Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Removal Of Rudy
By Miss Alli | Season 8 | Episode 2 | Aired on 02.04.2004
After a commercial, sad cello music accompanies us back to Loser Beach, a.k.a. Camp Saboga. Jerri says to the team that she thinks they played stronger, just not smarter. "It was so frantic, I wanted to get goin' already," Ethan says. See? That's why they needed a calm leader saying, "Get on the top of the boat." Heh. Jenna points out that even after they got going, they sank again once he and Jerri climbed in. Ethan calls it "one stupid mistake," but I think it was really more a series of stupid mistakes, starting and ending with Ethan. The interesting thing is that Mogo Mogo did badly enough that I think Saboga, had they seen what Chapera did and just copied them, could have still pulled it out. I mean, had they not panicked when they did it wrong the first time, there was still time to recover. As Rupert sharpens what I guess is going to be the fishing spear, Jerri interviews that this challenge was "a huge letdown," and that each of them is blaming himself or herself for part of it.
Over a shot of a turkey (?), we hear the beginning of Rupert and Jenna's stroll, in which Rupert says he wanted to smack Ethan for sitting in the boat when they were trying to bail. Rupert points out the stupidity of "pushing [the boat] down and bailing." Jenna interviews that the problem is that Ethan "gets way too excited at challenges." Yup. With the thrown bucket, and the being in the boat, and the other problems, that's clearly about mental errors, because you know the guy's physically strong. Jenna gives Ethan all the credit for being such an asset to the team at the beginning of the challenge, but says that he wound up hurting them at the end. Which he did, after all. Ethan, meanwhile, has a new strategy for staying around, and he goes off to see if he can catch a fish. In an interview, Ethan says that based on the Tina boot, he thinks he's obviously the most likely to go. He says that the fishing was indeed an attempt to get people to want to keep him. Furthermore, he points out that "[i]f they, or we, expect to win any more challenges, Rudy has to go home." Which is probably true, as much as I hate to admit the veracity of anything this dink has to say, and even though today's challenge might have actually gone better with a little more Rudy and a little less Ethan.
Jenna has a talk with Rupert to the same effect -- that they don't have a choice but to vote for Rudy. Rupert is very torn, because he knows the situation, but he also already made an agreement. He voices over that Rudy is a "hero," and "deserves to be" there. He tears up talking about how much he admires Rudy for being able to hang in at seventy-five, when Rupert himself struggles with the conditions, and I say amen to that. Things get fragile when you get older, and I indeed think Rudy kicks huge amounts of ass for even wanting to come out and do this. When I'm seventy-five, I don't anticipate brain parasites and thirty-year-old dingbats being among my daily battles, I will tell you that much. ["I'm fine not dealing with those things already, at age twenty-nine." -- Wing Chun] Rupert explains to the girls how he and Rudy befriended each other on the first day. "I know what you're saying," Jenna says. "I adore him. But...we're losing, bad." Jerri interviews that although they're talking about voting Rudy out, she feels bad, because "he's tough as nails." She goes on: "He never once complained about anything out here. Not once." Rupert tells them that he'd rather vote himself out than write Rudy's name. Jenna gives Rupert an out, and asks him if he'd rather vote for Ethan. I think this was very smart of her, even though I don't think of her as much for strategy, because if she kept insisting that he needed to vote for Rudy, Rupert would have been more likely to go off with Rudy and Ethan and get rid of, say, her. By doing this, Jenna keeps Rupert with her, even if he's not going to vote with her on this occasion. "I'm not writing Rudy's name down," Rupert interviews.