Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sponge Bath, Flare Pants
By Miss Alli | Season 7 | Episode 12 | Aired on 12.03.2003
Sandra and Christa take a dip in the water, and Sandra says that she doesn't believe that Jon and Burton are really going to give up Lill, who's so loyal to them. Sandra interviews that despite Jon's snakelike qualities, Christa has chosen to believe that he's telling them the truth about taking them to the end, because he swore on Dead Old Granny Fairplay. Christa gives another lengthy interview to the effect that "lying is the way to go," and how it's all dirty, and blah dee blah, who cares, really? It's a game. There's lying. There's cheating. There's dirt. Let's move on.
Clouds go all shifty, and then it's time to get our asses to tribal council at last. The jury files in, featuring Tijuana, looking pretty spiffy in her black top and jeans. You'll be shocked to hear that Rupert is glaring. Jeff starts in this week with a question to Jon about whether the game is friendly or mean or competitive or what. Jon describes it as "hope-filled," saying that you just have to hope that the people you've chosen to make your allies aren't lying, and that you're "carrying the right person to the end." Jeff asks whether the game gives a license to lie and cheat, and Burton correctly says that lying to some degree about what you're doing with strategy is part of the game. "It's just like any competitive game," he says. "You're trying to fake out the other team." Jeff asks Christa if she's lied, and she says she's lied some, but not egregiously. He then asks Sandra whom she'd hate to face in the final two, and Sandra says Lill, because everyone loved her and she would win. Jeff asks Lill whether being universally loved makes her worried in this regard. (Everyone I watched this episode with, incidentally, was going, "Wait, who in the hell loves Lill?," but you sort of have to go with it.) She says it worries her to think that, and that she doesn't think the jury should just go with who's "nice." There's also strategy, as Lill says, not that she's ever employed any herself.
Jeff asks Christa why she shouldn't be voted off. She says that she's rubbed so many people the wrong way that she may not be much of a threat in a final two scenario. It's so refreshing when people can come right out and say, "Everyone hates me! That's my secret weapon!" Jeff asks Jon whether he trusts his relationships in the game. Jon says he does. Sandra is asked the same thing, and says yes. Christa? Yes. Lill? Yes. Burton? Yes. Darrah? Yes. Jeff calls them out on the preposterousness of the fact that they all know everyone lies in the game, but they all claim to trust their alliances. Jeff has figured out that these people are not rocket scientists, I fear. As have the many rocket scientists who are sitting at home not in line to win a million dollars. It actually makes the castaways all laugh a little. Darrah is asked whether she wants to surrender immunity, and she unsurprisingly says no. It's voting time. Hang on to your buffs.