Marquesan Vacation

Last time on Survivor, Neleh offered her sucked-on, chewed-up, half-dissolved, phlegmy, germ-ridden, wet, saliva-soaked, sticky, muculent mint to the rest of the tribe, who surprisingly enough declined the offer. She also talked endearingly with her mouth full, and said "Oh my heck" about a bazillion times, each time more adorable than the last. Except more "annoyingly" than "endearingly," and more "appalling" than "adorable." Tammy and Robert were worried about staying in the game, and rightfully so as a pissy Tammy got voted out after Robert won immunity. Six are left. Who will be voted out tonight?

It is a dark and stormy night...err, "morning" on Day 31 at Soliantu. A scary-looking tiki. A scary-looking pair of abandoned sunglasses. A trail of scary-looking discarded shells leads to scary-looking drying pots. And then, the horror: a scary-looking Kathy breaks apart leaves, while a scary-sounding grunting noise throbs in the background, revealing itself to be -- gasp! -- the snoring of Paschal. The tinkly bass piano plays so we know there's sadness forthcoming. Kathy tells us in a confessional that there's a lot of anxiety around camp, and that they're feeling depleted "energy-wise." She says that the S6 are all missing their homes and loved ones, and that it's "getting really old." She breaks down into tears as she tells us that she was strong until three days ago, and is now just trying not to cry. Here, my husband repeatedly rewound and watched the tape with the exclamation, "She cries just like you!" and I have no idea what that meant, but I am not flattered. In any case, Kathy explains that she wakes up at night sobbing and "hurting under the stars," except at first I thought she said "horny" instead of "hurting," which cracked me up. She's worried about her son, even though she knows he's fine. She says he thinks it's great that she's out there in the jungle -- and he probably does, most particularly in terms of the fact that it gives him a shriek-free month and a half at home. Kathy half-laughs and half-cries that it's "uncanny" to see what's happening with the "mental stability" of the S6. Which makes for an awfully big assumption: that the S6 had any "mental stability" in the first place.

The anticipated drama from the previews plays out in the first two minutes of this week's episode. Sean is perched in a tree branch about seven or eight feet off the ground, helping Paschal to cover the tribe's shelter with a tarp. Sean loses his balance after grabbing a twig too small to sustain his weight, and sort of rotates around on the branch so he's hanging upside down -- like something roasting on a spit. Then, he just hangs on until Robert comes to help him down. Actually, by this point he's released his legs from the branch and is just hanging by his arms, and since Sean is probably at least five and a half feet tall, and since that branch is no higher than eight feet high, that means he was hanging so precariously about two and a half feet of the ground. Still, Sean's weak and confused, so Robert eases him to his feet. Paschal tells us in a confessional that they spend "twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week" with each other, and if you "do the math," it comes to a total of nine hundred hours with each other. I just "[did] the math," and -- if they did spend every single minute together in the thirty-one days they've been out there thus far -- it would total some 5,200 hours. Still, half that time is spent sleeping, and certainly not all of it is spent in the company of all of the others, so the numbers aren't exactly reliable. We get Paschal's point, though: they spend a lot of time together. He tells us that under such intense conditions, the S6 know each other better than anybody else except their immediate families. Their relationships with each other are now even tighter than their relationships with best friends, because they've spent more time together. He wonders how many years of knowing someone it would take to amass nine hundred hours of time in that person's company. He does not account for the fact that none of those hours would be spent lying or scheming against that friend to deprive him/her of a million dollars. ["Well, probably." -- Wing Chun]

Now Sean opens wide and Kathy peers inside his mouth. Because best friends aren't close enough to look into each others' mouths, but the S6 are. Get it? We see Sean rush to chew something and swallow before sticking out his tongue. Why not wait until after he's had a drink of water, so Kathy doesn't have to look past tiny little masticated food particles? Paschal explains that his, Vecepia's and Sean's mouths have started "frying," as we see Sean sticky his pinky in the corner of his mouth in his best Dr. Evil imitation. Actually, it appears that he's just trying to help Kathy out by prying his mouth open even further. Paschal says that the burning started after they ate, so he's going to be more careful from now on. Or maybe Sean, Vecepia, and Paschal eventually did partake of Neleh's mint, and caught something nasty from her. Kathy wants Sean to lift up his tongue, because she's worried about blisters. A lovely close-up of Sean's tongue and the inside of his mouth reveal that he is, indeed, blister-free. And a collective sigh of relief issues forth across the nation. Paschal thinks it's weird that he misses his family so much now, but when he goes home, he'll miss his new Marquesan family. For once, this sort of confessional comes forth as earnest and bittersweet, as opposed to hokey and contrived.

Robert hacks at something, and how many sentences of my recaps this season have started that way? Someone's always hacking at something, it seems. He tells us that he has to keep his mind on the game because he's there to win. He can't focus on his family and become depressed as the others have. He then names all the various family members he could be missing but refuses to dwell on missing, although just by mentioning them so obsessively, he might appear to be dwelling. He says he's there to win the game, and that's it. He doesn't say, "I'm the General and that's that," but you know he's probably thinking it.

Paschal and a giggly Kathy check the mail, which contains a little carved turtle in a pouch. (Not an actual, organic turtle that had been carved up, but a carved turtle figurine. Because a carved-up turtle would be gross.) Kathy is confused by the turtle, then reads the clue:

Each step you take can decide your fate
Which way to go, or should you wait?
It's all strategy now, to get to the end
Big night for the winner, choose just one friend.

Paschal can't begin to conjecture what the clue is all about, which is just as well, since it has pretty much nothing to do with the forthcoming challenge anyway. Even though Kathy is exhausted, she thinks the suspense over the challenge is fun. Or maybe it's because she knows what the challenge is (because she's all-knowing Kathy, after all) and enjoys that the others will have to endure said suspense.

A big honeycomb-like grid awaits the S6 as they arrive at the beach. Peachy's there too, and points out that the members of the S6 have now entered their second month on the island, and they're "missing the people who matter the most." He whips a cell phone out of his pocket and wonders how they'd react if he offered them a phone call home. Neleh grins widely and is already tearing up, and Robert says, "Hells yeah!" Peachy then snits, "It's not gonna happen today. I was just curious how you'd react." Burn! Except not. Because when the tribe responds about how horrible he is -- even more horrible than usual -- Peachy doesn't wait very long to reveal that he's not such a bad-ass, after all. As if the freshly starched khaki pants didn't give him away. Peachy grandly summons Neleh's freakish mother Becky from the bushes. Becky emerges wearing two flowers in her flowing gray hair, short-length overalls, and a general aura of peaceful happiness. How annoying. She also appears to be shaking her fist at her daughter. One by one, the others' loved ones are called from their hiding places: the appearance of Kathy's son Pat prompts wailing as yet unheard this season; Robert greets his sister Diana, "Told you I'd get you out of Maryland some day!" Sean's "buddy" Darryl hoots his way out of the bushes while Sean cries and sticks his tongue out at him; Vecepia and her husband Leander point at God; and then finally Paschal's lovely (and young!) wife Beverly bounces out of hiding. She cheers Paschal to "stay focused and stay here!" Oh, and she loves him. Vecepia and Leander then make another cute gesture that I think is a symbol of strength, and has nothing at all to do with pointing at God.

Peachy explains that the challenge will take place using the honeycomb game board. He says that the contestants will stand on yellow tiles and, one by one, step off onto new yellow tiles. After each step, each player will turn their abandoned tile over, revealing green beneath. Once a tile is green, it can't be stepped on again, so when a player is surrounded by green tiles, he or she is out of the game. Peachy explains that the game is about strategy, and then discloses that the S6 will not be playing. Instead, their loved ones will compete. Peachy further reveals there are six skip-a-turn tiles on the game board; he explains that when they choose to step on such a tile, they'll have to skip their turn. Duh. There's also a surprise wild card underneath a yellow tile, which reveals the harsh "vote one person out" mandate. Peachy finally reveals a last rule: there can be no verbal communication between the S6 and their loved ones, but non-verbal communications is allowed. So basically, all the pointing at God Vecepia and Leander can get in is fine.

Looking at Neleh's mother hurts my eyes.

The S6's loved ones draw numbers to determine the starting order. Pat is first, followed by Diana, Leander, Becky, Darryl, and finally Beverly. Poor Beverly is always last. Thankfully, we don't have to watch every tile get turned over; after the first full round, things are sped up, and we join them when, as Peachy points out, they've become "really bunched up in the middle." He points out that Becky is "on the retreat," and insists that it's "only a matter of time" for Darryl. Still, Beverly is the first blocked in by tiles, and she seems confused, then appears to shoot Darryl a dirty look. I'm not sure what that was all about. Peachy's "not about to let" Beverly leave without an embrace from Paschal, so they hug. Neleh sobs on the sidelines, while Robert appears to be holding her back. Otherwise, I'm sure she would have skipped gaily over and thrown her arms around both of them. Or maybe she would have offered to kindly share her grimy chewed-up bathing suit bottoms with Beverly.