Episode Report Card Miss Alli: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Cirie-ous Problems
By Miss Alli | Season 16 | Episode 3 | Aired on 02.20.2008
Night 6, Malakal "favorites." It's dark. The couples are down at the beach working on making an apparently recreational hanging-out fire, and they've invited Eliza to join them. Eliza reports to us that this started out as "Heeeey, come to the beach with us!" and quickly turned into "SO HOW ABOUT THE VOTING YOU WILL BE DOING SOON?" Ozzy claims that, just for the sake of keeping the tribe "as strong as possible," he would pick Yau-Man, then Jonathan, then Cirie to boot. No, no. Okay, look. There is no way you keep your tribe strong by getting rid of Yau-Man first; that's moronic. Nor do you keep your tribe strong by getting rid of Jonathan before Cirie. Cirie is useless in challenges, much as I love her. Yau-Man, on the other hand, is a genius at challenges, and he's good at a much greater percentage of challenges than, say, James, since Yau-Man is basically good at any one that doesn't involve physical brute strength, and James is good at only those. So Ozzy is obviously lying about his motives here while trying to court Eliza. Somehow, I predict that Eliza is intelligent enough to read the writing on the wall. Oh, hey! So Eliza says, "You dislike Jonathan that much, huh?" Ha! Ozzy claims that it's not that he dislikes Jonathan; it's that "he plays everyone." Spoken like a true beneficiary of Jonathan's playing of everyone, who wouldn't have gone nearly as far in his previous season if Jonathan weren't such a rat cancer flipper, and who pretty much owes Jonathan a hundred grand, if you think about it. Not that this should inspire loyalty, but: food for thought. Ozzy was a member of an alliance to whom Jonathan handed the game with his last flip, so...maybe something he doesn't want to be too embittered about.
Of course, Eliza explains to us that she listened openly to this pitch that was allegedly about booting the weakest people and clearly wasn't. However: "I don't trust them," she says plainly, with "them" being these two couples. Good for you. That girl's all right, most of the time, you know. She's certainly nobody's dupe. I'm not kidding when I say she's going to make an awesomely scary lawyer. She goes and reports this back to Yau-Man, Jonathan, Ami, and Cirie, the last of whom is happily sitting in on the alliance discussion as Eliza talks about how "the five of us are so tight." Now, as you can see, Eliza is not an idiot, so she got the idea that Cirie was with them from somewhere, although the show has conveniently left that part out. For some reason, they're very determined not to show any of what Cirie has said to indicate that she's with these people, even though more than obviously, she's made a deal with them, since all of them include her in their alliance, and when she's accused of having agreed to be with them later, she doesn't deny it at all. But it's been carefully omitted, which is an interesting editing choice.
Cirie calmly explains in an interview, however, that she's basically stringing everybody along, because she's "still trying to figure out which side is better for [her]." Jonathan says to the group that if there's another vote, they should target Parvati, because she's this year's Amber. I mean, he doesn't say this, but he does say that she's weak (by which he means not helpful in challenges) and yet threatening (by which he means socially positioned near people who will block for her). Note the theory picked up in the previous season's recap, that Todd = Amber, in that the most threatening person is the person who is bad in challenges, but socially positioned well. So Parvati, here, kind of fits that mold. Also? Jonathan hates Parvati's guts like her guts are made of arsenic, and that factor cannot be overstated. In an interview, Cirie explains that it's all about whom she can "trust." If she can trust you, then she'll stay with you, but if she can't trust you, then you shouldn't believe anything she says. In other words, Cirie's trustworthy as long as she thinks it benefits her to be so, but if she doesn't think it's to her advantage, she's perfectly willing to lie. And then she cackles at herself. Just...make a note of this. That's all I ask.