Previously on Let Them Eat Beefcake: Fat dudes ran the show. The women won a twenty-four-hour visit from a guy so much smarter than they were that a glimmer of hope appeared that they would learn to count and tie their shoes and stuff. They also discovered as a result of their abbreviated Remedial Vanuatu 101 class (first term paper: "Please explain the advantages and disadvantages of eating your own feet") that they could split coconuts and suck sugar cane and didn't have to just keep devouring their own bitterness, resentment, and divisive jealousy. Although those are the most satisfying staples they have, and best of all -- no calories! Yasur then rolled through the immunity challenge, proving that you don't have to be competent to win, you just have to be less incompetent. Although Brady tried to crack the alliance of five men that had previously booted two of his stud-y buddies, he had no luck, and found himself the prettiest boy yet to ride the bus to the Land of Nice Boys Who Don't Even Make It To The Jury And Have To Sit In The Back Row At The Reunion Show.
Credits. You know, the pictures going by only make me more depressed about Brady. I know it's shallow of me. I should be punished. Like...arrested and aggressively questioned by the FBI would be good.
Volcano! And...is that a bat hanging upside down again? It looks like a bat in a Hefty bag. Clearly, my knowledge of bats is not what it should be. That's a deficiency I'll have to correct, what with Halloween coming up. It is the morning of Day 11 at Lopevi, and John is spitting a seed out of his mouth. That's how you can tell there are no chicks around. If John were trying to bag a chick, he certainly wouldn't be spitting for distance. There is tension in the camp, however, because there is an issue on the rapidly shrinking table. Specifically, Chad and his nicely-constructed shoulders want to talk about where everybody sleeps. (Totally unrelated aside by which I mean nothing untoward, of course -- Dear Chad: to me is open. Signed, Miss A.) Sarge -- who apparently sleeps in the shelter himself but nevertheless thinks he might be able to help mediate -- takes over the discussion and breaks it to Bubba that some of the guys aren't happy that he sacks out in the same spot by the fire every night. "Well, they can build a bridge and get over it," Bubba says, showing the kind of cooperative Dixie spirit that got Atlanta burned to a charred husk. Sarge insists that this attitude is inappropriate, because nobody came here to be an individual; they came here to be a team. And normally, I don't contradict men named after military ranks, but that is so precisely the opposite of true that it's hard not to make an exception long enough to say: Huh? (I am still totally distracted by Chad's shoulders, incidentally, so I apologize if I miss anything.)
Anyway, Bubba wants to know, if Chad has a problem with where Bubba's been sleeping, why Chad didn't just sack up in a manly fashion and say something, rather than going to Sarge like he's a camp counselor. And in theory, I agree, but in practice, I don't know if that would have worked any better. Furthermore, I think Chad wanted to present it as a tribe-management issue, not his personal beef about wanting to sleep in a better spot. This is basically what Chad says -- that he wasn't the only person who was irritated about the sleeping positions. In interviews, Bubba rejects the entire idea that it makes any difference what spot you sleep in, but Chad clarifies that the wind comes the same way most of the time, so if you sleep to the bad side of the fire, you get smoke and ash blowing on you all night long. Chad adds that Bubba got stubborn about it and was not going to give up the prime spot. Obviously, if Bubba really believed what he's saying and he thought it didn't matter, he'd just say, "Oh, I had no idea you cared. Sure, we'll rotate." I mean, he'd say it more like, "I's jes sat down 'ere cuz'n I dun wun fubba holla tem lack-ree mush," but it would mean the same thing. But he doesn't say that, because he doesn't want smoke in his face all night. Instead, he goes into a huffy, passive-aggressive "Fine, then, I won't even sleep around the fire" thing, and you can just see that his constitution and his attitude are going downhill in a hurry. Bubba interviews that, indeed, he's "getting kind of tired of hanging out with these men. It's so lonely." I'm thinking he's really not cut out for this, because...it's Day 11, dude. I shared a cabin with twits for longer than that at summer camp when I was nine. You'll live. And...does he have any other clothes besides the Bob Barker shirt? Because...I suspect that thing is about ready to get up and spin the big wheel on its own, if you get my drift.
Later, the team spots two gentlemen approaching their beach in a boat. Bubba's response is, "Guhn have visitors uhn bay skape." Or something. I would request more yellow letters to caption Bubba, please; he's single-handedly wearing out the TiVo's poor eight-second replay button. As Rory explains, having two guys come to visit was exciting because the men of Lopevi are all sick of looking at each other's mugs, and furthermore, the guys appeared to be locals, and the teams haven't had much contact with the Vanuatuans so far. A man in elaborate garb gets out of the canoe and summons the men, speaking some language other than English. The men gather around. As he talks to them, they can't make out much, except that at one point, he says, "One chief." They eventually figure out from this that he wants them to pick a leader. The men, of course, can only pick Sarge, so, figuring that he has to go with them, he starts taking off his pants and shoes and such. As leaders do. Embarrassingly enough, however, he's not going anywhere, and all the guy wants to do is give him a staff and a medallion. Boy, I hate it when you take your pants off and it turns out you've misinterpreted your companion's intentions, don't you? I generally favor going out a bathroom window, but the canoe guys get back in the boat and leave. "And we're like, 'I guess I'm not goin' with them,'" Sarge says. Yeah. I guess not. Bringing a new and more literal meaning to the words, "Keep your pants on, Sarge."
Over at Yasur, the women also gather that the guy wants them to pick a chief. Ami and Lisa speak up for Scout, and no one else objects, so the staff goes to her. She does not take her pants off. Ami explains in an interview that Scout is the oldest and "the wisest" (look who remained fully-clothed, eh?), so choosing her as the chief was a no-brainer. (Fortunately.) The canoe guys leave. "Have a good day, thank you!" Scout calls. At least they don't sing. Leann interviews that they suspect the tribes may get shuffled in some way, but that they have to wait and see.
And then, after Leann makes this comment in her interview and moves on to her blank, question-awaiting stare, there is a deep rumbling. Her eyes widen and her mouth drops, like, "What's that?" She looks nervously amused, and then the ground starts to shake, and she grabs for the log she's sitting on. "Holy shit," she says. The camera loses her and goes up to the trees. And, of course, shakes. Birds scatter.
At Lopevi, Bubba stops and looks around nervously. "Whoa, feel that earthquake?" he says as we see chaotic-looking earthquake footage.
"Oh my God. Oh my God," says an out-of-focus Eliza to an out-of-focus Julie. Will they all die? Boy, that would confuse the spoiler people. "Our information is that...everyone is voted off. We don't really know what to make of this."
When we return, we find that the earthquake has apparently caused the island to be rife with volcanoes. And the birds are really freaked out about the earthquake. The only person who appears amused rather than wigged is Chad. Once the shaking stops, Lisa says that the shaking "scared the daylights out of [her]." "We don't have those in Colorado," Ami agrees. Lisa swears that she "felt the ground opening." Well...probably not. But, okay.
At Lopevi, Sarge chuckles that he's heard of earthquakes, but that he didn't think they would feel like the earth quaking. Well...ask a silly question, get a silly answer, I suppose.
"Ah luuved it," Twila says. Hee. (Booming Voice of God: "Sacrifice someone wooorthy in the volcaaaano to saaaave yourseeelves." Voice of tribes: "Uh...." BVOG: "Don't worry, I'm grading on a cuuuuuuurve.")
Volcano! The tribes make their way to a challenge, where Jeff -- who has undoubtedly survived the volcano by taking shelter under his ego -- opens by asking them about the earthquake, and both teams chuckle. He takes an interest in the fact that it was Bubba's first earthquake ever. Like the kid from California who just saw snow for the first time ("It's melty!"), Bubba has made some pedestrian observations to go along with his undue fascination with the phenomenon. For instance, he was interested in the fact that he could hear the earthquake before he actually felt it. "I was excited," he says. Behind him, I can't help noticing that Sarge has extremely white teeth. I would think you could easily pick him out if he were sneaking through the jungle on secret maneuvers. Jeff asks the women what they were doing when the earthquake hit, and Lisa says that she was in the middle of chopping some food, and she repeats her conviction that she believed the earth was going to split open and swallow her. Sadly, I suspect that was never in the cards. Jeff tells them that now he's finally going to explain how they are going to use the chiefs that they have just picked. He calls Sarge and Scout over onto a separate mat. And then, fatefully, he tells the rest of them to drop their buffs. He tells Sarge and Scout that one of them will divide the two tribes into two new tribes, mixing the men and women. Because there is one extra woman, according to Jeff, she won't be picked, and they will deal with her later. The other chief from the one who divides the teams will then decide which tribe to take back to camp. Whichever tribe Scout chooses will remain Yasur and whichever tribe Sarge chooses will remain Lopevi. Scout and Sarge play rock-paper-scissors to decide who will divide and who will choose. Sarge wins, and he chooses to allow Scout to divide and himself to choose.
Jeff reminds Scout that she will want to divide the tribes as evenly as possible, so that whichever one she winds up on will be a good tribe. He also tells her that she will pick by alternating men and women. He tells her to start by choosing a man for one tribe, which we will call Tribe A. She puts Rory over there. On the other tribe, she places Chad, on B. She sends Eliza to join Rory, and Julie to go with Chad. Bubba goes to A with Rory; Chris goes to B with Chad. Leann goes to A with Eliza, while Twila goes to B with Julie and Chad. The last man is John, and what I don't understand is that there is not, in fact, an "extra woman." There is an "extra man." There is an even number of women when you take out the leaders, but there is an odd number of men. And yet, rather than divide up the women evenly and argue over the man, Scout is just asked to announce where John is going, and then one of the women is sent to the other team and the other one is declared "extra." It makes no sense whatsoever, and it makes it more likely that you're going to get unbalanced tribes. Anyway, Scout sends John to the B tribe with Chad and so forth. This leaves two women, Lisa and Ami, one of whom will be chosen for the A tribe, and one of whom will be the mythical "extra woman" that the show has created. Anyway, Scout sends Ami over to the A tribe, and leaves Lisa standing alone. At this point, Sarge is given his pick of tribes. Now, one of them consists of John, Chad, Chris, Twila, and Julie. The other consists of Rory, Bubba, Leann, Ami, and Eliza. See how dumb this is? It doesn't matter how Scout splits the tribes; one of them winds up majority men and one of them winds up majority women, and then on top of that, you let Sarge pick which one he wants to be on, which makes it even more lopsided. It's asinine. This was a great way to split the teams if you wanted to ensure that the game remained boring and no one had to make any changes to his or her strategy. Dumb, dumb. Probably the only thing Scout could have done that would have helped would have been to make the team with fewer men have the strongest men. Had she split the men, say, Bubba-Rory-Chris versus John-Chad, Sarge would have a tougher choice. Because he could still go with his majority, but (1) he would have a harder go in physical challenges; and (2) he hates Rory.
Anyway, unsurprisingly, Sarge decides to join the team with Chad, Chris, and John, along with Twila and Julie. Scout goes off to join the majority-women tribe. Now, it is time to deal with Lisa. Her initial fear is that because she wasn't picked, she will be going home. This is not the case, however. ["Unfortunately. Ol' Grapefruit Boobs really bugs me." -- Wing Chun] As a matter of fact, Lisa is in possibly the best position of all, because she has the option at this point of choosing which team she wants to join. Both teams try to convince Lisa to come with them, but ultimately, she chooses to go with Scout and the new Yasur. She skips over to her new tribe, and is greeted with cheers and hugging. So this careful reassignment of teams has resulted in one tribe that is 4-2 in favor of men, and one that's 5-2 in favor of women. Well, that will sure rattle their cages. Sigh. Had that been done properly, it would have come out as a 3-3 split and a 4-3 split. Think how much more interesting that would have been. Well, actually, don't think about it. It will only make you sad.
Jeff explains about the new challenge, which is for reward. Or, as it turns out, "reward." The teams will swim out to a pair of platforms. One tribe member at a time will swim to a buoy and dive to retrieve a marker. The markers are located along a rope that stretches from the surface to the bottom, with the markers two feet apart. So there's a marker at six feet down, eight feet down, and so forth. After ten minutes, whichever tribe has the most markers will win. Jeff asks them whether they want to know what they're playing for. They say they do. They are playing for a food reward, and the food turns out to be Pringles. No, really. It's Pringles. Granted, they are also giving them beer, which would soften the blow slightly. ["Although you'll note that they didn't get a beer sponsor this year, because we don't see the label on the bottle." -- Wing Chun] But you've been out there for almost two weeks, and their idea of a treat is Pringles? On the theory that nothing sates an insanely cranked-up appetite quite like pressed potato slurry? Product placement is one thing, but this has reached a ridiculous point. (week's reward: all the Bugles you can eat!) The teams pretend that they're incredibly excited about the Pringles, and Jeff proceeds to hand out one chip per team that they can split and salivate over. Man, this is stupid. They enjoy their bite of "chip," or "potato chip food," or whatever it is that Pringles are actually allowed to call themselves under existing FDA regulations, and then Jeff explains that the Pringles and beer festival will take place at a waterfall where they will be transported after the challenge is over. Yasur has to sit someone out, as it turns out, and they choose Bubba. I think that, indeed, he is not so much the swimmer. The rest of the castaways head out to their platforms.
The first to dive are Twila and Scout. Scout emerges with a marker, but Twila cannot seem to get hers untied. Once Twila gives up and returns to the platform, Chad heads out . Leann, at the same time, swims out for the second marker for Yasur. Chad unties the marker for Lopevi, and returns to get them in the race, sending Julie . Leann returns with the eight-foot marker, so Yasur has a 2-1 lead. Bubba cheers from the sidelines. Julie comes up with the eight-foot. Rory heads for the 10-foot marker. Sarge does, too. Rory unties the marker with little difficulty, followed closely by Sarge, so now, it's basically a dead heat. out are Eliza and Chris, for the 12-foot markers. Eliza gets hers okay, but as Chris unties his, he lets it slip out of his hands, and as tense music -- which literally sounds like it has "more cowbell," or at least "more percussive dented instrument of some kind" -- plays, we follow the marker as it falls and falls and lands on the bottom. When Chris surfaces and confesses to what happened, Jeff tells the team that the marker is gone; they'll have to just go for the one. The marker rests uselessly on the bottom of the ocean. Tragic! John dives for Lopevi; Ami for Yasur, currently leading 4-3. John brings one back to go 4-4, and then he goes right back and gets another. He and Ami return at the same time, making it a 5-5 tie. You can tell from John's collapse on the platform that the pressure at 14 and 16 feet really put the squeeze on him. Julie claims the 18-foot; Rory claims the 16-foot. Still tied at six apiece, with three minutes left. Ami goes again; Chris goes again. He comes up with the 20-foot; she comes up with the 18. Sarge goes for the 22-foot; he can't do it. "It's unbearable; my ears," he says to the team. Man, if I had a nickel for every time I had said that while watching this show, I would be watching it on a much bigger television. Rory comes up with the 20-foot, putting Yasur ahead. John goes for the 22-foot and nabs it. Chris goes out for Lopevi; Ami for Yasur.
Sidebar: It's interesting how, particularly in light of the fact that this allegedly took ten minutes in real time, obviously, some of these folks dropped out fairly early, probably because of the pressure. The order for Lopevi was Twila, Chad, Julie, Sarge, Chris, John, John, Julie, Chris, John, Chris. Not only did Twila never go out again and Sarge drop out, but Chad never got another marker after his first one. Of their last seven markers, Chris and John got six of them. Even more strikingly, the Yasur order was Scout, Leann, Rory, Eliza, Ami, Rory, Ami, Rory, Ami. Of their last seven markers, Rory and Ami got six of them. So it appears that people like Scout and Leann and Eliza also realized, either by trying or just by guessing, that they weren't going to want to go anymore. But anyway.
Chris and his ponytail make a great show of bringing up the last marker -- who can blame him, when he's got a fair amount of redeeming to do? -- and Ami is not able to produce hers as time expires. Thus does Lopevi manage to snag the Pringles and beer and the waterfall trip. Jeff congratulates them and sends them off on their trip together. A dejected Yasur returns to camp.
A Pringles commercial masquerading as a segment of Survivor ensues in which the Lopevi tribe arrives at the waterfall and debates which type of tasty Pringles is their favorite. As if ANYONE cares about the Pringles when there's beer to be had. "This tastes like gold," Sarge says obligingly, holding up a Pringle for the camera. They drink beer, they eat Pringles...it's like a big salt and alcohol lick, which I suppose is an inherently good idea, even if the salt delivery method is not the one I would have chosen. Sarge says everyone seems happy now that they "got rid of some people." He is really, really, really beginning to irritate me. Well, not "beginning to," I guess.
And now, Twila and Chris bond as they discuss -- her with her mouth full of half-chewed Pringles, not that Pringles aren't essentially half-chewed as they come out of the can -- their lives working on road construction. She says in an interview that she fits in better with the Lopevi guys than she did with the women, with whom she could not "kick." She and Chris discuss maxing out on overtime and other gory wage and hour details. It's like...I want to find it heartwarming, but they're so dumb. Not because they both work on road construction, just...because they're so dumb. Chris and Julie go off and stare at the waterfall, as she tells us that she's "buzzed up," but assures us that it's from the change of tribes, and not from the beer. Yeah. Stick to that story, dear; I've been there, believe me. Everyone plays in the water as Julie acknowledges that she and Twila are kind of stuck together in this dance of trying not to position themselves so they won't just be picked off by the men. Lopevi frolics under the waterfall some more, and John tells us that he, too, was very happy about the switch, because his odds in his old tribe sucked, and he thinks they've improved markedly. He also thinks the new Lopevi have an advantage compared to the other tribe, and...so do I. I'm not really feeling too nervous about Lisa the immunity monster.
Yasur, Day 11. The team returns dejectedly to their camp, as Eliza tells us that nobody was really concentrating on the loss, because they were getting the feel of the new tribe dynamic, by which she means, "counting to five over and over again and making sure we're confident that it's more than two." Rory and Bubba thank the women for making them feel at home. They chat, and Eliza gives up the information that they have sugar cane to suck on. Bubba gets a chance to try some, after Rory cautions him to remember he's not trying to swallow it. Bubba interviews about being nervous, "sweating like a prostitute in church," like, that's really not that funny, so stop trying to be amusing. Because you're not. And...do prostitutes sweat in church? Out of nervousness, is that the idea? Because if you're a prostitute, and you've gotten as far as to go to church, I wouldn't think you'd be all that nervous once you get there. I'm not convinced he didn't leave out part of that down-home witticism. Like, "sweating like a prostitute in church in a mink coat in July" or something.
The women immediately put Rory and Bubba to work pulling up trees and carrying things and whatnot. Because that's what boys are for! Lisa starts, at one point, to show the guys how to split open coconuts, the way they were taught by Da. "Why?" Ami asks in a snotty little voice. "Why what?" Lisa asks. "Why show them?" Ami snots back. "'Cause I think it's kind of cool." "Well, we don't have to be cool," Ami says. "We're cool without showing them." Excuse me, moron, she didn't say she was cool. She said it was cool. You want to listen at all, just a little? Lisa doesn't get why Ami is being a jerk about showing the guys how to split open a fucking coconut, and Ami basically has no argument whatsoever, so she just stands there, looking bitchy, with her giant fake (or at least fake-looking) boobs. ["Oh no, it's a boob-off!" -- Wing Chun] Once again, Lisa says that she just wants to show the guys how to open a coconut because she thinks it's kind of cool how you do it, and Ami says, "I don't need to be showing them stuff to be cool." And once again, that is not what Lisa said, for crying out loud. Ami is either not listening or she's not very bright, because Lisa didn't say she was doing it to make herself seem cool. She said she wanted to show them the trick to splitting a coconut, and the trick is cool. Ami interviews that she was so glad that the guys started doing menial labor, and then she claims that she was "irritated" to see that the women's "bond" was somehow being compromised: "I just don't think it's really that important that we show them all of our secrets." Like how to split coconuts? Do you really think the guys are going to outvote you suddenly because they know how to split coconuts? And what is that "bond" thing? Are we at a retreat now? Do I need a unity drum? How does it compromise your "bond" if the guys know how to suck on sugar cane? Ami is so full of shit, and it goes perfectly with her idiotic BS about "let the girls braid your hair" that she unleashed on Twila. She is my first official bone-deep hate of the season, based on this scene. That kind of idiotic, "the women must bond over domestic secrets and primping" crapola drives me out of my bird. It's like we're all refugees from a Steel Magnolias casting call, talking about our suck-ass husbands and boyfriends, putting each other's hair in curlers, and pushing back our cuticles. Bite me, Ami.
ANYWAY. "We're definitely still five women strong," Ami says. You'll want to keep that in mind.
The teams show up at the immunity challenge, and as they step onto their mats, Bubba says, in a low but not whispering voice, "Chris, think about the merge." Wow, sneaky, with the out-loud talking! Jeff tells them that they will race into the jungle and untie pieces that will make up an outrigger canoe. When they have all the pieces, they'll paddle the boat out to a marker and paddle it back. They'll have to hit their tribe flag with the boat, and then they'll be done. Loser to tribal council to send somebody home. Yasur still has an extra member, so they'll be sitting out Scout.
"Survivors ready...go!" Ami and Bubba run for Yasur, and Sarge and Twila for Lopevi. They both get their frames back at roughly the same time, and Julie and Chad head out with a slight lead over Leann and Eliza. Julie and Chad finish the paddles still with a small lead. John and Chris go, and then Rory and Lisa. For whatever reason, Rory starts in trying to untie knots with his teeth, which I'm almost sure makes them worse and not better (the knots, not his teeth -- although probably, actually, both), and he starts to lose time. John and Chris head back with a significant lead over Yasur. Whatever the trick was to untying those particular knots, Rory just didn't quite figure it out, so it takes him forever. Lopevi is already partway through assembling its canoe when Rory and Lisa bring the outrigger back. Lopevi ties its canoe together, an Yasur seems to make up a little bit of time on the assembly. Still, Lopevi pushes off John and Chad to paddle well ahead of Yasur. What's more, when Yasur finally pushes off the paddling Bubba and Ami, they push them in the wrong direction, so that the first thing they have to do is turn around. Ami appears to advocate paddling the entire course backwards, but instead, they make the far better decision to turn around. John and Chad bicker a little over the paddling, but it's nothing compared to the problems Bubba and Ami are having. Lopevi gets its flag. Chad and John get off-course as they head for the finish flag, but they do manage to get back and bump the flag, still well ahead of Yasur. An excited Lopevi wins its second challenge in a row. Jeff gives them the immunity Pointy Stick, and then turns to Yasur for a highly unusual speech: "Not sure what went on out there. Rory, you lost a lot of time on the knots...some of the worst paddling I've ever seen...somebody's going to pay for it tonight. See you at tribal council." Not that Jeff would stick his hosterrific nose into the voting process. Sheesh. It's not that there's any such thing as the ethics of being Jeff Probst, but if there were, that would violate whatever fictional code you care to imagine. He sends the teams back to camp.
Volcano! Yasur returns sadly to camp on the afternoon of Day 12. Rory interviews that it's very apparent that the person going home will be either him or Bubba. He says there's no doubt that the women will vote together, so he "feel[s] extremely vulnerable." He says he can do nothing but "assume the worst and hope for the best." As the inevitable post-mortem on the challenge begins, Ami asks whether they looked totally stupid paddling, which...yes, you did. She then declares in an interview that she's "annoyed as hell with Bubba right now." She goes on to complain and moan that he tried to communicate with the other team at the beginning of the challenge. Now, think about how stupid this is. Ami has already declared herself so uninterested in Bubba and Rory that although she's happy to have them lift heavy things for her, she doesn't even want to tell them how to split a fucking coconut, lest it intrude upon the bond that the women have developed from exfoliating each other. I ask you, how much of a dope do you have to be to tut-tut at someone for lack of team loyalty when you have predetermined that he will never be, in your opinion, any part of the team? I can't stand her.
Ami and Scout take a walk, and Ami talks haughtily about how "people get themselves kicked out" by doing things like that. Welcome to Ami's Great State of Unreality, in which everything she does is justified by how much better a person she is than everyone else. "Bubba's not part of the tribe," she says. "He's making plans with the other team! Can you see Michael Jordan whispering over to the other team what their play is?" Well, no, dear. Can you see three members of Michael Jordan's team conspiring to throw Michael Jordan off the team? No? Then SHUT UP. ["And, maybe back that analogy up and try it again with an athlete who didn't retire six years ago." -- Wing Chun] It's not a team game; it's an individual game. Always has been, always will be, and Ami is playing it accordingly herself. And, like most contestants who claim to be playing a reality show from the perspective of a higher sense of personal ethics, she needs to shut up a lot -- if for no other reason, because it usually backfires when other people become annoyed. Self-righteousness: it's what makes you what's for dinner.
The team eats some dinner prepared by Lisa, and Bubba says that what he was doing at the challenge when he was communicating with Lopevi was encouraging Chris to think about the merge. And, actually, to think about throwing the challenge. The theory would be that Lopevi could then dump one of the women, evening the overall men-women numbers in anticipation of the merge. Now, Ami: can you imagine Michael Jordan talking to the other team seeing if he can get them to throw the game? Would that strike you as quite so disloyal? In a private conversation, Bubba asks Ami if she will give him a heads-up if he's the one going, and she now tries to claim that she doesn't have a team mentality, that she "doesn't do that 'y'all' thing," and that he'll just have to "check with the boss." She cannot be booted soon enough for me.
Scout asks Eliza if she's okay with booting Bubba. Eliza says that she's just nervous about throwing all the guys off their team, because she's afraid that they'll just be even more likely to lose immunity challenges over and over if they do that. She wonders if they're "shooting [them]selves in the foot." She interviews that she doesn't really want to boot the guys anyway. "Well," Lisa says, as if Eliza is dumb, "we're not going to kick one of us off." Eliza makes a face like, "It's not a sorority, dummy. Nobody swore lifelong sisterhood." As the women stand around the fire, Rory and Bubba go off and pray together, hug, and discuss how much they love each other. (As one of the EEFPs noted, consider the upcoming votes these guys are going to cast. "Who are they praying to?" the EEFP wondered. "Judas?" Heh.)
Volcano! Suddenly, it is night, and it is time for tribal council. Yasur comes tromping up to the fire. They sit down, and Jeff asks Lisa whether, in light of how long the teams remained divided along gender lines, this is actually one tribe now. She tries to be polite, talking about how they tried to welcome the guys to the tribe, and how "it feels like they've been with [Yasur] forever." Well, except for the part where there was all the predestined plotting against them. But other than that, it's definitely all one tribe now. Jeff asks Leann whether she's really accustomed herself to the new tribes, or whether it's still boys against girls in her mind. Leann cuts right to the chase, and admits that, to her, it's still boys against girls. As it has been since second grade, so shall it ever be.
Asked the same thing, Ami gives the biggest bullshit answer ever, saying that "this morning, [she] thought [they] were all one team." As stated previously, bullshit! She didn't even want to give them coconut advice, and she said from the beginning that it was still the five women together. Grrrr. I hate people who try to convince you they're taking the high road by trampling a lot of other people. She gives her big BS explanation of why she knew that Bubba's horrible betrayal meant they were "not a team," blah dee blah. Needs. To. Shut. Up. Bubba explains exactly what he wanted, which was to convince the other team to drop the challenge. "We had all intentions on winning," Leann snots, apparently offended that Bubba feared they couldn't win on their own, which would be a lot more convincingly indignant if they hadn't already lost, so what the fuck? And then Ami throws in that they weren't going to get rid of Bubba anyway. Rory makes a face like, "Yeah, thanks for that." And honestly, Ami, who are the "we" who weren't going to get rid of "you" if it's all one team? What Bubba was doing was definitely a move against the women on an individual level, given that it addressed post-merge strategy, but it was not in any way a move against his team on a team level, as it would have been if he'd offered to throw the challenge, know what I mean? Their whole argument on this point is so without merit that you feel like if they had given it fifteen seconds of thought, the women would have figured that out, even though they're really not that bright. Asked whether he's nervous, Rory flatly says that the only thing that was going to change the fact that he or Bubba was going to get canned would have been winning the challenge, because the women never had any intention of allowing them to disrupt the preexisting alliance. Well, at least he's straightforward.
I realize I am way too annoyed by these people this week. I guess this was the week I realized that this is the year you learn what would happen if people actually played the game intelligently rather than switching alliances and taking out personal grudges and stuff. This year, both tribes formed bare-majority alliances, which have stayed together and are slowly plucking the excess people off one by one. For the most part, nothing has changed, no one has changed strategy, no one has allowed any personal problems to cloud his or her judgment...and it's the right way to play. All of the majority-alliance people are playing exactly the right way to get to the merge, and in all likelihood, once they merge, whichever of those alliances has more people will just pluck off the other alliance one person at a time. I mean, after this episode, there are twelve people left, and you're literally not going to see anything interesting until it gets down to about five. I don't know what the answer is in future seasons, but I'm not sure the problem this season is anything more complicated than the fact that, after nine seasons, people have finally figured out how to play, and we've essentially returned to a very elemental version of the game: form alliance, keep alliance, pay no attention to anything that happens, vote according to alliance. And the major opportunity to disrupt it was missed because of the stupid way they mixed the teams. So you can pick on the casting or whatever, but I'm not sure anymore that it's anybody's fault that the show is so boring. I guess you could argue that the people on the outside of the alliances aren't doing very much to change their fates, but could they, really? Anyway. So I'm reduced to being irritated by hypocrisy, not that I'm not usually.
Jeff asks Ami whether she feels at all troubled over ditching the two guys when there's really no reason to, other than that they were the two guys who wound up on the team with a bunch of women. Ami says basically that she feels slightly bad, but more than that, she's just happy she has them to throw overboard so that they don't have to vote for Twila or Julie. Ah, yes, the incredibly valuable and compelling...Twila and Julie. Jeff asks Bubba why the women should keep him, and he tells them that he almost drowned as a child and never goes in the water, so the fact that he was out paddling the boat should count for something. He says he's a team player, but cops to "a mistake," which he shouldn't have done, because he didn't even make a mistake. Jeff asks why Rory thinks he should be kept, and Rory implies that he doesn't like the men anyway, so he's got no reason to have divided loyalties. I mean, he's more subtle about it, but that's the unquestionable subtext, I think. He also insists that if he can't break into the sisterhood, he's man enough to take it. Well, thanks for that. Scout says that when she initially split the teams, there were three guy she wanted to play with, and these were two of them. I'm wondering whom the other one was. Sarge? Chad? Curious comment, Scout. Anyway, she says the thing about the fat lady singing, and I'm not sure what that means under the circumstances, but there you have it. She should know that there are not now, and have never been, any fat ladies on Survivor.
Leann votes. Rory votes for Bubba, apologizing to his "brother." Lisa votes. Bubba votes for Rory. "Rory, I picked you, and...uh, go get 'em, girls." I think he knew he was the one. Scout votes. Ami votes, holding up her vote and smarming into the camera, all femme-fatale-in-a-porno-movie, "Sorry, Bubba. You know why." HAAAAATE her. She also writes in all-lowercase letters. I hate that I can't ban people from TV. Eliza votes.
Jeff reads the votes. Bubba, Rory, Bubba, Bubba, Bubba. So, he's done. He gets up and brings over his torch. Snuff! As Bubba retreats, Jeff tells the team that Yasur is down to six, and that now, we'll see if the women stick together and, of course, when and whether there's a merge.
In his exit interview, Bubba fixates on the mistake of communicating with Lopevi, which is okay, but honestly, it didn't make nearly as much difference as Ami claimed. He was gone anyway. If not this week, week. Goodbye, Bubba. Wash your shirt.
week: Rory stands up for himself. Chad digs Julie's naked ass. And probably, nothing at all important happens in the actual game.