Episode Report Card Sara M: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Waterloo
By Sara M | Season 19 | Episode 15 | Aired on 12.20.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Brett manages to win another immunity challenge, forcing Li'l Russell to have to choose between Jaison, who sucks at challenges and thus won't help him beat Brett but is beatable in the jury, and Mick, who also sucks at challenges but everyone thinks he's really strong and is a potential jury threat. Li'l Russell makes promises to both of them before ultimately choosing to get rid of Jaison. No, Mick and Jaison did not attempt to team up with Brett to get rid of Li'l Russell. No scheming whatsoever happened aside from Li'l Russell's. Jaison is angry at being betrayed by his alliancemate, but it's his own fault and he was boring, so good riddance to him. After the filler torch walk of the fallen contestants, we head into the final challenge, where the contestants must balance a wooden figure on an increasingly long pole. "Challenge threat" Mick is the first to go, followed by Natalie. So it's Li'l Russell against Brett at the end. Though Li'l Russell comes close to losing his figure more than once (and, if you look carefully at the footage, has one hand ABOVE the boundary mark… not sure what the explanation for that is), Brett's figure falls first and Li'l Russell wins immunity.
Back on the beach, Brett does absolutely no scrambling to stay in the game. Li'l Russell promises to take Brett to the Final 3 even though he has no intention of following through with it and Brett is voted out. The next morning, Mick and Natalie try to enjoy their breakfast while Li'l Russell goes on and on about how he's going to win a million dollars and rehearsing his jury speech in front of them and saying "may the best man win." At the Final Tribal Council, Shambo openly supports Li'l Russell while the others hate Mick, hate or love Natalie, and don't give Li'l Russell the respect he clearly thinks he deserves. In the end, Li'l Russell's self-proclaimed amazingness is only good for two votes. The rest go to Natalie, and Li'l Russell spends the rest of the reunion show crying about how the best woman won.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's almost over! Li'l Russell's reign of camera time will soon end! Probst recaps the season thus far, giving credit for everything to Li'l Russell, whether he had anything to do with it or not. At least he also acknowledges that Li'l Russell's sock-burning "strategy" might have had something to do with Foa Foa's "spectacular failure" at challenges. Then we watch the other Russell die, the merge feast, and Natalie actually gets a wee bit of credit for Erik's ouster before Li'l Russell is held responsible for everything else. Oh, and then we finally mention Brett, "who had been virtually unheard of the entire game," as Probst says (as if that's Brett's fault and not that of the editors who couldn't be bothered to try to give the contestants equal time or the casting lady who insists on putting the most boring people in the world on these shows), before emerging from invisibility to win two immunity challenges in a row.
After three minutes of nature footage, we've filled eight minutes of show and it can finally, actually begin. With Li'l Russell, of course. He wakes his sleeping tribemates up with some treemail he found when he was no doubt looking for a hidden super special secret secret immunity idol. There's an immunity challenge today, which Jaison is not pleased, about since he apparently spent last night doing a lot of unpleasant pooping. And thus we see the downside of reward challenge wins. Li'l Russell complains that he's the only person who appears to be focused on winning, while everyone else sleeps or complains. Or in Jaison's case, both. At this rate, he says, they'll never beat Brett in an immunity challenge. He laments that he's stuck in an alliance with a "bunch of misfits." Yes, a doctor, a lawyer, and a beautiful Southern blonde are misfits, while the Billy Barty lookalike with a missing front tooth and crop circle patterns in his beard is not. "I should be here with superstars," he adds, not realizing that if he was in the game with people who really knew how to play it, he'd have been gone a long time ago. Also, NEXT SEASON SPOILER ALERT.
Mick and Jaison talk about how Natalie is going home next if Brett wins today, although Mick wonders if Li'l Russell will be able to vote his closest ally out. "I think Russell'd have an easier time doing a lot of things than you'd think," Jaison says. Well, I'm sure those words won't come back to haunt him or anything. Jaison interviews that he's worried about Brett and his "immunity run like we've never seen." It's just two wins in a row, Jaison. It's not that impressive. Well, maybe it is when you're on Foa Foa.