Episode Report Card Sara M: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Race Wars
By Sara M | Season 22 | Episode 10 | Aired on 04.20.2011
The tribe returns to camp. Rob and Grant are hungry, so they decide to make a ton of rice and forget about their rations. They even sing a song about it:
Rice Wars
by Rob, Grant, and Phillip
Gotta eat more than the old Zapatera tribe
Rice wars!
We're gonna eat ourselves out of house and home after one day!
Rice wars!
Hey!
That "hey" came from Phillip, who also contributed a terrible dance. The girls, as usual, contributed nothing. Andrea opens the rice canister, only to find that some of the rice is discolored and also moving. Yes, they have mold and maggots. And the editors seem to think we want to see them in a close-up. Yuck. They have to dump all the rice out on a blanket and separate the maggots from the good rice, but now they have nowhere to keep their rice, since the rice container is gross. Rob says they can just put it in Zapato's container and everyone will eat from that one container, and even Phillip knows enough about human nature to know Zapato won't be on board with that. "I wouldn't want to do it if I was them," he says. Remember that comment, guys. Andrea bravely heads over to ask Zapato if they can put their rice in with Zapato's. Steve immediately says no way. Andrea pretty much figured what the answer would be and walks away, but Phillip is pissed. Apparently he's already forgotten how he said he wouldn't let them use the rice container if he were them, as he interviews that he can't believe how cruel the other tribe is being to them. He says this goes beyond the game of Survivor and speaks to how terribly Steve, Julie, and Ralph will treat other human beings. Of course, this is especially amazing since, as you'll recall, Phillip gleefully stole a good amount of Zapato's rice like ten minutes ago. When Phillip deprives his fellow human beings of food, that's noble. When Zapato do it, it's a war crime.
Phillip strolls up and angrily says that the rice on the towel has been separated out from the "bad" rice and so Zapato shouldn't have any issue with putting it in their container. Steve says they'll ask Ralph when he comes back from wherever he is and make a decision then, but that's not good enough for Phillip. He says they aren't being reasonable. Even though they're being reasonable enough that Phillip himself just said he would have done the same thing. Phillip says this shouldn't be Zapato's decision to make, since the rice doesn't belong to any one alliance, but to the entire tribe, just like everything else in camp. Except, he adds, reward items. Those will stay separate. Julie knows what's good for her, so she just stays quiet. But Steve can't help but stoke the fire, saying that Phillip should have thought about where to put the rice before he dumped it all out. He says, again, that they'll talk to Ralph about it and then let Onomatopoeia know if they can put their rice in the container. Phillip says he tried to ask nicely (which he didn't -- from what we saw, he was confrontational with them from the start), but now he's just going to wait until Zapato leave their container unattended and steal it from them. Steve asks if Phillip is threatening him. Phillip starts swearing and yelling and pointing, concluding that he is a "very reasonable man." Steve says Phillip not at all reasonable, but a "lunatic." Phillip says he sure is, and Steve had better not forget it. Then he decides that he is not a lunatic, but a black man who intimidates racist white people. Uh oh. Over by the fire pit, Rob and Grant immediately snap to attention. "Ooooh, did he just play the race card?" Grant asks, his eyes like saucers. "Did he really?" Rob smiles. Okay, their reactions were awesome.