Episode Report Card Miss Alli: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Rubbing Out of Amazon Rob
By Miss Alli | Season 8 | Episode 4 | Aired on 02.18.2004
Back at Chapera, they're all excited about the prospect of cleanliness. Big Tom has carried the toilet back by wearing it over his head, which does introduce a rare element of physical comedy. "I'm willing to bet it's not the first time Big Tom's had his head in the toilet," B-Rob interviews. Heh. They all bathe in the ocean, washing with real soap and everything. Well, at least with real Herbal Essence Body Wash. I'm not sure I think body wash is really up to the challenge, and I have to think I would have wanted to start with something a little more aggressive in that situation, like a nice bar of Coast, but at least now they'll all smell like scented candles for a few hours. Well, grime and scented candles. B-Rob bathes Amber as he voices over that they were worried that this would make the tribe "get the wrong idea" (what "the wrong idea" is, I'm not sure, considering that they actually seem concerned that the tribe will get exactly "the right idea"), but in the end, he just decided to go with it, apparently, because there he is, scrubbing her nekkid back. He is many things, but "crafty" is not so much one of them.
The next order of business is pursuing the rice clue. The clue's references to a place they go every day "to find out what's in store" appears to lead them to their treemail box, so they all tromp out there. The clue then seems to suggest they go "ten paces" back from the mailbox and find the key buried in a "shallow grave." I'm sorry, "shallow grave"? What kind of a Stephen King treasure hunt is this? Their first efforts at finding the buried key don't go especially well, and discussion turns to the actual size of a "pace." "My pace is diff'rent than a midget's pace," Big Tom offers in an interview. Not only that, but I suspect Big Tom himself has several different paces, from "stone cold sober" to "adversely affected by a pint of moonshine." A-Rob explains that searching for the key turned out to be sort of "'the search for the Holy Grail' meets 'the opening of Al Capone's safe.'" He decides that perhaps they're going the wrong way from the mailbox, so he winds up taking ten paces the other way, which lands him right in the middle of the sandy beach, where he begins to dig. He vows that he will "dig up this whole entire beach," as a dubious B-Rob and Amber observe. B-Rob derisively explains that this looked like A-Rob was "building a friggin' sandcastle." The B-Rob/A-Rob battle of wills ends when it turns out that B-Rob was right all along, and it's in the woods, not out on the beach. A dejected A-Rob watches miserably as B-Rob collects the congratulations. When they open the rice crate, not only does it contain rice, but it also contains whiskey. Big Tom interviews that eating rice is just like "gas in the tank." "I don't know how anybody's going to stop us at this point," Alicia says. "We're so far ahead of the other tribes now, it's insane. I feel sorry for 'em -- not." And if you don't recognize that as the tempting of fate in a manner that never goes unpunished, it is safe to say that you have never watched a reality television show in all your life. If there's one thing that is always punished, it is smugness.