Previously on It's All Over But The Starving, Drowning, and Administering of Anti-Parasite Drugs: No one minded that Osten had threatened to quit, but everyone was offended by Lill's failure to take a specially appointed member of the Royal Fishhook Mounted Guard on her morning rounds. Drake tried to find treasure, to no avail, leaving them to cry all over their unbroken string of victories. At the reward challenge, Osten's and Andrew's ineptitude quite literally drove Morgan under, and Drake looted a pot from their desolate camp, declining the tempting opportunity to make off with the bugs, the sand, or the low-hanging stink of despair. At the immunity challenge, a muscle-off resulted in a victory for Rupert over Osten, proving that even the times when you theoretically might want Osten around are times when you might as well send him home. Driven to yet another tribal council, Morgan booted Lill, because Darrah is way cuter with her buff wrapped around her torso, and because Ryan-O just wasn't feeling the love for Lill in quite the same way, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Practically everything made Morgan depressed. Practically everything made Rupert holler like an angry drunk at closing time. Practically everything made Probst wonder how all these people got up, dressed themselves every day for years and years, and didn't choke on their own zippers.
Credits. You know, it's good that Nicole's boob-tubular dress is preserved in some manner for the remainder of the show. It's got more personality than most of what's left of her tribe. Sturdier than Osten, more cerebral than Andrew...it's Nicole's dress! Give it a hand.
It's the morning of Day 10 at the Camp of the Damned, where the lapping waves are about four feet from the Morgan shelter. As Ryan-O and his tribemates inspect the situation, he explains that the seas are a little stormy, and the little sand lump he and his tribemates have built (which he rather hilariously calls a "wall") has taken a little bit of a beating, so it's not doing as much to keep the water away from the shelter. ["You'd think that, as an electrician, Ryan-O would have been on enough construction jobs to learn, just by osmosis, that SAND isn't really the sturdiest building material." -- Wing Chun] He adds that, in general, the tides are getting higher as the month progresses, so they're either going to have to improve their water diversion strategies, or face the prospect of moving their shelter, which they really don't want to do, because it would be work. Yuck. Work, like talent, is for ugly people. The Morgan men continue consulting as the water splashes up literally a foot or so from the shelter. If Ryan-O is right that the tides are continuing to come up higher on the beach over the course of the month, then they might as well move the shelter now, because it looks, even at this point, like a particularly good-sized wave would totally drench the shelter, creating a Titanic-like disaster scenario in which Andrew would play that Spy Daddy guy who couldn't get over his overwhelming feelings of guilt for killing everyone. Ryan-O sighs that they've endured many struggles here at Camp of the Damned ever since they got to the island, and he calls it "almost comical now." Almost? Please. If it took as much to amuse me as it apparently takes to amuse Ryan-O, I never would have made it through so many episodes of Wings.
Andrew, looking more and more like a "Before" picture in an ad for Ratty-Beard-B-Gone, huddles with the boys by the sand lump and endorses the strategy of lump buildup, calling the lump "the last wall of defense." He's quite brilliant, that Andrew, except that I think he's confusing the sand lump with the police department. In Andrew's little interview, he refers to the tribe as "absolutely devastated." He does not add, "by the unrelenting series of failures it has suffered under my inept leadership," as he should. He follows with the non-newsworthy tidbit that "morale is low." It particularly amuses me to remember that last week he said it was at an "all-time low," which I guess means that what he really meant to say this time was, "Okay, now morale is at an all-time low." He adds with faux-sadness that the members of Morgan "definitely feel the impact" of Lill's departure, presumably in the area of work, considering that all of a sudden, other people actually have to do some. As is often the case, from the shot we now see of Tijuana taking charge of water-boiling, it appears that the slack is being taken up by people who did at least some work already. Darrah, apparently, is busy making a mint julep or something. "I think it's us against everything else out here," Andrew says, going for "fearless" and landing on "incompetent dumb-ass." As often happens.
As Andrew rattles off the enemies of Morgan, one of the things he mentions is the local population of fire ants. Indeed, it appears that the place is crawling with them. Tijuana explains to Andrew that the ants are apparently living in a particular log, and whenever the fire sends smoke in their direction, they emerge. Andrew adds, apropos of nothing, that the tribe "desperately need[s] fish." He says that eating coconuts and rice and beans has been sufficient to keep them alive, but that he's hankering for the nutritional and psychological boost that only animal protein can bring. Coincidentally, that's what I always say right before I order a steak. "Morale is low," I intone into my menu, and then I ask for extra sour cream on my baked potato.
We adjourn to Drake, Camp of the Not-So-Damned. The music is a bit more tense than usual, suggesting that perhaps all is not going to remain entirely merry this week. If the merriment were going to be perpetual, you would expect to hear more tootling flutes and less ominous whistling. Jon is shown pouring water into a canteen, and then for some reason, he and Burton get into some kind of a ridiculous spat about who does what around camp. Or something. Wisely, the rest of the tribe members remain silent while they bicker, except for Shawn, who jumps in halfheartedly near the end. Trish interviews that the mood around camp is "funky." Wow, "funky"? I only saw fighting. Maybe Rupert performed "She's A Brick House" after Burton stopped yammering about who didn't do enough chores. Trish goes on to say that the personalities are beginning to grate on each other. Despite the clear deterioration in mood, it's still pretty admirable that they went ten days before even this much happened in the way of discord. Trish describes morale as "off and on," saving "all-time low" for another occasion, apparently.
In quieter but equally noteworthy news of intra-Drake unrest, Sandra complains to Christa that Shawn and Burton make a big fuss about how they're always the first ones working, and Sandra maintains that this is not the case at all. Christa notes in an interview that all the winning is "annoying" in a sense. It's not annoying in the way that listening to Christa talk is annoying -- in that it doesn't make me want to hum "Camptown Races" until it's over -- but I can see her point. You see, Christa has discovered that winning endlessly means that they can't get rid of anybody, and they "really want somebody to leave." It isn't clear at this point whether she's talking about a specific person or whether she just means that they're ready to start reducing the numbers and cutting out some of the more contentious personalities generally. This is followed by some kind of stupid conversation between Christa and Shawn about college, after which he interviews that Christa has issues with him and makes "little comments." I have to say, I like Christa better than Shawn, but she does appear here to be doing exactly the kind of quasi-casual interrogation about people's academic history that almost never signals anything but contempt, even if it is of the passive-aggressive variety. Asking if he went to college seems okay, but the way she specifically asks if he graduated sounds snotty. Anyway, Shawn menacingly smirks in an interview that what Christa says will soon be "coming back to get her." I totally bet that back at home, he's the scariest guy in the whole juice bar.
We return to Christa, who for her part interviews that she doesn't get along with the Burton-Shawn-Michelle pod, which has apparently gotten quite tight and clique-ish. "I'd rather have them out of here," she says flatly. Of course, "flatly" is pretty much the only way Christa speaks, so don't make too much of it.
In one of the greater miscalculations I've seen in a while, Burton now spends a little of his free time harassing Rupert about his skirt, its possible propensity to display his butt crack, and so forth. "It's like high school," Rupert interviews. "The pretty-boy jock-ass idiots all gotta pick on me." Shawn adds some more needling about how "pretty" Rupert is, and it really does feel quite a lot like high school, actually. Trish -- quickly becoming one of my favorites in spite of the fact that I haven't heard much from her -- interviews that she's not sure why the Shawn-Burton-Michelle clique got so tight so quickly. She assumes that the guys just think they're too strong to get voted off, and that they hooked up with Michelle because she's cute: "I don't think that they realize that they alienated everybody else in the tribe." Ah, but they never do. That's how the pretty-boy jock-ass idiots wind up with no one to talk to at the reunion, which in turn is why if you head for the punch bowl at your reunion, all you will find there are pretty-boy jock-ass idiots, standing around talking about the stock market. Just a little hint from me to you.
The sun beats down. Birds fly around in search of Tippi Hedren. We float in over the beach and then zoom abruptly toward the site of this week's reward challenge. The two teams take their positions on the mat, and Jeff "Earning The Right To Ditch My Old Nickname By Reaching New Heights Of Sarcasm And Bitchery" Probst welcomes them, pointing out the absence of Lill in case Drake missed it. In today's challenge, he explains, each team will be solving a jigsaw puzzle made of sixteen large pieces, eight of which are out underwater and eight of which are buried in the sand on the beach. One tribe member at a time will go retrieve a piece from either the sand or the water and bring it back, and then another tribe member can go. They can't start putting the puzzle together until they have all the pieces. And what is the reward this week? Well, in addition to another treasure-map section and the right to loot the opposing tribe's camp, the winning team will get an old-fashioned (i.e., non-electric) sewing machine and a bunch of material. For people who've now been in the same clothes for ten days (YIKES), that's a pretty big reward. I've got to think those clothes are about ready to rise up and revolt.
Drake sits out Shawn, Michelle, and Christa. Ryan-O and Burton line up and put on the same masks that caused so much trouble for old Ryan S. a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, after Jeff sends them off into the water, we do not get a shot of Ryan-O's goodies peeking out through his shorts as we did last time. Aw. It's always the stuff you want to go unrepaired that gets fixed first. Ryan-O and Burton both go out into the water, and Burton is first to dive and retrieve a puzzle piece. When he gets back to the team, he tags Sandra, who goes for a piece in the sand. "Dig like your name! Saaaaaaand-ra!" Christa yells. Hee, that was kinda funny. I have to admit that I started out anti-Christa because of TheSmokingGun.com, but she's growing on me. If she had someone else's voice, she'd be one of my favorites. Anyway, Sandra retrieves the piece and tags Rupert just as Ryan-O returns with Morgan's first piece. He tags Andrew, who quickly gets a piece out of the sand. Tijuana, not taking the mask and losing first her skirt ("Showing a little booty," Jeff remarks) and then her top (which means pixels, pixels, pixels, and somebody's rakish "Yeah!") goes out . Rupert returns with the third Drake piece, and Trish heads for the sand. Tijuana, meanwhile, struggles mightily with the part about hunting around underwater, because she didn't take the mask with her for whatever reason. Trish apparently already found her piece and tagged Jon, because there he is, getting one out of the sand as well. Burton charges back out into the water and snags a piece while Tijuana continues to struggle. Finally, she snags a piece just as Burton returns and tags Sandra again. Sandra digs at the beach, and when she's done, she tags Rupert, who goes into the water.
Now here's a quandary for you, in keeping with the puzzle theme of the challenge. Osten, who has already told us that he's not a strong swimmer, goes out into the water wearing the mask on his forehead. Why would a guy whose team still has more puzzle pieces left on the beach than in the water go into the water? Don't know. Why would he do it knowing he can barely swim? Don't know. Why would he wear the mask, but not actually put it over his eyes? Don't know. But that's what he does. Meanwhile, Rupert has retrieved the piece from the water, and Jon has gotten another piece from the beach, so Burton heads again into the water. Ryan-O tells Osten to put the damn mask on already, but Osten ignores him and dives under with it covering his very valuable forehead. Wouldn't want to get it all...I don't know...salty, I guess. ["I'm sure that's the ostensible reason. GET IT?! Ostensible! God, I'm funny." -- Wing Chun] But then, as Osten realizes that his feet are quite a bit off the bottom, he starts to panic. Jeff asks him if he's okay, and he says he's not. You can actually tell from the girly screaming. Jeff instructs him to hold onto the course-marker rope, and then sends Ryan-O and Andrew out into the water to help him. Drake continues collecting puzzle pieces as Ryan-O and Andrew go to rescue Osten. Oh, look, it's a floating brain trust. I'm surprised they don't collaborate on a book while they're out there dog-paddling around. Anyway, it isn't clear exactly what the boys do when they reach Osten, but soon, all three of them are making their way back up the beach. "Way to not quit," Jeff says, desperate for something to congratulate them about other than their natural buoyancy.
Ryan-O now goes into the water to fetch for Morgan as Trish goes for the last Drake piece in the sand. It's hard to tell, but it looks like this piece is buried exceptionally far under the edge of the water, so she's trying to dig it out of very wet sand that's constantly being re-flooded. Andrew goes to snag the Morgan piece that's closest to the water, and it just doesn't look like it's anywhere near as difficult. Trish continues battling even to clear the sand long enough to get at the piece, let alone get her hands wrapped around it or get it out of the very heavy, wet slop it's under. This just didn't look quite fair to me. ["Oh, this challenge could have been completely rigged, but Morgan managed to biff it anyway, through its unstoppable suck." -- Wing Chun] Anyway, Andrew tags Darrah, who wears the mask out into the water. You'll remember that they specifically kept her on the theory that she would be great at challenges, and this eighth piece is the first time they've sent her out. She sure is a valuable commodity. I'll bet Lill couldn't have done this at all, don't you? Of course, Morgan kept Osten for challenges, too, so...maybe they have a special magic double-deke strategy that involves a lot of losing. That's it. They've got Drake right where they want 'em.
Trish finally comes up with the last sand piece, and Jon goes after a water piece. Andrew goes after a sand piece. Tijuana goes after a sand piece. Burton goes after Drake's last water piece. Darrah goes after a water piece. When Burton returns, Drake has finished collecting puzzle pieces and starts putting the thing together. Osten -- more intelligently this time, and more inclined toward the option that doesn't involve a high risk of death -- retrieves a piece from the safety of the sand, where even he will presumably find it difficult to drown. Ryan-O fetches another one for Morgan, but it's too late, and Drake takes its sixth consecutive challenge. A despondent Ryan-O lies face-down, almost literally burying his head in the sand and therefore taking the Visual Metaphor Of The Week trophy. Drake accepts its reward with its usual lack of graciousness, hooting as loudly as possible. Darrah looks despondent, like somebody just took the very last piece of hay right out from between her teeth.
Commercials. I'm sorry, but no amount of applesauce will make a fried-chicken-based kids' meal a good idea, let alone a "square meal." ["Okay, but what about the Sierra Mist? It's just packed with nutrimites. Any scientician can tell you that." -- Wing Chun]
Bird and lizard footage brings us back to Drake, where Christa is firing up the sewing station and measuring Rupert for a new skirt. Isn't this where they all start singing "I Feel Pretty"? Sandra comments that they could easily make him some shorts so he doesn't have to wear a skirt, but he says he just wants "something to cover [his] ass." You know, I admired the whole skirt thing as improvisation, but I'm starting to think he's doing the skirt now just to be self-importantly quirky. He strikes me as one of those people who searches for opportunities to attract attention to himself and then complains that people won't leave him alone. At any rate, Christa talks about how much she loves the sewing machine and how it's exactly what they need. She then prattles admiringly about Rupert, both for wearing his skirt unself-consciously and for taking to sewing on his own. She seems to think that it's incredibly rare that a guy could try making his own clothes, but most of the guys I know would find ten days of skirt-wearing sufficient inspiration to take to the sewing machine. Snowmobile Boy would probably have fashioned a pair of improvised long pants out of palm fronds and snaps made of fish bones by now. If he had a dead motor, the pants would have decorative rivets.
Shawn -- desperately hunting for new ways to shoot himself in the foot -- wanders up the beach and starts giving Rupert grief about sitting at the sewing machine. "Whatcha makin'?" he snots in his smarmy fashion. "A new dress," Rupert growls. "Ooh, sexy sexy," Shawn smugly smirks. Christa looks on as Rupert ignores Shawn's efforts to annoy him. "When you're done, I have some pants that need hemming," Shawn says. Christa analyzes the situation: "Burton and Shawn never leave Rupert alone about his skirt. I mean, don't keep talking about something that keeps bothering somebody." Of course, any teacher of eight-year-olds could tell you that the best way for Rupert to get them to stop it would be to stop reacting to it, but if you believe my theory that what Rupert wants more than anything is lots and lots and lots of attention, you know that this will never happen. As Rupert settles into his new skirt -- complete with more rearrangement of his body parts than I really needed to see -- he maintains that it feels great and is very comfortable. He closes with a conspicuous crotch-grab. It's not even just a grab of the crotch, either. It's sort of...a comforting pat. He loves it. Nice.
, the members of Drake takes a look at their final treasure-chest clue, aware that they should now have everything they need to track it down. They read the usual badly written verse on the final clue and take off with their shovel and key. Sandra voices over that she's hoping for candy and canned fruit and juice. "Anything but rice," she says with dread. Jon adds his usual note of class: "We talk about the treasure, we dream about the treasure, we fantasize about the treasure...I've had more wet dreams about that treasure than any girl in Playboy." Makes sense, really. At least with the treasure chest, he's got a shot at getting in.
There is some hassling and digging as they try to follow the map, and eventually, Shawn and Michelle track down what they think is the "devil's fork" they're supposed to use as a landmark, which appears to be a big tree. They dig a little, and quickly ascertain that they've indeed located the chest. Because he is the only one who is ever allowed to be right about anything, Rupert immediately disbelieves them. "Show me the devil's fork!" he says contemptuously. They do. He's like, "Oh." And then he gives Shawn his due, returning the attention to himself by hollering as loudly as he can that Shawn is "a god." The group digs at the ground around the chest, as everyone talks about what they hope is in it. "Barbecued potato chips!" Trish yells. "Eight pair of pants," says one of the guys. "Bacon cheeseburgers!" yells someone, who I believe is Michelle. Idiot. What are the odds that a buried treasure chest has freakin' bacon cheeseburgers in it? Potato chips, maybe. Pants, maybe. Bacon cheeseburgers? Yeah, thanks, nimrod. Trish gets things back on track by yelling, "New underpants!" God, totally. Now there is something to root for. But finding themselves unable to get the chest out of the ground, the tribe eventually just decides to open the lid, leaving it where it is. "Finally, it popped open," Sandra interviews. "And, oh my God...a stench so awful, it smelled like death." Oh no, it's Andrew's sexy cologne from home! Okay, not really. Drake removes its booty from the trunk (hey, isn't that a new dance craze?), and the tribe discovers that everything has gotten wet and is moldy. The only thing in the trunk that seems to be in serviceable shape is a jar of wrapped chocolates. ["Ferrero Rochers, if I'm not mistaken." -- Wing Chun] Shawn interviews that, had there been no chocolates, the team would have "ripped each other's heads off" from frustration. We see them happily pass around the chocolates right there by the treasure chest, although honestly, they don't look so good, either. I wouldn't eat anything from that trunk that wasn't hermetically sealed, I don't think.
So what is actually in this trunk? Well, some goblets, candleholders, and candles, all of which can probably be saved and used for a highly anticlimactic picnic at some point. There's canned food, but frankly, all the cans appear to be smashed (indicating that getting wet is not the only thing that went wrong), so I'm not sure I'd want that, either. They land some coffee beans they seem to think they can salvage, although if it were me, a cup of semi-coffee would only make me miss actual coffee, so that might just bring misery. Burton interviews that he thinks the tribe was being ridiculous and needed to "grow up" because they were so disappointed by the haul. I don't know...after all that buildup, to have everything suck that much? Psychologically, I do see how that would be a blow. Jon (unsurprisingly) pitches in on the complaining, pointing out that they got blankets that were totally gross, a hammock that smelled, and a mosquito net that wasn't any better. "I'd call it a ghetto Christmas," he says. "It's like asking for an Incredible Hulk doll and...and gettin' your sister's Ken doll painted green." You know, not to stand up for him, but there's really nothing wrong with Jon that giving him a kick in the head, a concussion, and a lengthy hospital stay wouldn't fix. Oh, wait. Giving him those things would fix what's wrong with me. My mistake.
Camp of the Damned. Andrew and Ryan-O are taking a stroll over to another part of the island so that they can try fishing with the spear. Yes, kids, that's right -- the Tribe of the Damned has had a fishing spear this entire time, and yet they have chosen to rely on improvised nets, a tiny supply of hooks, and, apparently, the power of hope. Oh, the irony. Andrew says that they're trying the other side of the island, because one of their maps indicated some "dorsal fins" on that side, so he thought there might be sharks or fish over there. Hey, I know! Let's go fishing where the sharks are! (Eye-roll.) Andrew says that he and Ryan-O were hoping that the other side would have "a multitude of fish." A multitude? Who says "multitude" in regular conversation? Can I look forward to some smiting and healing of lepers in this story? Anyway, Andrew is back in his grungy business suit and sneakers, so he looks pretty damn funny tromping off into the jungle. Ryan-O is in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, which is presumably what he was wearing when they got there. Relatively speaking, he looks normal. The fellas stomp their way through the various trees, occasionally pausing to consult about which way to go, based on their cartoon-like map. I keep half-expecting them to stop and look for the big "N," "S," "E," and "W" that the map indicates should be somewhere floating in the water. I have to say, bushwhacking in a suit? Is just funny.
Back at the Camp of the Damned, Tijuana reminds us that this is the morning when Drake will do its looting. As the S.S. Booty-Looter skims through the water, Osten explains that if Drake really wants to do them in, they'll take the pot, because without it, Morgan will be done for. "End of game," he says. As Trish gets off the boat and walks up the beach with Tijuana, she says that she feels really bad. "Oh, yeah, whatever," says Tijuana with a grin. You know, if she wasn't such a blind follower of Andrew the Raging Dickhead, I might kind of like Tijuana. She seems like a nice enough girl, and she does do work around camp, unlike Darrah, who just stares coldly at Trish's approach. With surprisingly convincing concern, Trish asks Morgan how they're doing. They tell her they're doing okay. "Our boys went to go fish," Tijuana explains. Oh, it would be so sad to have those be "your boys."
Speaking of the fishing expedition, let's check in with Andrew and Ryan-O, shall we? They are currently heading through the thick woods with no apparent confidence that they know where they're going at all. "This is definitely The Blair Witch Project," Andrew says in frustration. Yeah. And all they'll find of Andrew in the morning is his cufflinks and gold teeth. Ryan-O stops for a drink from the canteen, which is now empty. This alarms the fellas. "Do you know how dangerous it is not to have water?" Andrew says, laughing nervously. Heh-heh, life as a desiccated little rind is a darn funny thought.
Back at camp, Tijuana asks just what Trish is planning to take from the Morgan camp, and Trish stalls by unnecessarily admiring the Morgan shelter. "Our tough men put that together," Tijuana says. Ew. Her use of the possessive in connection with people like Andrew is just...baffling. ["Plus, it's pretty self-evident that men built it, since girls like Tijuana and Darrah can't do anything except look pretty for boys. Now, let's all forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream!" -- Wing Chun] Trish gets down to business at last. "I guess what they want is the lantern," she says, scrunching up her face to express regret about what "they" told her to take. Of course, as Darrah goes on to interview, Morgan is perfectly delighted that Drake wants the lantern and not the pot. Trish insists to Tijuana and Darrah that she tried to talk the team into not taking anything and was overruled, which is probably laying it on just a little thick. As Trish walks off with the lantern, Darrah voices over in her barely decipherable accent that Morgan probably ruined the lantern by putting cooking oil in it anyway, so she doesn't even think it will work. The interesting question, of course, is why they went to all the trouble of showing us last week the agonizing struggle at Drake over whether to take the pot, when it didn't even matter (since Morgan had two), but they gave us no indication this week of any of the discussion that went into foregoing the pot this week (when it mattered enormously). It seems like there are three possibilities. First, Drake left the pot behind out of sympathy. That just does not seem likely, given that they sent Christa out with orders to take it last week. Second, Drake wanted to take the pot and Trish chose not to do it. Also does not seem likely. That leaves option #3, which is that some offscreen-type made it clear that they weren't to take the pot, because, as Osten said, that would finish off Morgan and disrupt the game. That's the only explanation that I can see that accounts for the complete failure to show even a hint of the Drake looting discussion. I could be wrong, of course, but if they did change their mind and go with mercy or something, it would be criminal not to show it, at least.
Back to Andrew, tromping through the brush in his suit and sneakers, all Tarzan of the Concrete Jungle. Finally, he and Ryan-O break through and come out of the woods on the other side, landing on an exceptionally rocky (as opposed to sandy) beach. Here, the water is even choppier than it is on their home turf, making fishing appear even more dicey a proposition than it did over there. Andrew concludes, naturally, that the map is obviously wrong. "It's majorly frustrating for us," he complains, as we see Ryan-O drive the spear into the beach angrily. Ryan-O says that he and Andrew (whom everyone is now calling by his last name, "Savage," speeee-yack) are burnt out, and although they know the tribe will be bummed, there's nothing more they can do on this trip. A nice aerial shot on the end of that segment does a great job of making them look pathetic. Not that it takes much.
Commercials. Am I hallucinating, or is DQ picking a fight with the Martians?
Night 11, Drake. Burton explains in an interview what we see in night-vision, which is that he gets up in the middle of the night and runs into Rupert. The two start talking -- based on the firm foundation of trust they've been building as Burton tries repeatedly to stuff Rupert into his figurative gym locker, I suppose. Burton tells Rupert that the two of them are completely screwed, because after a merge, everyone will eventually gang up on them for being the strongest. He contends that if Jon and Sandra and Christa were smart, they'd be looking to get rid of Burton or Rupert now. "We don't need to win any more immunities," Burton says. He then argues that they should start throwing immunity challenges and get rid of Trish and Christa.
Now stop and think about what Burton just said, and the fact that it literally makes absolutely zero sense. Is it possible that post-merge, the strongest people will be targeted? Of course. Is that bad news for Rupert and Burton? Of course. But there is nothing about intentionally losing an immunity challenge now that will help that situation. By losing an immunity challenge on purpose, you don't save a Drake over another Drake. You save a Morgan over a Drake. Looking post-merge, why would it be better to get rid of Christa as opposed to, say, letting Morgan get rid of Darrah? Darrah isn't going to vote to keep Burton and Rupert any more than Christa would have, on the post-merge strength-ousting theory. If he thinks he's capable of single-handedly winning every immunity challenge, as he apparently does, then that will stop his team from eliminating him pre-merge. Post-merge, he'll be in no worse position than he will be if he throws the immunity challenge this week. In other words, he tried to make this about strategy, but it was nothing but an effort to get rid of someone he didn't like (Christa), which he couldn't do if they didn't lose a challenge. The guy just lost patience, got way too full of himself, and blew it.
Anyway, Burton the Not-Exactly-A-Brain-Surgeon asks Rupert whether he can stand to throw a challenge. Rupert says he can, "to keep the strong together." Heh. Yeah, right. Rupert now interviews that when Burton said he wanted to sacrifice a team member, Rupert wanted to smack him for being a traitor. "If this were a pirate culture, he'd already be dead," Rupert growls through clenched teeth. Dude. It is not a pirate culture. It is a game. Morally, it's just Twister. Or Risk. I get the feeling Rupert's the kind of guy who would be like, "You sank my battleship!" and then would run over and punch you in the head. Sometimes, I think Rupert is a little...off his rocker, actually. Anyway, back on night-vision, Burton emphasizes to Rupert the importance of getting rid of Christa. Rupert nods. Burton also asks him to keep it between the two of them. "As long as no one else knows, we can run the game," he says.
The morning, Jon goes through a grotesque bit of non-comedy before opening the trunk containing what he is calling "seamail." I refuse to transcribe the non-comedy or the seamail, but the idea is that it's time for the immunity challenge. It sounds like it's got something to do with board games and going in the water. I'm trying to forget the entire thing as quickly as possible, because it involves Jon, and listening to Jon makes me feel like my ears are being chewed off by weasels. Michelle interviews that the group is considering throwing the challenge, and she says that her little group is ready to boot Christa.
Later, Rupert, Trish, and Christa work at the edge of the water, and he quietly explains to Trish how Burton approached him, and how he played along. "Burt's the first to go, in my mind," he says. He then interviews that his alliance, too, is willing to throw the challenge to "cut out a little bit of cancer" from the tribe, in the form of Burton. Rupert interviews that "throwing a challenge is the stoopidest thing that Drake could ever do," but that if they want to do it, he'll sit out the challenge and let them throw it. Oh, he also mentions that it is impossible that they would ever lose a challenge in which he participated, so if you needed any proof that his ego is right up there with Burton's, it's readily available. Truthfully, they're both pretty much self-important asses; Rupert's just more interesting and doesn't pluck his eyebrows.
We swoop over to the site of the immunity challenge, which is a floating game board made up of a web of beams. When they get there, Jeff takes the immunity idol and starts to explain the game. It's hard to follow, let alone put into words, but the idea is that each team member has to make it across the "board," periodically stopping to face off with members of the opposing team in which they balance on a beam and try to throw each other in the water. The person who gets thrown in has to go back to the beginning and start trying to cross again. There is, of course, a wacky pirate theme attached to this challenge, but it's even lamer than usual. It's really just about trying to throw each other in the water. First tribe to get everybody across gets immunity. Oh, and there's something else coming at the end of the challenge. Jeff will explain it later, but you may think of it in your head as the Improvised Punishment For Challenge-Throwing.
Now it's time to announce who's sitting out: this time it's Rupert, Trish, and Burton. The remainder of the folks arrange themselves on the board. Jeff calls the start, and the teams start moving across the beams. Tijuana, for whatever reason, is grinning from ear to ear as she takes her place. Idiot Jon does an idiot dance as he idiots his way onto the playing field. And the weasels continue to chew.
The first face-off is Osten versus Michelle. She, of course, is about as subtle as a train wreck in letting the challenge go, so she basically stands on the beam, and when Osten grabs her wrist, she jumps into the water. No, really. She's crazy smart, that one. Unsurprisingly, she appears to fool Osten. , we have Ryan-O versus Shawn, the latter of whom Jeff is calling "NYC" for some reason. Ryan-O loses his balance and goes in first. , Osten keeps up his assault on the finish line, now taking on Idiot Jon. Jon is a little bit more subtle than Michelle, but he still pretty much falls in upon being touched. Now it's time for Andrew to face Michelle. She actually looks like she tries slightly harder this time than she did against Osten, and they both go in. Because he went in on top of her, though, she hits the water first, and thus he "wins" and she has to go back to the beginning again. Now, Shawn takes on Tijuana. He shoves her in, pretty much, although she does manage to salvage her dignity by hooking his leg with her foot and dragging him in after her. Yay! Heh. As she climbs out of the water, she's working the ass-pixels again. I have a feeling Tijuana has no underwear or maybe has a thong under that black skirt, because she always has to find a way to hitch the skirt up about hip-long for the challenges, and whenever it scoots around on her, everything under it is nothing but pixels.
Anyway, as Shawn finishes the course and climbs in with his waiting tribemates who are sitting out, Jeff stirs the pot by asking Drake why they're sitting out some of their most physical guys during a physical challenge. They insist that it's just rotation. Heh. Pot-stirrer.
Back on the course, Michelle faces Ryan-O, and he throws her right in the water. I! Am! Shocked! This means that all the Morgan men are done, and only Tijuana and Darrah remain to cross the board. Tijuana takes on Jon, and he does actually seem to fight her. She manages to get him in first, so she's all the way across as well. Darrah finishes off Christa, and that's the ball game. That's right, kids: Morgan won itself an immunity challenge. They proceed to have a big celebration in their boat, complete with Tijuana actually crying with happiness. I cannot imagine how much it sucked to watch this on television and realize that Drake threw it. Of course, in my book, they still have every right to celebrate, because part of winning is not being a bunch of morons, and Drake only threw the challenge because they're a bunch of morons, so it's not as if there's not merit in the win, too. Jon and Burton grin, because it's all part of their brilliant plan.
Now, it's time for Jeff to do his favorite thing, which is to put the screws to stupid people. (Coincidentally, that's one of my favorite things, too.) He unleashes the special reward that comes with this immunity challenge, which is that Morgan has the right to take a member of their choice from the Drake tribe back to live with them until the immunity challenge. This person will not go to tribal council and will not vote, and will compete for the reward with Morgan time, and share in it should they win. Unsurprisingly, Morgan selects Rupert. Carrying their kidnapped pirate and their somewhat ill-gotten immunity idol, Morgan takes off in its boat, grinning and fist-pumping. At the loss of Rupert, Drake looks a little green. Rupert himself, sitting in the Morgan boat, looks like the cat who swallowed the canary, because he is the center of attention, and that is his favorite thing ever.
Commercials. Look, men, participating in child-rearing! That is so daffy!
Later, at Drake, Christa and Sandra are working on grinding some coffee beans as Christa voices over that having Rupert gone was a little unsettling. She also says that she realized that it's not impossible that there could be people gunning for her and she could go. She's concerned that Jon might vote with the Sweet Valley High alliance of Shawn, Burton, and Michelle, but she's trying to stay positive and she's hoping Jon will vote with her and Sandra and Trish, even in the absence of Rupert, to boot Burton. In a speech with a weirdly ugly tinge to it, Shawn tells Jon that when he and the SVH crowd all vote together to oust Christa, they'll have the added advantage of being able to screw Sandra and Trish over whatever votes they may make. I'll tell you, the best thing the women on this tribe have going for them right now is the incredible capacity of these guys to underestimate them. Burton interviews that SVH is pretty sure Jon is with them, giving them a solid four-vote bloc to oust Christa.
, however, we see Jon having a walk-and-talk with Christa and Trish in which he fills them in on Burton's machinations. Christa voices over that there's a lot of scheming in Drake right now as everyone prepares for tribal council. To her credit, she's not at all ready to trust Jon entirely, despite his claims that he's ultimately on her side. Among other things, he tells Christa and Trish that Burton and Shawn are under the impression that the target of the opposing bloc will be Michelle. Now, why in the hell would they vote off Michelle instead of Burton or Shawn? Did they get that from Jon? Because that's what I mean by "underestimate." Why would Burton know that strong people can be a target and yet ignore the possibility that even a lowly group of women may be smart enough to know that when going after an alliance of two blowhards and an airhead, you get rid of one of the blowhards first?
Hillbilly music plays as we enter the phase of the show, known as Jon Gets Drunk Off His Ass Before Tribal Council. Basically, Jon spends the little while yelling, shouting, showing off, laughing like a hyena, swilling whiskey, and basically making a giant ass out of himself. In an interview in which he also appears to be boozed up, he talks about how stoked he is about going to tribal council, and how he thinks it's going to be "awesome." He goes on to brag about all his alliances with various people, blah dee blah, not realizing that making everyone hate him is not going to serve him well as the numbers dwindle. Ah, well. "I'm a freakin' puppetmaster," he brags. Mm-hmm. I think that last word needs less "uppetmaster" and more "unk." Oh, and we get to see Jon running around naked and frolicking with Burton. Yeah, I'm not even making that up.
Tribal council. Jeff solemnly watches the tribe enter. He has them each dip their torches in the flame and get fire. They all follow instructions -- for now -- and sit down. He talks to them about the fact that Drake is seeing its first tribal council. He levels his eyes at Jon. "Give me the state of affairs of this tribe." "Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. Happy tribe," says Jon, every bit the idiotic drunk. Jeff nods and glares at him. "That's it -- good tribe, couldn't be happier," Jon says, grinning like the pickled nitwit he is. Back to Jeff, still glaring. Without breaking his game face, Jeff looks straight at Jon without a trace of amusement and says, "Are you loaded?" It's really hard to explain how totally, preposterously awesome Probst was at this moment unless you saw it yourself -- he managed to pull off a flawless combination of disgust, fury, and...something else I can't quite put my finger on. ["Contempt?" -- Wing Chun] "Yeah," Jon says, grinning and then cackling like an ass. Michelle and Shawn grin, because drunken fools are really funny. Jon maintains that the occasion isn't happy, but that "you might as well make it as happy as possible."
I just loved that exchange so much that I want to wrap it up and tie it with a ribbon and mail it to myself on my birthday every year. I think it was because normally, they do a really good job on these shows of making you forget about the enormous amount of work it takes to put them together. They don't harp on how much work it is to stage tribal council or to put together the challenges, and it's not like the camera guys are the ones getting their pictures in People. But tribal council is one of the few predictable parts of the time you're on a show like this when you, as a contestant, actually have responsibilities. You need to show up and you need to be able to participate, partly because if you can't, you make the jobs of a whole lot of non-famous people a hell of a lot more difficult. These people are working; they don't need a drunk making their jobs harder, any more than anyone else does. Now, of course, the show has only itself to blame in many ways for allowing them booze and giving them booze when it suits production's whimsy on other occasions. But most people reach an age where they have some awareness that your big-time drinking has its time and its place, and people who lack that awareness get very tiresome, for reasons just like this: they're a lot of work to maintain, and they become the responsibility of everybody else there.
Anyway, Seething Probst was the highlight of my week.
Jeff asks Michelle about friendships, and she insists that "everybody's a friend," which is obviously enormous bullshit, because if that were true, she wouldn't be friends with Shawn and Burton and their anti-Christa crusade. I don't like her one bit. She blathers about the affection she has with everyone, bleh blee blah. Jeff returns to the topic of the immunity challenge, which was so physical and for which they sat out Rupert and Burton. He asks Christa whether it was really just rotation, and she keeps up the steady stream of crap that has characterized this tribal council session by saying that indeed it was just rotation; everyone wants a chance to compete, after all. Jeff cuts right to the point and asks Burton whether it's a double-edged sword being successful, because although you're not losing members of your tribe, you can't get rid of them either. Burton returns to the theme that I suspect is actually closest to his heart by saying that this is true; it's nice to win, but you can't "control the game" if you can't vote people off. Of course, some people would say that you are "controlling the game" by winning challenges and keeping your tribe intact, but I think Burton is looking for a more ego-feeding version of "controlling the game."
Jeff turns back to Jon, whom he more than obviously hates with the fire of a thousand suns: "Jon, self-proclaimed 'good strategist,' what are you basing your vote on tonight?" Jon keeps grinning. "Whatever the astrological signs tell me to do," he says. See, that's exactly what I mean when I say that you have to come to tribal council capable of participating. He's basically drunk enough that he can't really take part in this conversation, and that's what's pissing off the host. Still angry about the drunk thing, Jeff doesn't like this answer, either. He looks at Jon, dripping with contempt. "Is that a respectful way to treat somebody that you've lived with for twelve days?" See, he doesn't really care about respectful treatment of other people -- he's seen disrespect for teammates before -- but he's obviously genuinely angry. Anyway, Jon's smug response is "Maybe, maybe not." Wow. Good one, genius. You sure showed him.
Jeff sends them off to vote. There is voting. Unsurprisingly, we see Christa vote for Burton and Burton vote for Christa. We also see Jon showboating like a drunken fool on his way to and from the voting booth. Seriously? Worst. Survivor. Ever. ["I never thought I'd hate any Survivor contestant more than I hated Robb, so I kind of admire the producers for finding and casting the equally loathsome Jon." -- Wing Chun]
When Jeff reads off the votes, Christa winds up with two, but when Burton hits four, that'll do it. A stunned Burton -- and I am saying stunned -- gets up and goes over to Jeff to be snuffed. Snuff! Hee hee. An excellent booting. Very satisfying, surprising to the bootee...I give it a thumbs-up. Once he's gone, Jeff remarks that "there was a lot of talk tonight about 'one big happy tribe'...should be interesting back at camp." They all take off.
Over the credits, Burton continues to delude himself that he was voted off for being a threat, says they won't be able to win challenges anymore (HELLO, you got them to THROW one, you dink), and pretends to be gracious. Not. Fooling. Anyone. We do learn something very interesting, which is that one of the votes for Burton came from Shawn, so Burton actually got everyone's vote except Michelle's and his own. Hmm, Shawn turned on him.
week: Shawn's vote for Burton is discussed. Rupert's visit to Morgan is discussed -- will he engage in espionage? Probably not, but he apparently will engage in fishing, for which he earns Morgan's eternal love. Because they are hungry and inept.