Culture Shock And Violent Storms

Previously on He Never Found A Decent Reality Show To Go On, And He Wound Up Living In A Vanuatu Down By The River: Following the ouster of Rory, the men attempted to regroup. This little piggy came to camp, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy cried "PUT ME DOWN, BITCH" all the way home. Scout made sure to convey her dislike of Eliza at the reward challenge, because why hide your bitchiness? It's not a popularity contest! Leann and Julie bonded over chicken wings, leaving Scout insecure and short of poultry. The women made it evident that they have no use for Eliza, and the men reacted with predictable ineptitude and cluelessness by attempting to get Eliza booted, rather than attempting to form an alliance with her. Ami won immunity, but it really didn't matter, because nothing had changed, as nothing has changed for weeks and weeks, and one of the guys was going, no matter what. In the end, even Chris voted against Sarge, most likely to avoid voting for any of the women, lest he need one of them later. Sayonara, Sarge. I didn't really like you, your tendency to flap your ass in the wind, or your skeevy reaction to being rubbed against by Julie, but I still disapproved of your exit for its predictability alone.

Credits. Looking at the women in this group makes me feel short and stumpy, but at least I am authentic. Even on days when I'm dumpy, at least I'm not Tofumpy.

Night 24. The tribe returns from tribal council in night vision. When they get there, the pig is waiting. And judging. He has come for you. He knows about every BLT you have ever eaten, and he is not amused. Unafraid of the Pig of Vengeance, Chris announces that this was the hardest tribal council yet, because ten minutes before they left, Sarge asked him whom he was voting for. Chris claims to have told Sarge he wasn't sure, and then explains that Sarge pulled him aside one more time to say that Chris should vote for him. And what reason did Sarge allegedly offer? "Everybody else is." So Chris explains to the group that this is why he voted for Sarge. It's not the worst idea I can think of. On one hand, it isn't like Chris is going to break into the women's alliance by showing solidarity with it, so it's hard in that respect to see why he bothered doing this. What I think it really did was clear Chris of responsibility for voting against any of the women. He doesn't want the animosity or distrust of whomever he would have had to pick to vote against, and he wants them to know that neither the vote against Julie nor the vote against Eliza came from him. But he also doesn't want them to think that he turned on his friend, or that he was just engaged in a craven effort to save himself -- as he actually was. Thus, this sob story of Sarge giving Chris the all-clear to vote him off. Unsurprisingly, of course, this tale of Sarge's selfless sacrifice isn't true, as Chris tells us in an interview.

On Day 25, Scout gets up early. She tells us that Leann and Ami have, she believes, turned against her and Twila in favor of a new bond with Julie. Which of course would only count out either Scout or Twila from the final four, if my math does not deceive me. But this makes Scout angry anyway, because Julie "doesn't deserve it," Scout snots. Oh, give me a break, As if there is such a thing as "deserving it" in this particular game. If it were about "deserving," none of you would even be there, so let's not get precious. Scout approaches the guys while they're still sleeping and whispers in their ears that she's got a plan to keep them around, but that she needs to talk to Twila about it. Chris whispers his excited appreciation, although if he's smart, he will immediately know that this is the kind of thing people say all the time to make themselves sound important, and at this point, it means almost nothing. Scout explains to us that her plan would be to start by getting rid of Eliza, and then get rid of Ami. Getting rid of Ami is especially important to this plan, because Ami is pulling all the strings, not that Scout can see that if that's true, you would move to get Ami out first, not second after Eliza. But like most strategists, Scout is allowing her judgment to be clouded by her personal preferences. There's a joke in there somewhere about John Kerry, but I'm really tired.

As Chad adjusts the WonderFoot 3000 for the day, Chris assures him that it's Day 25, and they're still there, so they just have to "keep goin'." The sun finishes rising. And...Volcano! When it is fully daylight, the entire group goes to retrieve a piece of treemail. With the treemail is a wooden rod with holes drilled through it, and through and around the holes, there is rope knotted in various ways. Twila reads the traditional suck-ass poetry, which tells the tribe to bring the pig along with them. And not in the form of sandwiches, Twila. Ami picks up the pig to carry it to the challenge, and the pig squeals, because Ami is mean, and even animals can tell.

Challenge beach. Today's attempt at...humor? Endearing friendliness? I don't actually know why, come to think of it, but anyway, today's attempt at something positive is to have Jeff provide the team with an orange buff to tie around the pig's neck. Because nothing makes you human or puts you in touch with nature like making animals wear clothes. Jeff asks the group whether they've named the porker, and while Ami says the pig has actually had many names, the one that has really stuck is "Piggy." And if that doesn't tell you all you need to know about these people...I mean, really. "Piggy"? You're in this show, with its rich history, you have unlimited free time for brainstorming, and you call your pig "Piggy"? If I thought there was a Lord of the Flies reference there, it would be at least mildly clever, but I'm fairly sure there isn't. I mean, which of these people do you think would have that kind of familiarity with literature? Anyway, once Piggy has been buffed, Ami shoves him into the crate that is waiting on the ground. Which I'm sure he really appreciates. Piggy's all, "Sure, yesterday I'm a pet and today I'm chops." Oh, and Jeff calls him "Buddy," because "Piggy" is too formal and doesn't have the requisite devil-may-care, rakish charm. Jeff asks the team whether it was fun to have "a little company at camp," and Twila, never one to let anything drop, ever, says that it's not fun to keep him as a friend when you just want to eat him. Thank you again, Twila, for translating subtext to text so generously.

Jeff explains that in today's challenge, they'll be split at random into two groups of four. Each group will pick somebody to be tied to the end of a rope that is threaded through all of the parts of an obstacle course. The rest of the group will have to take that person through the course, untangling things as they go. In other words, that person is like a rock at the end of a rope, and you have to thread the rock through all kinds of loops and knots to free it up. See how it works? It's really difficult to explain, which is too bad, because it's actually a fairly cool challenge. The parts of the course include leading the person past a fence, through a series of what Jeff calls "hitching posts," over a wall, under a log, and through a "vertical rope maze." Basically, this challenge consists of quickly putting the person at the end of the rope under, around, through, and over the right thing at the right time to untie all of the tangles and get clear. I can't explain it any better than that.

Now, it's time for Jeff to explain what they're playing for. The winning team will be taken on an overnight visit to a traditional Vanuatu tribe. There will be "cultural activities," including "a major feast." And because you don't go to a party empty-handed, they'll be taking their pig to the party as a gift. At least it's not another set of linen napkins.

The way the teams break out for the challenge, Chad, Chris, Eliza, and Ami wind up in one group, while Scout, Twila, Leann, and Julie wind up on the other. Eliza is the tied-up person on her team; Julie is the tied-up person on hers. "Survivors ready...go!" The first thing Julie and Eliza have to do is crawl -- or in Julie's case, dive -- through the middle of a fence, and it's all looking pretty difficult at this point, actually. The two guys do have an advantage, in that they find it fairly easy to basically manhandle Eliza, just throwing her through the middle, picking her up, winding her back through, and so forth. I will freely admit that I thought all of the parts where the guys were threading Eliza through the course were kind of hot. Sorry. Eliza gets untangled from the fence first, and she heads for the hitching posts, where her team continues to do a good job of leading her through the course. Julie's team finally gets her past the fence. Eliza's team unwinds her from the hitching posts, and they head for the wall. Interestingly, I think the secret MVP here is probably Eliza herself, who does quite a bit of jumping up and swinging over things in a way that indicates to me that her stomach muscles are nothing to chuckle at. I think she did a very good job with this challenge, even though her role seems kind of inert at first glance. Julie gets to the wall, cutting Eliza's lead by a little bit. Eliza clears the wall, and now it's time to burrow under the log. Eliza is pulled under the log, in a move that really does look like it could be kind of dangerous if the hole turned out to be too shallow, because if they yanked on her and it hung up on, say, her nose? Ow. But that doesn't happen, and she goes under the log just fine. Of course, the rope goes around one more time, so she has to go under again. Julie goes under. Eliza goes under, losing her ponytail along the way. Julie goes under the second time face-down, requiring the blurring of her ass crack, as well as really making you wonder what these people are smoking, because why would you pull her through the sand on her face? Both teams make it to the final piece, which is a tall post with holes in it, with the rope all knotted and screwy around it, so they've got to do a whole lot of untangling right here before they're done. See, it's all this carrying of Eliza that Chris and Chad are doing that I thought was kinda sexy. It's possible that I have fireman fantasies or something. At any rate, Eliza's team finishes first, they run to the finish, and they celebrate. Julie is actually a little teary; I think being the ballast in that challenge was pretty physically unpleasant. Jeff sends the losers back to camp, and sends the winners to their party with their pig.

Back at camp, the night-vision camera reveals that it is raining hard, and that no one is having any fun at all. Someone declares that "it's been raining forever," and Scout interviews that, as a result, everything in the camp is wet. They're also struggling to keep the fire going. "I've never been in a worse situation than this, really," Scout says. I hope that's true. She's a very fortunate lady, if it is. A shivering Leann, looking a little crazy around the eyes, says, "This is by far the worst night." No one around camp really wants to think about what kind of a night the winners of the challenge are having, because it's undoubtedly too depressing. They all look miserably at the sky.

Day 26 dawns. Palms sway, and Scout is already awake, talking about the "hell of a night" they had, and how the shelter just wasn't able to stand up to it. So in the spirit of learned helplessness, Scout takes the opportunity to tell Julie, Leann, and Twila that they ought to send Eliza home so that they can keep the big, strong guys around to help with things like fire duty. And killing bugs, and opening jars, and not asking for directions, and ho-ho-ho, don't you love the gender politics? Julie and Twila seem to be on board immediately, owing to their powerful dislike of Eliza, but Leann looks skeptical, because she would of course never make any decision without having it approved by Ami. The rest of them suspect that the reaction of the rest of the tribe to Eliza's departure will be "ecstatic," and Twila doesn't even understand how people kept her around for this long. Twila wonders whether they should tell Ami, and Julie says she's sure Ami will be "cool with it." And if she's not, they can always...you know, abandon their own plans and do whatever she tells them to do. The fire burns. A well-camouflaged lizard moves through the leaves, followed by another. Beware of falling metaphors.

Now, the challenge winners approach, returning from their trip. Scout quizzes Chris on how bad the conditions were or weren't, and Ami is careful to throw in that the "food and the sleeping arrangements were horrible," probably not aware that as bad as they were, they were a lot better than what these people were dealing with. "You didn't have to sleep with wet blankets," Leann points out, "and you didn't get poured on, right?" "We did not get poured on," Eliza admits. Eliza then says with some shock in an interview that nobody was happy to see them at all when they came home. We watch Ami rave about being around the kids singing, and Scout munches on something. Ami, too, feels that everyone was awfully indifferent to her exciting experiences on the reward. And I can understand how she could be surprised by that, assuming that she had never seen the show before in her whole life. Because...come on. The group always resents the people who come back from the late luxury rewards. They could at least have brought a small child back to camp tucked into someone's pantleg, so that those who were left out could enjoy some of the singing. Ami adds that she could tell something had changed in the air while she was gone. And not something good, like Lysol.

Things are misty at Alinta on Day 26. Ami asks the rest of the girls whether they're all still voting for Chad. Scout decides that the thing to do here is share her plan -- that would be the plan which has booting Ami as its second step -- and this is where you start to realize, as does Scout, that she hasn't thought this through, and did it all wrong. Anyway, Scout says that she's thinking that they should boot Eliza in order to keep the guys around for a few more days. And she chalks this up to the notion that the guys are needed for menial labor, which is a good way to ensure that Ami is able to leverage her "girl power" crapola as a strong argument for why it's a stupid plan. Indeed, Ami dismisses the fire concern as BS, assuring Scout that they can handle the fire without help. Ami returns to the idea that they have to get rid of the guys to keep the guys from getting immunity a bunch of times.

Ami interviews that she and Scout find themselves at odds, because Scout wants to toss Eliza, and Ami thinks it's not time for that yet. Ami just wants to keep chipping away at the guys for as long as possible. Of course, Ami's own argument is rife with sexist claptrap, as she is all concerned about the "two strong men" winning immunity, despite the fact that Chris is basically a complete washout in challenges, and Chad, while a strong competitor, hasn't been setting the world on fire. I mean, sure, one of the guys could go on an immunity tear. But so could Twila. And so could Eliza. Those two have both shown some surprising grit in a couple of situations, and Eliza is very, very determined at this point and knows she doesn't have allies, which can make people pretty formidable competitors. thing you know, Ami is coaxing the bulk of her alliance back to the Chad boot. Leann claims to be up in the air, but you can tell she'll ultimately do whatever Ami says, because Leann has absolutely no mind of her own. Similarly, Julie gives in, saying that she had liked the idea of throwing out Eliza, but that she now sees the wisdom of everything Ami is saying. And, you know, there's a shocker.

Chad, concerned, comes to Scout wanting to know what the story is. She hedges, claiming she's not exactly sure what's going to happen tonight. She assures him that she, for one, is voting for Eliza. Chad interviews that the mood seemed to be a little shifty when they got back from the challenge, and that he wasn't sure Scout was finding it possible to get the votes they needed to get rid of Eliza instead of, say, him. He heads off to try to talk to Twila, who is down by the beach washing the dishes, but she offers him no reassurance either. "From the way that they're acting," he tells her, "it just doesn't look good for me." "Ami's not stupid, and she sees something's coming," says Twila. Chad interviews that there is some scrambling going on, as is often the case, and that it's just hard to say at this point quite what's going to happen. This is one of those sequences that they have played out on this show so many times with different people that it's just almost impossible to give a good goddamn, and I don't know what they need to do to fix it, but they'd better think of something.