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.
Ryan-O interviews, with a grin, "The smartest thing this tribe ever did was get a hold of Rupert." Aww. He is so cute. Rupert takes a swig from a canteen.
Commercials. Ah, yes, AOL 9.0 -- for people who still think the internet has too darn many buttons.
Back at Morgan, Rupert goes to retrieve the boat-mail, or whatever we're calling it. He winds up with a paddle with a poem written on it, suggesting that the reward challenge will have something to do with boats (duh) and will offer a shot at something having to do with getting clean. It's about time, considering that their collective writhing stank is probably about ready to hatch fully-formed as an adult, like Jonathan Winters on Mork and Mindy. Tijuana's face lights up so pleasantly at the prospect of an effective washing that I instantly want her to win. Rupert explains to Morgan about his attitude toward the challenge, which is that as much as he likes Drake, he wants to beat them so that they will learn that they win challenges because of him. See, that's where Rupert loses me again. No matter how much people suck up to him and no matter how much love they give him, Rupert is always looking for opportunities to wave his own importance around. It's like a four-year-old at his own birthday party, surrounded by presents and cake and red juice but still needing to walk up to the other kids and grab their goody bags, yelling, "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!" I hate that kind of kid. I always want to break all his stuff.
The tribes meet up on the beach, and they are welcomed by Jeff "Don't Cross Me" Probst. He explains the challenge: each tribe will get in a boat and paddle along a course. At four points along the course, someone will hop out and dive for a pair of wooden pieces that eventually will be assembled into a ladder. They have to be put together in a particular way, because the rungs have different-shaped ends. It reminds me of my two-year-old nephew's shape sorter ball a little bit, although the look on Little B's face when he plays with it is much more cerebral than anything Andrew or Idiot Jon will be mustering any time soon. When your tribe has retrieved all the pieces, you come back to the beach and put the ladder together while one member of your tribe runs into the jungle to a well and pulls up a bucket with a little idol in it. The runner returns with the idol, and then you lean the hopefully-completed and hopefully-weight-bearing ladder against a tower, and someone runs up the ladder with the idol. Whichever team gets somebody up at the top with the idol first wins. So it's basically a paddling/diving phase, followed by a running/assembly phase. Jeff explains that the reward this week has a water theme, kind of like those The Price Is Right showcases that are made up of "things you might use in a Mexican restaurant" or "things Rod Roddy found the last time he cleaned out the trunk of his car." In this case, the reward includes a portable shower, a boiling pot, two water cans, rain jackets, and loofahs and soap and shampoo for washing your filthy self. Of course, you also get the opportunity to loot the booty and, in Morgan's case, a piece of the buried treasure map that may lead you to your very own stash of moldy supplies.
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.
At any rate, they negotiate about how much rice Andrew will take, and Andrew walks off happy with a big bag of rice. Rupert condescendingly says in his interview, "That truly was not a looting. That was friends helping friends." Well...no. Plainly, it wasn't. Andrew had a right to take the rice. He didn't get the bag of rice because Rupert gave it to him; he got the bag of rice because his team won the challenge, fair and square. This is what I mean about Rupert -- he just recast that incident as a decision by him to give Andrew a gift, which is absurd. Andrew got that bag of rice because his team earned it, and the fact that he could have taken even more doesn't mean Rupert gave it as a gift. More to the point, as Andrew walks off with the rice, he voices over that he hopes to be a member of the same tribe as most of Drake soon, so he considers the nonconfrontational looting a matter of "diplomacy." It's a reasonable theory, even coming from an idiot -- it's not like the smart thing to do would have been to loot the entire can of rice and piss everybody off, given that everyone thinks they're within a few days of a merge that Andrew already knows may well leave his tribe in the minority.
As if trying to prove my point about his self-importance, Rupert interviews that he may be "too much in control of both tribes." Wow. If his head gets any bigger, he's not going to be able to fit it between the shelter supports. You can also tell that with his little remarks about how his utter control over everyone will eventually "alienate someone," Rupert's setting up what will later be his argument -- I guarantee you -- that anyone who doesn't like him was just jealous and threatened. Because you can't dislike Rupert. IT'S HIS BIRTHDAY!
Shawn and Jon pick up the "seamail" on the challenge. The usual bad poetry makes it clear that this will be a gross-food challenge, and offers a milkshake glass that implies to the tribe that it's going to be of the whirl-things-in-a-blender variety. Rupert instructs Trish about how to complete the challenge -- by holding her nose and not slowing down. Michelle interviews that she has no problem eating disgusting things, which leads Drake to come up with a plan. They intend -- in a plan that looks like it's hatched by Idiot Jon -- to make it look like Michelle is really squeamish, and they hope that will lull Morgan into choosing her to complete any bonus round that may come along, which she will then shockingly dominate. It's a pretty weak plan, but one that they're at least going to try. Better a fairly lame plan than no plan, I suppose.
Elsewhere, Rupert finds a snake in the water, which is apparently wounded. He adopts it. Whatever.
A little later, Jeff welcomes both teams to the challenge, which is located in a clearing in the woods. He starts by asking Rupert about the snake, which Rupert explains is named Balboa. I imagine the snake whispering, "I'm ssssssorry; it's actually Aliccccce." Now it's time to have the challenge explained. Jeff is standing in front of a sort of roulette wheel and a blender, as well as a variety of seafood ingredients. The ingredients include clams, octopus, oysters, squid, sardines, mango, conch, coconut juice, and seawater. This is going to be a series of head-to-head challenges where one person from each tribe will go up to the wheel, and they'll both throw a ball onto the wheel as Jeff spins it. The wheel is marked off with the ingredients, so where the balls land, that will net two ingredients for the "smoothie" they'll have to eat. Jeff explains that this is not a race; it's simply a situation where you either finish your smoothie or you don't, and if you do, your tribe gets a point. Morgan will have to send up two people twice, since they're down two members. First to go are Andrew and Sandra. Their shake ingredients shake out as sardines and bleeding clams. Jeff whirls it up in the blender. Andrew gulps it with no difficulty, while Sandra dramatically holds her nose, gags, stops and starts, and responds to Christa's cry of "you're gonna be stronger after this" with "I'm gonna be sick after this." In other words, Sandra's struggle is pretty extravagant and conspicuous. Finally, she finishes, too.
Michelle and Ryan-O are . She makes a great show of cringing at everything Jeff says, and when she's presented with the shake, she makes a huge, comical face. She complains loudly about the octopus. She groans. She frowns. But when she actually gets the shake in her hands, she gulps it all at once. Now, this behavior will be much-maligned for the rest of the episode and used as a reason she should be booted, but one of her post-show interviews explained it in a way that was perfectly credible to me. She basically said that she realized that if she slowed down, she wasn't going to be able to do it at all. It is, after all, liquefied fish. I honestly think she did everything she could to play up what the tribe asked her to do, but when she got there, she couldn't drink it in little sips. Oh, and by the way, Jon makes a great show of his disgust when Michelle bolts the shake, dropping his head onto Christa's shoulder in dismay, so it's not like he's the poster boy for the poker face and the maintaining of the plan, either.
up are Jon and Darrah. Seeing Jon do the same dumb-ass thing with his fingers that he did at tribal council, Jeff asks him what the hell that's all about. Jon says that it's his signal for "Johnny Fairplay." This is the F! This is the Y! He's all in between! God, you tool. TOOL. Tooly-tooly-tool. ["It was at this point that everyone in my household started talking about how, if Jon walked through our front door, we would all beat the shit out of him with baseball bats, and then when he was on the ground, crying and begging for mercy, we'd start kicking him in the balls. So, fair warning to Jon: don't come to our house. Plus, he's been in the jungle for two weeks. How can he still be wandering around stoned?" -- Wing Chun] Jeff's face: "I can imagine what your hair would look like wrapped around a poisonous jellyfish." Jeff's voice: "All right, here we go."
As Jeff mixes up a conch-coconut smoothie, Jon tells Darrah that they're about to eat stinky stuff, so if she wants to kiss beforehand, they can. "I'll pass," she says in that cringing, what-a-dork way. Jeff -- never missing an opportunity to drive a stake through Jon's ego -- asks Darrah what kind of shot Jon would have if Darrah didn't have a boyfriend. "Nothin'," she says, obviously entirely sincere. I mean, we've all seen the I-hate-you- but-not-really thing played out from time to time, but this is not it. Darrah thinks he's vile. And why not, really? ["It's the first flicker Darrah has shown of being a person I wouldn't hate in real life." -- Wing Chun] "No offense," Darrah adds with a smile. "No offense, but NONE," Rupert mocks with a chuckle. Jon tries again with "To you, baby" when he goes to drink the smoothie, but he's still completely vile. Admittedly, there is such a thing as a charming jackass, but you really, really, really have to know what you're doing, or else it's even more repulsive than a run-of-the-mill jackass. And that's what Jon is here: extra-repulsive. Not the secretly hot kind of repulsive, the way he thinks, but the kind of repulsive that almost makes you want to talk to him a little bit because it can only enhance the story you will tell your friends later. Anyway, Jon tries to make Darrah throw up by gagging, which is really stupid, because he should have just kept hitting on her. That was far more likely to work. Can you imagine keeping a fish smoothie down while Jon is hitting on you? Talk about an iron stomach.
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 Nestlé 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.
Shawn talks quietly to Rupert about the possibility of booting Michelle. "This isn't the time right now to talk about it," Rupert says. Huh? Before tribal council isn't the right time to talk about it? Whatever. After Shawn walks off, Rupert makes a disgusted face. "Two damn minutes and he's already trying to get somebody out." Oh, come on, would you? Once you get back from the challenge, having lost, there's nothing wrong with thinking about -- and talking about -- which of your tribemates you might vote out. It's not a funeral where it's rude to hit on the widow. It's just a game. You don't owe respect to those you are about to kill, because you are not about to kill anyone. Rupert can be very charming, but he just takes himself and the whole Morality of the Game far too seriously. And I've also had about enough of Rupert's theory that he stands in a position to judge everyone. "He better watch out, or it'll be him," Rupert adds self-importantly. Yes, because Shawn committed the offense of talking about which tribe member should be voted out on a game in which the entire object is voting the other people out. I tell you, there's barely enough "whatever" in the world to cover it.
Later, Rupert talks to Michelle. She tries to make a case that because Shawn doesn't do any more work than she does and eats twice as much, he would make an equally good bootee. She also points out that they have only one more challenge before the merge, in all likelihood, so there's not that much need to bring Shawn along for his strength in challenges. She then goes over out of the way to throw up, presumably at least in part from the giant fish smoothie. Rupert follows her over to where she's throwing up, and while she's still throwing up, he quizzes her about what they could say if they were going to argue for the ousting of Shawn. Does he not see the irony in being all lecture-y with Shawn about when is the right time to discuss getting rid of people, and then trying to have a conversation with Michelle while she's actually in the middle of reviewing her own stomach contents? Rupert covers the puke up for her, though, which is nice in a weird, overly familiar, okay-only-in-the-jungle kind of way. Rupert interviews that Michelle made a good enough case that he's willing to consider taking her arguments to the group.
But for now, it's time to take off for tribal council. Drake gathers in the dark to be grilled. "What a difference a few days can make," Jeff says to the gathered tribe. "In the last four days, you've lost three challenges, and by the end of the night, two members." He turns to Sandra and asks her about the tiebreaker she wasn't able to bring home. He asks her if she's worried that the person booted tonight might be her. She apologizes some more for the loss. Jeff asks her if the tribe is starting to splinter, given that they've now lost three straight challenges. She says no, but she's careful to mention that they didn't even plan to lose this one. Jeff takes them back to the reward challenge. He turns to Jon and asks him if it was as true as it looked that he didn't know how to handle the rudder at all. Rather than answering the question, Jon says, "The last reward challenge was the first challenge of all the challenges that we actually lost." Rupert rolls his eyes for whatever reason, as if agreeing to sit out wasn't just as much a part of throwing the challenge as the rest of them played. He himself said last week that he was perfectly willing to sit back and let the tribe throw the challenge if that was what they were going to do, so it certainly didn't appear then like he fought them on it very hard, no matter what he's saying now.
Jeff turns up the heat on Jon, asking him just to admit that they threw the last immunity challenge. Jon fesses up without too much hesitation. "So now that you've lost three in a row, you want to come clean and say, 'Well, we actually didn't lose the first one; we threw it,'" Jeff presses. "Yeah," Jon says. "My point is that throwing a challenge in a game like this is really cocky," Jeff says, as Rupert nods gravely, as if he didn't agree to sit out, knowing they were going to throw it. Jeff asks them whether in retrospect, they can see that they gave Morgan a psychological boost that allowed them to rally and win the two challenges that Drake did not intentionally throw. "That's a load of crap," Michelle says, despite the fact that it's far from being a load of crap, but is in fact demonstrably true. You can tell Jeff struck a nerve, because her answer is so dumb. She says that the psychological boost Morgan has gotten isn't that big a deal, and she doesn't think Drake will lose any more challenges. Whatever. These people are just as stupid as Morgan.
For a non-change of pace, Rupert delivers a lecture on how much smarter he is than everyone else, by saying how stupid it was to throw the challenge -- a point about which he's correct. He also then claims that he "learned a lot about" Morgan during his sojourn that he might be able to use against them. Of course, he doesn't suggest what he's talking about, because it's pretty clear that he didn't learn very much of anything about them that he can use against them. All Rupert learned was that Morgan is inept, and Osten is the most inept of all. Who didn't know that?
It's time to vote. Shawn votes, Michelle votes for Shawn, Rupert votes, Sandra votes, Trish votes, Jon does his dumb-ass walk up to the voting booth and votes for Michelle ("You're a good girl, but say hello to the bad guy," he says, as if she doesn't already know he's gunning for her), Christa votes. Jeff tallies.
Unsurprisingly, the votes come back trouncing Michelle. She picks up her torch and is snuffed. Snuff! We will learn over the credits that everyone voted for Michelle except Michelle. Bummer. That tribe certainly is doing a good job of eating itself all of a sudden.
week: Morgan is menaced by a pelican. Osten complains some more. Jon gets into another screaming match with Shawn. We can only hope that Pirate Pete and the Peg-Leg Parrots will return.