Hog Tied

Props to Miss Alli and her consistently evocative recapping prose. I've never even seen this so-called "Brady" character I keep hearing so much about, and even I'm heartbroken that I can't gaze upon him anymore. Er, "anymore." See how good she is?

Previously on Survivor Vanna White Is On Fire Or Some Such Silly Thing: actually, I don't know what happened. I haven't seen this show since, like, a year with a "9" in it. But I watched it obsessively for the first two seasons, and it seems that, aside from the names of the characters and the quality of the boob jobs, little has changed. So pardon me if some of my Survivor lexicon comes across as a bit dated. Speaking of which, did anyone ever find out if it was really Kel who stole all that beef jerky? Y'all, the whole country's talking about it!

Scary, scary darkness envelope the inhabitants of Vananananatu. A full moon lingers overhead as a subtitle informs us that we're joining the good people of the Yasur Tribe in the middle of "Night 12." Rory and Ami haughtily tear branches apart to show the rest of their teammates what "work" looks like, as Scout sits idly by acting the role of Yasur's mascot, an actual bump on an actual log. Rory -- ensuring that his fire will provide warmth and spite in equal measure -- mutters ruefully to no one in particular: "Y'all need to leave me alone right now." Happy to oblige. I'm sure they'll just...oh. I guess he's not finished. "'Cause y'all are showing me something I'm not real impressed with." Well, then, if you'd rather we just go, it's no big... "Perhaps for the peace and tranquility of this tribe, it would be best for me to hold my tongue until tomorrow morning." Yes, Rory. Yes, by all means, hold your tongue.

Or, instead of the holding, embark on a lengthy congressional filibuster about his surefire strategy going forward: "The ladies made a mistake in telling me that I would have been ay-liminated [sic] before Bubba was. And so what I'm going to basically do is I'm gonna play it up." So either Rory's foolproof plan involves ingratiating himself to his new teammates by acting like an irredeemable prick, or this is just the introduction to the Opposite Sketch. Because...guh? Back at camp, Snore-y rants on, "You got me up on the auction block." They have him up on no such thing. In fact, unless a fast-talking man at a podium with a gavel intends to sell "Lot Rory" to the highest bidder to "the lady in the back with the red dress," what I believe they have him on is the chopping block. Scout concurs, telling him, "Don't say I got you up on the auction block." Sigh. It's not like I expect these malnourished, uprooted, cholera-drenched castaways to walk around the island constantly referring to their dog-eared copies of The Vananananatu Manual Of Style, but "auction block" and "chopping block" mean completely different things, even though they are merely one word apart. Like, "you're mangling the idiom" and "you are an idiot"? Different. But the same.

Rory continues with his confessional, still succinctly trying to lay out his two-pronged approach toward inoculating himself against further threats from his tribe: 1) act like a total prat to his team, and 2) explain via a series of loopy, nonsensical confessionals why it's such a brilliant and strategic move for him to act like a total prat to his team. Let's listen in! "The thing I need to watch is, I can't push these ladies too far...my thing is to come off as an upset, angry brother who is welcomed back into the fold." For someone with absolutely no power going into Yasur's elimination (and from what I've seen of this team, for Yasur there's always about to be a elimination), this is certainly a complex plan. But we'll forgive Rory his delusions. After all, life's been hard for Rory ever since they hoisted him up onto the Jenny From The Block.

"Rory would like to tell everybody off right now, but that would just seal his fate," Scout explains from the comfort of a nearby confessional, even though Rory seems to believe that he is telling everybody off right now and that it's what's keeping him off of the Chuck Knoblauch. "He's sittin' over there on his pity pot, so hopefully he'll wipe his ass and get off and get over it and, y'know, start a new day." Oh, Scout. She's either such a salty old broad or she isn't! Because, I mean, really, how would I know?

Volcano! We're off to Lopevi. I know it's the name of a volcano or whatever, but every time I see it in print it reads in my mind like some brown food my grandmother tries to force down my throat every Rosh Hashanah. "Try the Lopevi. It comes in a darling pickled jelly." She might have said. Because they have a tendency to win a lot in this episode and because this show has a tendency to laugh and point at the losers, I didn't really come away with as much of an impression of Lopevi. They seem to enjoy steak. And for their luxury items, not one of them seemed to have brought an auction block. Do they still allow luxury items? Is that something they still do? And when did this show stop airing on the Dumont Network? What time does it air in Pangaea? Where are my bifocals? I'm old!

Sorry.

We join Lopevi on the morning of Day 13, where we find Lea (I believe he is the one you call "Sarge"?) carrying a large log. On this team, they carry logs. On the other team, they impersonate them. See how I make vast generalizations with very little actual information? It's easy if you don't try. Over in a confessional, Lea is all, "It's a blessing to have women around. I'm not saying we need 'em. I'm not saying it would be any different one way or another, but it's good to have 'em." This is precisely the language Adam used to woo Eve. Check it out, y'all. It's in The Bible. As he says this, Lea's man boobs shake with glee because he has mood boobs and they never lie.

Lea now sits by the campfire in the middle of shucking or whittling, as if we've just happened upon him while he's out in the wild, shucking or whittling. He tells the rest of his assembled team (meaning Julie, whose cleavage apparently contains her ears, his staring would indicate), "We got women around. Now my dreams are starting to get elaborate." Like, sometimes he dreams that he and Julie are riding a train really fast into a dark tunnel or that he and Julie are on a spacecraft that's taking off, and then he wakes up and his bamboo stalk mattress and his pile-of-leaves blanket are all wet and he runs to throw them into the washing machine before his mom finds out about it.

Chris (was there a Chris the first time I watched this episode? I honestly don't think there was) tells us how "interesting" it is that a pretty woman is playing the game (Ami is sitting at home right now, watching this and being all, "Hey! That's not...oh, he's right. Sigh"), noting, "Somebody like that can fly underneath the radar and sweet-talk their [sic] way into the final five, and then, y'know, boom! The thing you know, they're sittin' there waitin' to win the money." Who knew the distracting scourge of ugliness would be such a deterrent to victory? Because, Chris? Pack your bags, dude.

Julie, however, wouldn't know a "boom" if it stared at her titties and dropped a roofie into her Malibu Sour. She's sitting on a perch, explaining what she feels she left behind in her other team: "Women are more passive-aggressive than men are. I don't know. And that's all you would get over at Yasur." Back at the camp, circumstantial banter abounds as to who they think got booted at last night's Tribal Council, and -- wait, who's that guy? How did Elliot fromJust Shoot Me end up on Survivor? I mean, I know this show is often scripted and that show rarely ever seemed to be, so this is technically a jump upward career-wise, but you think people would be making a bigger deal about it.

Twila and Julie take a walk through the woods, Twila telling us in a twangy voice-over that seems to come replete with implicit banjo accompaniment, "Julie and I actually talk now. That's more than I can say we ever did over at the other tribe, 'cause I never actually talked to her over there." Twila is able to be really nice to Julie because she doesn't perceive her as a threat. Julie is able to be really nice to Twila because she thinks that Twila is one of Lopevi's men. Together, they are Hick & Thick, a reality spin-off if ever I've heard one. Twila tells Julie that the only protection they have against the alliance of the men is to continue winning challenges, and then expounds upon this notion in her ensuing confessional: "We're both vulnerable. We know it. Y'know, they could be blowin' smoke up her ass like they're blowin' smoke up my ass. Y'know, I don't know." Seriously? I've got a shiny nickel and an underarm trimmer for the first crusty old matriarch who manages not to couch her competition-based metaphors in the imagery of the human ass. I'm sorry that you have to poo in the ocean, but you're the one who signed the contract.

Tyra Mail! Er, I mean, "Treemail." Yasur discovers a rough-hewn wooden box with a small fake (I think) pig inside, and Lisa sounds out the note using her context cues: "You are likely to become exhausted/ So here's to mud in your eye." Lisa editorializes, "Oh, god," while Eliza silently considers what trough there is big enough to fill her gargantuan eyes with mud. Continuing on: "It's all for creature comforts/ To help improve your sty." The consensus is that they're going to be partaking in pig wrestling, which for some reason causes them to spontaneously do a group cheer where they all link hands and scream, "Yasur!" Don't get used to saying that word and smiling at the same time.

But first, healing. "My apologies to all of you for the horrible, horrible things that I said to you in my mind last night," Rory explains. In his mind? He said it all to himself? Was that sequence where he was rebuking them all for their shoddy treatment of him a scene from Survivor Herman's Head? "When I get angry, I tend to become extraordinarily hurtful." He vamps on that he came to them with the intent to be completely loyal to them, and that he couldn't go back to Lopevi because now that Bubba's gone, they'll think he sold his old teammate out. ["Which he did, but even if he hadn't voted for Bubba, Bubba would still be gone, so I doubt the men of Lopevi would hold that against him. Although it is true that Rory will be the first to go from the original Lopevi alliance, that has nothing to do with Bubba's departure and everything to do with the fact that they hate Rory." -- Wing Chun] I'm sure there's some faulty internal logic at work here I could pick to shreds, but, again, I haven't seen enough of this season to know what it is. "I will not continue to slave around camp ["he just had to say 'slave,' didn't he" -- Wing Chun] if I do not have a shot of making it to Tribal Council." In the confessional that follows, he tells us that his speech was intentionally cheesy and was just designed to sway the ladies with his brand of fierce smooth-talkin'. It's a nice bit of damage control, but I kind of didn't believe a word of it. ["I resent it because I don't think he'd be trying to get men to break a pre-existing alliance on his behalf by making them feel guilty; I think he's trying to guilt the women so that they'll go out of their way to prove they really are nice, and he thinks that will work because they're women and are basically soft-hearted, which is a pretty sexist tack for him to take." -- Wing Chun] Besides, if his explanation about his actions doesn't come with an ass-related explanation, how are we supposed to know what he's talking about?

Challenge! Jeff "I Knew Phil Keoghan. Phil Keoghan Was A Friend Of Mine. You, Sir, Are No Phil Keoghan" Probst explains to both attending teams, "On the island of Vananananatu, pigs are highly valued. They're currency and they're a status symbol. And right now, they have a value to you." Jeff directs their attention to a nearby pen filled with wee pigs, with their hair (do pigs have hair? They look like piggy mohawks) dyed each team's color. He tells them that five tribe members must grab two pigs each, and that each team must appoint a gatekeeper to make sure their pigs stay caught. The winner will receive six steaks, an announcement that sends the two teams into protein-deprived rapture. The pigs themselves can't be too happy about this whole challenge, but at least it's a relief to find out that they're the reward and not the "reward." Lopevi announces that Julie will be the gatekeeper for this challenge, and Scout will be the gatekeeper for Yasur. I'm sure she'll do fine, but Julie really always struck me as more of a keymaster. Watch her performance and I'm sure you'll agree that there is no Julie, only Zuul.