Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT An Emerging What?
By Miss Alli | Season 12 | Episode 7 | Aired on 03.29.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Some of the most inept strategizing of all time marks the merge between Casaya and La Mina. With his team down 6-4 and a target on his back, Terry somehow convinces himself that Cirie and Bruce will want to switch over and be the low men on his six-person totem pole instead of the low men on someone else's six-person totem pole. Because he offers absolutely nothing as bait, he gets no takers. (Hint: Offer them something better than F6, dipwad.) When we make it to the immunity challenge, Terry once again fails to realize that he has one opportunity to boot a member of Casaya, which is to give up immunity, allow them to vote for him, throw down the idol, and get rid of, say, Shane. Thus, Terry gets immunity so that they doubly can't vote him off, meaning that Nick is thrown out in his place. Prepare for a very, very dry three-week Pagonging, as we learn once again that when people actually play this game correctly, it's not very interesting. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Long, Long Ago, There Were New Episodes: Shane wanted out of the Alliance of Suck, but first, he had to get his son's name back. Courtney and Chiclets were so eager to return said son's name that it almost hit Shane in the forehead when they hurled it back at him. Sally was up a creek over at La Mina, but when Casaya won the challenge and sent her to Exile Island, she was miraculously saved. Very Pale Dan was the unfortunate recipient of the votes of the rest of his reluctant Boys' Club, and our astronaut experienced a crash landing. Also, Shane had a cigarette, the smoking of which was just not a pretty sight, as it called to mind every really disgusting story of addiction you have ever seen, including the ones on Intervention. Ten left. Who will go next?
Credits. It's the short credits again. Apparently, there is no love for the roll call anymore.
We are at Casaya on Night 15, and as usual, it's raining. I'm not sure I've ever seen a camp as persistently soaked as this one. It's like whatever spirits live there are actively trying to wash them out, for which I could not blame them. Spirits do not have access to conventional restraining orders. The team is huddled in the shelter to escape the rain and cold, but Courtney has found herself the odd woman out. Apparently, Shane is resisting her efforts to snuggle, as she protests, "I have, like, an arm on you." "Courtney, that's good, but..." She gets the hint, and rolls away in the other direction. She asks if she can have a little more of the blanket if Shane's that determined not to let him touch her, but he doesn't budge. She protests that she's cold, "but whatever." I don't know. What's the use of being a fire dancer if you can't dance and make fire? If she were a rain dancer, I wouldn't expect her to be whining all, "I'm thirsty." Of course, maybe she's just a bad fire dancer. Like, she dances, and the lights flicker, or the garage door opens.
The next morning, a river runs through the Casaya camp as Courtney, tightly wrapped in a blanket, complains to the rest of the group about the way Shane shut her out until she was practically freezing. She interviews that it was "the worst night [she] ever had," because she got so cold and so soaked. She clearly is really put out about the fact that everybody else kept each other warm, while she was left out. As she hangs wet things up to dry, she says that her "inners" (she may say "innards," which is still funny) aren't even warm yet. "Everything I own is soaked," she says meaningfully to the now-present Shane, who does not feel guilty, because that would require activation of the gene for compassion, which he does not have. Courtney then talks sort of sadly to Chiclets -- in a way that has an oddly personal twinge for something that involves Shane -- about how he was totally unsympathetic, just elbowing her as she tried to get warm. "I cannot trust Shane," she interviews, "and I don't want to deal with him anymore." She retells the story of herself and Chiclets welcoming him to leave the alliance, but rest assured: this has nothing to do with the rest of the episode, and you don't need to remember it. Which is good, because being repeatedly confronted with the fact that there was someone somewhere who was unhappy about not cuddling up next to Shane would totally freak me out.