Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Dumb Luck
By Miss Alli | Season 14 | Episode 9 | Aired on 04.11.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Both tribes receive clues telling them to leave almost everything behind and head for Exile Island, and they correctly figure out that this means a merge. What they don't figure out is that when they follow the directions telling them that they're going back to live at Couch Camp (yay!), they'll find that it has been robbed of its couch and everything else that made it fancy (boo!). So it's back to the survivalist drawing board, and a lot of these people are pretty spoiled at this point, so it's going to be interesting. The boys who got stranded at Ravu have named themselves the Four Horsemen, and they're even including "Dreamz." But when Mookie decides that the last Horseman needs to know about the immunity idol, Alex and Edgardo are not too happy. Mookie and "Dreamz" are very nervous about Alex and Edgardo's plan to bring Stacy into the fold, because they know how many three are and how many two are, and they know who's who. It looks like Stacy is lined up for the boot until the very saddest thing to ever happen happens. When the tribe gets to the immunity challenge, they find out that they're basically un-merging for this challenge, and Earl, Yau Man, Cassandra, Boo, and Edgardo are randomly picked to go up against Alex, Mookie, "Dreamz," Stacy, and Sacrificial Michelle. Because there's not time to think, Earl doesn't have time to figure out that he needs to throw this challenge and toss Edgardo, so his group wins the challenge, putting a great big target right on Michelle. Michelle has no time to try to save herself, owing to the additional twist of a trip straight from the challenge to tribal council. Michelle can do nothing but watch herself get voted out, and it really stinks, because she was playing a hell of a game. Poor Michelle. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously: Yau Man dug up the immunity idol and gave new meaning to "kissing the turtle." Then, over at Ravu, Mookie, Alex, and Edgardo also dug up an idol, of which Mookie took custody. They chose not to tell "Dreamz" or Lisi, convinced that the idol was nothing without the element of surprise. Lisi was pretty sure that this hadn't happened. (Those in charge of editing the previouslys even insert Lisi saying her little getting-up-early, cat-like-me thing in, despite the fact that its plot significance is limited, because it's the funniest thing to happen on the show all season.) Lisi went bazoo on Exile Island after her tribe lost on Fiji Dance Fever, and by the time she got home and endured another immunity challenge loss (mostly at the hands of Yau Man), she was ready to go home. Of course, in true Wait Wait Don't Boot Me fashion, she changed her mind at the last second and wanted to stay. By then, however, the opportunity to get rid of her smelled much too delicious, and Lisi was sent home by every one of the guys in her tribe. Fortunately, she won't have to get up early in the morning anymore, because what she's on now isn't that kind of jury duty.
We return to Ravu, a.k.a. Ouch Camp, on Day 22. Edgardo, Mookie, and Alex are hanging around the fire, and Edgardo questions Mookie about the location of the idol. Mookie assures Edgardo that he has the idol in his pocket. And he means that both literally and figuratively, as we learn when Mookie interviews, "The idol I have in my pocket is actually for..." And it's like he's going to say it's for all the guys, but then he goes the other way at the last minute and grins that he's "selfish," and he admits it. The idol is his, not theirs. He does claim that if self-interest means cooperating with an alliance to go farther, that's okay, too, so it's not like he's against the other guys in his alliance; he's just not particularly with them. I was very relieved that Mookie almost immediately started talking about the idol in this really unsentimental way, because if he'd been all "it's for the group, man," that would have been very annoying and disingenuous. Back at the camp powwow, however, Mookie promises the other guys that he would never betray them. And then he adds: "Ever." Good one! That's how they'll know you're telling the truth.
Just then, "Dreamz" returns with an armload of pineapples and a head full of illusions ripe for the shattering. Alex interviews that the reason they aren't telling "Dreamz" about the idol is less that they don't want him to know, and more that, they don't want other people, particularly Cassandra, to know. I think that in their little Stand By Me arrangement, "Dreamz" is the Vern. Unfortunately, the rest of them are arguably all the Teddy. The guys all sit around having a chat about being in the top ten, and then about trying to get to the top four, and you can tell that among other things, this group of guys has, like, nothing to talk about at this point. "Glad we got this far." "Hope we get farther." "Me too." "Yeah." This must be what Toastmasters is like.