Episode Report Card Miss Alli: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Cirie-ous Problems
By Miss Alli | Season 16 | Episode 3 | Aired on 02.20.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Mikey B starts the week off all, "Oooookay," trying to explain to Joel that there was no need for a big power play against him when he was trying to accomplish the same thing Joel was trying to accomplish, but Joel (who is increasingly creepy, to say the least) has convinced himself that he has awakened the delusional Mikey with a baseball bat to the head. No, that's really what he says.
Over at Malakal, Jonathan and Cirie are competing to be first to break my heart by being way less cool than they used to be, because he continues to be blinded by his hate of Parvati to the point where every discussion becomes about getting rid of her, while Cirie is taking her "swing vote" status to an extreme while apparently failing to recognize the extreme danger she places herself in -- both now and in the future -- by making it obvious that her vote is for sale. Despite the fact that Cirie knows, and says, that people had better beg and plead for her vote, she somehow decides to believe it when Amanda and Parvati swear that they're tooootally going to F3 together.
A reward challenge goes Malakal's way, sending Kathy to Exile Island -- again. This time, she's with Ami, who can't figure out the clues to the idol as Kathy and Cirie easily did. Ha! So much for Ami's "smart cookie" posturing. After Airai spends a horrible night waiting out a storm -- unfortunately, this tribe of "superfans" are the worst at sheltering and caring for themselves since Rupert dug his All-Stars tribe into a hole -- they pull out a victory in the immunity challenge, sending Malakal to tribal council. Jonathan's specialty is not diplomacy when cornered, so he comes on sort of strong with Cirie, who acts defensive and self-important in response, and I kind of don't like either of them in this particular exchange, so my little heart is broken.
STOP HAVING ALL-STAR SEASONS OF THINGS THAT RUIN PEOPLE I LIKE.
In the end, Cirie declares that she's voting for Yau-Man no matter what (based, apparently, on his being a big threat), and for some reason, everyone seems to think that going against Cirie is suicide, so the couples and Cirie (and a self-preserving Eliza) get rid of Yau-Man, while Jonathan and Yau-Man vote for Parvati and Ami pulls her usual "I will be unique" bullshit and votes for Cirie, irrelevantly. This season is so bad. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Gimme Shelter, But Not With You: Airai (the tribe of non-fire-making, outdoor-incompetent "superfans" who apparently thought it would be more like one of those island adventures on Days Of Our Lives where the tendency for provisions to magically appear is such that you can wash ashore and into a cave without losing your diaphragm (hey, it's a long story) split into two embittered subgroups, with Chet, Kathy, and Tracy representing dinosaurs and fossils on one side, and everybody else representing youth and newsboy caps on the other side. Or so it seemed, until Mikey B explained how to make sure they avoided any unexpected problems with the idol. His plan made sense -- a little too much sense, Joel thought. Can't have that, so Joel had Mikey's close ally Mary voted out instead, just to reduce the size of Joel's own majority and make it less likely that he can successfully get rid of everyone who currently despises him before the merge. Clap. Clap. Clap. Over at Malakal, "favorites" Ozzy and Amanda got down to some cranium-swallowing make-out action, while Parvati and James seemed well on their way to doing the same. Hey, don't judge; people have needs. Screen time, for instance. Jonathan, Yau-Man, Ami, and Eliza got together in an alliance that seemed weirdly unstable in some way, and I'm not just saying that in retrospect. Cirie emerged as a possible swing vote. Chet did not make any friends for himself at the immunity challenge by strolling out of the water like he was not at all late to an appointment he kind of didn't want to go to anyway. Who will be voted out...tonight?
As Airai returns from tribal council on Night 6, Mikey interviews that his assumption is that Joel "stuck a knife in [his] back...already." And then he says, "Interesting!" in this sort of funny way that weirdly makes him remind me of one of my friends, and I wonder if I might like him a little bit. Fortunately, Mikey is next seen talking to Joel about how Joel is risking winding up in a group with "four girls and a kid [shot of Erik]. And...Chet is included as a girl." Whew! Now I know I don't like him, so that takes care of that, at least. I hate cognitive dissonance, so now I can be at peace with my opinion of his ticket-stub tattoos. Mikey tells us that Joel is currently playing a "long game" as opposed to a "short game." I'm not sure Joel is playing either one. I think Joel is playing a "big man make big move; smart people scary; UUUUNNGGGHH" game. Mikey tells us that it's idiotic not to play it to keep the team strong until the merge. Of course, that's only true if you think your team will stick together post-merge. And since Mikey's concluded that Chet, Kathy, and Tracy are "all useless" (by which he means: "girls"), you would logically get rid of them, not the obviously very challenge-oriented...Mary. Joel smugly tells us that Mikey "thinks he's got all the answers" (which: pot/kettle), and says that Mikey believes he has the whole tribe "in his pocket." Yeah. Yeah, that's it exactly, genius. In a night-vision interview more scary than most, Joel says, "I would really, really like to see the look on his face when the baseball bat comes swingin' up on him and wakes him up to the reality that he doesn't have this tribe in his pocket." So...Joel's plan involves the element of surprise and a baseball bat. So this season will be a little different, because sometimes fire represents life, and sometimes AVOIDING DEATH BY BLUDGEONING represents life.
Credits. It seems fitting that both the word "fans" and the word "favorites" are thus, with quotation marks.