Episode Report Card Sara M: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Tempura Battered
By Sara M | Season 18 | Episode 2 | Aired on 02.19.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Sandy gets much less airtime this week, as the focus switches to Tempura. Sierra decides the hidden idol might not be such a bad thing after all and recruits Brandon to help her find it. I thought she was using him as her lookout while she dug around the beach, but no one's on the lookout when Debbie comes running up and sees the giant hole they dug in the beach. Seriously, it was a huge hole. Did they really think the producers buried the next clue twenty feet deep? Please. Fortunately, Debbie is a moron and swallows Sierra's story that they're building a bonfire pit. Unfortunately, they're morons, too, so they don't find the idol after all of that.
The reward/immunity challenge involves basketball and wrestling. Tempura takes an early lead, only for Jalapeño to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, thanks to an unlikely basket from the nerdy Jew from New York City. Meanwhile, Brandon is sent to Exile "Island" and gets to pick a Jalapeño to come with him. He picks Taj. At Exile, they're presented with two urns. Taj's is empty, but Brandon's has a secret clue to the immunity idol. It doesn't make any sense to him, though, so he ends up showing it to Taj and they realize the idol is actually hidden somewhere in their respective camps. Brandon returns to Tempura in time for the scheming to start, as Candace realizes that Douche is a douche and starts plotting to vote him out ASAP. But stupid Debbie runs off to tell Douche about the plan and he's able to convince everyone to vote for Candace instead of Sierra with the stupid poison apple imagery someone just has to employ every freaking season. If only Candace had let Douche lick her face, she might have lasted a bit longer.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The Jalapeños return to camp sans Carolina. Sydney (only one person wrote to tell me I got her name wrong last week, which means she's probably just as invisible to most of you as she was to me) says voting Carolina out was hard, but no one seems to care very much because they have fire. Sandy's feeling pretty good about herself as she interviews that Carolina "played her cards terribly wrong," giving Sandy at least three more days in the game. I hope Sandy doesn't think she played her own cards right, because she didn't. She just played them slightly less bad. Also, she has dirt all around her mouth. She says she wants to win this game and "as long as I'm here, I can win it." That's like saying "the team that wins is the one that scores the most points." Sandy makes things even more awkward by thanking her tribemates for "letting" her stay with them for a few more days. Spencer interviews that Sandy will be the next to go.
And now it's morning at Jalapeño. The tribe cooks up some gourds, but it's not enough for Joe. He wants protein. And he's going to get it from termites because he watches way too much Man Vs. Wild. It's only been four days! That's not nearly enough time for me to get hungry enough to eat a freaking bug that probably uses up more energy to catch than it provides. Joe, Stephen, Spencer, and Sandy find a termite mound. Sandy, always slow on the uptake, sees the bugs and says "ew, what's all them? Termites?" What part of "we're looking for termites" didn't she understand? Spencer interviews that he's a growing boy used to eating what he wants when he wants it. But now he has to eat termites, which he does. One with wings. Joe rolls the mound over to reveal a HUGE grub. Like, it's the length of my middle finger and twice as thick. Sandy tries to grab it "for fishing," because she still doesn't understand the concept of what they're doing there. Ugh, there's a close-up of the grub. I'm glad I don't have an HDTV. Is that the termite queen or just some massive grub that happened to be hanging out with the termites? And if it is just a grub, how big is the bug it's supposed to mature into?? By this time, more tribe members have arrived to watch as Spencer, Stephen, and Joe split the grub three ways. Stephen gets stuck with the butt end of the grub and Sydney interviews that she wasn't about to try the "worm" after seeing the look on Stephen's face when he ate it. There also wasn't any left for Sydney to try if she had wanted some, but whatever. Keep pretending you were included, Syd. She says she'll eat a grub at a challenge if she has to, but not as a meal. Oh, Sydney -- gross food challenges are so ten seasons ago. Which is a shame.