to finding the idol. (I wasn't going to make the following joke - I swear I was not going to go there - until Bruce started mugging for the camera in karate poses.) Then a boat pulls up to Exile Island, and some GIs rescue Bruce, telling him it's OK to come along, that the Emperor has surrendered. Happy endings all around.

The two tribes meet up and immediately start to reenact some of the classic scenes from Airplane!. Shane admits that he picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue, and Jeff does his best Rex Kramer imitation at the Immunity challenge. "Casaya needs to pick it up! La Mina's not getting anywhere! Striker, you're coming in too low, dammit!"

La Mina wins the Immunity Challenge. They're shaping up to be the much, much stronger of the two tribes. The only friction they had was when Sally took the fishing equipment out for a test-spin, and dropped the spear into the briny depths. Dan looked about ready to clean and fillet her on the spot, but then it was commercial time.

Doomed to Tribal Council, Casaya gets a bombshell from Shane. He wants out in a big way. He heard that once you're voted out, you get to go stay in a hotel with cigarettes, a minibar and steak tips, and he's sold. He tells everyone to just chuck him. Melinda and Cerie, realizing that their chances of surviving are slim to none, can't believe their good fortune.

But then Aras has a brainstorm. You can almost see the wheels of his mind grinding as he thinks, "If we vote off this wretched, jittery, detoxing, inconsistent moron....MY ALLIANCE IS SMALLER!" He then makes the classy move of telling the whole tribe that they need Shane to keep his alliance intact. Points for honesty, Aras, if not for political savvy. Aras convinces Shane that they'll spend the next three days rigging up a crude wooden crystal-meth lab, and suddenly Shane's hot to trot.

So all that's left is to figure out whether Shane's blade will find Cirie's back, or Melinda's. You'll remember from Episode One that Cirie is afraid of leaves, and Melinda is harmless if a bit Mouseketeerish, so of course they decide to jettison Melinda.

At Tribal Council, Jeff resists the urge to strangle the Casayas. Shane says that even though he was begging and pleading to be sent home, he didn't really mean it. Cerie and Melinda express their disappointment with being on the chopping block for no reason. And Bruce looks around like a guy who's just been drafted by the Washington Generals.

And Melinda's torch is out. I hope she spends the next three days drinking all the alcohol and smoking all the cigarettes in the hotel, so the scoundrel doesn't get 'em.

Posted by Michael at 09:04 PM | Comments (3)

February 02, 2006

SurvivorBlog I: To Spite Your Face

After 3 1/2 years, I left my night job, which means two things: one, I no longer have to fight the 5:30 traffic at the Fresh Pond Rotary, and two, I'm home on Thursday nights for Survivor. I'd been out of touch with the show for a few years, but it took me about nine minutes to get sucked back in, and another three minutes to realize that the antics of these goofballs might be just the thing to get my writing muse churning again. So let's go.

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.

Posted by Michael at 09:14 PM | Comments (2)