What The...?, Part I

Previously on The Pelican Grief: Osten was intimidated by a marauding pelican. Hey, don't laugh! Pelicans are scary, with the...you know, feathers and the puack-puack noise and everything. America's new boyfriend Ryan-O stepped in to head off the beheading by machete and the inevitable PETA boycott. ("Poultry is Poultricide!") Jon and Shawn engaged in the Battle of the Network Bores, hollering at each other about who was less likely to make it to the moral high ground with a map, a compass, and a three-ton crane. Drake cannonballed its way to the reward challenge and chowed down on a low-carb meatapalooza, but when it came time for immunity, they weren't the big animals of the island. Surprisingly strong showings by a plucky Christa and a momentarily heroic Andrew highlighted a brute strength marathon that Morgan eventually took home in its puny, shriveled, calorie-restricted hands. As Drake prepared for tribal council, Trish and Jon accurately read the growing threat from Rupert's dominance and made a move to get him out, but an opportunistic Sandra snitched on them and Shawn stepped in to help make sure Trish got the boot instead. Now, Drake and Morgan are both down to five members, one for each toe on the foot I am often tempted to use to kick them. "Who will be voted out tonight?" Probst is not so much with the dramatic pauses.

Credits. Behold Osten's entire storyline, reduced to one shot of him trying in vain to swim. Man of Steel to Man of Mashed Potatoes in three weeks. The mind boggles.

Commercials. Okay, if I get AOL 9.0 because it will protect me from meeting smart guys, then what do I use to protect me from meeting guys who use AOL?

On night eighteen, the moon hovers over Camp Drake as a crab makes its way across the sand, back to the trailer of the Survivor staff crab-wrangler, who is waiting with a "good boy" and a biscuit. The tribe, meanwhile, is glumly returning from what was a rather emotional tribal council for Rupert the Eternally Indignant, and you'd better believe the drama isn't over yet. The thing we hear is Rupert's unmistakable bellow, which is now the most tired element of this show, having just beaten out the moon and its sense of eternal foreboding. "Who the hell voted for me?" Rupert thunders. "Who the hell voted for me? Jon?" Jon is walking and trying to ignore this silly matinee performance of the theater of the absurd, but he finally turns around. "Yeah," he says. "Who the hell voted for me?" Rupert loudly demands again. "I did," Jon says plainly. "What the fuck was that shit tonight?" Rupert hollers menacingly, physically advancing on Jon, who takes a few steps back. Jon claims that he was voting to protect Drake, presumably based on Trish's argument that Rupert might go off with Morgan post-merge and start picking off Drake members. As Jon starts to walk away again, a furious Rupert puts his hand on the back of Jon's neck to turn him back around. Hey, step off, there, Thugs Meany. Seriously. If Brynn almost got booted from The Real World for tossing a relatively innocuous dinner fork, you should probably keep your hands off other people's necks when you're angry. "DAMMIT, LOOK AT ME!" Rupert shouts, infuriated that anyone would vote him out right in the middle of a game the sole object of which is to vote off everyone other than yourself. Jon points out that he already is looking at Rupert, which Rupert probably can't tell because he has chosen to throw this hissyfit in the dark. Jon continues to take steps back, and Rupert continues to get all up in his face. Jon starts to explain: "I made a decision based on --" Rupert cuts him off, disgusted at Jon's attempt to offer an explanation just because Rupert demanded one. "You're starting this shit now!" he yells at the top of his lungs, stepping toward Jon again and getting about two inches from his face. Finally, Rupert abruptly steps back from Jon and puts his hands in the air in an "I'm not touching him" gesture. Oh, good grief, you big baby. It's a game. You get votes. That's the way it works. Nobody asked you to like the fact that they voted for you, and far be it from me to tell you how to feel about it, but this idea that the appropriate response to people's engaging in competition against you is to scream your head off like a damn crazy person isn't so much "pirate" as it is "Dennis Rodman." As a smart boy in a backwards hat once said, it's a game, and it's a game to be played hard, and you ought to be able to play hard and have other people play hard without taking it quite this personally.

In an interview, Rupert says: "I was ready to kill Jon. Literally. Grab that little scrawny ass by the neck [sic] and pop his head off him like a fucking chicken." So...yeah. The guy just told you he lost his shit, and he doesn't seem to be offering any alternative explanations. It's especially satisfying to see his "Troubled Teens Mentor" title superimposed over him while he's giving this speech, because there's certainly nothing that troubled teens need more than a guy who responds to frustration by fantasizing in detail about physical violence. Back at camp, Rupert continues his tirade as Jon continues to try to retreat. "I'm out there kicking my ass [sic] getting you goddamn fish and you fucking turn the tribe against me!" Rupert yells. It's a good point, you know, because Rupert did save all of their lives. If Morgan had come away with a reward challenge and taken "his" spear, the entire Drake tribe would have died. It's totally true. I bet CBS is sure glad they put Rupert on the island, because that would have been a lot of wrongful-death lawsuits to settle!

By the way, if you're keeping track of his mounting delusions, it's fascinating that Rupert completely fails to realize that a big part of the reason he got votes in the first place was his ill-conceived decision to flaunt in everyone's face how cozy he was with Morgan, as he did with Andrew and the rice-looting. It was Rupert's very own need to show off how he was the boss of everyone that convinced Trish that...hey, maybe he was the boss of everyone, and maybe that meant he needed to leave. Had he been booted at this tribal council, the boot would have been the hoisting and his ego would have been the petard.

Anyway, Rupert yells and threatens some more, and Jon tries to get him to calm down some more. I'll give Rupert credit for one very interesting accomplishment in this scene -- he manages to make Jon look sane and mature.

Over by the fire, Christa and Sandra and Shawn do their little post-mortem on how stupid Trish was to have moved against Rupert, because obviously her theory that Rupert's got the rest of Drake doing his bidding has no validity whatsoever. Yep, clearly. Shawn is particularly smug, which...oh, Shawn. Foolish, foolish Shawn. He really does think he just did something smart. It's a wonder that boy can floss his teeth without a map.

As the Rupert/Jon business finally settles down, Jon interviews that he's never seen a guy go off like that in his life, and that Rupert was clearly quite prepared to hit him. ["I find it difficult to believe that Jon-- Jon -- has never been on the receiving end of a near-beatdown before in his life." -- Wing Chun] Jon goes on to snot that on top of his general concern about Rupert's growing influence, he didn't appreciate the way Rupert helped Morgan win the reward challenge for the shower, so he continues to be suspicious that Rupert might not be entirely loyal. He also basically explains that, like all failed wrestler wannabes, he's a deeply bitter person who never forgets a slight. He undoubtedly still remembers every wedgie he got in the seventh grade. And the eighth grade. And college. We return to the big fight, which has now degenerated into a perplexing discussion in which no one is making any sense whatsoever, presumably because neither of these guys is all that bright. Jon says that he heard that Rupert said something about having the ability to jump to Morgan after a merge if he wanted to, and Rupert insists that he said no such thing. Rupert further claims that if he thought that way, he would have "stayed and made the Morgans stronger." He goes on: "I would have stayed there and said, 'You Drakes are dead.'" Wait...wha? By staying long enough to take a shower, which is the only choice Jeff offered him? What is he talking about? That must have happened on one of the secret episodes where he was given the choice of joining Morgan permanently.

At any rate, Rupert and Jon pretend to make up, because they're both full of it, and Jon's a weasel, and Rupert loves nothing more than to berate people and then put on a big show of forgiveness. It's the same thing he did with Shawn about the spear, it's the same thing he did with Ryan-O about the fish, and it's the same thing now. Different degrees, but it's all the same pattern. He flips out for no particular good reason, and then he wants to be treated like Mr. Incredibly Generous for getting the hell over himself. Lather, rinse, repeat. Anyway, Jon and Rupert both pretend to be at peace, because it was all the fault of the treasonous Trish anyway, and then they hug, and then whatever. If I ran into the two of them on the street...well, I wouldn't be sorry at all, even if I were driving a tank at the time. Talk about "no ill regrets."

In an interview, Rupert continues to cast himself in the role of King Friday, saying, "I'm not saying Jon is finished yet, but...I'm not saying that I believe him at all anymore." Yeah. "Johnny Fairplay is Johnny Pain-In-The-Ass now to me." Well, at least what he lacks in self-control he makes up for in inept improvisational comedy. ["Plus -- 'now'? The rest of us were there several episodes ago." -- Wing Chun]

The morning, a lovely time-lapse cloud shot starts off the day with a bang. Day nineteen at Morgan, as it turns out, is a rough one. Things may not be as dark as they once were, but we are certainly flirting with a return to the Camp of the Darned, at the very least. Among other hardships, it's raining, and although the tribe is lucky to have rain ponchos from the water reward, they're still not happy. "Bullshit rain, go away," Ryan-O says. Heh, I think that's how they sing that song in Pacino movies. He explains to Andrew that it's hard even to get out in the ocean to fish right now because he gets pounded around like so much photogenic flotsam. In an interview, Andrew opines that Morgan's drop-off in energy has been caused by its lack of protein food. Of course, there's protein in beans, but...hey, it's Andrew, so you're lucky he didn't attribute it to the tribe's failure to listen when he instructed them to start manufacturing protein spontaneously within their spleens. He reminds us that Morgan had some fish for a while when Rupert visited, but other than that, they don't have much luck with fishing. (I will certainly give Rupert all due credit for the mad fishing skillz -- it appears that he is indeed a super-talented fish guy.) Andrew, Tijuana, and Ryan-O stroll on the beach, and Ryan-O wades into the surf to try to spear a passing stingray. The stingray has a strong will to live, unfortunately, and it evades Ryan-O, leaving his tribe to lust after the protein that got away. "It's not that we don't want the fish; it's that we're having great difficulty catching them," Andrew says. For some reason, that comment strikes me very funny. "We're not vegetarians or anything; we're just completely inept!"

Morgan grimly gathers for yet another meal made from its favorite recipe: Beans Steeped In Pathos. "You can only eat so many beans," Andrew says sadly. "Why's that?" asks Ryan-O. There is a little pause. "They suck," Andrew answers. Heh. Tijuana points out that they only have a couple of portions of rice left, and Osten mentions that "it's imperative that [they] merge." I think if they run out of food, they could eat Osten's vocabulary. Mmm, crunchy. Osten then complains about how much weight he's lost and how miserable he is and such. Apparently, the conditions affecting him must be worse than the conditions affecting everyone else, or you'd think you'd hear a little less of the pathetically self-pitying bitchery. Perhaps he's not getting the shipments of Twinkies and beer that are going to the rest of the players. He actually seems to be claiming that he's worse off because he's the biggest guy, which is...kind of like logical, only the opposite. In an interview, Andrew talks about how much better off the tribe would be if they had fish, and he then says he actually can't really stand to think about having fish, because it makes him too depressed. Aw. I know guys who are like that about their old girlfriends. Poor, poor Andrew.

In the Conversation of Great and Powerful Foreshadowing, Ryan-O (looking like quite the nitwit with his buff tied around his head, incidentally) brings up how Ryan S. would have wasted away if he'd stayed around longer. Andrew insists that Lill wouldn't have made it, either. Yeah, neither of them has Osten's iron will, dude.

Now Andrew -- in a clip that follows somewhat randomly from another show called Elsewhere, This Is Also Happening -- interviews that it's a mental challenge just to think about all the things they have to do to survive. He says that he can see in his tribe that some of the people aren't doing very well. Specifically, Osten seems to have gone into a depressed funk yet again. We see a sad Osten in profile, showing a very nice view of his man-boobs and his otherwise encroaching skinniness. You know how sometimes, people are referred to as "skin and bones"? Well, Osten is all pecs at this point. "He'll rally if we need him for something," Andrew says. There is a long silence. "Hopefully." Dun-dun-duuuuun!

Pirate Pete and the Peg-leg Parrots sing another round of "The Num-Num Song" as we return to Camp Drake. Jon and Shawn are walking in front of the tribe to retrieve the day's seamail, and everyone thinks that it's likely to be a big one. Rupert says in an interview that the tribe is convinced that there's an imminent merge approaching. He, on the other hand, is not anxious to merge, because he "[has] a strong tribe right now." That would be the tribe that lost the last three immunity challenges and came very close to voting him off in the last tribal council. You certainly wouldn't want to mess with that chemistry. Shawn pops open the seamail, and they see that it has a set of keys. The bad poetry clue is very nonspecific, but indicates that the upcoming challenge is going to be a biggie. As usual, the syntax is the worst thing about the clue. "If the other tribe gets it, it would seem a painful blow" is the last line. Who talks like that, other than, like, characters played by Colin Firth?

Drake decides that they'll have some "popcorn" before they go. This consists of frying some pieces of coconut, apparently. Shawn and Jon get into another argument, because Shawn doesn't think that they have time to get into cooking up the coconut, so they can cook one up later. Jon is totally spoiling for a fight and is completely determined to push other people around. He's also doing the ganging-up thing that insecure pricks sometimes do where he's showing off for the rest of the tribe how much he can beat on Shawn. So Jon turns this -- which really started out very innocuously with Shawn saying, "Eh, we don't have time to cook it, so let's eat it raw and we'll cook one later" -- into a referendum on Shawn's character. Whatever, Frizzy Zoeller. Adding to the maturity level a little further, when Jon calls Shawn an asshole, Shawn invites him to fight. What's with the bully routines from these guys this week anyway? I swear, Drake does more dick-measuring than a team of porn spam fact-checkers. Sandra interviews that she doesn't care if Shawn and Jon fight, as long as it doesn't affect her. So wait, of all the available interview footage, they had to show Sandra saying she's...indifferent? Riveting.

But enough of the alpha-male-offs -- it's challenge time. The teams make their way through a field to a clearing where there are a bunch of cages and one Jeff Probst waiting for them. The tribes line up on their mats. Jeff gives them a little speech about all the things they've endured since they've been on their respective islands, and mentions the people they've voted off. Those people, he explains, have only one thing in common: they're not in the game anymore. "But that may soon change." A ripple of unrest goes through Drake and Morgan. Or, in Osten's case, a nipple of unrest. "Your past has come back to haunt you," Jeff says. He calls into the jungle, and who should step out but Nicole, Ryan S., Lill, Burton, Michelle, and Trish. The only person among the remaining players who's smiling as if he finds this amusing is Ryan-O, quite predictably, because he's the only one whose picture you have any chance of finding in the dictionary under "easygoing." Jeff explains that the six bootees are returning as a "ghost tribe." He reintroduces the members of the ghost tribe, and the funniest thing by far is that Ryan S. is wearing a buff on his head with big letters that say, "DIE, JERKS." Now that? Is hilarious.

"Do you guys have a tribe name?" Jeff asks them. "We're the Outcasts," Burton remarks gravely. Jeff goes on to make another of his rather limp pirate analogies that has something to do with people who are thrown overboard sometimes returning as ghosts, who would return from the dead with only one thing on their minds. And really, who better to discuss what's on her mind than Michelle? Jeff asks her what she's after. "Revenge, baby," she says very unconvincingly. She really can't pull off that remark at all. When she says "revenge," it sounds like a yearbook theme. Tense music plays as the existing players look around nervously. We close, of course, on a shot of a psychotic-looking Rupert. "WHO THE HELL BROUGHT THESE PEOPLE BACK?" he is thinking to himself. "AND ON MY BIRTHDAY!"

Commercials. I suppose it speaks well of The Amazing Race that it's got Visa Check Card commercials ripping it off now. I think that guy with no Visa Check Card at all is still going to get to the finish line before Team Who.

We return to the Ghost Tribe Challenge, where the remaining members of Morgan and Drake are absorbing the fact that they're staring down all the people they've booted. Jeff explains how the three-tribe challenge will work. They'll all compete against each other, and any tribe that loses to the Outcasts has to go to tribal council. That means that if the Outcasts come in first, both Drake and Morgan send somebody home. If the Outcasts finish in the middle, whoever finishes last sends somebody home. But after the voting out has concluded, the Outcasts will go to a special tribal council to vote for which of them should return to the game in place of whomever is booted. So there's the opportunity for one or two Outcasts to rejoin the game, and they'll be the ones to decide who it will be. Furthermore, if an Outcast makes it back into the game, they'll be immune at the tribal council, in order to give them what Jeff calls "a fair shot." "If the Outcasts kick your ass, you may be going home," he says, showing unusual candor. "On the flip side," he says cheerily, "if you really are the ten most worthy survivors, this should be no trouble." Snerk. Nice. He then goes on to assure Drake and Morgan that the Outcasts have been living on limited food, just as Morgan and Drake have. Well...probably not just as they have. I doubt the Outcasts were eating moldy rice.

As for the challenge itself, each tribe starts with most of its members tied up in the cages and one person running for a flag. When that person returns, he digs under the edge of the first cage and unties the person in there. Together, they dig under the edge of the cage and untie the people in there. Then they all have to assemble a pole to snag a hanging key to the last cage. When they've untied the person in there, they'll make a new pole to snag one last key and unlock the cage. When you've got everybody out, you win. So in terms of competition phases, we've got running, digging, untying, pole-building, and key-snagging.

The flag-runners are Burton, Andrew, and Shawn. "Survivors ready...go!" Burton unsurprisingly jumps out ahead in the footrace. He does, I have to say, look way more well-rested and well-fed than the other guys, so while I think there was an effort to provide some equity, there certainly continued to be a physical advantage to not having been in camp life for the last week or two. Soon, all three guys are digging by the edges of their cages. "Dig, Bur-uhn!" Michelle yells. Burton is indeed the first to dig himself a hole and shimmy under the edge of the cage. He works on untying Trish in the first cage. Shawn is second to get under, followed by Andrew. Shawn does well untying Christa, while Burton unties Trish and Andrew unties Ryan-O. Christa and Trish crawl under the cage at about the same time, with Trish showing a little pixelized ass as Burton shoves her under. Burton and Shawn follow. Andrew and Ryan-O bring up the rear. Hee, "rear." Rupert starts to assemble Drake's key-grabbing pole. Soon, the Outcasts and Drake have everyone untied and are working on the poles, while Morgan still struggles to untie their last couple of folks. Now, one thing that's very interesting here is that while there are sticks and string on the ground from which the poles are ostensibly being built, Lill also has with her a bunch of strips of purple fabric that she and Trish are using to lash their pole together. It's not that I didn't expect Burnett to cook this challenge in favor of the Outcasts, but...that seems more blatant than I expected. Moreover, Probst specifically said you had to build the pole from the sticks and string that were on the ground in the second cage. I loved the Outcast twist generally, but...boooo. If you look back, it seems like they brought the strips in tied around their hair and biceps and hanging from their belt loops and all manner of things. Certainly looks seriously cooked and not very subtle.

At any rate, Drake is first to get its first key and get through to the cage. Everybody gets untied, and now it's just about getting the second pole built and using it to get the last key. Interestingly, the Outcasts' second pole seems to be built more from string and sticks, and less from the fabric strips (though there are some), which is a good thing, since it does seem to be the biggest factor in their victory. What, you didn't know they were going to win? Come on. Still, the end of the challenge is particularly tense and well-edited, and the Outcasts do in fact come up with their last key first. They unlock the last lock and squeeze through the cage door one at a time. Much extreme celebration ensues on the victory mat as the Outcasts celebrate putting the screws to the people who so recently put the screws to them. It's interesting to see some of the relationships that have clearly developed since various bootings occurred, especially among Ryan S., Lill, and Nicole, who have been booted the longest, after all, and who were probably treated the worst by their tribe. I like the celebrating between Ryan S. and Burton, too, because -- come on, where else in life would those guys speak to each other without Ryan S. winding up bleeding? You can still see the Ryan S. and Lill love, too: he reaches over to kiss her cheek, and she responds by lovingly rubbing his scruffy head. Jeff congratulates everyone on their "huge effort," but both the Drake and Morgan tribes are going to tribal council. Heeee hee hee.

This twist has been really controversial, but my take is basically this: if Survivor were any sort of meritocracy to begin with, then it would bother me a lot more that this wasn't, strictly speaking, "fair." But so often, who gets voted off revolves around stupid things like who's prettier and who's a better suck-up...so it's not like the people who were remaining in Drake and Morgan are necessarily better people than the Outcasts. They were better at not getting voted off, which was the way the game was played at the time. But had this always been the way the game was set up -- had it always been the case that people voted off might have one chance to compete their way back into the game -- I think people would have gotten used to it and would see it as "fair," which means it's not inherently unfair; it's just unexpected. And unexpected developments are, in my opinion, part of the bargain and a very good thing on a show like this.

Post-victory, Jeff talks to the Outcasts about the fact that they've all "had [their] ups and downs" already. Presumably, Jeff's merciless torch-snuffing was a "down." At least I'd hope so. It would be sad if that were an "up." He turns to Burton and asks, "How big a victory is this?" Burton -- very scruffy but still disturbingly hot -- says that "revenge is sweet," and he reminds the remaining Drakes and Morgans that they don't know what pain is until they've been through the experience of a booting. This is the other reason why this twist was okay with me: it really did offer something new. We haven't ever seen people who've been through a boot get a chance to come back and get revenge. It really is sort of cool.

Jeff reminds Drake and Morgan of what's to come -- Drake will go to tribal council first, and then Morgan will go later. And after the two bootings, the Outcasts will hit the fire pit to decide who among them will go back into the tribes. Everyone heads out, with somewhat stunned faces all around. Awesome.

Commercials. My local channel ran a promo here for an upcoming news bit on tipping, which just made me angry. I hate tipping. I'll happily pay a little bit more for my IHOP pancakes if I don't have to try to guess how much I have to leave on the table to keep the waitress from spitting in my coffee.

At Morgan, the post-challenge atmosphere is tense and strange. Andrew gives an interview speech about how the game is frustrating and exciting and "a pain in the ass." Well, that's quite a coincidence, Andrew, if you get my drift. He then delivers a highly obnoxious monologue to the rest of Morgan about how the six Outcasts have no right to compete, and how they had no business coming back into the game. Oh, and he calls them "misfits." Andrew tries to make the team swear that they'll immediately vote off whoever gets sent into Morgan from the ghost tribe. His team gently reminds him that, actually, that person will be immune the first time they go up. He apparently missed this part of Jeff's speech, because the reminder bums him out all over again. Way to pay attention to the directions, there, Mr. Leadership. Ryan-O tries to console him by saying, "Doesn't matter, though. It'll be three on two. Bye-bye." Wait, how would it be three on two? If they lose a person in the one where the Morgan person is immune, then after that, it would be four people...does he mean that at that point it would be three on one? I don't understand Ryan-O's reasoning at all, and that pains me, because it makes me think we're less likely to get married. Andrew says that they need to strategize, because he doesn't want any of "those misfits" to get any sort of a foothold in Morgan. Given that there will only be one, there shouldn't be too much strategy needed if the five of them agree on that as their only goal, but...whatever, Andrew. Andrew continues getting snootier, saying that anybody who left Morgan was booted for "a damn good reason," so they have no right to be there: "Skinny Ryan's got no business stepping on this beach again." Hee. Die, jerk. "Lill, God bless her, she's got no business competing in those challenges." And that's another reason I liked the twist: there is literally nothing I like more on reality shows than the frustration of the arrogant, and that's exactly what's just happened to the generally overconfident Drakes as well as the specifically overconfident Andrew. I just love it when they put the screws to a jackass.

In an interview, Tijuana shows a certain sharpness by pointing out that Andrew was scrambling pretty hard to hold on to the control he has over the tribe. "I think that Andrew's very comfortable being the leader," she says carefully. "He's got the best seat in the house, and I think he wants to keep that." Amen, sister.

Back in the Morgan chat, Osten throws a wrench into the works by telling them that when they head to tribal council later, they should just vote him out. "Because I don't deserve to win," he says. He says that their bodies can last longer, but that his can take no more. He says he's out of gas and could barely move at the challenge, so they should just get rid of him. In an interview, he puts together the following fascinating chain of words: "My temple's got nothing to offer for me. I'm a bag of atrophy right now." Of course, atrophy comes from slacking, so...perhaps if he'd done more work, he'd be in better shape. He goes on to say rather amusingly that he always gives 110% -- and if he can't, then he's out. In other words, "If I can't give my all, I quit." It's really rather funny as a philosophy of life, if you think about it. He also says he doesn't care at all what anyone thinks of him -- which is clearly why he got that gym bod and went on television. "You can get in line to kiss my ass," he says. I'm sorry, but that's going to be a short line. He tells the tribe to just vote him off. "It's been a pleasure," he says. Weenie.

In an interview, Tijuana says that this time, unlike the last time Osten tried to quit, she had nothing to say to him and let him do whatever he was going to do. Yeah, she's totally not sleeping with him now. Andrew interviews that Osten wants out because he's "shut down," but points out that he himself would never quit, no matter the conditions. Osten stares out at the water, thinking that maybe he should swim somewhere, and then he remembers that he'd just quit halfway there anyway, so why bother?

Back at Drake, there' a very colorful crab running around who looks like he might be the star of a new animated movie or something, but once the tribe returns, their post-mortem isn't much happier than Morgan's. Sandra interviews that she wasn't happy to see the ghosts, particularly with Burton as their leader. She knows he's strong, and she knows he'll have the Outcasts all bubbling over with righteous indignation. Christa asks everyone who they think will come back, and Sandra says it'll be Burton and Lill. Jon tells her he thinks it'll be Michelle and Lill. Michelle? Why would that happen?

Now, in an interview, we get to see the little tiny recesses of Jon's little tiny brain, which is -- surprisingly enough -- even pettier than you'd think. "You know why those guys were so excited about winning?" he says. "Because they're a bunch of losers, and they got a second chance at life. If you're a winner, you don't have to through the second chance game. So...they're used to that. Their entire lives, they've been losers. This is no different." You know, it genuinely is hard to find the words for what a little prick Jon is. I'm not even bothering with the "how would he know if they're losers" debate, or the "takes one to know one" potshot, or the "nice hideous chest full of pustules, WINNER" sucker-punch. We'll just wait to see how Jon does. I'm assuming that unless he wins the million dollars, he'll be ready to admit that he's just as much of a loser as he's now saying the Outcasts are. Moreover, I almost forgot to remind him that the only reason he has to deal with any of them in the first place is that his tribe went to a challenge and, you know, lost.

Sandra asks the tribe back at camp who wants to go home. No one volunteers. In an interview, Rupert says that he's not vulnerable tonight. You know, opening Jon-fight aside, I'm so very relieved that they finally made an episode that isn't entirely The Story Of Rupert. Because The Story Of Rupert has been going on for weeks now, and I for one was ready for something else. Anyway, Rupert says that Jon and Shawn are the ones who are vulnerable tonight. He goes on to muse that even though Jon's the one who voted for him last time, he hasn't decided whom he's going with this time. He, Sandra, and Christa have a little meeting and talk over which one of the two guys they're going to boot. Sandra suggests that the three of them ask each of the two guys to give reasons why he shouldn't be booted -- it's a "we could make them beg" moment, basically. Which is an understandable instinct, but awfully small and petty and coming from people who have been nothing but small and petty for several weeks now. Sandra and Rupert are terribly amused by this idea of making the boys beg, because they're both...well, small and petty, evidently.

Up on the beach, Rupert gathers the guys and tells them that he hasn't decided which of them to send home, so they should each make an argument for themselves. As the Eagle-Eyed Forum Posters pointed out, he's saying, "Dance for me, sucker." "No fighting -- two minutes, and we're leaving in five," Sandra pronounces. Like...you know, a total bitch. As has been said before, some people handle power gracefully, and some people turn into raging assholes. And the Drake Arrogant Asshole Express, with Rupert up in front wearing his little engineer hat, is steaming down the tracks as we speak. Shawn and Jon both make lame arguments in their own favor that they know don't matter; I almost wish one of them had just said, "You know what? If you're going to vote for me, vote for me, but if you think I'm going to stand around and kiss your ass, you can fuck right off." That's what I'd like to think I would have done. Anyway, Shawn says "you can't mess with [him] for long before [he'll] come back and getcha." That is very menacing, indeed. Predictably, Jon claims in his speech to be "a much harder worker." He doesn't even mention that he's a much bigger jackass. I would think that quality would be hard to ignore, and considering the way the rest of his tribe is acting, you'd think they might see it as a plus. In an interview, Jon expresses his hope that Rupert will "forgive and forget" over the last tribal council, but he's not sure, because he knows that Rupert is still unhappy. I guess he could tell from the part where Rupert almost killed him. He's a perceptive boy.

Drake heads for the first tribal council of the evening. They sit around the fire, and Jeff takes one look at them and says, "Well, I think the walk in says it all." He tells them that he's sure they didn't intend to be back at the fire pit so quickly. "Two days in a row," Rupert quite understandably laments. Jeff asks Christa what her reaction was at the ghost tribe's return, and she basically says, "Gee, I was surprised, so I'm glad I was nice to everyone." She has a reasonably pleasant disposition, but she also does have a little bit of that bland, baked-chick thing happening. Jeff asks Sandra about Burton's comment that you don't know what it's like to be down and out until you've been booted out of a tribe. She says that it did hit her, because she realized that all the Outcasts would probably come back very highly motivated to do everything they could. "The way he sounded, he's ready to come back today," she warily says of Burton. True fact, my dear. True fact.