Trapped

Previously on Dances With Malaria: Matthew was the Bermuda Triangle of Tambaqui friends, because everyone he aligned himself with took a long walk off a short plank and got snuffed. Prejudice-heavy Roger tangled with top-heavy Daniel over chores in general and water-fetching specifically. It occurred to Jaburu that utter failure to get off their fannies and work would, in the jungle, eventually lead to starvation and an infestation of little bugs of various kinds, just like Mom always said. Therefore, they all got together for a rousing chorus of Veni, vidi, Viva: "I came, I saw, I really wished I had a roll of paper towels to clean this dump." Deena became leader of the pack, even though the cute girls were always putting her down ("Down! Down!") and saying she came from the wrong side of town ("Whatcha mean when you say that she came from the wrong side of town?"). Heidi, Jenna, and Shawna got bubbly and absolutely could not get over how freaking adorable they were. Could! Not! Get over it! Ultimately, when the women grabbed immunity in a machete-heavy cage match, the men voted off the hapless Daniel, who left after clumsily revealing that he had been allied with Matthew. SNUFF! Matthew glared. But then Daniel went off and got malaria, so he got his. Oh, and my email server thanks you for taking my word for it when I say: Yes, I know. It's manioc. Not mantioc. I am fully informed.

Who will be voted out...tonight?

I have to say that aside from the hysterically serious music, my favorite part of the credits is the two pig-like beasts they show right after the shot of Roger. Heh.

Morning comes to Camp Jaburu. Everyone is snoozing except Joanna, who is up and dressed and ready to unsheathe her machete and start her day. She starts sharpening it, which makes a scraping racket that echoes through camp. I have a feeling the feverish danger associated with weapon-sharpening is crucial to Joanna's ability to start the day on a positive note. Hey, mine too. I'm telling you, the grapefruits are just for practice. I am not to be trifled with. In other news, it appears that Jenna is sleeping with her glasses on, in case you needed any more evidence to convince you that she's a moron. Not that you should. "Oh, Lordy," Joanna says as she sharpens. "Lordy [scrape], Lordy [scrape], Lordy [scrape]. What a day in the Amazon." Jeanne, the to get up, works on pulling her hair back into a scrunchie. Wow, I'm totally thinking my punk band should be called Scrunchies in the Jungle. But we'll be all tricky and wear barrettes, because the young people love irony. Jeanne reminds us that this is Day 10, and they had all decided to get up early and work on the shelter. Wow, is the shelter not done yet? I think they're going to finish it on the day they leave. It's going to be like that movie with Kevin Kline and Anakin Skywalker where...well, never mind. It will take you fully the first eight minutes of the movie to figure out where it's going, so I don't want to ruin it for you. Anyway, we see Jeanne gathering some sticks and stuff as she explains that everyone should be feeling enthusiastic about working, because they have a lot to do. Please. I don't think Heidi and Jenna could be rendered enthusiastic about working if working were all that was standing between them and death by mysterious jungle diseases. Oh, wait -- it is! And -- they're not! Get how ahead of the game I am! I am so money.

Jeanne and Joanna discuss the goals for the day, and Joanna complains that whoever was supposed to be watching the fire before her apparently slacked off on the job (she calls them "some trifling folk"), because when she woke up, there was no firewood and the fire was out. Jeanne says she'll just go get a bunch more wood. Joanna's not crazy about that solution, because Jeanne already fetched wood yesterday, but Jeanne says she doesn't care. I notice that Jeanne and Joanna are both wearing silver hoop earrings, and I have to think that if I had as many things to worry about as they do, I wouldn't want to worry about earrings. Especially hoop earrings. Talk about an invitation to injury. Slowly, the other women of the tribe begin to wake up, in part because of the noise Jeanne and Joanna are making with all their annoying...you know, work. Shawna complains in a voice-over that she wakes up every day to see Jeanne and Joanna shooting her dirty looks for not working enough. It doesn't seem to occur to her that this might legitimately have anything to do with all the ass-sitting. She describes it instead as "a total martyr thing," and says it's driving everyone crazy. I assume she and the other non-martyrs aren't sitting by the fire, then, or taking advantage of the other work that the martyrs are doing, because if you're going to be resentful other people's attempts not to die of exposure with their feet in the air like a dead bird in a cartoon, the least you can do is not then sponge off them. We see Joanna straightforwardly ask the rest of the tribe not to scatter nutshells around where they sleep. I think the idea is that this practice attracts bugs where you might hope no bugs would be. Someone halfheartedly apologizes, because Joanna is such a killjoy. She's very inflexible with all the not wanting tarantulas crawling in her mouth while she's sleeping.

Heidi begins the sucking that will be her pattern throughout this episode by voicing over that what matters is what gets you ahead in the game, not what gets you ahead in life. She says that working to obtain food and shelter may be good for real life, but she's only worried about the game. Her lazy mooching ass is all about strategy, you see. She certainly did luck out that her strategy seems so ideally suited to her character. She also refers to the work that's being done by Jeanne and Joanna as "extra work." You know, I think Heidi needs to get out her Hello Kitty dictionary, risk cracking the heretofore-unbroken binding, and look up the word "extra." It occurs to me that it takes work to live in the jungle, not that Heidi's six functioning brain cells would make her aware of this fact. Making a fire so that you can boil water so you don't die is not "extra work," Count My Ribs Barbie. It's just work. In another blow for the sovereignty of the free rider, Heidi asserts her right to "maybe take a nap today." Well, I certainly don't want her to strain herself. Or, you know, reduce the time she has available for lying around on her ass. She ends this interview with a little what-can-I-tell-you gesture with her hands that is so repulsive that it hurts to look at it. She is so odious that it's hard for me to find the words. And I know a lot of words, too. Insulting words in particular.

Over at Tambaqui, an otter has breakfast on the riverbank while some of the guys take a fishing expedition. Dave says that his "belly's starting to rumble." Also on the expedition are Matthew -- who points out that these are "very evasive fish" (heh) -- and Butch. Butch is sitting quietly, because that's actually the best way to catch fish. Banter, however witty, is not, in fact, very good bait. I mean, unless you're trying to catch me. Anyway, in an interview, Dave says that they've got to improve their fishing record, because they're not getting enough to eat. The teeny fish they've been catching, he explains, are not getting it done as sustenance. In the boat, Dave recites the following ditty: "There once were three guys in a boat/ Left early with spirits afloat/ Looking for bass/ They sat on their ass/ Luck as good as Rob's jokes." Okay, despite the fact that he assigned three guys a collective ass and the fact that "jokes" can only be charitably termed a flawed rhyme for "boat" and "float," I've actually heard worse attempts to entertain the troops. You're all right, Dave. At least it's not singing or reciting scripture. Also, Dave is scruffy. Scruffy is good, in this context.

Back at camp, Dave tells the group that they didn't catch any fish on the outing for fear of becoming trendsetters. Hee. In an interview, Butch explains that the guys decided that in order to change their fishing fortunes, they'd have to go out and hunt for some worms they could use for bait. My favorite part of this "worm safari" (as they call it) is that they all use their machetes. They're looking for earthworms, mind you, not the Loch Ness Monster. You never know, though -- worms are stubborn things. As Matt looks for bait near camp, he explains that the other guys have gone off on a longer worm-hunting expedition, but he doesn't really think that's necessary. What he does think is that the rest of the guys are excluding him a little bit because of his early friendships with Ryan and Daniel, both of whom are now gone. He shrugs this off. "My ego can take it," he says dryly. Heh. He's aware that he's going to have to make an effort to get back in with the rest of the guys in the tribe. "Very often, I am not included, and I know it's on purpose," he says. Okay, that sounded a little...you know, seventh-grade-girly, if you see my point. He thinks that if the tribe had to vote tonight, he would probably be sent home, but he's going to make an effort to get back in the game. Elsewhere, the other guys find some worms, and Dave and Alex even turn up a baby scorpion, which they get a little overexcited about, it seems to me. Tambaqui goes home pleased to have accomplished what they set out to do.

Oh, and Rob calls a worm "feisty." Shut up, Rob.

Chipper music returns us to Jaburu, where Joanna has brought home a non-tiny fish to go with several non-tiny fish that they already have. Heidi takes this opportunity to explain that the reason the "work ethic in [the] camp is definitely creating friction" is that there are these big women like Jeanne and Joanna and Deena -- none of whom is remotely even on the heavy side of average, mind you -- who have all this fat to live off, and then you have these delicate flowers like Jenna, Heidi, and Shawna, who have only their bones and their skin. So of course, the delicate flowers can't be expected to do as much work as the big huge fat whale elephant cow women. You would think I was making this up, wouldn't you? I'm barely exaggerating. Heidi contrasts the women who do the "manual work" (also known as "work") with the "smaller girls" who she calls the "stay-at-home women." You'll notice that she doesn't say "stay-at-home moms," which makes a fair amount of sense given that there are about eight reasons she's not looking so maternal to me at this point.