Everyone's A Hero

Previously on Whine-ingen Versus the Ants: Morgan was trapped in a vortex of ineptitude powerful enough to suck the innards out of a cow. Drake got itchy about booting somebody, and Burton got bitchy about making sure it was Christa. Osten, given the opportunity to sink or swim, vacillated longer than you'd think a guy would want to. This allowed Drake to crow over a reward-challenge victory that netted them a looted lantern and a completed map to their buried treasure. Or, rather, "treasure," given that it turned out to be as moldy as the drywall in a below-grade finished basement. Rupert continued to take his pirate identity way too much to hearrrrrrr-t. Later, at the immunity challenge, Drake took a literal dive, forcing Rupert to take figurative flight over to the Camp of the Damned for a few days. Jon boozed it up at tribal council and earned himself the unchallenged top spot on Jeff Probst's not-so-secret list of People Who Would Make Adequate Soup Ingredients In The Event We Run Out Of Rice. In the end, Burton got his buff bottom bounced, and Christa voted and ran away, living to talk through her nose another day.

Credits. "Welcome to Survivor, I am your DEAD SKULL!" Wait, doesn't anybody else hear that voice? Okay, never mind. I'll be over here having a little nap.

Commercials. You know, "Cheek to Cheek" is a good song, and I don't much appreciate the fact that they're besmirching it through this association with Wendy's Deep-Fried Pressed Chicken Wads or whatever those nasty things are. The only poultry reference associated with that song should be the feathers falling off Ginger Rogers's dress.

It's night twelve and time for night-vision at Drake, where the team is returning from tribal council. "Weeeeell, well, well," says Jon, proving himself to be the rare contestant who can, without saying anything of substance, inspire nausea so powerful it can fell nearby trees. Around the campfire, Jon (for some reason) decides to "out" the fact that Shawn voted for Burton. Why Jon thinks this is a smart thing to do is anyone's guess. Obviously, if Shawn only voted for Burton knowing Burton would be booted, that means he wants the tribe to know how he voted. That's the only reason, in fact, that he would do it. Jon clearly thinks he's being crafty, but in case you haven't noticed, he's a complete idiot, so "crafty" may mean something different to him than it does to you or me. I kind of like the way Jon looks in night-vision, because the dead black eyes allow me to imagine that he's slowly and painfully being devoured by something that has already taken his corneas.

In an interview, Jon reveals the obvious: that he gave Shawn the word ahead of time that he was going to vote for Burton, so that Shawn could do the same. This doesn't strike me as very smart of Jon, either. All that did was give Shawn an out so that he wouldn't wind up lumped in with Burton and Michelle. Obviously, once he made the decision to boot Burton instead of Christa, Jon cast his lot with the other alliance, because Shawn and Michelle are now going to be alone. Or they would be, if Jon hadn't handed Shawn the key out of his own dilemma. In other words, all Jon did was reduce the number of outcasts in the tribe from two to one. It makes no strategic sense, considering that Shawn's loyalty is pretty obviously not worth anything, and now if the strategy for self-preservation that he handed to Shawn succeeds, there is only Michelle to boot before Jon himself might be considered as a possible alternative. I guess that, in theory, it makes Shawn not mad at Jon himself for breaking the alliance, but Shawn has basically no alliance left, so I don't see how pacifying Shawn helps Jon all that much. It strikes me as the kind of thing people do when they're concentrating on being sneaky for sneaky's sake, rather than thinking about what's actually going to get votes to go in a certain direction. Also, Jon's a dipwad.

Shawn now goes on to interview that, of the people in his alliance, he was always wary of Burton. Well, he actually says "weary of Burton," which would be funnier if he had done it on purpose. Shawn then claims that he was happy to have a chance to get rid of Burton. Huh? He knows that those of us watching the interviews aren't voting, right? And that we've seen the show? Anyway, around the night-vision campfire, Shawn backpedals for his life, insisting that Burton annoyed him, Burton thought he was better than everyone else, and so forth. Trish interviews that she found this maneuver downright insulting. "How stupid do you think we are?" she asks rhetorically, taking what is always a risk for a person on a show of this kind. If Jon had asked that question, after all, I would be stuck here in front of my computer for four hours, drinking coffee and trying to come up with something that would do it justice. Anyway, to her credit, Trish is not fooled by this change of heart on Shawn's part regarding Burton. "[Shawn was] with him for thirteen days," she says pointedly. We return to Shawn's propaganda-view, in which he says that he and Burton were "tight," but of course, it's not "show friends," it's "show business." Or something. He then goes on to cling to the one piece of good news he's got right now, which is that Michelle is in big trouble as a result of the vote, because she's the only person left who voted to boot Christa. He seems to be relishing Michelle's isolation rather a lot in his own dim way, considering that he was supposed to be aligned with her. In fact, you can almost hear the petty little voice inside his head muttering something self-satisfied and not terribly bright, like, "Heh heh, Michelle is totally persona au gratin."

Jon tries to blow some sunshine up Michelle's jerry-built skirt by assuring her that it doesn't matter anymore that she voted for Christa, and that no one's holding it against her. You know, as dumb as she is, I think Jon thinks she's even dumber than that. Sure enough, she interviews that she didn't believe his load of crapola anyway. "I'm in trouble," she says. I find it very hard to feel sorry for her, because this is basically what you get when you put your entire future in the hands of a three-person alliance that includes two unpopular jerks, just because the jerks are the prettiest boys in the tribe. This show's history of dense pretty people of a feather screwing themselves by incessantly flocking together could fill a book, even if that book did require a footnote that said "But see Jenna."

The morning, Pirate Pete and the Peg-Leg Parrots are back, singing their one hit, "Num, Num, Num, Num, Num, Na-Num" in the background as we return to Morgan -- new and improved, now with 100% more Rupert! We see the big man wandering around casing the place, and he voices over that the first thing he noticed was that the surf was pounding the Morgan shelter, and that Morgan apparently thinks they can control the ocean with three logs. It makes him chuckle just trying to explain it for the camera. He says that the lovable losers at the Camp of the Damned apparently don't yet realize that the tide is just going to continue to come up the beach as the month progresses, so unless they're planning to look into a religious or meteorological intervention, they're screwed. We see Rupert accordingly tell Ryan-O that today, the first order of business should be moving the shelter -- something you'll recall they were talking about doing last week prior to Rupert's arrival. Ryan-O agrees. The tribe makes a plan to move the shelter about forty feet inland, in toward the trees. In the most shocking turn of events since Boston blew Game 7, Osten starts bellyaching. He bitches in an interview that they haven't actually gotten soaked by the water yet, so he doesn't understand why they have to move the shelter now. It doesn't seem to occur to him that if you wait until your shelter is being pounded with waves, it might be slightly more difficult to rescue and move it than it would be if you were to just suck it up and do it now. ["Yeah, and isn't Osten some kind of financial planner or something? This is exactly the attitude I want from the guy advising me about my retirement fund: 'Why put money away now? You're not even old yet! Deal with it when you're old!'" -- Wing Chun] Furthermore, looking at where the waves were this morning as opposed to where they were just a few days ago, I don't understand how Osten doesn't get it that the waves are obviously going to take the shelter very soon anyway. What does he think is going to happen? That the tide was going to take a hard right at the last minute? Because that's, you know, not likely.

Andrew discusses with Rupert the fact that Osten, having lost the battle about moving the shelter, is now arguing about at least not moving it so far. I have to say that if there's anything I admire about Osten, it's that he's certainly not embarrassed by his own laziness. He just seems to want to provide zealous advocacy for the principles in which he believes, which include Fanny-Sitting, Work-Postponing, and Ensuring That Gusto Is Not Permitted To Gain A Foothold. He argues in favor of scooting the shelter a few feet straight up away from the water, while Rupert and Ryan-O are advocating moving it down the beach into a different location entirely. The problem with Osten's approach is that it would require moving the fire pit, which is right about where he wants to put the shelter. Of course, he undoubtedly believes that the relocating of the fire would be carried out by other people, whereas he knows that he will have to help move the shelter. So from the standpoint of minimizing his own workload, his plan is a keeper. However, there is not immediate agreement among the tribe.

As Morgan settles into its usual pointless squabbling, Rupert sits down and patiently waits for them to quit it. One of the merry little strumming ukulele-ish themes plays in the background, now transformed from a theme about tribe happiness to a theme about highly comedic tribe bumbling. Rupert smiles to himself while the members of Morgan continue to yap on and on back and forth about where to move the shelter. He interviews: "These guys work very hard at not working." Heh. "They fight and argue and bicker and bitch amongst each other so much that I know why it takes them hours to do anything. I know why they don't really do great in the challenges, I know why they're not really a great team." Oh, I think everyone knows why they're not really a great team at this point. It's the work of a little power axis I like to call "Andrew and Osten," because that is its name.

Back on the beach, Ryan-O -- quietly emerging as the closest thing this team has to a useful leader -- calls for a vote on the shelter once and for all. Osten is left all by his lonesome in the voting, and the decision is made to move the shelter down the beach. Osten pouts. As Morgan takes the shelter apart, Ryan-O shows-then-tells rather pointlessly that Osten's idea got shot down, so they're moving the shelter. Yeah. Got it. Of course, as soon as they start to move the shelter frame, they're confronted with how incredibly flimsy the whole thing is. "It's kind of like remodeling a house with four bad walls," Ryan-O says, and in a very, very nice piece of editing, we get a perfectly-paced series of quick shots of various parts of the shelter frame collapsing as they try to move it. It's like trying to move a Tinkertoys sculpture if all the pieces were only attached halfway and they each weighed seventy-five pounds. Heeeee hee. I want to edit reality shows when I grow up. It's the only job that gives you as much opportunity to be snotty about people as the one I'm doing right now. At any rate, Rupert looks around in disgust.

Over at Drake, a pelican sits on the beach thinking about calling PETA as Trish and Michelle have a chat out in the water. They discuss a can of Spam they have back at camp, but Trish says they've decided not to open it until Rupert comes home. Boy, when they're holding the Spam for you, it sure is hard to stay away. In an interview, Trish says that Rupert is over with "the enemy," trying to "get to know them a little bit," and that she hopes he's not inadvertently giving away information about their tribe. Jon hypothesizes in a Drake bull session that Morgan is likely buttering up Rupert as they speak, and Sandra interviews that she just wants him to come back and tell them tales of the other tribe. It always seems to me that the teams greatly overestimate the importance of gaining "information" about each other. Rupert isn't likely to come back with anything any more useful than "That Osten sure can put away the beans." I mean, what are you going to find out from reconnaissance that you're not going to find out as soon as the merge happens? That so-and-so doesn't like such-and-such? There's plenty of time to learn that. I think that's why they never seem to discuss anything in particular that they want to know about the other tribe; there's really nothing to tell, not that this slows down the speculation.

Back over at Morgan, Rupert says that he's been thirsty and hungry ever since he arrived at their camp, so he's heading out to get some fish. Someone (Andrew or Osten; it's hard to tell) teases him that all the fish are out in the water waiting for him. He then gives a little spear-shooting lesson to the Morgan tribe, explaining that you zing the spear on its elastic band, but you don't actually throw it. Ryan-O and Rupert head off to go fishing. "Ryan-O...nice young kid," Rupert says in an interview. "Very willing to learn, wanting to be the provider, not knowing how to do the providing. Willing to learn on the spear, willing to go out with me...I'm very comfortable with him." Oh, and he gives that entire speech in the same voice you would use to talk about your favorite three-year-old and how he's staying dry almost every night now, so this is where Rupert starts to bug me again. I don't really like people who assume that it's their place to talk to and about other adults as if they're children. I mean, Ryan-O is thirty years old, and Rupert is thirty-nine. I'm not sure I'm buying the two of them as Ryan and Tatum O'Neal.

Rupert dives down and spears himself a fish. He brings it over to Ryan-O, who's left holding the bag, quite literally, because as they try to transfer the fish from the spear to the bag, it gives a wicked wriggle and manages to get away. Rupert yells (of course), but can do nothing, because he didn't hang onto it either. Of course, he says in an interview that Ryan-O lost it. It's interesting how everything Ryan-O does right is because he's so willing to be taught, but everything he does wrong he apparently did on his own. Fall down a little on teaching him how to transfer the fish to the bag without losing it, Hairy-Wan Kenobi? Anyway, when they return to the beach, Ryan-O chats with Tijuana, and although he mournfully (and, um, adorably) recounts the one that got away, Rupert soon shows up with several more that didn't. Andrew praises Rupert's "work ethic" in an interview. Wow, thanks for the approval, there, Andrew -- I'm sure Rupert is hanging on your every word. Andrew says Rupert's been "a godsend." When they make it to the shelter, Tijuana gives Rupert a big kiss for bringing them lunch. "Ah, thank you, baby," he says. See, that was cute, and it's so confusing. Sometimes, I like Rupert so much, and then other times, he is so full of himself that it drives me bonkers. I would even be willing to overlook the act of calling an adult woman he doesn't know very well "baby," even though in general, it's really not a good idea.

Survivors ready...go! Drake gets out in their boat first, with Morgan just behind them. There's not a lot to say about what ensues here: Morgan executes the paddling/diving very well, with Rupert diving and Osten steering. The members of Drake, on the other hand, does fine with the diving (Shawn does it with no problem), but cannot steer the boat to save their lives. This appears to be primarily because Jon has taken the steering position at the rudder in the back -- a position taken by Osten in the Morgan boat, you'll recall -- and he has no idea how to use the rudder at all. It's rather laughable how badly Drake manages to get off-course; they actually wind up crossing Morgan's course and wandering around on the opposite side of Morgan from where they want to be. If their course is Colorado and Morgan's course is Missouri, they wind up in about North Carolina. When Morgan hits the beach with all the pieces of its ladder, Drake is still way, way out in the water finding its way into the course. Andrew starts the run into the jungle for the idol. Out on the Drake boat, Shawn actually boots Jon out of the rudder position and takes over. Morgan efficiently works away at the ladder assembly while we see Andrew pull up the idol from the well.

Drake finally arrives on the beach, and Michelle runs for the jungle. "Let's go, Drake, welcome to the contest," Jeff rubs it in as they float toward the beach with their ladder pieces. Andrew returns with the idol as Morgan is completing assembly of the ladder. "Drake, glad you could join us," Jeff says again as Drake runs up onto the sand, just in case they missed his little dig the first time. Morgan leans the completed ladder against the tower as Drake just starts assembling. Andrew scales the tower to pull down the victory for Morgan. He raises his arms over his head, showing off his alarmingly protruding ribs, which are spontaneously trying to take advantage of the exposure by twisting themselves into a sign that says "HELP." Morgan celebrates its victory. Rupert and Ryan-O share an obviously genuine hug. Probst gives Morgan its first piece of the treasure map. He then presents an option to Rupert: go back with Morgan long enough to share in the reward, or go home with Drake. Rupert goes back with Drake, unsurprisingly, given his tendency to take his pirate status and the "tribe bonding" thing a little too literally. Jeff reminds Morgan that they'll want to select a looter for later.

Commercials. Oh, hey, let's check out the Red Sox-Yankees game. It just started, but hey, it looks like the Red Sox have a chance! Can you imagine the anguish if they lose? That would be so bad!

We return to Morgan, Camp of the Hot Damn, We Won a Shower! Andrew interviews that this was the first time Morgan got to see the Drake tribe look uncomfortable. "We just really smoked those guys," he says. And it's true. "A lot of it was Rupert," he allows, "but if you saw us in the boat, the Morgan tribe was perfectly in sync." I agree with him -- Rupert did contribute with the diving, but I think that, considering how Drake performed, even if Ryan-O had been doing the diving instead of Rupert, the difference would have been enough that they would have won anyway. I think Drake lost that challenge for itself, and I don't think Rupert could have helped that tribe enough to make the difference. Even if Rupert had done the steering instead of Jon, it didn't appear that he could have done it much better than Osten, and if he had done the diving, he couldn't have done it any better than Shawn. That challenge seemed to come down to steering and paddling, both of which Morgan did just about perfectly without much of a contribution from Rupert. It would probably have been closer had he been with his team, but I don't see any way to conclude, as we will later learn Rupert did, that it would have gone the other way with any level of certainty. As we see shots of a suddenly happy Morgan tribe, Andrew says, "We've proven to ourselves that we can win."

That's actually the biggest reason why throwing the challenge was so dumb. Drake let Morgan up off the mat. Drake had Morgan so beaten down that, had Drake won the last immunity challenge (which we don't know that they would have, but if they did) and forced Morgan to send somebody home, it might well have been smooth sailing until the merge -- maybe the first clean sweep ever, with a merge at eight-two. ["Well, probably not, because the producers would have fixed a challenge before the merge so that it wasn't totally lopsided. I mean, let's be sensible, here." -- Wing Chun] Now, Morgan has its feet under it again, which is not only going to make them more of a pre-merge force, it's also going to give the Morgan members more fire post-merge, because they won't feel like such incredible losers. Not that anyone will feel as much like a loser once they get to spend some time in the company of Idiot Jon. It's like hanging around jockeys to make yourself feel taller.

Tijuana very nearly merges the molecules of her face with the bath products they've received from the reward challenge. "I cannot wait to wash my body," she chuckles in an interview. "I just feel like the nastiest person on earth right now." God, considering they haven't even had a single change of clothes with them, I'll bet. I once took a long Amtrak ride and couldn't take a shower for...I think it was three days, and I was absolutely miserable. No amount of washing in the bathroom is any substitute for actual clean water running over you, and I suspect that no amount of wiggling around in the ocean without soap is, either. Ryan-O says that, back at home, he wouldn't be so crazy about the girly scents that the bath products are carrying, but right now, it smells pretty good. Heh. Andrew talks about setting up the shower, which they will hang from a palm tree. Darrah makes a pretty much incomprehensible speech about how there was really nowhere to hide in the shower, so the guys helpfully turned away and didn't look at her nakedness, which she appreciated. I have a feeling Ryan-O may have rigged up a system of highly reflective palm fronds or something, but we'll let her have her illusions that the Morgan men weren't dogs about it. The camera guys, of course, have no compunction on this point, and they do take a few lingering stares at her artfully covered naked bod, thank you very much. "The Morgan tribe seems to be riding a high," Ryan-O says. And who gave it to them? Ah, yes. That would be the stupid, cocky members of the Drake tribe. Fools that they are.

Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, Ryan-O makes an adorable straggly scrapper.

The happy strumming theme returns as Drake welcomes Rupert back home. In a statement that could come off as accusatory but that I think is, in context, actually a compliment, Trish tells Jon that nobody knew how to steer, and that he "stepped up to the plate" and agreed to do it. On reflection, I think Trish is actually telling him it's okay. Oh, and Idiot Jon and Rupert are hugging, which is just another thing about Rupert I don't entirely trust. Rupert interviews that there was no question that he wanted to come "home" immediately, rather than enjoying the reward with Morgan. "I need to go bond with my tribe," he says. My theory about "bonding" is pretty much that you should only discuss it ironically, because almost nothing good has ever come of an active attempt to bond. Try it on someone you know: walk up to someone and say, "Would you like to go to dinner and bond?" I would argue that if the person doesn't either punch you in the arm or laugh in your face, he's not worth knowing. Anyway, back on the beach, Drake pumps Rupert for information that will be incredibly strategically valuable, like what Morgan eats for dinner. Rupert explains how bare-bones things are over at the Camp of the Semi-Damned, where they have very little food left. A couple of meals of rice and beans, he thinks, and that's it. He also rips Osten quite extravagantly: "Osten doesn't get in the water, doesn't go in the jungle, doesn't get water, doesn't grab firewood...." Jon wants to know if anyone at Morgan tried to recruit Rupert, and Rupert basically says no one bothered, knowing it would never work: "They know that a Drake is gonna win this whole damn thing." Apparently, Rupert has never watched this show, and is unaware that there is historically no correlation between being in the stronger tribe and being the ultimate winner. Zero. None. But hey, Rupert would never discuss actual Survivor strategy when he could...well, glorify himself. Anyway, a Drake group hug ensues. Whatever. I don't like them anymore, either. The fact that they're morphing into a corporate human resources department on a team-building retreat isn't helping.

Andrew approaches in the S.S. Booty-Looter. When he gets there, Rupert tells him that although he can take anything, Rupert is going to tell him what to take. And that's a good example of a moment when I find Rupert's arrogance to be overkill. Andrew interviews that Morgan has very, very little rice left, and then we hear him say, "So I'm going to take a bag of rice." Now, it's not clear how that statement was pieced together, and it's not clear that Andrew said that ahead of time, but it appears that he was certainly well aware going into the looting of how low on food his tribe was. I suspect he would have taken food anyway. What else is he going to take? They don't care about the lantern. They just won a new water pot. They don't care about the tarp anymore, because they don't want to rebuild the shelter. And they're almost out of food. So what's Andrew going to take, besides food? In other words, Rupert can play it up however he wants that he told Andrew what to take, but I thoroughly believe that food is exactly what Andrew would have taken anyway. And honestly, if you read Rupert the way I do, the best way to play him would be to play into his ego and allow him to condescend to you without objection, just as Andrew did. It seems just as likely that Andrew was being smart here (surprisingly enough) as it is that Rupert expertly manipulated him.

From here, it's not so interesting. Christa and Osten both drink, and Jeff calls a tongue-waggling Christa "ya freak," which makes me laugh. Trish and Tijuana both drink. Shawn and Andrew both drink. Rupert and Ryan-O both drink. So it's a tie, and we go to a tiebreaker, which will be a race to finish the shake. In other words, the tiebreaker is just as Drake thought it might be. Each team gets to pick the person they want to go against from the other tribe. Drake picks Darrah, and contrary to what Drake had planned, Morgan picks Sandra. The smoothie, among other things, includes a sardine garnish that Sandra and Darrah will each have to eat, bones and head and all. Nice. Like a Nestl Crunch bar, with more eyeballs. Both Sandra and Darrah struggle pretty mightily with this, but in a close finish, Darrah edges out Sandra, meaning that Morgan has just taken its third challenge in a row. And without Rupert -- imagine that. I wonder if he isn't actually King of All Things. Everybody takes off to head back to camp.

Commercials. What the world needs now is more Jackie Collins. That is so true.

As the members of Drake return to camp, we hear Sandra voice over that she feels that her team has to go to tribal council because she wasn't able to eat the sardine fast enough. She says that she feels like if she's the one who's sent home tonight, she'll feel forced to admit that it makes a certain amount of sense, since she's the one who couldn't get the fish down. The rest of the tribe reassures her that they don't blame her, because she did her best.

Out on the beach, however, Jon bitches to Shawn about how much Sandra sucks for not being able to finish that challenge, which was the "easiest" they'll ever have. "I believe the last immunity challenge was mind over matter; obviously, a sardine was bigger than Sandra's mind," Jon interviews. Well, a Goldfish cracker is bigger than your mind, Tiny, so I wouldn't go getting all cocky. He also goes on to explain that he's "extremely pissed off at Michelle," because she drank the shake all at once and didn't convince Morgan that she was a weakling, as Jon demanded. He apparently believes that Michelle has supreme power over all things, so had she done it the way he wanted, Morgan would certainly have sent Michelle to go last. It doesn't seem to occur to him that, as we saw the challenge, several people went AFTER Michelle and saw what happened with her, so had they wanted to set up a decoy, they could have done it themselves. Jon could have faked up problems drinking the drink, as could Shawn, and they both seemed to have no problem gulping it down. It's just an absurd theory to blame this entire loss on Michelle. Given how transparently Sandra struggled, it's entirely possible that they would have picked her, no matter what Michelle did. Ditto Trish, who also looked like she could barely swallow the shake. This is another way that the Drake cockiness is playing out: they've convinced themselves that they're so superior that if they just all play along, they can always guarantee the outcome. Which is just silly. And considering how hard Michelle worked when she first went up to the table at making faces and squirming and complaining, I think she did her absolute best to play along, and Jon's claim that her "ego" couldn't stand to look girly is positively absurd. That's just not what happened, because if it had been ego, she never would have made all the faces and acted so cowed in the first place. I just detest Jon, and this whole speech is one of his stupidest yet. It's quite an accomplishment.