The Big Lie

The action in this episode primarily revolves around three acts that jostle the dynamics of the game. First, Christa is brutally blamed for an act of fish-dumping to avenge Rupert's ouster -- an act that later turns out to be the work of Sandra, who chooses not to confess and take her friend off the hook. Then, the reward challenge brings the loved ones of the survivors to the islands, and hatches probably the skeeviest thing anybody's ever done on this show. Idiot Jon gets his idiot friend to tell him and the assembled masses that Granny Fairplay has died. The rest of the folks feel bad enough for Jon that they give up the chance to see their own loved ones so that he can get the scoopage on Granny. Of course, it turns out that Granny Fairplay is fine; Jon just wanted the sympathy and the free reward challenge. Did anybody get hurt? Nah. But is it in-bounds game play? Well...not to me. He's not really doing it to win the game, he's doing it because he's a professional wrestling fan, and everything with him is just a series of dumb stunts. He got the better of them, for sure, and I'm the first person to say that being offended by voting, or by shifting alliances, or by self-interest as a concept, is ridiculous in a game of this type. Still, there remain a lot of choices about what kind of person you want to be. I probably wouldn't choose to be the person who treated other people like that on television, but whatever. Jon's been a dick all along, and he's still a dick. It's not like it's a surprise. Then finally, in our third act, Jeff manages to give away immunity, hand over the Supreme Cutlass, and then have to take it back and offer a do-over after he doesn't notice that Burton can't spell "liaison." Darrah walks off with immunity instead. In actual booting news, Sandra craftily arranges for Tijuana to overhear Burton and Jon plotting Tijuana's eventual demise as soon as they've disposed of Sandra and Christa. Thus, Sandra proposes that the four women band together to boot Burton instead. Tijuana takes Sandra up on the offer, but very, very stupidly involves Jon. Jon goes to Christa and Sandra, determined to save Burton, and convinces them to work with him and boot Tijuana herself instead. And so, a gracious Tijuana is the to go, even after things looked so cheery for her in the last episode. Go figure.



Provenance
Original URL
http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com:80/story.cgi?show=47&story=5849&limit=&sort=
Captured
2003-12-03
Page Type
recap (0%)
Wayback Machine
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