Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Don't Come Back, Shane
By Miss Alli | Season 12 | Episode 12 | Aired on 05.03.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's Loved Ones Week at Gitanos, and the reward challenge brings out Cirie's husband, Chiclets's mom, Aras's mom, Terry's wife, and the one and only Boston Powers. Who, incidentally, is much too cute to be related to Shane. The challenge is entirely physical (duh), so Terry wins (duh), and he's put in charge of deciding who gets how much time with loved ones. Terry gives himself and Shane the overnight resort visits with wife and son, respectively; he lets Cirie's husband come to camp with her for a while; he lets Aras get a hug from his mom; and Chiclets gets nada, and goes to Exile Island. Rather than just acknowledge that the situation sucks and nobody needs to say otherwise, Terry comes back to camp and declares that Chiclets shouldn't be mad, because it's "just her mom." Aras takes offense, and Terry proceeds to explain to him how all married people know more about what emotional relationships are important than anyone else does, which is why, after all, no marriages ever end. Jerk. There is another immunity challenge, it's physical again, and Terry wins again, which is absolutely mesmerizing, except not at all. Shane wants the Chiclets boot again, but for some of the same reasons that Courtney was removed last week, Cirie and Aras are both thinking that it would be a good time to get rid of Shane, who is cruising to a nobody-likes-you F2 spot if they're not careful. In one of the season's few actual surprising boots, Shane is finally dispatched, separated from his Thinking Seat and wood Blackberry, and reduced to ranting in private. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Cirie-ously: It looked like Chiclets might be on her way out, and then it looked like Aras might be on his way out. But Cirie took note of both Terry and Shane's determination to take Courtney to F2, so she engineered a split-vote -- in which Shane's vote against Chiclets and Terry and Courtney's votes against Aras went to waste, because Cirie, Chiclets, and Aras ganged up on Courtney and sent her off for a hot-oil treatment. Oh, and Terry won a car, but his winning ways were such old hat that they had fungus growing on them. Now, five are left. Who will not make it to the weird extra episode we're getting next week before the finale?
Credits. The long ones! Remember Melinda? I know, it's been a really long time.
Gitanos, Night 30. I hope you're enjoying Bruce's beautiful tribe flag, now that Bruce is off enjoying a barium enema. Shane and Aras are talking in the wake of the surprising-to-Shane Courtney boot, and Aras tells him that he found out Chiclets had planned to vote for him in the original plan that was hatched by Terry, as well. Shane asks Aras how he knew this, and Aras says that Cirie clued him in. Shane interviews that, indeed, at tribal council, he thought that Chiclets was the choice, but it was not to be. Shane confronts Cirie in night-vision cam and asks her what happened. Cirie claims that everything went down really quickly in the ten minutes before they left for tribal council, and that there was no opportunity to talk to Shane, because he was...off somewhere. This what's known as the "You were way up there in the thing" defense, and it's hard to believe that it could work. Cirie interviews that this story is something that she and Aras cooked up ahead of time to try to cover their asses so that Shane wouldn't freak out. Well, so he wouldn't freak out any more than is an ingrained part of his personality.
Shane responds to this by lightly scolding Cirie that she should have "run up" and told him what was happening, but he is happy in announcing to her that the two of them and Aras "have the numbers." Now, they can boot Chiclets next and be done with it. Shane pauses: "You're not trying to pull no fast..." Cirie reassures him that she isn't. Fast? Cirie? No! Shane interviews that F2 with Courtney would have been the "easiest" thing for him. But he's been assured that Chiclets will be out next, so it's all good. Around the fire, he tells the rest of the tribe, "It's nice not to have that moron here running her mouth." And then he uncorks a line that I laughed at in spite of myself: "It couldn't have happened to a loopier broad." There's a lot of truth to that, although it is kind of the pot calling the kettle loopy.
The moon. The sun! Things change so quickly around here. Now, it is Day 31. Aras is resting and staring into the fire: "How calm is this camp?" "Calm," Shane agrees, and then he adds, "I wonder why." Yeah. Thinking Seat/Fake Blackberry Guy wants the others to know that other people were really making camp life feel a little wacky. Terry interviews that last night was his fifth failure to get the numbers to turn in his favor. Not a very good record, strategy-wise. Fewer wins than the Green Bay Packers. You see, Terry thought that all would clearly be well, since he and Chiclets "shook hands" and "looked each other in the eye" about taking Courtney to F3. He feels that because she lied to him, "[Chiclets] is next on the chopping block." And if there's anyone who influences who's next on the chopping block, it's Terry. He waves his wand, and princes become frogs! Worlds are destroyed! "Not my problem anymore," he says coldly, as if he's been protecting Chiclets this entire time up until now. Now, she will feel the wrath of the really, completely, utterly irrelevant!