Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Goo Goo Gotchoo
By Sara M | Season 16 | Episode 5 | Aired on 03.05.2008
Over at Airai, the "Favorites" are horrified to see the mess of a camp the "Fans" have "built." Eliza is shocked that they're just sleeping on the sandy beach, which is full of little biting insects. Which is why everyone always makes their shelters on raised platforms. Those sand bugs are, like, torture. They bite and bite and bite, so you can't sleep at all. It's better to sleep on a hard, uneven bamboo floor than the softer sand full of merciless biting bugs. Also, the platform reduces the number of rat encounters. Reduces -- not totally eliminate. "The Airai camp is pretty much a disaster," Eliza tells us. They try to cook their reward, but Eliza notes that the fire pit is too close to the incoming tide. "At Malakal, we had everything. And here, we pretty much have nothing," Eliza says as the camera pans to a mess of pointy sticks that passes for a shelter. I wonder if that's where the challenge people got the idea for that reward challenge obstacle course.
And sure enough, the tide comes in while they're cooking and puts the fire out. Wow. They've been there for twelve days and they STILL haven't figured out how to put a fire in a place where the freaking tide -- which comes in and out TWICE EACH DAY -- won't extinguish it? They so suck. James agrees: "the set-up they were living in, it was terrible. The waters are washing away the fire, you know, I'm amazed that they're still alive, the poor things. They should be dead! I mean, they're a bunch of dingbats." Ha! I kind of love James, even if he keeps thinking people are going to/should die. I guess that kind of thinking is what helped his gravedigging business prosper.
Jonathan tells us that he somehow punctured (!!!) his knee on something in the obstacle course (my guess is a sharp stick in the mud when he was crawling under the branch to grab Cirie's flag, but who knows with that reward challenge? It may well have been tiny evil men throwing poison-tipped spears). He says other people were injured as well, and we see that Parvati's fat lip has become a morbidly obese lip. She must have hit that branch really hard. As the camera weirdly shifts into night vision, the Survivor medics show up, to apparently treat Jonathan in the dark. With needles. And no flashlights as far as I can see. Hmm … I wonder if they moonlight as reward challenge planners. One of them shoots Jonathan up with a local numbing agent, which they have to inject right into the injured site. So it HURTS. I 've had my toe numbed up like that (infected from an ingrown toenail...SEXY!!!) and it was excruciating. Like, to the point where I wondered if removing the nail without anesthetic wouldn't have hurt less. So I don't doubt that Jonathan is having a horrible time of it right now. We get to see the wound, up close and personal, and it is truly a big ol' hole in Jonathan's knee. Deep, too. The medics wash it out and stitch it up while sad, ominous music plays. Jonathan tells us that they gave him three stitches and a warning that the wound could get infected, which would be very bad. "Let's hope it doesn't get worse!" Jonathan says. Okay, I will. ["I almost passed out watching that sequence, dude. Needles into flesh...(thud)." -- Miss Alli]