Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Jenna Jumps
By Miss Alli | Season 8 | Episode 3 | Aired on 02.11.2004
Anyway, Jeff asks what's going on, and Jenna says, "Wait." She goes on: "Due to someone who's very ill at home right now that's getting worse, I need to pull myself out of the game and be there." Jeff looks at her. She says she loves the game, but that her priority is her family, and that it "doesn't make any sense" for her to stay. You can see that her hand is shaking when she puts it up to her forehead. Jeff asks if she's talking about her mom, and she says she is. She says again that "things have gotten a little worse, quickly." Jeff says that she's talking as if she's getting information about things, and she insists she isn't, which I suspect is a big fat lie. She insists she just got "a feeling" that something was up. Yeah, right. A feeling of somebody whispering in her ear. I mean, she said it twice, that things were getting worse, and the second time, she said they were getting worse "quickly." And as we're going to see in about five minutes, her mom died eight days after this, after a twelve-year cancer bout. Vibe, schmibe. My money is on a scenario in which somebody -- whether they were supposed to or not -- took pity on her and told her that she might want to take a powder if she wanted to make it home before Mom died. Jenna also says, "I made a bad judgment call. I shouldn't have came [sic, ow]. I thought that I could do it and she would want me to, and I was wrong, I should be there in case something happens."
For whatever reason, Jeff decides to poll the rest of the castaways, including people who aren't even on Jenna's tribe, about what they think of her decision. Alicia takes the opportunity to point out haughtily that she would never have some in the first place. Kathy looks over at Alicia, like, "Step off, Pushyface," and says, "Jenna admits her mistake." ["See, I would totally think that privately -- and do think that, by the way -- but I would never say so to Jenna's face when she was in the process of crying." -- Wing Chun] Amber, all crying and stuff, says she feels really bad for Jenna, and asks to give her a hug. Permission to hug granted. Hugging ensues. Jeff then pushes the issue with Jenna as to whether she's leaving because the conditions are too difficult. She insists that she could handle it, just like she did before, so that's not the issue. And this, too, I'm sort of inclined to believe, because the conditions have gotten much better over the last couple of days. They have better shelter now, they have fire and water -- if she had left back during the really desperate part when everybody was really extra-deprived, I'd be more inclined to think she was just flaking out, but I think now, the conditions aren't much worse than they were in the Amazon. There's also something about the way she says, "I need to be there, sitting by her bed, whether she's awake or not" that makes me think Jenna's given it a fair amount of specific thought, as far as whether, if Mom won't know anyway, she really needs to go. Jeff asks Boston Rob what he thinks. "I don't think it's right to even [sic] question her motives," he says. "We don't know what she's thinking, or how she's feeling. I'm not one to get emotional, and I know inside right now, I feel butterflies. [Butterflies?] So I say we just support her decision and go from here." Jeff asks Rupert for his view. "I feel bad for her," he says. "but, you know, to quit...." He shakes his head. "It's a hard decision." Right. That's definitely what Jenna should be thinking about. Don't go home to Mom, because you'll be a quitter. As if you ever could, or ever should, weigh those two things against each other. Now, time for the bizarre insights of Big Tom: "Before I left, I told my family, I made a commitment. I was comin' here, not stayin' home. If they all got killed in a car wreck, don't call me. I'll be there after it's over. Now, I made that decision for Big Tom, and a lot of people are different than Big Tom." Also, your family already being dead in a car wreck is "different than" somebody having cancer and you having a week left if you want to see them. Tom's responding to a question about a situation in which there is something you can do by talking about a situation in which there is nothing you can do, so the comparison seems totally inapt to me. Still, I appreciated that he allowed for the fact that everybody might make this kind of decision differently.
Jeff tries to wrap it up by saying that he doesn't think anybody's judging Jenna, they're just saying "here's what I would have done." Actually, not a damn one of them answered what they would have done in this situation. All of the tongue-clickers either said nothing about what they would have done (Rupert) or said what they would have done either at a different stage (Alicia) or on a different set of facts (Tom). Jeff explains that Chapera and Saboga get off easy, because they avoid tribal council, while Mogo Mogo will be down a person. Jeff then suggests that they should still have some kind of a symbolic tribal council to get rid of Jenna, and he asks her if she'll hang around that long, which I think is a really ass question. I mean, if you believe she's flaking out because it's too hard, why is she going to hang around so that Jeff can guilt her some more? And if you believe she's genuinely leaving because of Mom, she's certainly not going to sit around so they can get a shot of her torch being snuffed or whatever. It's just dumb, and I was glad she said no. "Fair enough," Jeff says somewhat disapprovingly. "Let's bring in a boat!"