Episode Report Card Sara M: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Idol hands
By Sara M | Season 18 | Episode 7 | Aired on 04.02.2009
We go back to Camp Jalapeño, where everyone is looking pretty down, seeing as how all of their hopes for an easy run to the Final Three/Two have been dashed. J.T. assumes the blame for the loss, and the rest of the tribe is quick to tell him it's not his fault, etc. Stephen says J.T. gives his all in every challenge. It didn't work out this time, but it has other times. Not in a while, it hasn't. And I don't hear Joe saying anything about this, most likely because he sees the value in keeping "I told you so" to himself. Also, he has a nasty infected leg wound. Taj informs him that it "looks bad" as if he thought red infection streaks all over his leg were a good thing. We get a nice shot of the wound (which looks small, but that doesn't really matter in this environment) with a bug crawling on it, and once again I am thankful that I don't have HDTV. Joe says he "nicked" his leg a few days ago. Possibly in the last immunity challenge when he said he hurt his knee? Joe stupidly thinks his bright red leg with bugs crawling all over it will be better tomorrow.
With that, he tells the tribe about his time on Exile. He tells the truth that he picked the wrong urn, and I have to think that every single person who has come back to Jalapeño from Exile has said the exact same thing -- that the person from Tempura got the urn with the clue in it and told him or her nothing. Joe then lies that when he tried to "juice" Erinn to show him the clue, she wouldn't budge. How is juice a verb here? Does he mean he tried to extract juice from her or injected her with steroids? Because that's the only way juice is a verb as far as I know. Stephen, of course, pokes as many holes as possible in Joe's story and leaves him with an insincere "wow, that's weird!" Joe then heads off to get some water by himself, and absolutely no one is fooled. They give him three seconds to run off to treemail before they burst out laughing at the obviousness of it all. I'm guessing Sydney is off sleeping in a hammock somewhere again, because we don't see her and she'd be wondering what was going on if she was there. Most likely, she's doing something awesome that's been edited out so that we don't confuse the audience by developing more than a few contestant personalities. Joe finds the fake idol and assumes it's real. He interviews that he's stoked and relieved to have it. Again, I can't believe it didn't occur to him that Taj and Stephen would have to be morons not to have found the idol already with the clues he saw they were provided.