A Chapera Surprise

Previously on The Lonely Gloat Herd: Shii Ann realized that she, as a person with no allies or friends, was slightly outgunned by a solid alliance of six people. She decided that her "best chance" was to "stir it up." Of course, the stirring might have worked better if it had been accompanied by some strategic approach other than "please save my ass, oh benevolent Boston sleazehound," but Shii Ann does not specialize in strategy, no matter what you've heard. From, you know, her. Rupert won a reward challenge because, ironically, he was the last person to get his face smashed in. Maybe that's only ironic to me. This put him in charge of assigning meals to the group in order of how much he liked everyone. I mean, he could have done it another way, but obviously, it's Rupert, and he's going to do it in order of how much he likes everyone. And, of course, he will save for himself the biggest slice of "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!" cake. Alicia got her pert little nose out of joint when the rest of the tribe suggested that she didn't deserve to be an All-Star, by which they meant, "We don't like you." Jenna chose to take it more in stride when the tribe called her the one who never shuts up. By which they meant, "We don't like you." Shii Ann tried to convince the members of a six-person alliance that they needed her to win, and they failed to see how that would be the case. Unfortunately, Shii Ann won immunity, meaning that we would all be subjected to her behavior for another week, which is about the way her tribe felt about it. She was shocked to find that even having won immunity, she was still treated as largely irrelevant as the former Chaperans pondered the best way to begin chipping at their own tribe. Because she never formed particularly strong sub-alliances, and because she ultimately let the bad side of her personality dominate, Alicia took the hit at tribal council and Chaboga Mogo sent her home. By which they meant, "We still don't like you." Only six people are left. Will Shii Ann win immunity, or will she finally be banished? Oh, one can only hope.

Credits. It's very strange, looking at everyone who started this game and the people who have made it this far. It's just not the configuration of folks you might have predicted. Hell, it's not the configuration of folks I did predict, so I guess...you know, I guess I won't be making my fortune playing the ponies.

Chaboga Mogo, Day 31. Jenna comments on what a nice day it is, and a pretty bird with lovely blue and green feathers preens prettily in a tree, then says back to her, "Tweet! Go home, for God's sake! You people have been here for months! Who in the hell are you? What is with all the cameras? TWEET!" Shii Ann watches Jenna tend the fire, thinking about what Jenna's hair would look like festooned with orange embers. Shii Ann interviews that on this, the first really nice day she's had since they changed camps again, it occurs to her that she has no friends. And now she's stuck with people who don't trust her or like her. It's very sad indeed, the way her name came up in that random drawing in which one person was chosen to have an unsatisfying social life. We watch Shii Ann cut up some plantains as she explains that it's all become "very unpleasant."

Jenna opens a coconut around the fire and says that she's preparing two of them. She says she's not having plantains on this particular day, so if Shii Ann wants plantains, she can make them herself. Unsurprisingly, this is where Shii Ann interviews that she's "really tired of Jenna." And, apparently, of Jenna's refusal to prepare food to order on demand like a short order cook. ("Adam and Eve on a raft! No, not you, Rob and Amber!") Shii Ann goes on to say that Jenna is a bitch, blah dee blah, as we watch Jenna preparing food and Shii Ann -- you guessed it -- sitting on her ass. If they ever make a Shii Ann doll, it's not even going to need legs that extend. They can save a lot of money on manufacturing by making the legs perma-bent and still achieve a high level of historical accuracy. She sits around the fire! She sits out challenges! She sits sketching a schematic diagram for a bamboo dumbwaiter! Shii Ann also treats us to her opinion that Jenna is "bossier than anybody else on this tribe." Which may very well be true, but again, Shii Ann would have long ago withered to a dried-out husk if somebody hadn't taken some initiative with regard to food, so she might want to be a bit more measured in her incessant complaining. Anyway, Jenna drives Shii Ann crazy. Yeah. Which is kind of the pot calling the kettle a giant pain in the much-sat-upon ass, I guess.

A crab comes crawling out of its little sand hole, looks around for John Ashcroft, and makes a run for the border. Just then, Rupert returns to camp carrying a string of fish. He gripes that he realized nobody was jumping up to help him clean fish, and I would point out for the sake of what's about to occur that, just as she will later point out, Jenna is sitting and tending a pan of plantains at the time Rupert comes by with the fish, and she seems to be doing a "stirring constantly" thing. He complains, at any rate, that people want to eat fish, but that they don't clean fish, so he decided he would just clean one for himself. "I'm feeling used and abused," he says, which I can totally understand, because it's not like he's spent the last four weeks running around like the biggest dork at a Boy Scout Jamboree, educating everyone about the use of the spear and trying to teach them that he is the king of fishing. Oh, wait. He did. Honestly, it's hard to understand how Rupert can fail to see how ridiculous this is, but he often strikes me that way, so I suppose I should just get used to it. In the interview, Rupert implies that not only is he not cleaning any additional fish, but that he isn't giving any of the ones he caught to anyone else, because he claims that the only fish anyone else gets is one that he or she caught and cleaned personally. Whatever. I badly need to see him crushed like a bug. I have been putting up with him since last fall. This is my twenty-third episode involving Rupert, and that doesn't count reunions and clip shows. If I wanted to watch the same grungy dipshits for twenty weeks, I would be recapping something from Bunim-Murray, now wouldn't I?

Around the fire, Jenna comments that they usually each have the opportunity to eat a fish, apparently noticing that Rupert has only cleaned one fish and is eating it himself. "If everybody gutted one, they'd be all done," Rupert snots, happy finally to have the opportunity to make his point about wishing people could help him clean fish. It's good that he did it in this roundabout way, because apparently, his lips and tongue were paralyzed, which prevented him from just opening his yap and saying, "You guys, could you help me clean the fish over here?" Also, that would be too easy. ["Also, are there six knives that would allow for tribe-wide simultaneous gutting? And also, has it not occurred to Rupert that the time to start acting like an asshole about the fish is maybe not, like, seconds before the decision gets made as to who goes to the final four? He really just never learns, does he?" -- Wing Chun] Jenna interviews that Rupert is indeed the one who does the fishing, because he's a big guy and he can do it without dying. She claims that she would be literally dashed on the rocks if she went fishing, and while that's probably an exaggeration, it's also one that most likely originates with the PR that Rupert gives himself. Rupert has always wanted the fishing job, to the point where he has in fact made it clear that when other people go fishing, he can feel his penis shrinking the entire time, so it makes perfect sense that the task has been left to him, lest he be left with the indignity of having to pee sitting down. Jenna comments that it felt like "a slap in the face" for him to clean one fish for himself while she was back cooking food for everybody. She also says, entirely correctly, that apparently Rupert thinks the time she's cooking something other than fish, she should make only enough for herself. And that's why you can't go down this road -- this isn't how group living in camp works. It's perfectly legitimate to bitch if other people don't do anything, but the fact of the matter is that Rob and Amber and Tom were doing just fine in the tribe they lived in long before Rupert arrived. They're perfectly willing to work. They built a shelter that didn't practically kill them, after all. Rupert's judging it task-to-task -- "They didn't help me with this, so they don't get any of this" -- is just stupid, although it's a very Rupert thing to do. And not just because it's stupid. Actually, I think the big show on the Disney Channel is going to be called That's So Rupert, and it's going to make narcissists the big thing.

Rupert and Jenna have a follow-up chat in private, in which she tells him that she didn't really appreciate his maneuver there. He tells her that anybody who wants a fish can go gut one and put it on the fire. Jenna explains that he's the guy who can handle the fishing, so that's why they ask him to do it. "How many fish have you cleaned?" Rupert asks, sure that he's got her cornered. "I've cleaned a lot," she says simply. Apparently without a snappy comeback to this highly unexpected answer, he rather preposterously asks her to account for the rest of the group: "How many have they cleaned? None!" Jenna points out that he shouldn't take out his frustrations about people who don't work on the people who do, but Rupert just doesn't make that distinction at all. All Rupert sees is himself on one side, noble and perfect and gleaming and dumb like a polished brass doorknob, and everyone else on the other side, inadequate and unappreciative and maneuvering rings around him. It's the same obnoxious, self-important view of the universe Rupert's been working since day one, so it's probably time for me to stop being surprised. I'll try. Jenna tries to explain that she's not speaking for other people, she's only speaking for herself. Rupert interviews: "My little Jenna...had the nerve...to bitch at me about putting one of my fish on the grill...she's just getting really a pain in the ass, and I'm very sorry that I have an alliance with her." Yeah. "My little." Among other things, Rupert is a rampaging sexist, and I have seriously had enough of those comments. "My little" this, and "little mama" that...get a new routine, asshole. Jenna wasn't bitching at you for putting a fish on the fire. She was explaining, quite calmly, that she doesn't think it's fair for you to do a passive-aggressive dance to punish her for things that she's not even responsible for, and she was pointing out that in a camp setting, all the work is shared. And she's exactly, entirely right, and you are not her daddy, or her boss, or her moral superior, so Shut. Up. A. Lot.

Rupert goes back to camp and tattles to everybody else that Jenna got mad at him for putting a fish on the fire. Which of course isn't remotely true, but I'm sure he doesn't make the distinction, and it's not like he's going to feel guilty about lying his ass off. Shii Ann, seeing the opportunity to suck up, goes on and on about how she understands that he doesn't have to share anything if he doesn't want to, including any of "those fishes." Yeah, those are the reflections of Shii Ann. The same Shii Ann who has happily eaten food and slept in shelters prepared by other people since the day she got here, and who has furthermore taken every possible opportunity to sit out challenges and take all her strategic advice from others. I normally think this show is too dumb for irony, but it almost qualified, since she's the biggest mooch in the entire game, and now she's going to get all "I understand about self-determination." I don't think so. "Shii Devil has some tricks up her sleeves," she interviews, trying to appear menacing. And as the Eagle-Eyed Forum Posters pointed out, if there's anything more obnoxious than referring to yourself in the third person, it's referring to yourself in the third person using a nickname. And if there's anything more obnoxious than referring to yourself in the third person using a nickname, it's referring to yourself in the third person using a nickname that you made up. Welcome, Shii Ann, to being the same person as "Jonny Fairplay." I wish the two of you a long and happy life of putting each other in headlocks. The good news? I don't care who wins; I just want the match to be really, really lengthy.

We move to a clearing where the castaways arrange themselves on a couple of benches. Jeff tells them that this is a reward challenge, and they figured that, this time, they'd show them what the reward was before they explained the challenge. "Amber," he says, "here's your mom, Cheryl." Amber's mouth drops open, and then she and Jenna cover their mouths with both hands in unison, which is kinda funny. Amber cries at the sight of her mom. She runs down and hugs Mom, who looks like your basic mom, and who actually jumps up onto Amber when they embrace. There is crying. up is Rob's brother Mike, who accuses Rob of losing weight and says that he himself is on the South Beach Diet. Hee. Wait, those are the ones who do hate potatoes, but don't think bacon is a health food, right? I'm learning to tell them apart. Rob gives Mike a surprisingly big and demonstrative smooch. And up is Shii Ann's mom, Lily. Shii Ann goes into a long wail, "Ohhhhh, nooooo, Mooooooom" that sounds kind of like a busted siren. They hug. Wait till you see her going, "Stupid, stupid people," Mom. You're gonna be all kinds of proud. Crying, crying. up is Bucky Bo, Big Tom's boy. They hug, sorta, and they talk, sorta, but of course, trying to actually understand them is essentially hopeless. Jenna jumps up and down at the sight of her brother. He assures her that everything's good and everybody's fine.

The contestants all converge on the immunity challenge. Jeff takes the immunity necklace back from Shii Ann, who of course has to make a little comment about how she "hate[s] to part with it." Jeff says that this challenge will test the players' ability to make fire quickly and keep it going. The game is that you build fire in one bucket on the down end of a seesaw. Then you run back and forth filling the other bucket with water. This will make the seesaw tip, and will send your bucket of fire into the air. When the bucket of fire rises, it should light a fuse and ignite a wok. However, they have a limited number of matches to use on their fires, and the bucket of water has a hole in it, so they'll have to balance running back for more water with tending their fire. They draw numbers for their positions, and the challenge starts. Not Shii Ann! Not Shii Ann!

Rupert gets his fire started, followed by Big Tom, and they go for water. Rob gets his fire started and goes for water. Jenna gets fire going, and then Shii Ann does (boooo!). Amber is last. Sigh. Rob gets his fire bucket to rise first, but his fire isn't strong enough to light the fuse, so he has to start over. You have to really hope the guy is able to avoid seeing that as any metaphorical "Yeah, you can get it in the air, but can you make it do anything" kind of situation, because how depressing would that be? Big Tom's bucket slowly empties, and Shii Ann's fire goes out, so we're pretty much dead even, basically starting again. Rob, however, runs himself out of matches and has nothing lit, so he's out. Amber runs out of matches , and it isn't clear to me that she ever got a fire going at all. Again, perhaps a depressing metaphor for her. Rupert's out of matches. Jenna's out of matches. So we're looking at...Shii Ann and Big Tom. Oh, please, Big Tom. I can't take it if I have to watch Shii Ann for another week. Tom gets a nice big fire going, and although Shii Ann ultimately gets hers going as well, Tom is substantially ahead of her, and he gets the bucket to tip. Big! Tom! Big! Tom! Big! Tom! His wok ignites. Yaaaay! Immunity for Big Tom, and not for Shii Ann. Interestingly, Big Tom chooses not to walk over to Shii Ann, poke his hat at her, and yell, "Take that!" Which he should have done. Actually, they should all have done that in unison. Big Tom gets the immunity necklace. Jeff tells the group that tribal council will take place later this evening, and he sends them back to camp.

Speaking of back at camp, when they get there, Big Tom is doing one of his little dances that would be a lot funnier if they didn't all remind me of "Ding! Dong! The Witch Is Dead!" Because that really wasn't that funny.

And now, we enter one of the many segments in which Shii Ann attempts to sound smart. She says the tribe dynamics are "interesting," and that if anybody wants to take a power position, they'll need her as a swing vote. No, dear. There are six people, geddit? Rob/Amber/Rupert/Jenna certainly do not need you to "take a power position," as they are aiming for the final four, and they don't have much motivation to change that plan. Tom certainly does not need you, because if Tom just boots you and waits a week, then he may very well become a swing vote himself. You are not a "swing vote." You are cannon fodder. Think, "BOOM!," dear. And now we see that, in fact, Shii Ann has no plan, because her first move is to approach Big Tom and ask him to go to Rob and Amber about voting out Jenna. This is so dumb, because none of these people is going to see any advantage in voting out Jenna that they don't get from voting out Shii Ann. Why would Rob or Amber vote out someone who's proved herself to be an ally? Shii Ann's only shot here was to convince Tom, Rupert, and Jenna that the power pair of Rob and Amber had to be broken up. That was all she could do, and she didn't have the stones to do it. Targeting Jenna just reveals that, again, Shii Ann can't strategize, because she's crippled by her own pettiness. Just as last week, she didn't get together with Alicia or Jenna because she was busy gloating, she now wants to target Jenna, even though that's not going to work, just because Jenna is the person she doesn't like.

Anyway, Big Tom agrees that he'd rather vote for Jenna, but he points out that he doesn't have the ability to make that happen. He tells her that he's in the same position she is, and if she wants Jenna out, she can damn well pursue it herself. Big Tom certainly is the hero of the week, I think. Big Tom interviews that he does in fact want Jenna gone, because he thinks that there's a chance that Rob and Amber will team up with her and put him out of the game. Of course, because it's Big Tom, it comes out like, "Duuhruuuhorflafly."

Shii Ann's move is to approach Rupert and tell him that Big Tom wants to vote Jenna out. "Yeah, he hates Jenna," Rupert says, missing the point as usual. Rupert goes on to say that he doesn't care who goes, as long as it's not him. Rupert says that if Shii Ann can get "them" (presumably Rob and Amber) to vote Jenna off, he'll go along. But, presumably, he's not going in for a three-on-three tie. And this is why, despite the fact that a two-person alliance seems small, the Rob-Amber alliance is in fact huge at this point. Because by the time you have six people, you need four votes to ensure that you vote somebody off. And if you have a two-person alliance you can't break into and you have a third person as your target, you can't do it. Which, again, is why Shii Ann's best shot was to choose Rob or Amber as her target, not Jenna. She's just not thinking. She thinks she is, but she isn't. She interviews that she's trying to get some kind of an alliance going, because "each one of them is planning to take a knife out and stab the other in the back." So what? They'd be better off with her? There are six people left. They're going to have to start stabbing each other pretty soon, and they all probably understand that.

Amber works on Shii Ann's hair as they chat. Shii Ann tells Amber that Big Tom wants to vote Jenna out, which of course is the same way she approached Rupert. She doesn't understand that rather than saying, "Big Tom wants to vote off Jenna, and so let's do that," she needs to find a way to tell people that it's advantageous to them to vote off Jenna -- or whomever, other than herself. "He hates her," Shii Ann says with delight, and you'll note that she fails to understand why Big Tom really wants Jenna out. Because he may indeed hate her, but that's not why he wants her out at this point. He sees her as the possible wrench in his plan to go to F3 with Rob and Amber. Amber says that she can't go along with a Jenna boot unless Big Tom comes to her about it. Amber interviews that she's willing to "entertain the idea" of voting Jenna off, because All-Stars is all strategic and stuff. Or something. I don't know. Work on the hair, Amber. Just work on the hair. At that point, Jenna walks up and sits down with Amber and Shii Ann, all ready for some "girl talk." Shii Ann very convincingly claims that they were talking about what she's going to eat after she's booted. Jenna interviews, in a voice straight out of seventh grade, that she is "very annoyed" with Shii Ann. "She opens her mouth, and I feel like putting a gun in mine." And then she tilts her head in this way that just...I'm not a Jenna-hater, but if I were, that would make me go blind with rage.

Shii Ann goes to Rob with her boot-Jenna plan. She claims that this will have the advantage of breaking up "the Rupert-Jenna connection." Rob tells her that he understands what she's saying, but that he has a deal with Rupert and Jenna. Shii Ann tells Rob that tribal council will be "real interesting," and she claims that she knows things about the tribe, all of which will come out "at tribal." I really despise people saying "at tribal," like "tribal council" is too long. It just sounds horrible. Believe me, I've tried to find shorter ways to say it myself -- I wouldn't be surprised if I've said "tribal" myself -- but it just makes my lip curl. It's like people who say "Hot-lanta." Oh, and Shii Ann? If you really know any secrets, now would be the time to 'fess up, while it can still do you some good. So if you knew anything, you'd be telling, rather than talking about telling, and Rob knows it. So there.

Night falls. Everyone makes their way to tribal. (That's what its friends call it.) Shii Ann, as usual, is incredibly shiny. The jury is brought in. Shut up, Lex's Mohawk. Jeff asks the remaining Chaboga Mogos to talk about "roles." He asks Jenna who does work around camp. Jenna first mentions Rupert and Big Tom. She halfheartedly names herself as the person who gets plantains, but then she sort of laughs, like, "Yes, I know, I'm a dork." Asked what Amber does, Jenna says that Amber helps with plantains and gets water and such. Jeff asks about Rob, and Jenna says that Rob has been "trying to fish," but that most of the fish come from Rupert. Jeff asks Rob if he agrees with the assessment that he's "not really doing that much." Rob says with an amused smile that he doesn't think that was the assessment. He acknowledges that he's fished, but knows he hasn't been as successful. Jeff switches gears, asking Amber whether she takes into account actions that people have taken over the whole thirty-three days in determining whether they're trustworthy. She acknowledges that, yes, that counts for something. She says that "people have changed a little bit," and talks about the difficulty of getting away from the "paranoia" that has set in at camp. She says, "It's gotten to the point where I'm annoyed with it." Poor Amber. She's annoyed.

Jeff asks Rupert whether the paranoia is getting to the point where relationships are being strained. Rupert takes a long time to think about how to give the most puffed-up answer possible. He says that paranoia has "at times started to rip our tribe apart." The problem with that is that they're pretty much playing an individual game now, so there's not much point in appealing to tribal unity, you know? But hey, that's a subtle point, and not exactly one I would expect Rupert to understand. Jenna laughs, pointing out that Rupert is the most paranoid person in the group. Jeff asks Rupert to explains what's been going on, and Rupert says that when he brought the fish home, it "freaked them out a little bit" that he just took one for himself. Jeff asks whether this means that if you build the fire, nobody else gets to stand to it or whatever. Jenna -- rather than taking the wiser course of letting Jeff take this one so that it doesn't seem to be about her -- brings up the plantains again, saying that this was her point: if there's other food, does Rupert not get any of that, just because he didn't help prepare it? She's right, but shutting up would have been the better part of valor there, I think. Rupert proudly says that this is what freaked people out -- that he "stepped up and said, 'Mine.'" That's not really "stepping up" so much as it is "being a selfish prick," but whatever. Amber says that she didn't have a problem with Rupert's eating a fish before the challenge, and I don't think Jenna had a problem with his eating a fish, either. I don't know how this got to be about Jenna telling Rupert not to eat, but that was never her complaint.