Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Reports Of Granny Fairplay's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
By Miss Alli | Season 7 | Episode 11 | Aired on 11.26.2003
Day 30 comes to the castaways. Jeff brings them into the challenge area, which this week involves each of them standing at little chalkboards with what are basically magnet letters like you'd arrange and rearrange on your refrigerator. (True story: One of Miss Alli's Dad's early retirement projects this summer was making the set of letters on the fridge into comprehensible, substantive English words, using all the letters with none left over. He's been working for forty-five years, people.) The castaways each have a full set of the letters S-U-R-V-I-V-O-R P-E-A-R-L I-S-L-A-N-D-S. They have to use letters from that group to make twenty words broken down into varying lengths -- three three-letter words, four four-letter words, and so forth. When you have all your words, Jeff will come over and check your board, and if you've got all the words you need and you've spelled them all right, you win. If you're wrong, you're out.
Jeff says "Go!" and they all start writing. The first person to claim to be finished is Christa. Jeff comes over to check it out, though, and one of her words is misspelled -- she appears to have written "lavendar." Therefore, she's bounced. And she is banned from shopping at Crabtree and Evelyn. A happy Tijuana is almost finished, and she gets right back to her board when Christa is dumped. She claims to be done next, but when Jeff comes over to check, she's screwed up as well: she broke the rule that says you can't use plurals. Play resumes yet again. Next to claim immunity is Jon. Jon, however, has written "sandle" on his board, so he's out as well. (He has also written, rather frighteningly, "virile." Ew.) This leaves Burton, Lill, Darrah, and Sandra. Before long, though, Burton gives the up-arm and Jeff goes to check his board. He reports that it looks good, and he hands over the Supreme Cutlass to Burton, yet again, solemnly intoning that, yet again, Burton will be immune from the boot. Everybody else will be "very vulnerable." Rub it in, why don't you, Jeff?
Then, just as the music swells and the folks run off, Jeff gives out a hearty "Yo!" and calls them back. (Not "Yo-ho-ho"? Way to lose your theme, Jeff.) It seems that Burton's board says "liason." Not a word. Sadly, there were enough spare "I"s to spell it right (liaison, for those of you keeping score at home), but Burton didn't. Anyway, Jeff must pull immunity back from Burton. Oooh, painful. Jeff thinks, however, that after he called the game, the castaways probably started talking about words and saw each other's boards and so forth, so he doesn't think they can just pick up and get going again. Instead, he proposes to start over with those who remain -- he's going to give them a new set of letters, and they'll have one minute to come up with as many words as they can of at least four letters. The mind...um, Boggles. They all agree that it's a fair rundown, and they're off. The ladies all squint and write and squint and write and write and squint and stuff. Jeff calls time, and they stop with the writing, although some squinting persists. Lill came up with ten words, Darrah with fourteen, and Sandra with twelve. So surprisingly enough, it's Darrah with the drawl for it all, taking home the Supreme Cutlass. There's a sight you weren't planning on seeing anytime soon, I'll bet. Burton looks most dismayed, because I think he would have much rather had that one for himself, and had he spelled "liaison" right, he probably would have. Immunity newly redistributed, now it's time to head back to camp.