Episode Report Card Sara M: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Lost Puppy Dog
By Sara M | Season 16 | Episode 8 | Aired on 04.03.2008
James and Parvati (who has a brown ring around her mouth for some reason. Did they get chocolate milk in a reward challenge I didn't see?) complain about the Airai beach. They are always complaining about that beach. It must really suck compared to Malakal, which isn't really fair to the contestants. Even the ocean hates the Airai beach, as James points out they while they used to have calm water at Malakal, Airai has choppy seas too dangerous to boat in. "Popeye wouldn't go in that. You would die! Jacques Costeau would be like, 'damn!'" James cracks me up. "This is where they bring the criminals," James says of the Airai coast. Then James gets down to strategizing, worrying that if Alexis and Natalie get too close to the merge, Eliza and Ami will swoop in and ally with them, and then Parvati, James, Ozzy, and Amanda's alliance will be in trouble. Parvati tells us that they'll have to pull in more people if they want to stay in the game. After a shot of a symbolic spider weaving its web, Parvati goes to Natalie and says that she and James want to ally with Natalie and Alexis. Natalie agrees to this. I can't believe Eliza didn't approach her earlier. Maybe she did and we didn't see it. I hope so, for Eliza's sake. Love you, Eliza! Parvati continues that once the merge happens, the big guys (Ozzy and James are mentioned. Oddly, neither Erik nor Jason are) will get voted out quickly, leaving Parvati, Amanda, Alexis, and Natalie in the Final Four. Parvati tells us she likes James and Ozzy, but knows it'll be impossible to go against them in the end. She'd rather go against Natalie and Alexis. From calling Jason a loser to doing some actual strategizing, Parvati kind of rules this week.
Eliza and Jason are spending a lot of time together, and discover some treemail or whatever they're calling it these days. It instructs the team to pick one player on Malakal to sit out today's challenge and go to Exile Island. That player will then get individual immunity from tribal council if his team loses today's challenge. Eliza is shocked to see there's a tribal council tonight, while Jason figures out from the Malakal member names on the paper that Tracy was voted out last night and thus displays mental abilities I didn't know he had. Eliza tells us what we just saw, and then Jason wonders who on their tribe will get the immunity.
That's our cue to go to Malakal, where Amanda reads the clue that says today's challenge will involve balancing and that the winning team probably gets food and no tribal council. They wonder who to choose to sit out. "Whoever's their best balancer," Ami says. That would be the guy who coaches gymnastics, right? Right? Meanwhile, Erik hopes against hope that he'll be the one picked by Airai because immunity is his only chance to stay in the game right now. Well, Erik, I guess that's what happens when you let the "Fans" get picked off, one by one, without doing anything to stop it, and you yourself are also a "Fan."