Last week on Survivor: Susan snitted and Rudy pranced. We learned that Dirk doesn't want to play; he just wants to bang on his Bible all day. The Pagong tribe got down and dirty while a personal flotation device did little to prevent Gervase from almost drowning. Stayfree snarked herself right off the island, leading an exodus of other rats and assorted nasty creatures.
The night vision shots, usually reserved for rodents, show Ramoaner fussing in the tent with wide-open glowing rat-eyes. Apparently, Pagong did not have an easy night in the storm, and Gervase tells us that "everybody was just wet." Which does happen when it rains. Ramoaner, queen of all who enunciate says, "It was. The worst. Night. I've ever. Slept." Gretchen tells us she spent six years in the Air Force Survivor School, and I'm really hoping she doesn't mean six years straight, where she learned to make fires and build shelters. I know B.B. was a buster, but if Gretchen was so well-informed and was truly convinced that building their tent on the beach was a mistake, I don't know why she didn't stand her ground. It's not like any members of the tribe were dying to accommodate B.B. Of course the directors, editors, camera crew, hair and makeup stylists, and caterers all know why she didn't, but they don't choose to share that information with us -- which is exactly what's wrong with shows like this: We can watch fifteen jiggle shots of Richard running down the beach, but we can't get a little clarity. Would that be too much to ask? Gretchen calmly berates Joel for leaving his shovel where it was when he finished digging, and he futilely tries to argue. Just put your damn toys away, Joel, when Mom tells you to. And don't play ball in the house! Gretchen tells the tribe, "You wanna blow me off? Fine. But we gotta organize this. I don't wanna sleep in that tent any more, okay? You can sleep on the beach if you want to. I don't wanna sleep on the beach any more. I don't want to be anti-social but I'm going into the woods." Either Gretchen's really flustered or she's been taking public speaking lessons from Sean. Colleen suggests that they all go together and Jenna, who can make fun out of an enema, announces that it's "so exciting when you get to move to a new place!"
While the team is moving logs around, Gretchen tells us: "If this were, right now, each man for himself, Greg would be the victor. He's relaxed. He's not fighting this. It's not, like, a battle for him." It's a battle for me to have to watch his clown antics, but I guess no one gives a rat's tasty little leg about that, huh? We are then treated to our first shot of Greg, who is barking orders into a phone fashioned from a coconut. He's actually conversing with a pretend-person on the other end of the cocophone. One of the two-year-olds where I volunteer does exactly the same thing with a banana. Greg tells us in a confessional, "The nature phone is really a way that I kinda keep in touch with the greater spirit out here." He then makes matters worse by adding, "You get reception everywhere. You're always in communicado with everything, with everyone. And, uh, you know it's light, it's quick, it's easy and it's relatively inexpensive." ["My money is definitely on Greg in the Who Will Go Crazy and Injure Themselves or Others Pool." -- Toenail] It's also useless and ludicrous and painfully unfunny, but I guess they edited out the part where he said that. And I wish he'd learn the meaning of the phrase and in communicado himself right off the island. The editing in this episode is particularly irritating, because it seems to me that they've just picked members of the tribe staring off into the distance and made it look as if they're responding to Greg's behavior. Gretchen tells us that Greg manipulates the group without them realizing it, and "in his own way he's the leader." God (or Dirk) help them all.
At Tagi, Dirk announces that a "phat, filthy stainless-steel filet knife" has been added to the booty. He thinks he's rollin' with the homies when really he's just pushing a tractor with the farm boys. Richard tells us that Sue made fun of Dirk's swagger, and then we are able to see it for ourselves (because they can't just show us; Richard must translate it, continuing his trial-run to host the season). Dirk says, "Thank you, Susan," and Dirk actually does have balls, even though he chooses not to use them. This must be the week that the editors learned how to express irony by showing contradicting scenarios. Dirk says in a confessional, "The ideas I didn't like were just maybe some of the things that were maybe a little bit tasteless and didn't have much class. I believe that class kind of shows itself and things like…" "Condoms!" Kelly shouts out to the group and explains, "If we had enough condoms and they were different colors that would be so funny." Maybe if you were in seventh grade, and just finished writing your best friend a note on lined paper, which you then folded into a tidy little square and passed on to your neighbor to pass on to your friend. She then adds, "You guys should put little orange thingies on your weenies." Does she think she's Lindsey from The Real World Seattle? And should Rudy really be subjected to such blush-worthy subject matter? I hope he sues for sexual harassment. In his confessional, Dirk says, "That's not very creative; that's just looking on a bathroom-stall wall." The way he said this cracked me up; he sounds so disappointed. Richard suggests they make an arrow in the water from Styrofoam buoys, which seems like a pretty good idea to me, but Sean shoots him down saying, "time, get a fish!" Oh wait, that was last week. Now he says, "They'll float all discombobulated," and that he prefers "something simple but extravagant, like the Rose Bowl." I think he means the parade and not the game. In a confessional Sean says, "I just wish people would, you know, see things my way in terms that I think that what they want is something really spectacular and I think that we could work through the night and build something really spectacular that would ensure us getting the goods." I'm glad Sean speaks in such specifics. Richard cackles, rubs his palms together, and twirls his handlebar mustache when he tells us, "What's happening in my head is: Here's conflict. Here comes the dynamics that suck. Here comes the people that just shout and don't listen. Here comes the negativity and here comes the crap." And here comes the big fat gay man with a spear, so run away all you little fishies everywhere. Richard then tells us that he's "planning something sneaky" and that he knows what the resolution to the conflict would be at home (dragging Sean by his ear up a hill at 4 AM), but that he's planning something different. He says he's trying to ensure that he makes it into the round. As his voice-over says this, we get shots of snickering Sue, giggling Kelly, and sniggling Richard. Do you think these three are planning something? Because I didn't get that at all.
At Pagong, Ramoaner heaves her muscles into rolling some twine. Jenna tells us that Ramoaner isn't pulling her weight, and Greg cryptically says, "The only thing Ramoaner can be is herself." Ramoaner brags to the group about being a "mama's girl," as if that's an excuse not to work. Greg continues: "She has great gifts to be offered; maybe she will, maybe she won't." Hey Greg, Confucius is on the coconut phone; he says, "Stop talking like fortune cookie." Ramoaner lamely says, "I can't do any more than I can do. I'm not gonna, like, try and bust my ass to prove something." Because the show's not about that at all. Gervase is doing his confessional while floating out in an inner tube with a sunhat on. He says, "Every chance she got she was just making it worse," and I wonder when this was filmed, since he's talking about her in the past tense. He then says he tried to pull Ramoaner aside to correct the situation. We zoom in on their conversation and learn that the cliques are bothering her. Ramoaner looks pretty buff against a sunset; I bet her team members were psyched when they first saw her. Now the're just psyched out.
At Tagi Day Eleven, Richard's out in the ocean fixing up the Styrofoam. I'll give him this: He works hard. Or else he's just a camera hog. Over at Pagong, they're dragging brush. Pagong drags a lot of brush. Today Ramoaner feels more like part of the group, and she doesn't know why. Gervase says he wants to win because of "pillows. [He likes] the pillows." Ramoaner carries a log behind her back with one hand while Gretchen struggles to bear the entire weight of the log, plus the weight of Ramoaner's arm, as she holds up the other end. Reminds me of when I pretend to carry stuff with my boyfriend when we move, but really just let him do all the work.
Just Peachy is now hanging out of the side of a little plane with a shit-eating grin on his face. When Peachy comes on-screen, my dogs leave the room. Well, the smart dog leaves the room; the other one walks in two circles, then sits down, then gets up, then walks in two circles, then sits down again. This time Peachy says that the tribe whose distress signal is "most clearly visual" will win the challenge. Earlier, he said the "more creative" signal would get the booty. In my notes I have written, "Stupid asshole." I can't think of a better way to say it now. Kelly yells out, "Da plane! Da plane," when it circles over Tagi Beach, where they've written, "Tagi is Groggy" in the sand. They redeem themselves by donning yellow rain slickers and forming a circle on the beach that looks kind of like a flower. They then count time and raise their arms and legs, and it appears that they're synchronized swimming on dry land, another activity which I'm sure Rudy enjoyed. Actually, I thought this idea was relatively clever, and of course the editing job gives us no idea who to credit. Peachy reads Tagi's message aloud for Dirk and Susan's kin, watching on the farm and in the trailer park.
When the plane flies over Pagong, we see that they're still confused about being at summer camp, instead of on a survivalist game show. They are running around cheering; I'm surprised Jenna didn't request a set of pompoms to go with the spice rack. Greg is begging on his hands and knees, and I'm so sure Colleen is getting tired of seeing that. Ramoaner runs around and looks pretty while waving the team flag. We then see that they've made a giant happy face in the sand and I exclaim, "Pathetic!" which makes my challenged dog Pandora, which does sound a bit like "pathetic," get up and start walking in circles again. After doing another pass over both beaches, Peachy tries to build some suspense by twice telling us that he has "conferred with the pilot and dropmaster" and that they're in agreement. He says, in short, that the Tagi bodies gave good distress. At that moment, the trunk of supplies gets tired of Peachy and jumps ship. Dirk is not very gracious and begins chanting, "We got the spice rack! We got the spice rack." Richard says, "How 'bout a big 'Aw' for the other team." This show puts the "Aw" in "audience," if you ask me. Richard then pounces on the knife and says, "It's where you'll always find it, around my thigh." Aside from the ew-factor of that statement, why do the other members of the team allow Richard to usurp power this way? So far he's claimed the fishing spear and the knife without one objection. And no one's getting near that thigh.
At Pagong, Jenna says she really wanted some garlic. Probably to keep Joel away when he creeps up to her in the tent at night. Colleen is definitely the type of girl who is used to getting her own way; she pouts and says, "I didn't like the final decision for the S.O.S. game. I thought it was quite silly. I mean, a smiley-face, give me a break." Once again, we have no idea upon whom to pin the damn stupid smiley-face idea, and I find this very irritating. And besides, give me a break, give me Nell Carter and that pesky little Samantha, and I'll be doing much better shortly. As foreshadowing drops by in the form of a giant wave that wipes out Pagong's smiley-face and their entire supply of condoms along with it, Ramoaner says, "I hate to lose. It sucks."
Richard is all sneak-this and plot-that and blah blah blah alliancecakes. Susan says lackadaisically of alliances, "You're gonna have that," because being evil comes naturally to her. Because of the way this is edited, we have no idea of the sequence of things, but at one point, Rudy tells the group that he thinks there'll be alliances later on and the others are all like, "Yea, maybe, I dunno" about it. Kelly's a case for the medical textbooks, proving she's both brainless and spineless in saying, "Rudy's kind of crabby, but he's a lot better to get along with, you know, than the two boys. I mean Rudy, at least he's honest. You know, he'll tell you, you know, 'up yours' in a second." I don't think Rudy really says, "Up yours." The three decide to let Rudy in on the alliance, but Rudy has a little something known as "moral fortitude," which is apparently foreign to these parts and tells us, "Somebody said that if you wanna sorta gang up against somebody you oughta talk about it to get rid of him but, uh, I don't agree with that so I'm not doing it. I don't know about the rest of 'em." Richard later says, "I think until the segment the three of us would work together really well," and Kelly responds, "I trust you completely," which proves that she's either really stupid or she thinks the others are really stupid. We then get a shot of Susan snickering. It's hard to tell if this is a response to Richard or Kelly's statement, or to a joke Sean told over dinner three nights ago. In a confessional, Richard says something that includes the word "trustworthinesswise" and Sue cackles back, "Three of us against the world." Odds: One billion to one, in favor of the world.
At Pagong, Ramoaner tells us, "I haven't had a white friend since, like, junior high school. And I really can feel having, like, my first white friend in a long time." After hearing from both Gretchen and Gervase (back in the inner tube), who say Ramoaner has changed, Jenna tells us that Ramoaner changed her work ethic, but not her attitude. As she earnestly says, "It's a little too little too late." Ramoaner, who still does not appear to be working very hard and moves pretty slowly, says, "This is what I'm like every day, when I'm feeling, like, at 100%. I'm feeling good about being part of the group. Hopefully everyone sees [sic] like, wow! This is Ramoaner, you know, this is what, like, 100% Ramoaner can offer to the team." I think we need about six-million-percent Ramoaner to make a dent, here.
We're into Day Twelve, and Jenna unappealingly scratches both her legs as we lead up to the challenge. We're made to suffer through another poem about which I'll only note that they rhyme "balance" with "talent" -- I always thought that was an example of a bad poetry, until I went to graduate school and learned it's an actual technique, known as "slant rhyme." So, logically speaking, either the editors know they are using slant rhyme, or they think they are authoring bad poetry; either way, it's apparent that it's a half-assed effort. While the poem is read, Greg brushes his teeth for a long time. Joel's sole contribution toward the entire show so far is to offer up the following options: "Plan A, we think everything out, and Plan B, we throw everything out the window when we get there and completely panic and do whatever we think we should." We then get various shots of Pagongers saying crap like, "Without a doubt," and, "We're here to compete and we're here to win these competitions, and we're gonna do 'em as a team," and, "I wouldn't say we're awesome; I just think we're the best." I'm expecting to hear at any minute my old favorite, "Go back! Go back! Go back into the woods!" cheer that we used to jeer at the team from the boonies in high school. Pagong is just Road Rules: Desert Island.
As the teams arrive at the challenge, Just Peachy tells us that the challenge is a relay, and really shakes things up when he declares, "If one person completely falls down, then the team could crumble." The relay is as follows: a team member swims out to a buoy under which there's a bottle containing a map; the swimmer retrieves the bottle and passes it to a rower, who then runs over a log bridge, hops in a canoe and rows back to shore with a partner. The fourth leg is a "sprint" into the jungle; the runner climbs up a rope ladder and grabs a key. The last two members of the tribe are diggers, who have to find a trunk and place it on a platform, to be opened with the key. The fifth leg can begin at the same time as the fourth, which confuses me a little.
Sean and Colleen are the swimmers; I remember her breaststroking her way through the trunk challenge, so needless to say, Sean gets there first. Kelly grabs the bottle from him, and jumps in the boat with Sue. Colleen (why didn't they just send Gervase?) finally gets to the bottle and hands it off to Greg; he and Joel row parallel to the beach and Greg screams that, if he had only brought his cocophone, he could call for directions. On the shore, Richard can't get the map out of the bottle, and he'd still be trying today if Dirk didn't start screaming at him to "break it!" Rudy hovers and looks like he wants to jump in on the action, but his pride and self-respect prevent him from doing so. Dirk takes off into the jungle; he's a good runner. When the Pagong bottle is finally broken, Gervase runs from the beach into the jungle, and that's about all the running he'll do. He wipes out, jogs a bit, then begins slowly walking. While digging commences on the beach, Ramoaner yells, "Alright, ladies, looking good," which would really be cause for a face-full of sand if I was out there digging in hundred-degree weather and knew she hadn't yet done a damn thing. Dirk continues to hustle in the woods, and then they slow down the music to show Gervase bumbling around. They intersect at a downed log and Gervase makes a half-hearted attempt to look like he's running. I could climb a log faster than Gervase, and if you knew me, that would mean a lot. Dirk, obviously, gets to the beach first. Richard hauls the trunk out and allows Rudy a moment of glory by letting him run with the trunk to the platform; the team is shouting, "Rudy! Rudy!" because he just caught that pass and Notre Dame won the game and whatever happenned to Sean Astin anyway? Gervase returns, throws himself onto the beach and hams it up like he actually exerted effort during his nature walk. Gretchen tells fellow digger Jenna, "We did our best," and Jenna ignores it, so Gretchen says it again. And then she says, "You answer when you're spoken to, young lady." For some reason they seem to think their leg lost the relay, and I'm not understanding how they failed to notice that Gervase went into the woods two minutes after Dirk and emerged from the woods twenty-two minutes after Dirk. During the Tagi celebration, Susan has an expression on her face like she genuinely likes Rudy. Must be bad lighting. Peachy says, "Pagong, I'll see you tonight at the Tribal Council," like they're all meeting up at McDonald's later on for a McFlurry. The dramatic music swells and the camera pans to a crumpled piece of paper with Pagong written on it. I'm glad it was only a piece of paper, because otherwise it would have really hurt when they pelted us over the head with it.
At Pagong, we get various shots of glum and guilty-looking team members, as they each express their reasons for dreading the Council. Gervase says, "The most difficult thing of this whole thing for me is to vote someone off. I think we're all dreading that," and then he's back in the inner tube, recovering from his marathon and telling us he'll vote for "Jenna, because she's more annoying than Colleen." Greg says, "We're all friends and then you boot someone. It's like that board game, Sorry. You pick the card, you gotta take your thing and smash the other guy out of the way. Knock him out, that's that. You move on. Saaaaahhhhhhreeeeeeeeee." Just keep your "thing" away from me, Greg. Gervase says, "We'll just keep Colleen around a little longer," and I find his manner of speaking really irritating throughout this episode, because it's like the thought never crosses his mind that he might be the one to go.
Pagong arrives at Tribal Council all face-painted again. Does face paint qualify as a necessity? Something goes wrong with the sound here and Just Peachy looks like he's speaking mumbo-jumbo garbage. Wait. He actually is speaking mumbo-jumbo garbage. My mistake. Peachy looks happy as he calls out the weak tribe members. Maybe later he'll kick one of them when they fall down. Ramoaner says, "Nobody, like, totally sucks," and, "I mean, it would almost even be easier if we didn't like each other." Wait. Wouldn't it totally be easier if you didn't like each other? The point just called, Ramoaner; it's sorry it missed you. I had to wade through various "likes" and "you knows" before I was fully able to confirm that her sentence made no sense. Peachy asks if anyone feels invincible, and Gervase irritates me further by raising his hand. When his teammates raz him, he acts like he was kidding, but I think he meant it seriously, particularly when he says, "I'll be around, I'm looking to anchor the final four." Only if they tie the final four to Gervase and throw them all in the water can he feasibly count on being an anchor. Peachy pulls out zinger and says, "Well, it's interesting that you say this, because for the last three challenges you were somewhat responsible for your team's loss." I am no fan of Gervase, but I really don't think that Peachy's job is to try and influence the vote like this. Peachy continues to shoot Gervase down, but turns it around somehow and ends up saying that Gervase's confidence says a lot about him. Maybe it says that he's stupid, but I don't think that's what Just Peachy means. Gervase then says, "I feel quite comfortable about my position on the island," and any sympathy I felt for him goes the way of Sonja, B.B., and Stayfree.
Peachy then asks who feels vulnerable, and Gervase says he does now because of Just Peachy. It's not the means, Gervase, it's the ends. Peachy says, "Jenna, you're gonna walk over there; you're gonna pick up that pen; you're gonna write down a name. Is it gonna feel good? Or is it gonna feel bad?" Jenna says that it's "gonna" feel much better than sitting around listening to someone dressed straight out of the J. Peterman catalogue talk down to her. She doesn't say that, but I bet she wanted to say it. Instead, since she knows Peachy isn't above switching a couple of votes, she says she'll feel guilty. She adds that if they take someone away they'll be a weaker tribe, and they're already so strong so they can only get worse. Jenna, listen carefully: You've lost two challenges in the past two hours. You're not a strong team. The point of the game is to take someone away. I suddenly can't wait until the groups merge.
Gervase votes first. He contradicts his earlier statement by picking Colleen and says, "My vote is for Colleen, because she's giving it to Greg and thus I have a better chance with Jenna." Well, that's what the closed-captioning might have said if I had it. What he really said was, "We don't know what lies ahead right now, but we're hurting so I think we need to stay as strong as possible and, I mean, I love the girl to death but somebody's got to go." Aw. He loves her to death. He and Sean both must have fondly read over their junior-high yearbooks before they came on the show. Greg votes for Jenna and says, "Self-fulfilling prophecy. It seems time to go." We don't know what this means, but it's Greg, after all. Ramoaner votes for Colleen and says, "No comment." Either 'Moaner really doesn't like Colleen and can't bring herself to say anything about her, or else she votes for her because she has no one else to vote for, in which case that's kind of sad. Jenna looks pained as she votes for Ramoaner and says, "Because even though she tried to redeem herself, a little too little too late." I can just see Jenna squeaking this out while admonishing her twins. Her children, for all you breast-joke people out there.
Peachy comes back with the final vote: The first is for Ramoaner; the second vote is for Jenna; the third and fourth votes are for Colleen. And you can't tell me they don't arrange these votes for suspense. The last three votes are for Ramoaner. You can always tell which is the fair vote because that's who Gretchen voted for -- which we now know was Ramoaner. She's the moral compass -- hey, what's that from? Ramoaner grabs her torch and prissily hands it to Peachy. As Ramoaner heads off into the brush wailing and crying and stumbling about, chipper Peachy announces, "You've survived another one!" to the group. And so have we. Pat yourselves on the back.
week on Survivor: Sue prefers tapioca and nuts to Dirk and Sean. I thought they were the same thing. Colleen might never live down the dramatic confession that she and Greg are having a "passionate love affair."
In the, like, farewell confessional, you know, Ramoaner, like, claims that the first, like, two, uh, days really, uh, like, hurt her, you know? That, like, and uh, the fact, like, that she didn't, you know, do any work for the, like, ten succeeding, you know, days.