They Came At Us With Spears

We swoop in over an erupting volcano, spewing forth the remains of Survivors past. I think I see part of Jenna Morasca's ear. On the edge of the volcano, we find Jeff "Still Trying To One-Up Phil" Probst, who tells us that he is on the rim of Mount Yasur, a volcano that Jeff believes to be angry. So we're jumping right in with the anthropomorphizing, obviously. Jeff then confirms my suspicion that this is where the dead, such as Hatch and Sue Hawk, are buried. He explains that there are nine active volcanoes in the nation of Vanuatu, which I predict you had no idea was a nation until now. Or, you know, until CBS started advertising a few months ago. Vanuatu is indeed a country, and it's in the South Pacific, and it's an especially nice place for a holiday if you enjoy being burned with lava. Among other things, Jeff breaks the news that the island has "a fascinating history of cannibalism." Well, sure. Is there any other kind? Does any place on earth have "a ho-hum history of cannibalism"? No, I didn't think so.

Anyway, Jeff claims that "sorcery and black magic" are still commonplace, so that will be good for those who like to justify their voting decisions in strange ways. "It was sorcery!" they will say as their closest friends slink off to be sequestered. We watch our eighteen contestants (again with the expanded cast...bad trend, bad bad trend) who approach on a big sailboat. Jeff says they're "strangers, all from different walks of life," and now, they have to "create a new society." Which is what he always says, of course. My great hope at this point is that the hick-looking guy in the orange Bob Barker t-shirt will not suck, because that is a cool shirt. A plume of volcanic ash attempts to sneak up on Jeff as he explains that only one person will be around to claim the prize at the very end. All of the rest will have been eaten by then. Figuratively speaking, that (probably) is. Quick shots of all the contestants follow as the music swells with tension and time-wasting. And then there's Jeff again, on the edge of his volcano. "Thirty-nine days, eighteen people, one survivor!" Here we go again. And it's like they know how tired it's getting, from the voice at the opening of the music that sort of shouts. "AIIEEEEE!" Because, I mean...exactly.

Credits. Ah, jumping with ropes tied to your feet is in the credits. Wonder if that'll come up at all.

The boat's anchor drops. As the castaways anxiously look toward the shore of a typical, Survivor-type island, a bunch of guys in boats come paddling toward them through the water, shrieking and generally looking a little alarming. There are thirty or so of these little boats, so it's not just a couple of guys -- it's a flotilla. And it's definitely on the way. But then we see that among the flotilla is Jeff Probst on his very own canoe. He comes up to the castaways' boat and climbs aboard. The castaways all applaud happily, because they're still all clean and stuff and haven't yet begun to hate him. Jeff welcomes them to the game, and he tells them that before they can start, they have to be "granted access to the land." Oh, great. I can only imagine what this is going to entail. Jeff tells them that they'll be participating in a "tribal ritual," which is a "rite of passage." And which, I'll bet, nobody has performed without tourists present in the one hundred years before Burnett showed up. Just a guess.

Jeff tells the castaways that in order to stay, they'll have to participate in The Ritual. Wait, it's baby-eating, isn't it? I'll bet it is. He tells them that it will "impact each of [them] differently." It is! It's totally baby-eating. "At times, you may find it beautiful." Yep, that cinches it. "At times, you may be repulsed." Well, maybe not. Because, who could be repulsed by baby-eating? Jeff promises that a "real chief" will preside over the ritual, and tells them that the tribes take the ceremony seriously, and that they should remember their manners. Just because people eat babies, that doesn't make them bad.

Jeff sends the castaways off in the canoes toward the land. Bookkeeper Mia says that she was nervous about what this was going to turn into after hearing Jeff's somewhat ominous description. (She didn't think of baby-eating, I'll bet.) There is climbing into boats. Bob Barker Shirt Guy, whose name is Travis, tells us that he was just thrilled with the part about climbing into the canoe, because he only learned to swim six weeks ago. (Or, as he says it, "six weeks a-fore I come here," which pretty much tells you what you need to know about his manner.) And in fact, Travis and his group manage to tip their canoe and go into the drink. But they all live. Whew! The tribes sing to the castaways as they head toward the shore. Well, that's nice. Leann the Equity Research Assistant talks about how overwhelming it was when they were paddled into a larger circle of boats and then toward land. "I was moved to tears," she says. Mm-hmm. Moved. To. Tears.

The castaways land on the sand, and from a group of small houses, folks run out and start screaming. And they have spears. So that's not so comforting. Indeed, "There was a bunch of tribesmen running with spears!" exposits John P. the sales manager, saying he wasn't sure whether they were expected to defend themselves or not. Unsure of what to do when confronted with a bunch of angry people with pointy things, the castaways stand motionless. Rory, a black guy who's a housing case manager, says that he was the only one who didn't get a spear in the face. "I took that as, you know, a black man coming on the island isn't particularly unwelcome," he smiles. The singing and dancing starts up again, and Eliza the law student tells us that some guys showed up in big shaggy "jungle dresses" (well, close enough) and started pulling people out of line with sticks and prodding them forward. She noticed, because she is smart, that they sorted the women to one side and the men to the other. She also notes that the men all got to sit on little stumps, while the women had to kneel on a mat. Hmm.

Lea, a drill sergeant (and a man, even though his name is "Lea"), is approached by a guy who tries to move him toward a bowl of water, but Lea is unsure what he's supposed to do. He wonders if he's supposed to wash his fingers, because it's time to eat. Heh. He calls the water "rustic-lookin'," and indeed, it's very brown and chalky. It becomes clear that his host wants him to drink it. This, it turns out, is Chief Mormor, and he's offering them kava, which is "the local drink." "It's like mud, basically," Lea says. Rory adds that the kava makes your lips and your tongue go numb. Well...that doesn't sound very good. But they all drink it, except for Travis, who spits it out, to the giggling of the local children. John P. takes note that the girls aren't getting diddly, neither anything to drink nor any attention, from the chief. Of course, his reaction is that "this is pretty cool." Well, sure. Oh, for a society where women don't have such darn high expectations. Asshole. Ami the coffee barista (yes, there is an Ami and a Mia, which is...not fair) says that she was waiting for the women's turn, which never came. You don't welcome women, you only welcome men, you see. "I'm not used to being put second behind a man," she says. Yeah, I'm not...I'm not loving this. I wouldn't enjoy seeing castaways taken to a racist society to see the nonwhite ones treated poorly, and I don't care for this, either. I don't think it's quaint, and I don't like seeing the women lined up to be treated like they're not even there. The fact that there are and have been societies where those rules existed doesn't mean I really want to visit (or revisit) them.

There is dancing and such, and then Jeff asks everyone to remember that "what is about to happen is a common part of their tribal tradition." Lisa the real estate agent notes that a pig was then brought out, and she became aware that the Vanuatu people really like their pigs. In fact, she thinks "pigs are somehow better than women." There is certainly no shortage of things to cringe at so far, so they're off to a booming start, at least. And after they bring in the pig, everyone realizes that while it is hanging upside-down from its feet, the pig is alive. You know, for the moment. But then, to be plain about it, the pig is killed. By, apparently, bludgeoning. This ceremony just gets better and better. Eliza says that while she eats meat and knows you kill animals for it, seeing the pig killed was a bit gasp-inducing. I think I would find it gasp-inducing because that is not among your less cruel ways to kill an animal, in my opinion, although I am no expert on pig slaughter and would stand to be corrected. Dolly the sheep farmer -- no, really, sheep farmer -- says in an interview that it didn't bother her, not that you can tell from her slack-jawed expression when it happens. She claims that because she's "a shepherdess" and raises lambs, she doesn't react to it. And as the step in the ritual, the pig's blood gets smeared on the foreheads of -- you guessed it -- the men only. And the chief tells them they are all warriors. So the guys all feel welcomed. The women? Not so much. Not warriors, not welcome, not really even there.

Jeff now announces that there is one final thing they need to deal with, and that it's "a spiritual stone." The stone is believed to ward off evil spirits, and could give a team "a spiritual advantage." Uh...okay. Jeff tells them that as they've undoubtedly noticed, men and women are treated differently. In this case, the chief is offering only the men a chance to get the stone for themselves. And how do they get it? By retrieving it from the top of a greased pole. If they fail, the women get it. Not that the women get an equal chance to compete for it -- the women just get it. Frankly, this is irritating. These are real, genuine, flesh-and-blood women, and seeing them treated like cargo is irritating to me. I realize everyone's got a cultural filter, but this just makes me really uncomfortable -- watching them sit there, shunted off to the side.

Anyway, the chief will send up a tribe member to put the rock at the top and show the men how to climb the pole. The tribe member shimmies up the pole and puts the stone at the top. Travis explains that even though he didn't believe in the spirit stone, he still wanted it, just "so the girls wouldn't get it." I'm sorry, "git it." Lea says that when the guy was done putting the stone at the top, none of the guys was excited about being picked by the chief, because none of them wanted to be the one to crawl up to the top and then fall down. Hey, at least you're getting a chance, there, Sarge. Don't look a gift chief in the mouth.

The person who manages to get himself picked for the pole is Brady, a very, very pretty FBI agent who says that he figured the only way to get up was to do it exactly the way the other guy did. So that's what he does. The women sit there and hope that Brady will fall, which seems fair, considering that they have yet to have a fair shot at jack, but of course, it doesn't happen. The guys get the stone, so that's a nice assertion of how much of a crap the show gives about the women it has brought into this situation. You know, if this is the way the entire season plays out and this is going to be the gimmick, the way pirates were the gimmick of the Pearl Islands, then between this and Rupert's Million, this show may just do itself in. I really don't think that women find seeing other women treated like this as entertaining as I guess Burnett and Probst do, and I kind of resent having Probst lecture the women about how not being spoken to, how being made to feel less important than the pig, is just "different," and that they shouldn't be all small-minded about it.

Anyway, the guys celebrate, and Travis has some kind of comment about how it abruptly started raining "like pouring pee out of a boot onto a flat rock." Wha-huh? Whatever. Maybe this is as much sense as Tom would have made if I had been able to understand the actual words coming out of his mouth. A frightening thought. And one that makes me miss Tom's old "Aaahhverrnafeeefernuttin" way of talking. The guys have prevailed. And now, finally, Jeff comes out to divide the teams and get this stupid thing underway already. He tells the men that they will remain as the Lopevi tribe, while the women will remain together as the Yasur tribe. Chris the construction worker says that he was glad it was men against women, because eight guys are much easier to fool than eight women. "Women stick together," he says with suspicion. "They're thick as thieves. Men are deceiving, mischievous [he says "mis-chee-vee-us"], untrusting human beings." Blah blah blah. "Men, I can manipulate," he announces. Twila, a highway repair worker, says that she looked around at the other women and wondered what exactly she had gotten herself into. She noticed that there seemed to be some fairly prissy women, and some who looked like they'd never gotten dirty in their lives. Heh. Yep.

Jeff says, as the rain soaks him, that the thing on their plates is to find their tribal beaches. They'll have no maps and no fire. They'll find it, he can promise, "a long, dark, wet walk." And waiting for them at camp? Machete, pot, map to water. Because once again, the All-Stars ruined it for everyone. Actually, they ruined everything for everyone. Jeff sends the men in one direction and the women in another, and they're gone, in the truly pounding rain. If that rain is real, somebody up there really likes Burnett, because it's quite a dramatic exit. Mia notes in an interview that the women basically got nothing out of the ceremony; didn't get to do anything, didn't participate. So they're "out for blood now," not that I really see the connection. "That ceremony was meaningless to me! I will fight to the death!"

This season's scene-transition icon is the volcano, so we see a shower of sparks fly into the air as the (women's) Yasur tribe walks in search of its beach. They're making their way along a very wet and slippery area, holding hands as if they like each other and are all going to be best friends. Scout, a rancher who's obviously been ranching for a lot of years, takes a tumble, and then she starts to advocate just "hunker[ing] down" and waiting for light rather than trying to get to camp, because the conditions are so poor. She tells us that while she hasn't let anyone know yet, she's got an artificial knee, so she tries to be pretty cautious when she's confronted with bad terrain for walking. She and a couple of the other women call out to the rest, asking how they feel about just stopping for the night. Eliza says that they "almost insisted," which...no, they didn't, really. When the women all get together, Scout tells them that among other things, she feels unsure that they're headed in the right direction, but she's perfectly okay with having the rest of them go on ahead and she'll just stay back. Leann interviews that they wound up unable to make a decision about it, and that she was kind of concerned that they'd already overshot the camp in the dark.

John does get some smoke to appear, but the one ember -- or, as John says, "amber" -- that they provoke doesn't do them any good because they aren't able to get it to catch. Chad interviews that he thought they were close to fire, but that it just didn't happen. And now, it's time for Chad's big reveal, which comes when he asks the guys if they agree that he did fine coming down to camp, no problems or anything, and they all seem fine with that. He unzips his convertible pants, and as he pulls off the bottoms to make them into shorts, we see that he has an artificial foot and lower leg, which looks like it starts maybe at about the knee or a little lower. Chad interviews that once he had proved himself with something "physically demanding," he could let them in on his situation. He explains to the guys that he lost his foot to cancer about a year and a half ago. "Dude, it's inspirational that you're here," Chris says. Ugh. "Inspirational." ["Yeah, Chris, Chad survived cancer just to give you a little morale boost. Ass." -- Wing Chun] John K., the "mechanical bull operator" whom I can't yet tell apart from Brady, says that he had no idea that Chad had an artificial foot. And excuse me, but I call bullshit on "mechanical bull operator" as an occupation. Doesn't that just mean you tend bar in a honky-tonk? I mean, seriously.

Anyway, Brady reacts to Chad's news with this interview: "Greeeat. The guy with the mechanical leg's gonna win for sure! He's nice, he's smart, he's quiet, and he's got the underdog thing going on. So we're screwed." Officially, that remark is pretty tacky, but unofficially, it's also pretty funny. Because it's kind of true, and if any of these guys were honest, they'd admit they had the same thought somewhere along the line. ["It's certainly what I thought about the New York City cop Ken in...Marquesas? Whichever season that was." -- Wing Chun] Brook tells us he thinks it's "inspirational," but that he'll still vote Chad off if necessary. Yeah. Thanks for that. We slide in extreme close-up, all the way up Chad's Inspirational Leg to Chad's smiling face.

Volcano! Yasur retrieves its treemail, and then there's some kind of dumb-ass group sing as they return to camp. If you can't sing from your belly, don't try to sing like Marines, is what I'm saying. The bad poetry on the clue says very little, although it does seem to suggest that fire will be available to the winning team, and Julie the "youth mentor" claims that they're "psyched up" for the challenge, although frankly, she looks utterly plagued by ennui. Leann chooses this moment to say in her interview that most people think women are weak, which...where does she live? Sheesh. I mean, I agree with her desire to "kick some butt" and all, but fortunately, I don't think most people think women are weak at this moment in history. At least, I like to think not.

The teams make their way to the challenge and meet up with Jeff at what appears to be a big obstacle course. He asks the women how they're doing, and they say they've spent "two long, cold, wet nights" at camp without fire. The guys add that they need fire before they can have water, so that's their priority. Jeff explains that indeed, the challenge is in the form of an obstacle course that the team will do in one big group. It starts with a belly crawl in the mud, and then three team members will operate a box maze and drop a ball into a net at the end. Once the maze is done, they'll all have to get across a balance beam, and then run and build a fire in a kettle. When the fire burns through the rope stretched above the kettle, a torch drops. You light the torch and then light one last fire, and you're done. The reward segment is that if you win, you get flint, which can be used with your machete to make fire, at least in theory. In addition, you'll take the pointy-headed immunity idol. Which is...really, really pointy-headed.

Later, Chris walks by himself on the rocks as the rest of the guys talk. Asked by Brook and John P. who he thinks should go, John K. says, "Weakest link." "Chris?" someone asks. "It has to be," he answers. Well...no, it doesn't, but okay. Brady, notably, says nothing. When Lea walks up, they ask him what he's thinking. John K. says that he wants to "beat those girls," so he's back on the theory of booting "the weakest link." Lea is noncommittal, saying that he wants to wait a few hours and see which way the wind is blowing, which is an interestingly frank admission that he's interested in following at this point, and not leading. In a interview, Lea claims that J.P. (which seems to be an adopted nickname now), Brook, Brady, and John (K.) told him that they needed to get rid of "the weakest link," and they seem to assume he believes that's Chris.

Lea has a little meeting with Chris, in fact, in which he tells him that he thinks the only shot that the "old people" have is to start picking off that pack of young dudes before they get too powerful. I can't believe someone has actually figured this out, rather than sitting around like bumps on logs until it's too late. That may be a first. Chris's choice for a target is J.P., whom he believes to be "too strong." Lea gets that, but points out that at least J.P. is useful, in that he's "really trying to make fire." Lea's proposal is Brook, who is presumably equally threatening while being more useless. Not a good combination. Chris agrees to take the idea to Chad. Chris then claims in an interview that there's a plan, and that he doesn't feel vulnerable "at all." I think that may be overstating the case, but whatever.

Brook and John take a walk as Brook is heard interviewing that he thinks the young "tigers" (bleh) might be targeted. John tells him that Chris is on the way out. In an interview, a surprisingly tricky Brady (well, he is an FBI guy, I guess) says that he hasn't entirely decided what to do, but that he's thinking about Chris as well as Rory, who "is on his own sheet of music" much of the time. Yeah, independent thinkers suck. Boo! The men walk single-file toward tribal council as Brady voices over that Rory isn't much of a team guy, and that "the group right now is where it's all at." Great sentence, unsurprisingly made up entirely of small words.

Golly. When we're not using volcanoes to transition, we're apparently using a skull. Because...skull! And then we are at tribal council, where the men are just arriving. They gather around the fire pit, and they're each issued a torch, which they light from the pit. "When your flame is gone," Jeff intones, "so are you." Jeff welcomes them to tribal council and starts the questioning. He asks whether anyone is willing to admit that as they saw Chris struggle so much with the balance beam, they were thinking that he was "killing [them]." Hands go up: Travis, Lea, a few others. Lea says that it was bothersome to him, because the balance beam is "so easy." What I don't like is the way he says, "All we've got to do is build a little fire, light a torch, and win, over these..." And he really sounds like he's going to say something very offensive, before he ultimately comes up with "females." Only he kind of spits it -- "FE-males." Hate that, a lot. I find that "FE-males" almost always means "I barely kept myself from saying 'bitches.'" Jeff asks if Chris was thinking, "I'm dead," but Chris denies that he was. He points out that, the first night, Rory got into a bit of a dust-up with the team (a clumsy effort to remind people before the vote that others have flaws as well), and says that Chris didn't give up on Rory just for that, so he didn't figure the team would necessarily screw him just for the balance-beam incident. Chris points out that everybody's got a way to help the team, so there's no point in assuming that you should boot a guy on such scanty evidence. Jeff asks Rory how he's fitting in, and Rory insists that it's going great, and that Lopevi is functioning "as a family, as a team." Jeff moves on to J.P., asking how close they are to "crisis mode" as a result of not having access to drinkable water when they have no fire. J.P. says it's pretty bad. When you don't have water, you get tired and get headaches and so forth. "It's taken a toll on all of us," he says.