Episode Report Card Miss Alli: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Finish That Was Weirdly Satisfying
By Miss Alli | Season 13 | Episode 14 | Aired on 12.16.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.THIS NEVER HAPPENS. Seriously, the person I'm rooting for never wins. But this time, he did. See, we start out with five people, and Adam doesn't win immunity some more. Although he comes up with a surprisingly lucid argument for the rest of the Aitus to take out the hidden idol before F4, they don't go for it, so Adam goes home uneventfully. And weirdly, it seems like the final four is actually made up of people who genuinely like each other, not who kind of like each other but harbor hidden resentments of all kinds. I think they really like each other. Anyway, the last immunity challenge sees a surprisingly good showing from Sundra, but she can't hold out against the challenge monster, so Ozzy wins again. This means that you can't vote for Ozzy or Yul, so it's just Becky and Sundra. Aitu agrees on a tie, to let the women fight it out at a fire challenge to see who stays. Nobody anticipated, however, that neither of them would be able to make fire. Like, at all. They start out with flint, and after an hour (!), Jeff Probst concludes that neither of them is going to get a fire started, so they move to matches. Anyway, Becky eventually gets a fire going, and Sundra goes home. At the final tribal council, the jury is relatively sane, with the exception of Adam ("You want my vote, trash-talk your friends!"), Candice ("Dance for my vote, monkey!"), and Jonathan, who surprisingly goes into some kind of weird mad-at-everyone routine that we hope is a routine. It doesn't disintegrate into anything ugly, because the final three just kind of won't, but it's also hard to tell what's going to happen. Ultimately, Yul manages the win, by a vote of 5-4, in part because Adam apparently stuck to the plan to vote for Yul if he got rid of Jonathan. It's a stupid way to get a vote, but it's glorious, because Yul is the winner. Lovely, normal, adorable Yul, who thinks that this entire game is just kind of weird, which is what all sane people think. I'm telling you, this never happens. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Why Are You Offended When All We're Trying To Do Is Figure Out Which Race Is The Best?: The contestants were divided into tribes by race, a social experiment that dared you to suggest that you would ever profess to have learned anything from it about how those [blanks] are really good at [blank], or what have you. Jeff Probst rather terrifyingly suggested before the season started that perhaps we would learn a little something about how Hispanic people and Asian people make fire differently, or something. Of course, he also suggested that he had only recently learned that "Korea" is not Korean for "Japan," so he put his own credibility in some doubt. In the end, because life is not an episode of Gilligan's Island, there didn't turn out to be much in the way of offensive stereotypes mixing with survival skills, and we could all at least be grateful for that. After only two episodes of Survivor: George Wallace's Brain, there was a merge into conventional tribes. Producers inserted a twist that meant something for once, as Candice and Jonathan abandoned all the people of color on their tribe and went over to hang with the white people they started out with, leading to accidental and uncomfortable comments about how "maybe it'll be us Caucasians at the end." Which led television pundits wearing my pajamas to be like, "Oh...God."
Little four-person Aitu, which included representation from all the non-white tribes, appeared to be completely doomed (not for that reason, obviously), but it had three secret weapons to pull out. First, it was bonzo at challenges, largely but not exclusively because of Ozzy, the Amphibious Island Dolphin-Monkey Of The Gods. Second, it was bonzo at strategy, largely but not exclusively because of Yul, the Ass-Kicking Nerd Consultant and Full-Time Consensus-Builder. Third, it was relatively nice and pleasant and likable, which suddenly became important when Jonathan "Nanny Nanny Boo Boo" Penner realized that his new post-mutiny Raro tribe was made up entirely of dipshits, and that he wasn't going to win anyway. Seeing a chance to make trouble in the best way, he turned his back on the bullying Heathers who had only recently seen his front, and the entire game shifted. From there, big and powerful Raro bit the dust, one capped tooth at a time, managing to take Jonathan with them before they were done. By the time the game got down to the final five, only Adam remained -- one tall, solid, dense, thick tree against the Aitu four, who became a tribe together six episodes ago and have not lost a single person since. Remarkable. So now, there's just Adam, and there are four people who basically appear to be unobjectionable, and who are presumably going to have to start cutting each other's legs off at some point. One gets the sense they will at least consider using anesthetic or bourbon.