Previously on Five Hundred Reasons The S.S. Minnow Never Would Have Even Made It To Shore If Rupert Had Been The First Mate Instead Of Gilligan: Rupert's failure to obtain a gravity variance in advance from the local zoning commission meant that his giant hole in the sand filled up with water at the first sign of rain. Saboga thus spent a very long night waiting to be served at the Department of Chattering Teeth. Rupert thought, in fact, that the sand hole was the worst idea of his life. Possibly even worse than his beard. Possibly even worse than the tie-dyed tank top. Chapera was comfy during the storm, however, as Amber snuggled up to the Sleazestache for warmth. A-Rob thought that B-Rob and Amber were going to "do it," and he barely restrained himself from adding "duh-huh" at the end of that prediction. At the reward challenge, Chapera emerged victorious again, taking home the bath goodies and their last rice key. At the immunity challenge, blindfolded idiots threw heavy things into each other, which was exactly the way it was all supposed to work, surprisingly enough. Nobody managed to knock Ethan on his shapely fanny, however, so it wasn't a perfect result. Chapera pulled out to an early lead, but when they struggled with puzzle assembly (damn that spatial ability!), they fell all the way to the back of the pack and headed for tribal council for the first time. A twitching A-Rob put together a supposed alliance with B-Rob, but it looked about as solid as Rupert's sand hole, in terms of providing cover. Indeed, when it came time for the boot, it went to Amazon Rob, who just never found a place in Chapera the way he once did in the Amazon. Back to the basement, baby. Fire up a round of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" on the karaoke machine for me, would you? Oh, and...who will be voted out tonight?
Credits. I like the way all the contestants look like they're being sandblasted. week: Stung by bees!
We fade in on clouds flying through the sky, and there's apparently no time for general progress reports, because Chapera is already on the way to the treemail box. It's Day 13, the sloth is starting to get tired of the contestants, and Rob and Amber are holding hands. Ew. There is some happy singing on the way to the mailbox, so apparently A-Rob is not too sorely missed. When they get there, the mail tells them to build a raft. And on the raft, they will take two of each species of reality-show contestant -- two dating-show people, two gross-out show people, two warm-self-improvement people...we may have to repopulate the entire reality universe, you know. Okay, not really, it's just the raft. "I did this in Marquesas," Rob says immediately. The clue tells them that they'll need to build a raft that will seat four of them for the challenge. Sue proposes that Big Tom sit out, because he would be the heaviest one to try to carry in a racing situation. This seems to be largely agreed. Amber explains that to help with construction and testing of their raft, they were given bamboo, rope, and one paddle. So the challenge is the raft construction and then, presumably, a race.
Over at Saboga, Rupert is taking charge of the building. Because that went well last time, so why not keep it up? Maybe this time, he can build a boat that appears to sink immediately, but is secretly incredibly well-conceived, because after all, he's been building rafts for twenty years. His idea is to build a boat with "outriggers." Yes -- broad, with lots of appendages for extra drag -- that's the key to real speed. Jerri interviews: "Apparently, we're building a pontoon boat." She allows, however, that it might be more of a catamaran. Hee. Basically, the raft that Ethan and Rupert wind up constructing is very sturdy and very wide. Built for stability, yes. Capable of hosting a well-attended margarita happy hour, yes. But not really all that much for speed. They test out the raft, and it does at least appear to float. "I feel very good about the raft," Rupert interviews with a proud grin. "I'm trying not to think about the house. I got my reputation riding on this damn thing again." Wow, I sure hope it works, or people might start to think he's a giant preening idiot, kind of like I've always said. I'd hate to see that happen, because God knows, I hate to be right. "We came up with a good design...with four paddles, we should be able to fly," Rupert says. "We want to win." Well, with their unique brand of leadership and plucky, can-do Yankee craftsmanship, I can't imagine that will be a problem.
Mogo Mogo. The sturdier folks carry the bamboo out of the jungle and to the beach. They start off discussing whether it's worth the effort to cut the bamboo shorter for more specialized use in the raft, and all are leaning toward keeping the bamboo at full length, simply because it's "too much energy to cut it down," as Kathy says. Hatch comes up with the idea of using the tied bundles of bamboo essentially as they are, to build the world's simplest raft. And in the end, that's what they do, creating a long, narrow bullet of bamboo that floats. Colby explains the challenge and the difficulty that the raft will face: "It's gotta carry 260 pounds-a-Hatch." And that's exactly how he says it. "Pounds-a-hatch." Colby and his big hat want you to know, however, that you should not be too impressed with their grasp of physics, because "laziness and pure exhaustion" dictated the way the raft was ultimately built. "The raft will definitely float," Hatch says knowingly, "but it won't be swift. It will not be swift." You know, almost like this show is just a bunch of arrogant assholes learning that they're not as smart as they think they are. And people wonder why there's an audience for it.
Over at Chapera, Alicia is looking out at the raft admiringly as Rob, Sue, and Amber frolic upon it. Quality-wise, it's somewhere in between the Mogo Mogo and Saboga rafts -- it's not nearly as broad and flat as Saboga's pontoon boat, but it's wider than the Mogo Mogo torpedo. "I say nice rack -- uh, raft," Big Tom says, and Alicia's like, "Yes, yes, har-dee-har." He says it was an accident. Riiiight. She asks him if he's been drinking. Rob tells Big Tom that the boat is like a "waterbed." "That's the best-built thing since Alicia," Big Tom slurs admiringly. In an interview, an unhappy Sue says that if she could get rid of anyone at this point, she'd get rid of Tom. "He's a stupid drunk," she says, not really amused. "He's a stupid, klutzy drunk." She goes on: "I don't care for the man whatsoever. I don't think his sexual indoendoes [sic] are funny." Have you ever seen the one where the Indoendoes fight the Huguenots? Now that's not funny. Tom heads down with the whiskey to "christen the ship," and Sue interviews that she decided to christen it by peeing on it instead. His big moment stepped on, Big Tom is not happy. "Kiss my ass, what a hag," he mutters on the beach upon learning this news. "That's gonna make a hole in the driftwood. That'll rot any wood I know." Yeah...the stubborn women totally have the most acidic urine. ["It's not a very neighbourly comment, but I have to agree: Sue is a hag." -- Wing Chun] Tom does, however, go down to the water to join the rest of the team and the raft. "I christen thee...the Suzy Q, in honor of me old lady Sue!" he slurs. Sue is, in fact, laughing at this point, so I'm not sure things between them are quite as bad as they appear, though I think they're certainly not good.
Time to make our way over to the reward challenge. Jeff calls in the teams, and Rich snots that "Sue's still here" when he sees Chapera. They all note the absence of Amazon Rob. The way the challenge will work, Jeff explains, is that two team members will board the raft. They'll then paddle out and "rescue" two more team members on separate floating platforms. Then everybody paddles back, you run up the beach to the finish line, and you're done. Pretty straightforward. Oh, and there are some flags to grab along the way, because there are always flags to grab. And what's the reward? A set of hooks and a fishing spear. Also, for the first two tribes, a key to the lockbox if you still need one. Oh, and there's one other thing: the tribe that finishes last will be dissolved and scattered to the two other tribes, whether they want your sorry ass or not. The losing tribe members will also not be returning to their old camp, so while their personal stuff and clothes will be brought to them at their new homes, their shelters and reward and stuff will be lost to them forever. Yeah, Rupert. You'd better win, because if you have to go somewhere else, they're not bringing you your sinkhole. Big Tom is sitting out for Chapera, and Shii Ann is sitting out for Mogo Mogo.
The rafts take off. Before long, the Mogo Mogo Silver Bullet goes streaking away from the rest of the teams. "The worst-looking raft of the three," as Jeff points out, is performing the best. Mogo Mogo picks up Kathy and heads for Hatch. Alicia and Jenna are picked up by the other two tribes shortly thereafter. The Mogo Mogo lead increases. Hatch hops aboard the Silver Bullet. There's an effort here to force me to find Ethan hot, with the shirtless rowing and everything, and...I almost could. But not quite. Which is odd, because a test I took today pronounced that the types of men I find attractive are "Professors" and -- yes, ladies and gentlemen -- "Pretty Boys." I am not making that up. (It also pronounced me "Very Picky." Hmph.) Anyway, Chapera picks up Amber. Saboga picks up Jerri. There's more paddling, but nothing's going to change. Saboga is way too far behind at this point, and Mogo Mogo is way out ahead, so the order is pretty well determined. It's interesting, because one thing that appears to be supremely wrong with the Saboga barge is that there's nowhere to put your legs down through that's comfortable. The other teams built their boats so that you could sit on them comfortably with your feet hanging down. And while the drag from the legs might seem bad, I don't think it's nearly as bad as the loss of power that you can tell Saboga is experiencing from not really being able to sit comfortably and dig in -- that's why Ethan is kneeling the entire time. You can see that the other three just can't get any power behind their paddling at all, because they can't get up over the paddles. I can't explain the physics, but sitting on your butt with your feet out in front of you is no way to get power to your arms, it seems to me. Anyway, Mogo Mogo is first to get across the finish line, followed by Chapera. And Saboga, the worst tribe ever, will be mercifully done away with. Not since my last glass of Tang has dissolution been so very welcome. As Mogo Mogo is waiting in a huddle on the beach for the other tribes to finish, they recall that Jeff said the other tribes would be picking the members of the dissolved tribe, with the first team to finish picking first. They discuss that first pick. "We've gotta get rid of Ethan," Colby mutters. "Bring him along, Rich." They all appear to agree to take Ethan just in order to take Ethan out. After the stragglers make their way up onto the beach, Saboga shares one final group hug -- because who wouldn't mourn the loss of a tribe so mighty? Ah, never have so many suffered so much because so few knew so little about so many properties of water.
Mogo Mogo picks first, and they do in fact choose Ethan. Come and meet your doom, soccer-boy. Chapera takes Rupert. Mogo Mogo picks Jerri over Jenna, so Jenna is left to twirl her buff and try to look inconspicuous until she gets sent to Chapera. "Doodle-ee-doo...just sitting here twirling my buff...not worried about being picked last...la la la...." ["Heh. Jenna is the Omarosa of Survivor." -- Wing Chun] Interestingly, there's a Sue/Jenna hug once she finally gets to Chapera that looks pretty darn warm -- warm, that is, for any moment involving Sue. I don't know that I would've picked them out as friends, but I suppose you never know.
Following the commercial break, we swoop back to the happy land of Mogo Mogo, where the new team is having an extremely insincere welcome celebration for Jerri and Ethan. "I am so happy," Jerri says to Kathy. Colby interviews that the best part of the reward was having control over "dismantling Saboga." He says that they chose Ethan because if they took him, they'd control how long he stayed around. Jerri they chose because they didn't think Ethan would have "bonded" with her too much. It's kind of funny that Ethan perceived Jenna (probably correctly) as the person most willing to participate in taking him out, but Mogo Mogo read her as having more likely allegiance to him than Jerri. You gotta read those exes carefully, or you can get them totally wrong. Colby goes on to say that it's still "the original Mogo Mogo tribe, [with] Jerri and Ethan...on the outside looking in." Well, don't we just have supreme power over the universe? A lizard goes running across the beach, thinking about how he is also on the outside looking in. Because it's hard to live in close proximity to a species that's taller than you are. As the new Mogo Mogo returns to camp, Jerri happily proclaims the place "beautiful." She manages not to say, "Thanks, guys, this is way better than the collapsed sand pit." She and Ethan both admire their butt-kicking, balcony-having, above-ground shelter. Ethan interviews that "every day [he's] started over," and now he's having to start over again. Jerri tells the rest of Mogo Mogo how happy she is to be with them. She interviews that her "spirits are very high right now," and says that she doesn't miss Saboga in any way, shape, or form. And honestly, who would? She lost Jenna, Rupert, and repeated opportunities to die of exposure. Let me get her a hanky.
Over at Chapera, Jenna and Rupert are welcomed. As she returns to the Chapera camp, Jenna voices over that "over at Saboga, [she] had complete control, and [she] was telling everyone who to vote out." You know, I think reality television is kind of like The Ring, except it's "Before You Die, You Say 'I Am In Complete Control.'" She certainly seems to have fallen in with Amber right away, which is kinda funny, given their shared Ethan history. Jenna then complains in her interview that her first thirteen days are just wiped out now. Well, right. Except for the fact that two people have already been voted out of her tribe, and neither of them is her. So...you know, not completely wiped out. Rupert and Jenna love the Chapera swing, and even take a shot at swinging on it. "Our camp was Hobo Junction; theirs is the Taj Mahal," Rupert says. The world's entire hobo population writes letters to Rupert that say simply, "Hey, tin can stoves work, asshole." "We're gonna kick the green team's ass," Alicia says as she goes for a belt of whiskey.
The sun sets and rises, and it's the day. Day 14 at Mogo Mogo, and many hands are digging for the rice key. Jerri finally pulls the bottle, shakes it, and to her delight, the key rattles. "It felt so good to find it," she interviews happily. "I was so excited, everybody was like, 'Yay, Jerri!'" She puts her hands up in a sheepish pseudo-victory gesture and says, "I felt like, 'yay, now I'm a part of Mogo Mogo.'" And she does it in a "Look at me, I'm the biggest dork ever" kind of self-deprecating way I find very endearing. Hee. I'm sorry, I know intellectually how hideous she was in her own season, but she's really pretty cool at this point, and right there, she was totally adorable. She has a certain ability to recognize her moments of looking really stupid that would serve the rest of these people well if they actually shared it. The tribemates bust open the crate, and while the whiskey is doing fine, Mogo Mogo didn't do a good job of keeping the crate dry as instructed, and about half of their rice is rotten. Oh, boo. Colby miserably watches Jerri dump out the bad stuff, and he interviews that this made him miserable, because he's run out of rice before, and it's not a good situation. "Even though we have rice," he says by way of segue, "we do still need fish."
Speaking of fish, Hatch is talking to Ethan about when he's planning on going out fishing. Ethan takes the spear, shrugging that he's going to "try for a little bit" with the fishing. Hatch interviews that he thinks "Ethan's always playing the game." He says that Ethan is very careful not to step on the Hatch toes about the fishing, and tries to act very deferential. And as we see in this week's Ethan Fishing Footage, he does manage, with the assistance of the new spear, to catch an actual fish. I think that's the first time that Ethan's Fishing Footage has lost the extra "of Futility" suffix. "How'd you do?" says Hatch as Ethan returns. "Not much," Ethan says humbly with a nice fish hanging off the spear, "but every little bit helps." Ethan interviews that he recognized Hatch's unhappiness with the fact that anybody caught a fish other than himself. As they prepare to cook the fish, Lex congratulates Ethan on the fact that it's really a pretty nice fish. "He got a fish," Hatch overacts in an interview. "I was the only one who's supposed to get fish. I have to fix that. I'm going to have to bring back twelve now." And Hatch heads out fishing, just to make sure that his status as King Fish Guy is secure. When he brings two fish back to camp, the team is ecstatic yet again. Kathy is very happy about this, as she interviews: "If the guys want to feud on how many fish they bring in? Rock on!" Hee. I love her. I also agree with her -- always profit from other people's insecurities wherever possible.
After the commercials, we come back, and are greeted with a warning: "THE FOLLOWING SCENE CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT MAY BE INAPPROPRIATE FOR YOUNGER VIEWERS. PARENTAL DISCRETION IS ADVISED." So if you've been letting your seven-year-olds watch the naked people and the snuggling and moaning and the bleeped swearing, this would be the point at which I suppose you would encourage them to leave the room. ["Hey, I'm well over seven, and there's stuff in this chunk of the show that I wasn't all that psyched about watching, myself." -- Wing Chun] A yelling chant on the soundtrack sweeps us into Mogo Mogo on Day 15, where Hatch and Jerri are retrieving some treemail. It doesn't give you a whole lot other than references to "speed and strength." "I think we'll win," Hatch interviews. "And if we don't, who cares? Lot of people we have to get rid of." He smirks, and then looks around. "Hope nobody heard me say that." Yes, yes, you're very enchanting.
Around a boiling pot of fish or rice or something, the rest of Mogo Mogo agrees that the challenge sounds like fun. Colby interviews, however, that they're having to change their approach a little, because up until this point, they've relied on finishing second in immunity challenges rather than last. And obviously, at this point, second will not do at all. "Second place now sends ya home," he says.
Jeff calls the teams in for the immunity challenge. He retrieves the immunity idol from Lex and reunites it with the half of the idol he took from the abandoned Saboga camp, and now there's just one immunity idol to rule them all. He explains the challenge. Basically, each team starts on a platform and has to walk across a web of balance beams to get to the other side of the course, where they can grab a team flag and make their way back. In the middle of the web, you're forced across a beam that's over a water pit. If you meet up on that beam with somebody coming from the opposite side of the water pit, you have a face-off, and the first person to throw the other person off the beam and into the water gets to go on. The other person -- just like anyone else who falls off a beam during the course -- just goes back to the beginning, losing any flag they may have already picked up. Each tribe can only have two people running the course at any given time, and you do have to go in order. First tribe to bring back twenty flags will be the winner.
The challenge starts. Hatch is a little shaky out of the gate, and Amber is, too -- but she executes a crazy balancing maneuver that involves a cross between a flamingo thing with the feet and something that looks kind of like a figure skating spiral. On his way back with his flag, Hatch falls off the beam and has to forfeit. Tom very nearly falls off, but he manages to stay on long enough to make it back to the team. Shii Ann winds up in the water. The first showdown takes place between Ethan and Rob. When they face off, Rob decides to go at Ethan's legs, and this drives them both back toward Ethan's side of the beam, so when they fall off, they're almost at the edge of the water pit. This results in Ethan's basically landing face-first on the edge. Ow. Wow. Yikes. That looks exceedingly painful, and for a minute, he looks like he's half-conscious and is going to sink under the water, which was a little scary. He shakes it off, however, and climbs out. Oh, and he won, because Jeff judges him to have hit the water slightly after Rob. I find the whole who-hit-the-water judging very arbitrary, because it generally seems to amount to luck in cases like that where you fall off the log clutching each other. I sort of expect Ethan to spit out all this teeth when he gets out of the water, but he doesn't do it.
Rupert falls off the beam. Yeah...I don't think "graceful" is on the list of attributes. Alicia, however, looks like she's walking on solid ground. Hatch and Jenna meet up on the balance beam. "Ohhh, baby girl," says Hatch. Jenna looks around with a little smile. "Have you ever heard the story of David and Goliath?" she laughs. Hee. This is an awesome battle, too, because Rob yells, "Go for his feet!", so Jenna does, and she throws herself against Hatch's ankle. But he doesn't move at all, so she winds up sliding around his ankle and falling off the beam, dragging him down with her. Now that's comedy, people. But she lands in the water substantially ahead of him, so she's hosed. All things considered, though, she acquitted herself well. As Hatch exits the water from the match with Jenna, he takes his shorts off. And that's mistake #1. I would never have allowed nudity in a challenge that has mandatory physical contact. That's just not appropriate. ["As opposed to all the other challenges in which his nudity is appropriate?" -- Wing Chun] But nobody says anything.
Hatch jumps up on the platform that comes after the beam, so he's still heading forward towards the flag. He fetches one and returns. Sue goes out and fetches a flag, and she starts to head back as naked Hatch starts out. Meanwhile, Big Tom comes off the beam and winds up hanging from it by his hands, but he manages to clamber back up onto the beam. Pretty studly. He then meets up with Ethan coming the other direction. I would actually argue that, in slo-mo, it appears that Ethan gets the better of this match, but because of the way his hand slips, he does get into the water first -- again, I don't care for the "who hits the water first" method, though I don't know what else you would use.
Sue scampers back across the battle beam with no one there to battle her. From that platform, she has two choices to get back to her team -- right or left. The left beam is clear for the moment, and Hatch is just starting to come across the right beam from the other direction, toward her. Now, there's plenty of room for two people, or even three people, to stand on these platforms. There are several points during the challenge where at least two people share a platform. Sue initially surveys both beams, sees that Hatch is coming from the left, and takes a step onto the right beam. For whatever reason, though, she seems not to like that one as much. Rob calls out to her just to get on the beam, and she calls back, "I want this one," pointing to the left beam. "I gotta take my time." Impatient to get moving, she yells at Hatch, "Come on, baby!" Kathy, meanwhile, comes up to pass behind Sue on the platform and take the left beam.
As Hatch approaches, Sue tries to step right past him onto the beam -- she's taking that first step past him before he even reaches her, almost, so she doesn't appear to have been waiting around in order literally to have some kind of a smackdown with him. As Hatch reaches the beam, he pushes against Sue with his crotch -- he throws the hips forward, in fact, to make very sure that that's what happens, and as he does it, he says, "Want some, honey?" You can tell he makes a good solid contact with her, too, because it's enough of a bump to knock Sue into Kathy, who has to throw her arms out to rebalance herself. I would also point out that Hatch does not do this on his way past Sue. He stops, plants his feet, knocks against her, saying, "Want some, honey?," and then he goes by her. It's not incidental. Or accidental. Or remotely necessary. Not like you couldn't tell that from the lewd comment. She says something about "gross, Richard," and then she starts out onto the beam. If you look at the overhead shot that follows, he's got a good foot of platform on the other side of her that he can easily, easily, easily step onto at this point. He's essentially perpendicular to Sue as she starts to step out. Rather than turn away from her in the direction he's supposed to be going, he turns toward her so that he's pressing up against her back. Although he's blocking her from a good camera view, you can tell from where they are on the platform and how much space is behind him, as well as from the fact that you can see her foot between his two feet, that if he's not actually touching her, it's certainly not for lack of trying. The first one of these two shoves with the dick, you could almost call spur-of-the-moment total lunacy -- he's passing her, he loses his fucking mind, he decides it would be funny, he has no sense of boundaries at all, and he does it. But the second time? After she says "gross," and after she's trying to get onto the beam? That's just disgusting, and aggressive, and kind of disturbing. You can start to hear some protesting from the group on the platforms, and Jeff finally says, "Guys, come on, nobody cares about that stuff." I would have preferred, "Hatch, keep your dick to yourself," but I suppose you take what you can get. Interestingly, Hatch has no trouble discerning what Jeff is talking about, and he immediately turns around and starts across the beam.
I spent a lot of time after this aired trying to figure out why it bothered me so much, because it bothered me quite a lot. I just cannot stand the phenomenon of guys (not all or most or many guys -- I'm talking a very specific breed of guys) who respond to women who don't back down easily by trying to humiliate them or embarrass them by subjecting them to some kind of sexual contact or sexual behavior and saying, basically, "What are you going to do about it?" I mean, if you're looking at the dynamics of that situation, Hatch is a lot bigger than Sue is. She's muscled, yeah, but that guy is a lot bigger than she is. Is he actually going to physically overpower her? No. Do I think he's trying to scare her that he's literally going to assault her? Of course not. Do I think she rationally believes that he's a threat to her physical well-being? No. But when you have a man and a woman who have been facing off in a sort of battle of wills and don't like each other, and he's a lot bigger than she is, and he goes in the direction of unwelcome contact with his unclothed dick in a situation where by the time she realizes he's going to do it, she physically has nowhere to go? I have a major problem with that. It has exceedingly unsettling overtones to it. And obviously, yes, this particular situation is complicated by a bunch of other factors, like the fact that they're on TV, and her own participation in last week's "bone" joke, and whether you think it's relevant that Hatch is gay (for this purpose, I don't)...but all I'm trying to say is that that's where the echoes of this scene landed for me, and that's why it made me intensely uncomfortable. And I'm just not willing to write it off to "all behaviors in the game are okay." If some guy told the women in his tribe that he was not going to allow them any privacy to change clothes, for instance, and he was intentionally going to follow them and peep at them while they were changing, I would expect somebody to tell him to knock it off. There are behaviors that just are not okay in any setting. Just as I don't think people should have to put up with physical violence, I don't think people should have to put up with this.
Anyway. This sequence is where Boston Rob takes over. As several Eagle-Eyed Forum Posters have pointed out, he has a huge advantage here to begin with, because he's a construction guy, and he undoubtedly does a certain amount of beam-walking in his day-to-day life anyway. But he does seem very good at it. And who does he face ? Colby. You might think this would be rather epic, but...not so much. Rob manages a much better angle on Colby than he got on Ethan, and before you know it, Rob literally lifts Colby up off the beam -- no, he picks the dude up -- and throws him into the water, going right along with him. Now that is embarrassing. The first person to hit the water, however, is Rob -- Rob's foot, specifically. Jeff gets this one totally wrong, and awards it to Rob. Wrong, Jeff. But Colby doesn't complain. Rob continues to run the course, but Rupert takes yet another dive. I would point out that, given the choice, Rob also chooses the right beam at the same point where Sue chose it, so I think it may legitimately be less rickety or something. Sue is the first person, it appears, to tell Chapera that Rob is so fast, she's just going to jump off the beam and end her turn so that he can go instead. They all jump on the jumping bandwagon, and Rob continues his mad balance sprints, looking like a total idiot because he's got his hat on sideways. How very "1984 rap video" of him. On his way back with Chapera's last flag, at the battle bridge, he runs into Kathy. She knows she's toast in a conventional battle, so Kathy just drops down to straddle the beam. An interesting idea. She does appear to give herself some chance this way, but ultimately, he comes down to where she is, and he's too strong for her, and he throws her off into the water. I did enjoy the initial moment when he was like, "Wait, what?" Heh. He makes it back with Chapera's final flag, and we're done. Chapera wins immunity. To her credit, when Jenna gets the idol from Jeff, she immediately hands it off to Rob. So Mogo Mogo is headed to tribal council to vote someone off for the very first time. Ah, the tragedy of tribal council.
After the commercial, Chapera is returning to camp. They discuss how Mogo Mogo freaked out at their jumping-off strategy. "Some of us got no balance," Rupert says, laughing at his ineptitude, as is pretty much his only option at this point. "I hope they vote Richard off, 'cause what he did to me was absolutely disgusting," says Sue. And the rest of the tribe immediately knows what she's talking about, so it certainly doesn't look like it was ambiguous to them, even without her having made a very big deal out of it. "That was disgusting," Alicia says. "That was disgusting," Rob agrees. (Rob! Thinks it was over the line! I think Rob just now found the line!) "Disgusting!" Rupert shouts with...well, disgust. Rob says he actually would have welcomed the battle with naked Hatch. Heh. He goes on to interview that he enjoyed getting his team the victory. "I may not be as strong as some of 'em, but I guarantee I'm tougher than every single one of 'em." Back at camp, Sue gives a -- yeah, I'll say it -- rather adorable grin to Rob when she says, "You got Colby." "Colby?" Rob says in an interview. "Yeah, not as tough as you think, ladies." Yeah, that's playground bullshit, but I also found it kind of funny. They toast the victory.
Over at Mogo Mogo, the team is returning. Shii Ann talks in an interview about how sad she is, because she likes her tribe, and now they have to "go to tribal," and they have to vote someone off, and isn't it sad. Because the last thing you want to do when you come on Survivor is eliminate people. Boo hoo! Colby and Ethan take a walk, sharing the unhappiness of losing the challenge. Colby says he really doesn't want to sit around camp "talking about woulda-coulda-shoulda." Colby voices over that "this is a game where the more you strategize and the more you think about it, the more you change your mind." He says that sometimes, the gut tells you to do something other than what you've already agreed to. As he and Ethan sit together, he tells Ethan that "Richard's the one we've got to get rid of." Colby calls him "cancer in this tribe," and says that if allowed to grow and spread, he will. "Do you think he's strong enough to keep around for more challenges?" Ethan asks. "No," says Colby flatly. And seriously, with Colby and Ethan, I think they have a buff quotient that will be adequate for upcoming challenges, although it would be tempting to get rid of dead weight like Shii Ann, who seems to have no purpose in her tribe whatsoever. ["Surely you're forgetting about her suggestion that they add a dumbwaiter to their shelter. No one else came up with that." -- Wing Chun] "The cool thing is," Colby tells Ethan, "he thinks we're dropping you tonight." Ethan looks up unhappily. Nobody's happy to hear he's even theoretically on the block, even as part of a "but not anymore!" speech. Ethan interviews that now, the plan is to vote out Hatch, but he acknowledges that he has no clue whether that's for real, and in truth, it could easily be him. "I think I've got a fifty-fifty shot," he says with a weak chuckle. All right, that was mildly endearing. But I still hate him. I think he benefited a lot this week from not being on very much.
Elsewhere, Colby approaches Jerri. He tells her that if Hatch comes to her and "tries to bring [her] into the loop," she should tell him she's voting for Ethan, because that's what Hatch thinks they're all doing. "We gotta get rid of him," Colby says, referring to Hatch. "Okay?" "All right," she says. Jerri interviews that Lex, Colby, and Ethan approached her and asked her to vote out Hatch. She says she told them she'd do it, but that her perception of the down side is that it's not great for her to wind up in an alliance with three guys who will kick her ass in challenges. Well...right, but I think that by thinking ahead to the final four, she is thinking way too far in advance. She's forgetting the lesson of Sandra in the Pearl Islands. And how does that lesson read? "As long as it isn't me."
Out in the water, Colby has a chat with Hatch. Colby says that Ethan asked if he was being voted out tonight. "I told him, 'I can't tell you you're going home tonight, but I can't tell you you're not, either.'" He goes on to claim that he told Ethan that Ethan was just so dominating in challenges that nobody wants to compete with him long-term. Hatch laughs nervously, saying that he guesses he'll have to go with Colby, because it would be more logical, after all, for Colby to take out Ethan than Hatch.
Meanwhile, Lex approaches Kathy. "It's Richard," he whispers. "Why'd it change?" she says. "What, to Richard?" She's not that happy to hear that this was an idea cooked up by Colby and Ethan. Because seriously, who would want to go up against a pairing of Colby and Ethan? I totally agree with that. Lex stresses that he's wanted to get Hatch out for a long time, and that's obviously very true. Kathy tells Lex that she is okay with voting out Hatch, but she thinks they need to have a close eye on that sneaky Colby. Shii Ann snots in an interview that they had all agreed to boot Ethan originally when Ethan and Jerri joined the tribe: "And all of a sudden, Lex is coming up to me and Kathy and telling us it's Richard." She pauses. "Richard? Richard Hatch?" she asks incredulously. As if! Seriously, Shii Ann should go home now, because this adoration she has of Hatch is way out of hand. It's like she was recruited from his fan club. If she wasn't prepared to vote off people who'd won before, what the fuck is she doing there? I found that moment immensely irritating. ["Agreed. Shii Ann is useless." -- Wing Chun] She tells Kathy that she thinks it's a mistake to take out Richard: "Who do we have then? Just you and me." Apparently because she assumes that Colby, Ethan, and Lex all have an alliance with Jerri. Which may be true, but why does she assume that keeping Hatch makes her any safer? I don't know; they agree to think about it more. I'm going to have to think about it more, too, because I'm totally confused.
Jerri has a talk with Kathy, trying to get a feel for whether she's open to any other options besides the booting of Richard. She tells her that if they're interested in voting out Colby, Jerri's in. She interviews that there's "some revenge involved," and then we see her tell Kathy that she really doesn't want to be screwed over by the same guy who did it to her in Australia. Kathy claimed that what bothers her is that "the decision wasn't unilateral," by which she means "the decision was unilateral." In other words, she wishes that everyone had been consulted. And in truth, they were consulted, because nobody controls your vote but you, and you don't usually get the chance to have huge group meetings without arousing suspicion, so this is how it works. Two guys decide they want to do something, and then they go out and try to convince other people to do that, too. I think Kathy's overreacting a little bit to this aspect. "Colby didn't come to all of us, he just went up there and made that decision." Well, right. Because if Colby comes to all of you, it's going to be obvious what's going on; you take your opportunities to communicate where you find them. I think they're looking for the plotting to be way too warm and fuzzy. They agree to think about it more and talk about it more as necessary.
Jerri takes a walk with Hatch and Shii Ann. "This is such a crazy game," she says to Hatch, by manner of introducing the "we need to talk" talk. Hatch interviews that as tribal council approaches, "everything starts going haywire -- it's great." He then explains that Jerri came to tell him she'd been approached about booting Hatch. He has not-so-brilliantly deduced that the only way that could have occurred was through the work of Ethan, Colby, and Lex. We see Jerri tell Hatch that if he's willing to go with Colby, she's in. Hatch: "Okay, that's it, then -- if you're not for anything else, then we'll just do that, then." So it sounds as if Hatch had another idea (perhaps sticking with Ethan) that Jerri resisted, so he went with her idea of dumping Colby. "So they blew it," Hatch interviews all-knowingly. "How dare you approach somebody to get rid of me?" he wonders to the camera. "You must go bye-bye now. So Colby has to go home." He certainly is the smuggest smugface that ever smugged.
Hatch now has a talk with Kathy, in which he argues that Ethan, Lex and Colby are going to take all the challenges later. "So what do you say...Colby?" he asks her. She looks amused and conflicted. She doesn't know. "Give me ten minutes," she says. She walks off, and then we see a rainstorm, and Kathy saying that Colby and Hatch are the two people potentially on the block, and that she finds herself in the middle. "Do you trust your gut? Do you trust loyalty? Or do you just go with sort of what makes sense? And where am I going? I don't know." The tribe makes its way through the rain toward tribal council.
When they get there, they are welcomed by Jeff, who points out that this is the first time the original Mogo Mogo has had to vote anybody out. He asks Hatch about the boat at the reward challenge. "That was Bad News Bears, for sure," says Jeff. He then asks Ethan how he felt about being picked first: "Was your first instinct, 'Hey, they like me?' or 'Wow, I'm in trouble'?" Ethan says it was a little bit of both. He babbles a little bit about his "new lease on life," trying hard to answer the question without actually saying anything. And how is Colby doing? He says that it's very different this time, "because everyone knows how to play this game, so you can't coast. Although a lot of people are doin' it." Shii Ann rolls her eyes. It's funny how people always recognize themselves in comments about them that they think are completely unfair. Jeff asks Kathy how much more difficult the game is with people who are so knowledgeable about it. She says somewhat regretfully that before, she was able to do some bonding and some making of friends, and in this situation, there is nothing going on but game playing.
Jeff asks Hatch how the busy afternoon at camp was. He makes another "target on my back" joke, and really, those are getting kind of old, Hatch, so let's get on with something else. Jeff asks Colby about their "busy afternoon of positioning." "Ultimately," Colby says, "someone's gettin' duped. Someone is having the wool pulled over their eyes. And you won't know until that vote goes up whether it's you." Asked what his vote is about tonight, Colby says, "Cuttin' out the cancer." A wee bit melodramatic, perhaps. And for Kathy? "Taking the big players out," she says. "Taking the power players out." "Surprised who you're voting for?" Jeff asks. Kathy looks around, wearing her slightly rueful smile, and slightly ruefully says, "Yeah." I called her vote right there, incidentally. You can tell from the look, although I couldn't tell you exactly why.
Ethan votes. Shii Ann votes. Hatch votes for Colby. "It does come down to this," he says. "You could've trusted me. I was...I was on your side. I know that's hard to believe, but it's true." Jerri votes. Lex votes. Colby votes for Hatch. "Hatch, you're a hell of a player. You almost had me convinced I could trust you. But my gut told me not to. I'm not going to. Best of luck." Kathy votes. Jeff goes off to tally.
While Jeff is gone, Kathy can barely keep from laughing, because she -- like the rest of America -- finds the upcoming boot extremely historically significant. When Jeff returns, the first vote is Hatch's vote for Colby. Colby does not look happy, because that should not have happened, according to his plan. Should've been an Ethan vote. But the second vote is for Hatch. As is the third. As is the fourth, and as is the fifth, and that'll do it. When the last vote is revealed, Hatch looks stunned. "I've been bamboozled!" he yells, trying to seem jolly so as not to reveal that the one thing he has sold himself on for about three years -- "I am an unstoppable player of this particular game" -- has just vanished into the ether. He thumps Colby on the shoulder as he passes, and Colby says, "We played it, didn't we?" "Yeah, you did," Hatch says. And then Jeff snuffs Hatch's torch. Snuff. SNUFF! SNUFFSNUFFSNUFF! Go home, asshole. Seriously. You've already made fifteen minutes into an hour, and the hour is complete. Welcome to cultural irrelevance. Hatch dances his way off the screen -- again, trying to distract from the fact that he just lost. Jeff speaks some mumbo-jumbo about how everyone is at risk, and then they head back to camp.
In his final speech, Hatch tries to sound casually amused by his booting, which I assure you he is not. Over the speech, it is revealed that Hatch got every vote but his own, meaning that Kathy apparently let Shii Ann and Jerri know that she intended to go along with the Hatch boot, and they went with the Hatch boot also, to look like they were going along. There's a major problem with that, though -- Colby saw the vote for him. He's going to know that's almost certainly Hatch's vote. And he's going to know that Hatch wouldn't have voted for him -- rather than the previously planned Ethan -- if other people hadn't given him reason to believe that they were going to vote out Colby. So Colby is going to know that there was a mutiny afoot within Mogo Mogo, even if it wasn't completed, and he's going to put it right at Jerri's feet. There's no question in my mind that that's true. So to my eye, what Jerri did wrong is that she should not have approached Hatch for the Colby boot until she was absolutely certain she had secured all the other votes she needed. Because by switching Hatch's vote, she gave up the plan to Colby, and if he's smart, he's going to be gunning for her and Shii Ann -- not that he probably wouldn't have already, but still.
week: Shii Ann and Colby go at it. And Sue is not happy about the Hatch situation, even significantly after it's over. Veins are bulging in her neck, folks -- that's no put-on. Should really be something.