Previously on The Foolish Man Built His House Upon The Sand: Rupert thought that a big hole would make a boffo shelter during the notorious Panamanian rainy season, and he didn't want to hear Jerri being all nattering-nabob-of-negativity about it. Ethan, caught between the rock of Jerri and the hard place of Rupert's giant ego, decided to err on the side of stupidity, given its traditional position of dominance. After building a checkerboard, a swing, and a frame that actually didn't look like you could knock it over by blowing on it with a fireplace bellows, Chapera took the prize in the Home Depot Challenge, which also gave Amber an opportunity to eyeball Boston Rob's strange brand of "don't talk, sweetie, just pound nails" sex appeal with growing interest. Amazon Rob, on the other hand, started earning himself a most unfortunate slacker reputation that brought him within inches of the long-awaited first flat-out facial finger-wave of the season. Jenna M. grew thin (well, thinner) and bug-bitten and bummed about her position in the game. She wondered how Mom was doing. She wondered whether she should go home. She wondered whether mosquito netting is made of mosquitoes. Finally, she tearfully made a dramatic (one might even say melodramatic) voluntary exit to go home to Mama Morasca. Incidentally, she then went out and gave an interview in which she actually managed to brag that her voluntary exit protected her record of never having her torch snuffed, so if you gave her the benefit of the doubt about going home to Mom, she'd just like you to have this bouquet of stinkweed, because she really, really appreciates it.
Credits. I love that there's a map that says "Fallen Tree." Apparently, there's only one, and it stays where it is. It may be the jungle, but that doesn't mean there's no sense of order.
Commercials. Good advice, people -- don't take your herd of ostriches to New York City without bringing your walkie-talkie with you.
It's night as thunder and lightning return us to Chapera, where a drenching storm is underway. There's quite a lot of water accumulating here on Night 9, and it's a good thing Boston Rob and Big Tom built the shelter up off the ground, because things would be a little less Robinson Crusoe and a little more The Hunt For Red October if they hadn't. "We need a boat," Big Tom says, as he surveys the situation. Alicia interviews that she knew it was rainy season when they came down here, but she didn't know that "rainy season" meant "abrupt flooding of the take-care-to- avoid-drowning variety." Amber elaborates that they used all of the booty from the shelter reward to reinforce the place, using the parachute as a wall on one side and stretching the tarp over the top to keep the rain out. Boston Rob takes it from there, explaining that although they did have a little water come up through the floor, the shelter held up well and he was able to sleep pretty peacefully all night. We see him and Amber snoozing to each other in a series of snuggly poses. "You're so warm," Amber breathes. Eeeeeverybody...1...2...3...eye-roll! Did you feel that? I think that affected the tides. There is more canoodling, and Big Tom explains that the two crazy kids were using the opportunity to get a little "romantic mood" going. Eh, I guess. If your vision of "romantic mood" doesn't require music. Or wine. Or food. Or toothpaste. Twanging "bow-now-waaah" music plays as we see Rob fingering the back of Amber's neck. "Boston Rob and Amber are gonna do it," A-Rob interviews with his characteristic subtlety. "I don't know when, but they're gonna do it. They've got the mat, the pillows, everything is in place...and I really wish those two the best of luck." Hee. It was crass and bitter, and then it got funny right at the end. Like all the best things in life. Oh, and one piece of advice for Amber: sweetheart, make him take the Red Sox cap off. If you don't set some ground rules now, he's not going to learn them later.
More thunder, and even more lightning, and then we are at Saboga. It's raining. It's miserable. It's like the Camp of the Damned, only new and improved, with 75% less Camp, and 50% more Damned. They also did a brilliant job with music selection for this sequence -- it sounds exactly like the part of a war movie where there is a lot of bleeding. Jenna and Ethan are huddled together. Wait...Jenna and Ethan? I guess it's for warmth, but that's also going to come in handy if they get up a game of charades later and have to think of something for "any port in a storm." Jerri, meanwhile, is huddled in a shivering ball, and you can almost see her sanity wafting out of her ears in puffs of blue smoke. Rupert inspects the Shelter That Is No More. "Our beach is destroyed," he says. "Our stupid shelter that I built is destroyed...digging into the sand is the dumbest idea I've ever had in my life, and we paid dearly tonight for it." You know, it's swell that he takes responsibility for being wrong about the shelter, but to me, it's okay to be wrong. What was much more offensive was the oh-silly-girl routine when Jerri tried to raise concerns about it. It's the know-it-all jackass attitude, not the substantive mistake, that would be much harder for me to get past if I were a member of his team. He goes on to lament that with the loss of the Great Hole, the tribe is "homeless." "I gotta build us another shelter today," Rupert says, which I guess tells you how much he learned about not expecting to dictate everything that goes on without talking to anyone else about it. It's like he can accept the notion that he was a bad Daddy, and now he needs to be a better Daddy, but he can't accept not being the Daddy at all. Jenna and Jerri sit miserably in the rain, looking about as hard-up as I've ever seen anybody look on this show. Jerri interviews that they've been "shivering in the rain for probably five or six hours," and that once it started raining, "the whole shelter filled up with water." Kind of like she said it would, no? Gravity is stubborn. Jerri laments Rupert's unbending insistence on putting Saboga in a hole, and then she breaks down crying. "It's not worth it," she says.
Morning does ultimately come to Saboga, and as Rupert, Jenna, and Ethan stand on the beach, they wordlessly compare hands, accompanied by the Snare Drums of Adversity. Everyone's hands are all waterlogged and white, so in case you were thinking it wasn't really that bad? I'm pretty sure it was. Ethan, in particular, looks like he put in extra hours last night at the Hostess mini-donut factory. That's just gross. Jerri remains huddled on the Home Depot box, looking like she may never stand up again. As Rupert and Ethan look into the old shelter, it looks like the old hole entirely collapsed and filled with sand, actually, because there doesn't appear to be a hole there at all. Rupert comments on how insane the storm was. Ethan concurs. "Other than the time when my father passed away, I think that was the worst night of my life," Ethan interviews flatly. He says that there actually were those among them (I don't know who, but I suspect just from his contemptuous, snotty tone that this is a reference to Jenna) who thought it was so bad that someone might come rescue them, but he says that "this is Survivor." He goes on: "It's our own fault that we built a crappy little shelter." Well, right. Especially those of you who knew what a crappy little idea it was, and said nothing in the interests of saving your own asses. I feel terrible for Jerri, but Ethan? No. Elsewhere, Jenna brings Jerri out from under wherever it is that she's huddling. "Come on," she says, "you have to start warming up. I promise you it's warmer out here in a bathing suit. It's dripping and wet in here." She leads a truly horrible-looking Jerri out into the sun -- or what sun there is. Jerri interviews that she has no idea what's going on at camp at this point, other than that they're taking apart the lame old shelter. She doesn't know what they're going to do for a new one, and at this point, she "could give a rat's ass." Normally, I would be all over that kind of bad attitude, but I honestly can't blame her. I mean, she was right the entire time, and two of her teammates failed to back her, and the other one...is Rupert. So she has a point. Rupert tries to get Jerri to drink a coconut, which she doesn't want. Then, still all bossy-bossy, Rupert interviews that Jerri will be fine if she just gets some water and daylight. But they all must "get it together now." I'm glad to see that his taste for authoritarian rule wasn't diminished by fucking up so spectacularly that the tribe almost died.
Mogo Mogo, Day 10. They're not scraping the bottom of the survivalist barrel as hard as Saboga, but they're not living in a Gilligan's Island episode like Chapera, either. Shii Ann calls the storm a moment when you realize that "Mother Nature can be one forceful bitch." It appears that their shelter is largely gone, considering that Kathy is talking about coming up with a new "lean-to and a way to keep an ember." Sigh. She interviews that they made some mistakes in preparing for and dealing with the storm, but they recovered nicely by getting a flint and lighting some fuzz made out of Home Depot twine. Heh. You can avoid hypothermia; we can help. They get a fire going, as Hatch declares that he's almost ready to go out and go fishing again. And go fishing he does. He brings back a collection of moray eels, and his naked delivery of the eels to the tribe leads to some fairly obvious eel/nudity jokes that I lack the strength to repeat, but suffice it to say that they're maybe C+ jokes, as jokes go. Certainly nothing the JV football team couldn't come up with under similar circumstances. Lex interviews that once the eels were cleaned and cooked, they probably yielded five or six pounds of meat, so that's a good thing. Hatch gives yet another self-congratulatory interview about how much the team loves him for catching fish, and this is where the episode really starts to break down for me, because we've heard this, and we've heard it several times, and it's the same thing over and over, and it's not going anywhere at this point. ! Seriously, folks, I get the fish thing. Lex interviews that Hatch is a great fish guy, but that Lex will be happy when they get the last rice box key, because then they won't be as reliant on Hatch for food.
Commercials. It's wrong how much I want to see Miss Piggy kick the crap out of Jessica Simpson. What can I say? In a battle of that sort, I root for the woman of substance.
After the commercials, we return to find Colby and Lex, Ethan, and A-Rob retrieving boxes for their respective teams. You know, by the way, I think they're recycling the pirate music from Pearl Islands again. It's All-Stars, but they couldn't afford new incidental music? Feh. Anyway, inside each box's lid is a note that suggests that the challenge has something to do with give and take and something something and I intensely hate the rhyming clues on this show. In case I haven't made that clear. And now I really need a beer. Go away, and I'll stay here. Anyway, A-Rob recognizes the clue as hinting at a challenge in the style of the matchy-matchy Concentration-Go Fish hybrid game they played for the beauty shop reward during Amazon. When he gets back to Chapera, however, he announces that the note says, "We've played this game with kisses and hugs, now it's time to see if you can eat bugs." Hee. Everyone cringes, and then he tells them he's just kidding and reads them the real clue. I admit I'm an easy target, but I thought it was a little bit funny, especially since Sue thinks he's serious, and she promises to eat anything. They set her straight that it's not for real. No need to eat bugs yet, Sue -- we'll get to it.
At the beach later, Jeff welcomes all the teams to their mats. He calls last night's storm "some of the worst weather we've ever had," and asks how things are going. Chapera reports that the Love Nest is actually holding up pretty well so far. Jeff turns to Saboga and asks how the shelter held up. "Could've weathered a little better," Rupert acknowledges, cranking his Understatement-ometer up to about eighty. Jenna spins it positive, saying that they "all got showers," at least. Yeah. Maybe Jerri can describe her experience as a new Lord of the Flies-inspired form of mental health treatment. During the Mogo Mogo update, Lex happily explains about Hatch and the giant eels, talking about how great it was to have all that food. Kathy calls Hatch "King Neptune." Hey, it's more complimentary than what I would call him, which is something like "Prince Clowny-Man." Sue looks up and says that the eels he's bringing back must be better than the ones she used to get, because what he used to catch and feed to her was all bone. "That's why I gave it to you!" he says. "You have no bone to give me, Richard," she says. "That is absoluuuuutely true!" he says exaggeratedly -- again, in a situation where deadpan would have been much funnier. Jeff says that he's glad they're all in such a good mood, and now it's time for the challenge. Dick jokes are fun, after all, but you can't do them all day. Well, you can, but you can't put that on TV. Anyway, Jeff says that, at this challenge, the tribes are finally going to have the opportunity to interact with each other. Each person will have a "station" (basically, a pedestal) with a closed box on top of it. Inside the box are four items. Your task is to find another person with an item that matches one of yours. You ask a particular person for, say, a rock, and if the person you ask has a rock, he or she has to give it to you and you get a point for your team, and both of you turn in your item of that type. When your box is emptied, you're out of the game. And what's the reward? "The Survivor bathroom," as Jeff explains. It has a little commode and a solar shower, and it comes with Scope and Crest and Herbal Essences and a lot of other things that Proctor & Gamble would like you to know they will happily sell to you at any of your favorite local retail establishments. In addition to the winners' taking the bathroom home, the first- and second-place teams are each getting a rice box key. Sitting out for Chapera will be Sue and Big Tom, and sitting out for Mogo Mogo will be Colby. Amusingly enough, when Jeff first asks Chapera who's sitting out, A-Rob says, "Mom and Dad." Hee.
First up is Boston Rob. He turns toward Ethan. "Pretty-boy," he says. Ethan looks up. HA! Snerk. Jeff says, "Who's 'pretty-boy'?", but as Boston Rob points out, it's too late for that, because Ethan has already acknowledged that if there's a pretty-boy in the vicinity, it's undoubtedly himself. "You got a rock in they-ah?" B-Rob asks him with a grin. "You got a couple up here, don'tcha?" Ethan says, pointing to his head, which is such an unspeakably lame response that I can barely stand to recount it. Don't try to be witty if it's not in you, Ethan, because I heard that one moaning for help all the way from the frozen tundra. Anyway, Ethan has no rock. Hatch asks B-Rob for his rock. Rupert takes Amber's sponge (ew), Amber takes Kathy's seed (I swear this game is not dirty). Kathy takes A-Rob's shell. Ethan takes Shii Ann's coral. A-Rob takes Lex's coral. Lex tries in vain for a feather from Jenna, and then has his feather nabbed by Alicia. Jerri takes Hatch's coconut shell. B-Rob takes Hatch's driftwood (okay, never mind, the game IS dirty).
Hatch flames out going after a sponge from A-Rob, and then Rupert takes Jenna's rock, and even though she tries to get the box open and shut as quickly as possible, Ethan snots at her, "Jenna, why don't you just leave it open?" Good one, genius -- in case anyone hadn't been trying to peek before, they certainly will be now. And interestingly, A-Rob then takes Ethan's coconut shell, so maybe Ethan should shut the fuck up and worry a little more about himself and a little less about trying to embarrass Jenna, considering that they are on the same team. Lex takes Jenna's sponge, and Jeff helpfully encourages Lex to emphasize that he did indeed peek into Jenna's open box while she was taking something out. Alicia takes Lex's coconut shell, and Lex is out. Shii Ann asks Alicia for a feather, but Alicia reminds Shii Ann that she gave hers up already. Oh, shades of the conditioner! I remember this game! Rupert -- less stupid about this game than he is about the game of not drowning in your own hole -- takes the feather Shii Ann just announced she had. Amber takes Jenna's driftwood and knocks her out, and Amber is thus out herself as well. Kathy takes A-Rob's rock, and he's out. Ethan takes Jerri's shell. Shii Ann takes B-Rob's shell, and Jerri takes Alicia's coral. Rupert takes Kathy's driftwood, so they're both done. B-Rob knocks out himself and Hatch by taking Hatch's sea sponge. Alicia just needs to get the last match to win it for her team, and she does it by snagging Jerri's seed. So it's another win for the mighty Chapera. They collect their rice clue and, of course, their bathroom. I think that bathroom, incidentally, is better than the one in my old apartment, which wasn't even portable.
Back at Chapera, they're all excited about the prospect of cleanliness. Big Tom has carried the toilet back by wearing it over his head, which does introduce a rare element of physical comedy. "I'm willing to bet it's not the first time Big Tom's had his head in the toilet," B-Rob interviews. Heh. They all bathe in the ocean, washing with real soap and everything. Well, at least with real Herbal Essence Body Wash. I'm not sure I think body wash is really up to the challenge, and I have to think I would have wanted to start with something a little more aggressive in that situation, like a nice bar of Coast, but at least now they'll all smell like scented candles for a few hours. Well, grime and scented candles. B-Rob bathes Amber as he voices over that they were worried that this would make the tribe "get the wrong idea" (what "the wrong idea" is, I'm not sure, considering that they actually seem concerned that the tribe will get exactly "the right idea"), but in the end, he just decided to go with it, apparently, because there he is, scrubbing her nekkid back. He is many things, but "crafty" is not so much one of them.
The order of business is pursuing the rice clue. The clue's references to a place they go every day "to find out what's in store" appears to lead them to their treemail box, so they all tromp out there. The clue then seems to suggest they go "ten paces" back from the mailbox and find the key buried in a "shallow grave." I'm sorry, "shallow grave"? What kind of a Stephen King treasure hunt is this? Their first efforts at finding the buried key don't go especially well, and discussion turns to the actual size of a "pace." "My pace is diff'rent than a midget's pace," Big Tom offers in an interview. Not only that, but I suspect Big Tom himself has several different paces, from "stone cold sober" to "adversely affected by a pint of moonshine." A-Rob explains that searching for the key turned out to be sort of "'the search for the Holy Grail' meets 'the opening of Al Capone's safe.'" He decides that perhaps they're going the wrong way from the mailbox, so he winds up taking ten paces the other way, which lands him right in the middle of the sandy beach, where he begins to dig. He vows that he will "dig up this whole entire beach," as a dubious B-Rob and Amber observe. B-Rob derisively explains that this looked like A-Rob was "building a friggin' sandcastle." The B-Rob/A-Rob battle of wills ends when it turns out that B-Rob was right all along, and it's in the woods, not out on the beach. A dejected A-Rob watches miserably as B-Rob collects the congratulations. When they open the rice crate, not only does it contain rice, but it also contains whiskey. Big Tom interviews that eating rice is just like "gas in the tank." "I don't know how anybody's going to stop us at this point," Alicia says. "We're so far ahead of the other tribes now, it's insane. I feel sorry for 'em -- not." And if you don't recognize that as the tempting of fate in a manner that never goes unpunished, it is safe to say that you have never watched a reality television show in all your life. If there's one thing that is always punished, it is smugness.
Commercials. You know, I would have been skeptical about the heated seats in the Jeep Liberty until I rode in Snowmobile Boy's minivan and enjoyed a similar feature for myself. Then it warmed my butt -- now I'm a believer. ["We have those in our Jetta, and I agree; there's nothing like a toasty butt to put you in the right frame of mind for a long car ride." -- Wing Chun]
We return from commercials to a lovely sunrise over Day 11 at Camp Saboga, where Rupert explains that they have a new shelter that afforded them a few hours of sleep the night. "We all feel at least a hundred percent better than yesterday morning," he says with a happy grin that assures you that he has, in the long run, learned absolutely nothing from that experience, because he has already concluded that his handling of the shelter matter, while inept, was actually adorable. Jerri interviews that she "slept in," and now she's in "such a better space." She says that things are looking up at least a little: Rupert is out trying to catch some food, and she was working on waterproofing the shelter for the bout of heavy rain. Rupert brings back another smallish fish, and as usual, he demands to be stroked extravagantly. Jenna explains that between fire, shelter, and "a big meal," they were able to get some "redemption." Jerri says, as we watch them all eat dinner, that looking "far ahead of now" (read: when Rupert is not one of only three other people she ever sees) is what's keeping her from losing her mind. She says that the storm truly did freak her out completely, and that she "literally experienced a moment where [she] realized how people go mad." That's an interesting and, you know, creepy statement.
And now, it's time for the immunity challenge. It's going to test communication within the tribe, according to Jeff. Basically, one team member will be the eyes, and will direct the other team members -- all blindfolded -- around to pick up pieces of a big cube puzzle. The cube they're ultimately building is, like, five or six feet high, so these are big puzzle pieces people are off fetching. When all the pieces are retrieved, everybody will take off the blindfolds and put the puzzle together, and the first two tribes to finish will win immunity. A-Rob and Amber are sitting out for Chapera; Shii Ann is sitting out for Mogo Mogo. The guides are going to be Hatch, Alicia, and Jerri. ["Which is sort of funny, because Jerri was the 'eyes' the first time they did this challenge, and stank at it." -- Wing Chun] "Survivors ready...go!" There is a certain amount of chaos as blindfolded people go traipsing all over a fairly crowded course. Big Tom takes the first blow as he falls forward into some shallow water. Rupert runs into Jenna. Ethan tosses a big puzzle piece right into Colby, who falls down. Oh, falling down. Always genius. Tom gets clocked in the chest with a piece carried by Sue. Tom trips and falls.
, in a sequence I don't understand at all, Hatch has Lex put down a piece, turn around directly away from it, and walk off. I have no idea what that's about. Did he want them to lose? Why would it benefit him for the tribe to lose immunity at this point? Is there an obvious target, other than himself? Because it looked that way, like he was deliberately doing that. I mean, Lex had the piece in hand, and Hatch made him put it down, like it was the wrong one or something. Moreover, he sends Lex so far away that he can't even see him anymore. If it were the reward challenge, I would get it -- he'd be keeping them away from the rice and more dependent on the fishing, but with immunity? I don't get it. Anyway, B-Rob then pounds Kathy with a piece he's carrying. And then, in what looks like the toughest blow of all, Colby absolutely pounds Big Tom, right in the chest/face/head/neck/brain. Knocks his hat off, throws him to the ground. "Dammit!" an observing A-Rob yells dramatically.
The first team to get all of its pieces into the playing field is Chapera, unsurprisingly. They all rip off their blindfolds, and now it's time to assemble the puzzle. Elsewhere, Rupert walks into a tree. Woo! I didn't manage to get Ethan driven into the ground like a tent stake, but at least I'm one for two. Saboga is to finish, so they get on with the puzzle-building. Hatch has located Lex, finally, and brings him in with another piece for Mogo Mogo. They're quickly done as well. So now, it's just a puzzle-building race, and Chapera seems to be in trouble early, struggling with the fact that the sides of the finished cube have to be a solid color, although they all have a similar pattern. They start out, in other words, constructing it so that one side has a pattern that matches but is half-black and half-red. Jerri seems to take charge of the building for Saboga -- unwilling, I think, to let another challenge be taken over by Rupert and his endless bellowing. Shockingly, Saboga is the first to finish, and as you can imagine, their celebration is riotous, indeed. Lex takes over the Mogo Mogo puzzle, and rapidly, he puts it all together. Jenna cheers on Mogo Mogo, ready to see Chapera take a blow -- very understandably, considering the roll they've been on. Before you know it, Mogo Mogo fits its last piece, and indeed, Chapera is headed for its first tribal council. Jeff hands out the immunity idols to Mogo Mogo and Saboga (members of which kiss the idol like it's a long-lost relative), and the misery sets in at Chapera. As Chapera miserably walks off to contemplate its bad fortune, Rupert and Kathy exchange a handshake.
Commercials. You know, there's nothing fresher than lesbian stockbroker jokes.
As Chapera comes home, Sue and Alicia talk about how frustrating the challenge was. B-Rob laments, as they all sit around camp, that it always seems to be this way -- something comes up to keep you from having "just a really good day all day long." He interviews that because this is their first trip to tribal council, it's really the first time they're having to play the game very much, and it's already Day 12. Back at camp, A-Rob tells B-Rob how bad he feels for him over the fact that they were all taking such hard "body shots" and getting thrown on the ground. B-Rob -- looking oddly adorable as he stares down miserable and shirtless -- says, "Tough challenge, man." In an interview in which he looks like a complete dweeb with his buff tied on like a headband in an Olivia Newton-John video from 1983, A-Rob adds that the crew they had working on the puzzle was "not our best puzzle-building team." He hypothesizes that if he had been there, they might have won. Eh, maybe. He says that he's hoping the tribe concluded that they need him. I don't know. Tribes on this show don't have a great history of treasuring their most wily players.
Out in the water, Amber has a chat with Big Tom. She tells him that she sees an ultimate alliance between herself, B-Rob, and Big Tom. She suggests the booting of A-Rob. Big Tom agrees that "little Rob" (meaning A-Rob) has become smart. "He's too smart, that's why we need to get him out of here," Amber says. Big Tom listens, but he interviews that he's not sure voting A-Rob off leaves the strongest possible team, because he thinks A-Rob would have been an asset in, for instance, the challenge today. So he's basically going with the lesson A-Rob wanted him to learn, as he guesses that A-Rob's mind would have worked out the puzzle better than the people who were working on it. "I think Rob C.'s brain is better than Alicia's," he says. ["Though, as Glark pointed out, if what you want is to ditch your dumbest player, I don't know how it happened that Sue's name never came up." -- Wing Chun]
Alicia takes her turn guessing about what's going to happen. She says that she loves A-Rob and thinks he's "a great guy." On the other hand, she thinks he's well aware that he might be on the block. But, on the other-other hand, there hasn't been much talk about the boot, and the fact that she hasn't heard much is making her nervous. Ah, yes. The dreadful silence of no scheming going on around you. Unsettling, indeed.
On the beach, the Robs have a Rob summit. It's Rob-o-rama. The Festival of Robs. It's Robapalooza. It's Robfest 2004. Well, you see my point. B-Rob tells A-Rob that he thinks they would make "good allies." A-Rob agrees a little too happily, in a manner that I think reveals his insecurity, and he asks if B-Rob would be okay with getting rid of Alicia before Sue. B-Rob essentially agrees, signing on in theory to an alliance of himself, Amber, and A-Rob, and A-Rob replies that while he does sometimes get "paranoid," he'll go along as long as he has B-Rob's "assurance." "You wanna shake on it?" B-Rob offers. They do. And if you believe B-Rob just because he offers to shake on something, you are a great, great fool. A nervous A-Rob -- who I think knows, deep down, that this is too good to be true -- interviews that indeed, he isn't feeling so terrifically secure about this new alliance, but it doesn't seem like he thinks he has a lot of choices. "I've got his back, and a deal's a deal," he says. ["If he couldn't engineer a turnaround by pointing out to Sue, Big Tom, and Alicia that B-Rob and Amber already represent a sub-alliance that should be busted up as soon as possible, then he's really just not as clever as he thinks he is -- or that he was in Amazon, for that matter." -- Wing Chun] Everybody eats some rice for dinner, and if you're paying attention -- or even if you're not -- you'll see that A-Rob is sitting all by himself while everybody else sits together. Subtlety: it's a good thing.
B-Rob interviews that one of three people will be going. Could be A-Rob, could be Sue, could be Alicia. And when he makes up his mind, that'll be the person who goes. Bleh. Yeah, once the Sleazestache and the big talk both kick in, it's really just the shoulders that are left, and while I like shoulders, I don't like shoulders that much.
Tribal council. They all dip their torches to get fire, what with its being their first trip to tribal council and all. Jeff asks about the first twelve days, and he starts with Big Tom. Tom admits that the challenges so far have been pretty physically demanding, and have required him to "suck it up," adding, "When you go all-out as this tribe has done on every challenge, it'll git to you." Asked to compare the physical demands of this round to rounds, A-Rob says that it is much more difficult, but he also says that it's "what [they] signed up for; this is All-Star." In a really weird question that makes me wonder what Jeff was getting at, he asks Amber, "Is there anything in your normal life that you notice you're able to contribute out here?" Huh? She answers that she's good at keeping her cool and not losing her temper, unlike some people she could mention, but won't. Well, until Jeff asks her to, at which point she says that B-Rob and Alicia do have a tendency to fight a certain amount. They both protest -- heh -- that they've really only fought the one time (over the shelter/fire, I assume they're saying), and that they've gotten along since then. Which actually has occurred to me as well. Asked about the impact of losing the challenge, Sue says that she thinks it actually made them more dangerous in the future, and she agrees when Jeff asks whether this was because they "gave [them]selves a wake-up call." I hate when I have to give myself a wake-up call. It means I have to get up at least five minutes or so before I want to wake up. Jeff asks Big Tom how he's doing after the extremely punishing experience of the immunity challenge, when he got pounded like a veal cutlet every time he turned around. Big Tom fails to come through with anything particularly good, to my disappointment, falling back again on the old "what was the tag number on the truck that hit me?" joke, which...meh. Never use a joke that could easily have shown up on The Beverly Hillbillies. Even if you're Big Tom.
Jeff brings up the fact that up until today, Chapera has had a pretty easy ride. He calls it "pretty cush," which makes me think of Jerry O'Connell singing "Cush-lash, Cush-lash, Cush-lash Cush-lash Cush-lash" in Jerry Maguire. Any castaway who had started singing that would have been my hero forever. Alas, Jeff makes it into a question to Big Tom about whether he's seeing "relationships form." What does that have to do with things' being cush? Big Tom says that there's some "cuddlin'" and "might be a little grindin' there late one night." Jeff points out that Big Tom looked over at B-Rob when he said that. Big Tom says, "Well, I been watchin' him, and he don't sleep on his back every night." "Who you sleepin' to, Boston Rob?" Jeff asks. B-Rob, almost achieving sheepishness, says "I'm sleepin' ta Amb-ah." "Are you blushing?" Jeff asks Amber. She says she's not. It's not like you ever say yes to that question, of course. Man, the blush is such a vile betrayer. I despise the blush. And of course, I was born as pale as a cod fillet, so the blush is particularly fond of stalking and destroying me. Anyway, Amber says she's "young and having fun," but she says it in this really nervous way that indicates that she is quite put out over being asked about it, which...I mean, don't do the canoodle if you won't do the time, there, Amber. "I'm forty-eight...old...watchin'...havin' fun," puts in Big Tom. Hee. Because Jeff is the most obtuse man in Panama, he says, "Is there a little snugglin' going on with Boston Rob?" God, Jeff, WE GET IT. She already admitted it. But now Amber says, "We keep warm at night," which is gross, and cheesy, and twee. Amber, you've already been obvious. Denying it at tribal council is actually only making it more obvious. She'd have been smarter to admit it and play it off, rather than doing this endless evasive maneuvering. Jeff pushes some more, and Amber says, "I'm out here to play the game of Survivor. I'm not out here to play The Dating Game." I kind of hate her at this moment, because she's being so chilly and unpleasant about it. If she wanted to be crafty, she needed to do it earlier, because now she just looks kinda bitchy.
Jeff can't get enough of the love talk, so he asks Alicia for "the straight scoop." "Okay, these two are...you can't even get between 'em," Alicia says. And that's the point -- they've already (stupidly) given it away to the tribe, so why be so cagey? Like they're fooling someone? "Seriously, they're very close," Alicia says. Jeff now gets to the key question by asking B-Rob whether he's concerned about the fact that people obviously read him as having an impenetrable (hee hee) alliance with Amber. B-Rob says nah, he's not worried about it, because "it's obvious" that they've been flirting since the beginning. But, he tries to insist, his "commitment to the game is first and foremost." It seems to me that B-Rob answered the wrong question there, because he pretty much answered the question of whether he's so hitched to Amber that he would protect Amber's interests at the expense of his own. I think the issue is more whether he and Amber are so tightly allied that they would use their alliance to benefit both of them against the rest of the team. So I don't see how B-Rob's affirming his commitment to the game would make any of the rest of the tribe feel better.
Now, Jeff finally leaves the nookie talk and discusses how the voting will actually be done. Big Tom says that his thought at this point is how to make the tribe stronger. "So you're basing your vote on who the tribe can afford to lose?" Jeff asks. Big Tom nods. Jeff asks B-Rob what could cause him to be voted off. B-Rob more than obviously has absolutely no concern about being voted off, but he obligingly cites his "mouth" and "attitude." And then he says, "What else, Amber?" Jeff points out how couple-ish it is for B-Rob to consult Amber, and Jeff? I am serious when I say, I GET IT. And...wait, Jeff called Amber B-Rob's "wife"? Did I dream that? Wow, it's like common-law marriage with more night-vision cameras. Jeff asks Amber what else she does think could get B-Rob voted off, and she cites his need to keep his mouth shut.
Jeff asks Sue if she's worried it might be her. "Oh, yah," she says. "I just can be a bitch to be around sometimes." Big Tom, just behind her, makes a really funny face, so she turns around like, "You want to say something?" He doesn't. Heh. Like so many reality-show contestants, Sue cites as a weakness her genuineness and refusal to be anything she's not...yaaaawn.
Now it's voting time. A-Rob votes for Alicia. "I'm a little uneasy about this vote tonight," he says, "but if everything goes through with it, I have a feeling the time I see you, there's going to be a big finger wagging in my face." He gives a devilish grin to the camera and folds his vote. Sue votes. Big Tom votes. Alicia votes for A-Rob. She says that the team needs more "seriousness" going forward. She is no fun. B-Rob votes. Amber votes. Jeff brings the urn to the team, and prepares to read the votes. When the first vote goes to A-Rob, he tries to stay cool. When the second vote goes to Alicia but he recognizes it as his own, A-Rob grows a little more tense. When the second vote goes A-Rob, he barely restrains himself from saying "Fuck," because that was not supposed to happen, and he knows immediately that something is amiss. When he gets a third vote, he does say "Fuck." And with the vote, A-Rob is history, and he is obviously quite miserable about it. Frustrated, he takes his torch for the snuffing. When he's gone, Jeff sends the rest of the team back to camp with their torches.
It's interesting. As many of you know, I expected A-Rob to do a lot better than he did. He seemed off his game this entire round, almost as if, denied the opportunity to play the big-dumb-kid routine that he worked in the Amazon, he wasn't quite sure what to do. Moreover, he fell in with a tribe of people who don't really cotton to laziness, unlike last time, when he was able to settle in with people who were just as into lying around as he was. He failed to adjust to the dynamic, and that surprised me. He just didn't seem to play as well this time, and he never found a way to convince B-Rob that an alliance with A-Rob was a good idea. But of course, he was also working with the disadvantage that everybody knows now how slippery he is. The person a guy like B-Rob is going to want to get rid of first is the person he can't predict, and he knows he can't predict A-Rob's behavior, so I'm not surprised that was the boot.
In his exit interview, A-Rob says he never really got to get into the game, and he feels that he was "targeted unfairly." Which...you know, there's no such thing as that, but whatever. As people often do, he says he's going to take his ouster as a sign of respect. Which it probably sort of is, but still. Adios, A-Rob. Sometimes, a good reputation is a curse.
week: The Rupert Show focuses on raft-building. Big Tom does a little drinking. There is a twist. In other words? Second verse, same as the first. A little bit hungrier and a little bit worse.