Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Lydia Makes Her Move
By Miss Alli | Season 11 | Episode 11 | Aired on 11.23.2005
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.After last week's cracking of the Big Six, large fractures appear in the form of one of those stupid popularity-contest challenges that people are never intelligent enough not to take to heart. When Lydia has the nerve to take out Stephenie on the theory that Stephenie has already honked down a lot of food for someone who rarely wins anything for herself, Steph gets pissed off and decides that Lydia is Out Of The Alliance. OUT! Gary and Danni see a possibility of using all this cracking against the Big Six, but rather stupidly, they alienate Steph and try to suck up to Rafe, which is a losing proposition from the start. When Rafe edges Gary for immunity during the other dumb sort of challenge featured this week (Remember The Story Jeff Told You), Gary has no more miracle passes to throw, and he gets the boot. The final verdict is that Rafe and Cindy's stock rises after they bond on the reward, Judd's stock continues to drop after Gary calls out his lie about the idol clue, and Steph proves that, as smart a player as she wants to be, she hasn't learned to keep her mouth shut when she's dealing with people who are all going to be on the jury someday, even in her best-case scenario. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Losing One's Shit 1, Jamie 0: Jamie began to go slightly cuckoo as he wondered aloud why everyone was lying and backstabbing and why there were cartoon birds flying in and out of his field of vision. Lydia cost her team the victory in a reward challenge, and Jeff made sure that everyone noticed. Gary and Danni took advantage of reward time with Judd and Steph to try on hospital pajamas and argue in favor of ousting the increasingly annoying Jamie. Judd wasn't receptive, but Steph sort of was. After Jamie continued to annoy Rafe with his constant need for reassurance to the point where Rafe feared that leaf-based pinochle was inevitable, Rafe talked to Lydia and Steph, and ultimately, the booting of Jamie was accomplished. Jamie was all, "BLINDSIDED! NICE!" in an effort to pretend he loved being booted more than anything short of a massage from a Vegas showgirl, but the person most significantly blindsided was Judd, who had no idea the alliance had a crack in it until it had all already happened. Seven left. Can the Big Five stay together, or can Gary "Landscapers Do It With A Hoe" Hogeboom find another way to slip the noose?
Credits. Props to the Eagle-Eyed Forum Poster who pointed out to me that of all the weird shots in the credits, perhaps the weirdest one is the yellow mask dancing around in what was probably a Burnett-created fervor. "Hold this up to your face and dance, dance, dance!" It's amazing what people will do to get on television.
It is Night 27 at Xhakum, and the night-vision cameras are out in full force. The tribe returns, with Danni muttering a noncommittal "That was some crazy shenanigans." I fully support the use of the term "shenanigans" (not to mention shenanigans themselves), although I'm not sure it applies here. Steph asks Judd if he's all right following that unpleasant surprise, because she's all about caring. Judd does his usual subtle job of lying, sputtering about how he's perfectly fine and saying, "I'm fine, man, I just, I don't know what to say, man, I wish somebody would've [sic] told me, man, I don't know." I think being announced by Judd when visiting someone at the building where he is a doorman would take a very long time. ("Somebody's, you know, man, down here to see you, man, and I, man, I think the name is, like, whatever, man, I wish they'd tell me, man, because I could let them up. Man.") Steph tells Judd that, while they all wanted to tell him, they didn't think it was a good idea to put him in the position of knowing -- presumably because it would make him decide whether to tell Jamie. It's a lie, this explanation, because they really just didn't want him to gum up the works, which he would have. But it's reasonably credible, so tiny props to Steph for that. In an interview, Judd explained his total shock that Jamie was voted out ("man"), and that the alliance went a little crazy, so yes, he was angry ("man"). And from now on, he will wonder what's going on ("man"). (All "man"s in original.)