Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Goo Goo Gotchoo
By Sara M | Season 16 | Episode 5 | Aired on 03.05.2008
Erik talks to Amanda and Cirie and asks if they're voting Chet out tonight. Amanda agrees with this, saying they should make their team as strong (and, I suspect, "Fan"-free) as possible. Cirie doesn't say much, but the wheels are turning in her head. She tells us that she doesn't mind getting rid of the "weaker" players -- except that she knows they consider her to be weak as well. I think it's time for her to earn that Sprint player of the week nomination! She goes to the woods with Chet and Tracy. Chet tells her that he blames Joel for today's loss, smartly noting that Joel didn't trust the three -- Cirie included -- to solve the puzzle and barked out orders from the sidelines. "Let's take his ass out," Tracy says, getting right down to it. Oh, I hope they can make this happen. Please please please!
So while Ozzy is getting coconuts on the beach and Amanda is cheering him on while resting up her shark-wrangling arms, Cirie walks up and puts forth the idea of voting Joel out before Chet. They don't seem to be going for it at first, with Ozzy saying that with Chet out, they'll have Joel's (useless thus far) strength to win challenges. Cirie points out that Joel hasn't shown himself to be very good in challenges. Today he couldn't even hit one tile. Even Tracy hit a tile! And then he screwed them all up in the puzzle. "He's still a mover and a shaker," Ozzy says, less convinced. Cirie says that's another argument to get rid of him -- he's trying to play the game. Chet isn't. They can use Chet however they want. "That's true. That makes sense," Ozzy says.
Ozzy tells us that while Chet is a "waste of space" in the challenges, Joel wants to win this game, which makes him dangerous. "It's a hard decision," Ozzy says. I'm thinking that the editors are doing their best to make this seem suspenseful, but there's no way Chet isn't leaving tonight. Damn it.
They go to tribal council, where Probst points out that Ozzy picked Joel first. Joel smiles arrogantly. He smiles again when Probst says that Chet wasn't even picked to be on any tribe. Chet says that people have been counting him out since the game began and he's still here. And he's happy with the tribe he ended up in, no matter how he got there. Probst goes to Tracy and asks her what she thought of the reward challenge. Tracy feeds right into that and says that if Joel had communicated with Chet, they could have won. Joel makes a frowny face. He says there was communication with Chet. Chet shakes his head. "Don't shake your head!" Joel orders. Ugh. I hate him. He counters that if Chet couldn't hear him because he had mud in his ears from being dragged through it, that's not Joel's fault. Right, because Chet dragged himself through the mud. For fun. Chet tells us that Joel was making split-second decisions and there's no way he could have communicated them effectively, even if he had tried. Joel looks upwards like an asshole. I will say this: if I was in a fire, I'd rather be saved by a group of "weaker" people working together as a team than one guy hulking around by himself. ["Whatever, Sara M. I can't believe you don't appreciate the rugged individualism of firefighting." -- Miss Alli]