Previously on Judging Ami: Leann was gone, and boy, was Ami mad. Twila was getting a little mad, too, but more in the "dog" sense than in the "anger" sense. Jeff came zooming up in the reward car, and after besting Ami in a balance-and-swim competition, Eliza zoomed off with it, taking Ami and Chris with her for a night away from home. Ami and her fuzzy bathrobe tried to work on Eliza for a vote, and she tried to convince Chris that splitting Scout and Twila would be smart, but Chris just rolled his eyes and ate his dinner, while Eliza fretted with guilt over the prospect of voting against Ami -- who had already, of course, voted against her. Chris put all his eggs in the basket of Eliza's mental fortitude, and shivered in fear. The immunity challenge was tabletop shuffleboard, kind of (oh, just go with it), and Chris proved that when push comes to shove, he has the touch. He tried on the immunity necklace and found it a nice fit. Eliza toyed with the idea of amusing herself by voting off Scout instead of Ami, but in the end, she decided she'd rather have a million dollars than one good belly laugh, and she stuck with her alliance. At tribal council, Ami ripped into Twila about having sworn loyalty on her son, and Twila spit out a hearty "screw you" in return, proving that the old wives' tale about not coming between a mama bear and her cubs was written by some fairly smart old wives. Interestingly, the previouslys are edited to suggest that Eliza wept with pain as her vote was read and as Ami left, which is...not really what happened. Anyway, five remain, and as the math majors among you will surely agree, there are only four spots in the final four. Somebody's not making it to the final round of heavy hype. Who will it be?
Credits. I have to say, looking at the credits and remembering everyone's positions early in the game really does make me admire Eliza. She's never had anything but grudging allies, she's had to reposition herself a couple of times to stay in, she's known when to cooperate and when not to, and she's put on some nice challenge performances late in the game. I think she was definitely underestimated early on, at least by me. Also, her swimsuit has faded and deteriorated far less than some others of this and years. I'm looking at you and your floral ass, Amber.
Volcano! The full moon lights up the water. As the little group returns from tribal council, Chris comments on what a nice night it is, and Scout agrees. And it is a beautiful night, except for all the hating. Chris comments that, as they came back to camp, it seemed like the night would be fairly uneventful. But as he notes, "there was still a lot of emotion stirring in Twila." Among other things, Twila is not loving the fact that Eliza jumped on the "Twila sucks for swearing on her kid" thing with Ami at tribal council. Which, interestingly, I thought Eliza did only in the sense that she sympathized with Ami for feeling backstabbed, not so much because she thought Twila was evil for doing it. And around the campfire, Eliza tosses off a "Sorry, T" that's really difficult to evaluate without context, but certainly doesn't sound like much of an apology -- not that one is necessarily required, but just for the purposes of clarity, it doesn't exactly sound like Eliza was trying to make express her great regret for participating in that. Twila says again that she feels really bad about the swearing on her kid, and that Eliza knows she does, so she's not sure why Eliza needs to "keep rubbing salt in the wound." Twila goes on to say, in increasingly aggressive tones, that the only person she feels like she needs to apologize to is her son, so she's not dealing with it with the rest of them anymore. She says again that she's sorry she ever did it, but adds that she's also tired of hearing about it from them. She also makes use of the word "condole," which is a real word meaning "grieve" (thanks, online dictionary!), but which I think she's using to mean something like "reconcile." In other words, I think she just accidentally used a real word when her intention was to invent one spontaneously through malapropism. Anyway, after the discussion of the limited need for condoling, Twila says, "The rest of you motherfuckers can kiss my fuckin' ass." (Or something. The bleeping was honestly so aggressive in that clip that she could have said "The rest of you mother-loving chicken-pluckers can kiss my kidney stones," and it would be hard to tell the difference.)
So for whatever reason, Twila has apparently that this is a good time to lose her ability to function rationally and start trying to slough off jury votes. A million dollars is a pain in the ass, after all, what with the taxes and everything, and there's no way to keep it from happening to you quite like calling potential jurors "motherfuckers." Julie and Eliza -- and even Scout -- try to tell Twila that everybody's already over it, and Eliza claims that she was trying to apologize for bringing it up (and...as stated above, not exactly the most heartfelt apology the world has ever known). Julie throws off a haughty "That was uncalled for," to which Twila objects that it was very much...uh, called for, in her opinion. She points at Julie, all indignant over how they keep bringing it up, and Julie protests that she actually hasn't brought it up at all. Which is pretty much true, as far as we know, but that's only because Jeff didn't ask Julie about it and she didn't need to bring it up, seeing as how Julie never does her own dirty work and Jeff apparently has yet to ask her a difficult question.
In a night-vision interview, Julie says that Twila's "outburst" was "a heinous insecurity projected on [everyone else]," and that it was also handy, in that Julie plans to use it against her. I'm not sure I think "heinous" makes a great modifier for "insecurity," all things considered, but her basic point is well taken, in that Twila is clearly feeling very guilty and is finding it hard to believe that people have felt the need to pile on when she's already expressed regret. Specifically, I think Twila was angry at Eliza because she and Eliza had talked about it, and Twila had told Eliza that she regretted it, and I think she thought Eliza should maybe have at least credited her apology for something when siding with Ami about the entire thing. Julie and Eliza huddle together for the night, and as Scout listens in with concern, Julie talks again about how Twila's remarks were "uncalled for," and Eliza sucks up the sympathy on the basis that she claims (again) that she was in the middle of apologizing when Twila got so upset. In an interview, Eliza recaps rather unnecessarily the bit about Twila getting angry around the fire, and winds up coming around to the predictable "she's the one who did it, so she has to live with it" thing. Which is easy to say when it's not you doing the living with, because it's safe to say that everybody has done things they'd rather not have thrown in their faces four thousand times. Many of mine have been done just this week, and only one of them involves putting my jacket on inside-out.
The morning of Day 34 dawns, and some little animal that looks like the head of a mouse and the body of a slug -- seriously, what is that thing? -- is trying in vain to remain on a rock as the water tries to wash him off. Twila is still looking rough, sort of stomping around camp and not wanting to talk to anyone. Julie's comments that Twila was feeling "insecurity" over what she had done are, again, certainly spot-on -- that's what I meant last week about Ami being very good at intentionally finding and twisting the knives that are going to hurt people the most. Just because Twila effectively got rid of Ami doesn't mean that Ami didn't do a good job of putting a scar on her, just as Ami intended to do. Twila is a single mom; Ami disparaged her as a mother, just as she disparaged Scout's sexual identity. Ami's very skilled at finding the thing that's going to be most painful to say and saying it, and the fact that she didn't keep herself in the game doesn't undo what she did, unfortunately. Anyway, Twila and Eliza exchange "morning"s, and Eliza whispers to Julie, "Why is she so mad?" "'Cause of her issue," Julie says. Wow, sharp. And specific. "She's holding a grudge," Eliza says. Julie agrees thusly: "Against herself, towards us, mostly towards you." A what? Can I get a schematic diagram on that, possibly? Because that's going to take a lot of arrows. As Twila continues to walk around not talking to anyone, Chris interviews that he knew this entire sequence of events was not good for the plan. Twila was alienating Julie and Eliza, and Chris didn't want to see anything upset the four-person alliance that he's still hoping to take into the final four. "[Twila's] taking a road she doesn't need to take," he says. And then we watch Twila spit a mighty mouthful of water onto the ground. Which is pretty nasty, but I can't really complain, because I suspect it's hard not having a toothbrush, and whatever grunge you can take off your teeth with water, it's not like I can blame you.
Julie and Eliza take a walk in the woods together, and Julie asks Eliza why it would be bad to vote off Twila and keep Julie. "I don't know," Eliza says simply. "Just from your perspective, your position," Julie presses. "I don't know," Eliza says again, and then she adds, "I don't think it would." Eliza interviews that she "would definitely consider making a deal with Julie" if she thought it would get her further. Showing off the mark on her forehead that she's going to have on and off throughout this episode, which makes it look like she got slingshotted between the eyes with a red-hot marble or has been marked by a cult for future indoctrination, Eliza adds that, sometimes, you have to be willing to abandon your alliances to improve your position. Eliza tells Julie that she should probably talk to Chris herself, since he seems to "feel close to" Julie, and Julie agrees. Eliza asks Julie not to tell Chris that Eliza agreed to anything, but just to tell him that Eliza suggested Julie talk to him. Julie interviews that Eliza has made it clear that her primary loyalty is to Chris, so if he isn't willing to go along with a plan to get rid of Twila, Eliza won't go along with it. Boy, everything Julie is wearing over that cranberry bikini certainly is getting tattered. Including her headwrap-buff, which makes her look more washerwoman-like every week.
We sweep over to the challenge, which has a long, obstacle-course layout. When the tribe gets there, Jeff explains that this is the "second chance" challenge, where they'll get to revisit some past challenges. It's like taking a date to all the worst restaurants you've ever attended, kind of -- the one where you spilled something on yourself, the one where you walked into the kitchen while looking for the bathroom, that sort of thing. Anyway, in this case: first, they'll all go through a mud crawl. Then, the first four of them to finish will move on to the pig pen. You have to grab a marked pig and drop him into a little individual cage. The first three to catch pigs will move on to the tiki puzzle. First two to finish their tiki puzzles move on to a balance beam, a slide down a net, and then hitting plates with slingshots. The first to hit all three plates will send a flame up to light a torch and so forth, and that will win you reward. The reward in this case is a horseback ride to Mount Yasur, and a snack of hot dogs, wine, beer, and hot chocolate. Jeff somehow seems to feel that the hot dogs are particularly well-suited to looking at an active volcano, and I'm not understanding that at all, unless he's seriously so lame that a food with the word "hot" in it appears lava-appropriate. I would like to think that isn't the case. Anyway, at Mount Yasur, you'll get to stay overnight, too. "Worth playing for?" I hate it when Jeff asks that, because it's exactly like when waitresses ask you whether everything's all right, but they all nod obligingly. One other thing -- Jeff needs to stop wearing the dark shirts with the white stitching. That is just not sexy. And what's in those enormous front pockets, anyway? Graphing calculators?
The mud pit, pretty predictably, finishes off Scout. The pig pen (preceded by a smattering of Deliverance-ish harmonica that is only there to be noticed by the obsessive-compulsives, thank you very much) continues to be Eliza's Waterloo, and she's not making it out of that round. The tiki puzzle round is decided when Chris accidentally abandons a piece of his puzzle on the ground behind him and can't figure out what he's doing wrong. He's still trying to figure it out when Twila and Julie are both finished, so Chris is out. This is particularly painful because, while showing Jeff the puzzle assembled incorrectly, Chris literally trips over the piece of it that's on the ground. Chris may have done a nice job of keeping his ass in the game, but he's still kind of the Gilligan more than the Professor. Anyway, in the final round, Julie and Twila race up the ladder and across the balance beam. Julie is ahead, and it looks like Twila hurts her ankle landing on the net. (You might want to keep that in mind for endurance-challenge purposes, no?) She limps to the slingshot, but Julie is ahead of her, and when Julie has good success hitting the slingshot, her torch lights and she wins reward. A very muddy Julie jumps up and down in her swimsuit. Jeff tells Julie that, of course, she gets to bring somebody with her on her reward. "It's ironic," Julie says, "because none of these people would have taken me." First of all, don't whine. Second of all, it's not ironic. Third of all, don't count on it. I think Chris might have taken Julie if he'd won, just so he would know exactly where she was and whom she was talking to. He'd have had to take either Julie or Eliza, for fear they'd hang around at camp and plot -- not that, admittedly, they can do anything without a third vote, but still. It occurs to me that the real person with the dilemma if she had won this challenge was Eliza. Gotta leave Julie back at camp with Chris if you want them to be able to talk about voting off Twila. But that means taking Scout or Twila -- probably Twila -- on the reward. And that? Well, first of all, Eliza would hate that, and second of all, it would look incredibly suspicious. What would Twila think the purpose of that was? At any rate, that's not what happened, so what we get is Julie deciding to take Chris, who runs over and hugs her. Jeff sends Scout, Twila, and Eliza back to camp. And as they walk off, you can see how really, really skinny Eliza has gotten. Really. Olive Oyl jokes aside, get that girl a slice of pepperoni. Stuffed crust.
Aaaand, volcano! (The pastoral kind, not the exploding kind.) Chris and Julie take a walk to the challenge, and Chris explains that after they got cleaned up, they headed out into an "ashy, dense area." Julie interviews that, if I'm not mistaken, Chris is the person she "has the funnest with" (not just "funnest," but "has the funnest"), and besides, she needed to chat with him about her vote-off-Twila plan. Chris and Julie run into their guide, Joe, who puts them up on their horses for the ride to Mount Yasur. As they ride, Chris's horse gets a little stranded in a river, and he seems not to know what to do. Joe tells him to kick. No, kick harder. Game metaphor? You be the judge. Chris interviews that, indeed, he and his horse had a little trouble bonding early on. He says that nevertheless, it was a great ride, and that it was "awesome just looking at everything." We get a gorgeous shot of them making their way across what looks like ashy sand, leaving perfect sets of tracks. That is some pretty camera work right there, so stop and appreciate it. Finally, they pull up in front of a little hut, which Joe tells them is theirs for the night. Nobody anywhere to bother them, except for the swarm of crew guys milling around. Julie gives the usual "we saw all the hot dogs and beer and oh, gosh!" speech. Joe offers to show them the easiest way to cook stuff, and they're eager to know. Because raw hot dogs? Are bologna. ["Love them, but I'm trashy like that." -- Wing Chun] Joe shows them how to cook their hot dogs over a steam vent that appears just to be coming up out of the ground. And if you're going to eat hot dogs, you want it to be as organic and natural an experience as possible, because you don't want your tasty helping of hog cuticles contaminated in an unnatural process. Julie explains that they just sat there scarfing hot dogs for a while. As you do.
And now, Chris explains in an interview that he certainly wasn't surprised to be picked by Julie, who would like not to be immediately dispatched from the game. As they sit together, she asks him about his closeness to Twila. He says that he's not particularly close to her, opening the door for Julie's approach. Julie asks him to whom he feels most loyal, which is kind of a weird question, because...there is no loyalty in this game, in the sense that "loyalty" is traditionally understood to involve the willingness to make sacrifices for others, and in this game, it has about as much relevance as your earned run average. Anyway, playing right along, Chris answers the loyalty question by saying that, in many ways, it would certainly be Julie herself who's been the most helpful to him since the merge. Chris interviews that he does have "a bond" with Julie, and that she made it clear to him that she'd like not to be voted off, which...would that have come as new information? Julie goes on to tell Chris that Eliza made it clear to her that she won't make a move away from the plan to vote off Julie unless it has Chris's approval. Chris responds that he's not surprised, because Eliza has already told him that he's the only person Eliza trusts at this point. Chris interviews that he's sure that Eliza and Julie would love to see him jump ship and get rid of Twila. "And I didn't tell her no," he adds. Julie, in turn, interviews that Chris seemed "open-minded" and seemed willing to help her go farther in the game. "Chris is my rock right now," she adds. Oh, "rock," "Jell-O mold," same difference.
Back at camp, it is still not a happy time. For whatever reason, Twila has buried a bunch of bananas so that they can get ripe, and she won't tell Eliza where she put them. Eliza, understandably, feels rather patronized by being treated like a four-year-old whose cookies have been hidden from her. "If you ask me one more time, I'm going to let those damn things rot in the ground," Twila says. And that is just unnecessary. It's a shame that Twila has let the trip Ami put on her last week and its fallout affect her to the point where she now has her eye completely off the ball and is acting so damn cocky and defensive. Scout joins in, gently explaining to Eliza that Twila is saving the bananas so that everyone has food for breakfast, which would be all right except that, as I understand it, the skinny from the extra bonus online footage (which I normally try to ignore, but which seems particularly significant here) is that Twila isn't even the one who found these particular bananas. Eliza and Julie did, and Twila literally took them and hid them, and that's not cool. Food you find yourself you can choose to hoard. Food somebody else finds, you need to give them access to, would be my position. That knowledge also makes it seem a lot more reasonable when Eliza says, "I'll just go bury the rest of them and then let you know if I decide I want to tell you where they are." Scout and Twila laugh as Eliza walks off, and Scout sarcastically singsongs, "Touché! She got you! She got you, Twila!" It's nice to know that, with Ami gone, someone is picking up the slack as far as being a totally gratuitous asshole. I mean, this seems like a clear case of having just piled on Eliza because they can, and it's really kind of ugly. Inside the shelter, Eliza complains that she hates the way Twila treats her, and finds her "obnoxious and annoying," and at this point, I really can't argue. Out in the hammock, Twila is telling Scout how immature and childish Eliza is being, adding that she herself doesn't care if the bananas rot. In a personality quirk common to reality-show contestants, Twila has the ability to make two consecutive statements without noticing their tendency to discredit each other.
Julie and Chris go to the edge of the volcano with Joe, and it's more volcano-rific than ever. As they mention, it's very reminiscent of watching fireworks on the Fourth of July, only nobody keeps cranking up the military-band version of "Stars and Stripes Forever" or, God forbid, "God Bless the USA." It is an impressive show of sparks; I'll say that for it. If you don't get out in nature very much, you'll forget how pissed off it can get and how we've sort of settled ourselves in the parts of the earth where things have calmed down a little more. After they've watched for a while, Chris and Julie get up, and Joe takes them back down the mountain.
The morning, on Day 35, Chris and Julie return to camp. Chris comes over and hugs Scout in a show of warm affection and continuing scheming. She asks whether things are okay, and he tells her, "Good. Solid as a rock. Hasn't changed." Again with the rock! Although really, would he tell Scout if it had? She can't honestly think he would be like, "The eagle has landed. And...well, honestly, it doesn't look so good for you." In other news, apparently, Twila really did upset her foot, because it's the first thing Chris asks about when he starts looking for her. Chris interviews that when he hugged Scout, they were thinking the same thing: "It's game time." Whatever that means.
Chris says that, then, he had to go over and reassure Twila, because "she's a basket case." Indeed, as they hug, Twila whispers, "Everything's okay?" Chris responds, "You have nothing to worry about." He tells us that it all was coming together, as we watch Julie and Twila share what is undoubtedly the most awkward hug since Colin Powell said goodbye to Condoleezza Rice after submitting his resignation. Eliza tells us that on her agenda was a chat with Chris, because if he was willing to go with voting off Twila, she might be as well. They have a chat on the beach, and Chris remains somewhat noncommittal, telling Eliza that he knows Julie wants to stay in, and thus he wasn't surprised that she took him. Eliza asks him the big question: if one of the four of them won immunity, who would he vote off? Chris says he isn't sure: "It depends on, you know, our best interests in the game." He says he assumes that Scout and Twila will stick together. "Oh yeah," Eliza says. "If Julie stays in the game, we're automatic final three," she adds. Because I think she's assuming Scout won't be winning any immunity challenges, and that Julie would go along with voting off Scout. Now, why anyone would agree to vote off Scout before F3, given that she has zero chance in an endurance contest, I am not sure, but it might be true. ['That's what I thought about that leathery old bag Kim in Season 3, and she went up against Ethan in the final two, so you really never know." -- Wing Chun] Chris says that, indeed, he and Julie talked about an F3 of themselves and Eliza, thinking it might be "better for all three of [them]." Eliza then goes in a direction that I think won't work with Chris, which is the giggly bit about how great it would be to screw Twila. I think Chris basically likes Twila, or at least feels some kinship with her, and I don't think just the promise of shocking and screwing her is going to be particularly moving for Chris, so I think this part is a road to nowhere, and the more Chris thinks this is Eliza's motive, the less likely he is, actually, to go along with it. Chris interviews that they talked about voting off Twila. He then explains that he doesn't trust any of the women, and that he doesn't think they trust each other, but that he thinks they all trust him. Which is cocky, but is also true. He tells Eliza that they'll see how the immunity challenge goes. And then they'll do what's best for them -- which is where you realize most clearly that Eliza sees herself as having an F2 pact with Chris. Which I'm not sure he thinks he has with her.
Time for the immunity challenge. This is my least favorite kind of challenge, which is where Jeff tells a little story, and then you have to try to remember all the details. They dress it up with a lot of stuff about running into little huts and assembling puzzles that have questions on them, but it's really just a very, very simple memory contest, and the questions aren't even hard. Like, at all. Although the part of the story where people are strangled or buried alive is fairly creepy, and throwing "the women were strangled!" in with "Rory was best with the slingshot!" under Trivia You Should Know kind of gives me the willies. Anyway, I'm not really sure how to recap this very much, except to say that there's lots of running around and assembling puzzles, and Eliza -- who I am telling you, is no powder puff when it comes to challenges -- takes home the immunity necklace. And one other thing: it is while I am watching Scout be incredibly pokey at answering a couple of questions, including one that she gets wrong that isn't very hard, that I wonder whether she's doing the most elaborate fake-out in the history of the game. If you think about it, it would be pretty awesome to be an old lady and manage to get yourself far enough that people start thinking "endgame," and they start to conclude that you can't win anything. Because wouldn't they take you to F3, then? ["Kim. Remember Kim." -- Wing Chun] I mean, she just seems to almost be exaggerating her own inability to walk at this point, and now that she's piling on getting easy questions wrong? I don't know. Is that possible? It would be cool, but I doubt it, because that would bring a level of excitement to the season that I'm convinced is not meant to be.
Anyway, Jeff puts the immunity necklace around Eliza's neck, and he sends them all back to camp. Tribal council's a-comin', so you'd better circle the wagons. Uh, little dogies. Or something. I'm not suggesting she should have done it, but it would have made things interesting if Eliza had allowed Julie to take the immunity once it was clearly down to the two of them. Would Eliza have been likely to go, or could she have maybe gotten Chris to turn on Twila? It would have been an interesting, risky move.
Wow, out in the water? A whale! Or at least it looks like a whale. It's hard to believe they haven't played that footage nine zillion times, though, if it is. You'd think they might have used that once or twice instead of the damn bat. Anyway, Eliza voices over back at camp that she has won her first individual immunity. So she's feeling great, and thinks it would be great to win all of the challenges. "This is going to be the first tribal council I haven't brought my bag to," she says happily to everyone. She interviews that she thinks that, tonight, she, Chris, and Julie will "shock the hell out of everyone" by voting off Twila. She finds the prospect "really exciting," she tells us as the masterful editing team shows her walking by Twila and smirking. I don't know when contestants will learn that smirking goeth before a fall.
Eliza and Julie are uncomfortable, however, when they see that Chris is out by the water, talking it up with Scout and Twila. And indeed, what he's telling them is that "they" are three, and that Eliza and Julie are only two. Which is hard to argue with, but doesn't at all answer any interesting question, if you think about it, because the issue isn't whether three can vote out two; it's where Chris falls in that split. Chris assures Scout and Twila that he credits them for the fact that he's still in the game, so he's not deviating from the plan. "Don't even doubt it," he says. "I would tell you, you got it? We're going all the way," he assures them. But what does he say in the interview? That he's "still weighing [his] options." In fact, he claims to be going back and forth about what would be the best thing to do.
Chris then takes an interesting step, which is to chat with Eliza, as he lies in the hammock and she stands beside him, about how it will affect their pact if he decides to vote off Julie because he thinks it's what's best for both of them, meaning for himself and Eliza. One would think that, if that were the reasoning, Eliza could at least ask to be told ahead of time, making this conversation largely unnecessary. Eliza tells Chris no, his voting for Julie wouldn't make Eliza turn on him or anything. Eliza also reminds Chris, though, that Scout and Twila will not go against each other. Thus, she says, whichever of Chris and Eliza doesn't win immunity is going up against Scout or Twila "in a challenge at tribal council." Wait, wait -- what? New rule? Because it sounds like Eliza and Chris have information that ties in F4 will not be broken by purple rocks this time, but with a tribal council challenge, right? That's the only way that what she just said makes sense. She's saying that they'll never break a tie in their own favor, and that they'd have to go up in a challenge, whereas Julie would probably vote with Chris and Eliza against Scout. Which...again, given Scout's weaknesses, would she? Interesting to wonder.
And as Eliza presents this scenario to Chris, the camera guy slides over to show us that...Twila is listening. Fairly openly, too -- it's not like she's hiding in the bushes; she's just standing behind Eliza, and because Chris, quite carelessly, is conducting this chat from the hammock facing the same way as Eliza, they don't see her. And Twila is smiling a skeptical, somewhat disappointed smile. Finally, Eliza turns around and sees Twila standing there. A long and extremely awkward silence follows. "What's up?" Eliza asks, trying to appear relaxed. Twila's like, "Don't know, you tell me." Heh. Chris and Eliza sit there. Now that's uncomfortable for you. Twila finally prods, "What's up, Eliza?" Eliza does the only thing she can, which is say that she feels like Twila is "fucking with [her]." Which kind of doesn't make any sense, but Eliza's so busted, what can she do? It's the "I wasn't eating the M&Ms, I was just keeping them warm in my mouth" defense. Twila tells Eliza that she has immunity, and Eliza counters that she knows she does, but tomorrow, she won't: "Then who's gone, T? I think you're a liar, T." Twila would like to raise the matter of who else hasn't been too honest lately. Twila wants to know whether Twila is in the F4 alliance she's supposed to be in or not. Eliza insists that she hasn't told a lie yet. Twila pushes, saying basically that she knows perfectly well that Eliza has been scheming with Julie and trying to pull in Chris. "Hey, I'm going to listen to [Julie]," Eliza says. "And you're not saying, 'Okay, we would like to do this and this and get Twila and Scout out of here' or anything?" "I'm listening," Eliza answers unconvincingly. Eliza insists that Twila has been "trying to plot against [Eliza] since day one." Which...really doesn't matter now, kids. See, this is the point where we're long past loyalty, and it's really just endgame, and everybody knows it. Twila claims that Eliza has been on edge for three days, making everybody crazy, and now Eliza should relax, because she has immunity already.
Now, unsurprisingly, Twila turns to Chris. "Now, Chris, what are you thinking?" He tries to act all ha-ha-embarrassed, saying, "I'm just laying here, you know, in the hammock!" Now he's doing, "Ummm, porn? What porn? I don't know what you're talkin' about!" Twila, also smiling, says that she was listening, and found the conversation very interesting. "I'm hearing Eliza out; she's talking to me," Chris says, trying to close the conversation. Twila walks off. Chris interviews that there's a lot of "scrambling" going on, and that he's better positioned than any of the women. Well...maybe. Maybe not. Beware trying to be the swing vote, my dear. It can be very, very hazardous. And then he adds, "They're all women; how do you trust any of them?" Oh, shut up, Andy Ohio State Baseball Capp. He says that he is playing both sides, which he points out isn't exactly very difficult, since the two sides aren't talking to each other.
Now, Chris has a meeting with Julie in which he says that he's concluded that it is probably best for him to go along with her and Eliza in voting off Twila, as a result of the closeness Twila and Scout have. Unfortunately, in driving this home, Chris feels the need to cite the closeness of his friendship with Julie, which is always a very hazardous thing to do to anyone you anticipate seeing on the jury, because...well, people take that shit personally. "We'll keep you," he finally tells Julie as Eliza stands and listens. "We're going to vote off Twila." Julie interviews that she hopes that Chris will really follow up on that, and says she has little choice but to hope for the best. Unfortunately for her hopeful outlook, elsewhere, Chris is also reassuring Twila that his decision hasn't changed, and that he, Twila, and Scout will be going forward just as planned. In fact, he tells Twila that he's "not even hesitating." Twila interviews that she would like to believe Chris entirely, but she...doesn't. "You can't trust nobody now; nobody," she says. "You're playing for a million dollars. People have murdered for less than a million dollars." That's a good, and fairly creepy, point. (And somewhere, someone is making a note to pitch that show, I guarantee it.)
Eliza mentions again to Scout how happy she is to have immunity. "I know; you ought to be," Scout says, trying to sound relaxed. Chris -- looking a little rough, actually -- interviews that he's told both Twila and Julie that he's keeping them in the game, and that he's ultimately going to make the best decision he can for himself. "It's tough right now," he smiles. "I'm going to have to make a decision before long."
Well, now it's really before long, because here we are heading to tribal council. When those who remain are all seated, here comes the jury. Nice long white socks, there, Sarge. Did you pick those up in gym class before or after the four-square tournament? Jeff talks about the "wear and tear" from playing the game for this long, and reiterates that, obviously, everyone wants to win. He asks them whether they've given any thought to who deserves to win. Oh, yay! My favorite part. Now is the time on Survivor when we moralize.
Jeff asks Twila whether it would be possible for anyone to be "unworthy of winning." "I don't know," Twila says. "Be honest," Julie demands. Oh, shut up, Julie. You're not in charge of running the meeting. And you've got nothing to be so damn pushy about, after the shit you used to talk about Eliza yourself. "You don't know?" Jeff asks, "Or you don't want to say?" Twila points out to Jeff that he's being rather "hard on [her]." "Am I?" he asks, answering a challenge with another question, as he is wont to do. "Yes, sir, you are," she says, with a smile that I think makes this substantially less nasty than it would otherwise be. I do think Twila feels like she got the crap beaten out of her last week, and probably also that Scout got a little bit of an unjust hammering over the "girl power" thing. Jeff asks her whether she's saying that "there are people here that absolutely do not deserve to be in the final five." Twila hesitates, so of course, that means, "Yes." Eliza makes a most unfortunate bitchface. "Just tell him what you feel, Twila," Chris says, with more impatience than I expected from a guy who's been better than that at keeping out of unnecessary spats, for the most part. "My personal opinion is, yes," Twila finally says. Eliza puts her hand up, all exasperated, saying, "It's me, by the way, in case anybody was wondering." Oh, please. Poor baby. You don't like her either, so bite it. Jeff reminds Twila that everyone knows she and Eliza don't like each other. Asked the same question, Eliza takes the obvious opportunity to make herself look gracious by lying that she thinks everyone deserves to be there. Which is the only right answer, and Twila totally biffed it by failing to come up with it on command. Eliza also emphasizes that this doesn't mean she likes the other people in the final five, or that there aren't "other people who are no longer in this game" a lot better. (That being your obligatory sap to Ami.)
Jeff asks Julie whether she's thinking about whom she wants to go to F4 with, and she says she is: "I feel like I know who I can trust and who I can't trust, or who cares about me or who doesn't care about me." "At this point," Jeff says "do you really think any of these other four care about you?" "Yeah," Julie says easily as Chris looks pained. "I know, in fact, that some do." Asked about tonight's vote, Chris says it's the toughest one yet. So that could cut either way, which is probably why he says it. In fact, he sadly proclaims that he will not enjoy casting this particular vote. Anyway, Eliza declines to give up her immunity (duh), so it's time to vote.
Scout votes for Julie, intoning seriously that she should "go back to [her] roots," whatever that means, and whatever the hell it has to do with being voted off Survivor. Shut up, Scout. Twila votes. Julie votes. Eliza votes for Twila with a big grin: "Twila, I have been waiting to vote you off since the day I met you. I cannot believe that, thirty-six days later, I'm finally getting this opportunity." And her grin is just way, way too big. That was just reeeeeeal bitchy for a girl whose ass would be long out of the game if not for, quite specifically, Twila. Chris goes up to vote, and we are led to believe that he is hesitating, even as he stands at the podium. "It's tough," he says, as he holds up his vote that we do not see. "I've got to play the game."
And now, the time has come for Jeff to read from the urn. Chris really does, unlike Eliza last week, look pretty unhappy about the voting. First vote, Julie. Second vote, Twila. Eliza smirks. Another vote for Julie. Another vote for Twila. So we are, indeed, down to Chris's vote. The fourteenth person voted off is...Julie. Which wipes the smirk right off of Eliza's face, that's for sure. Eliza's mouth drops open, and you know whom she's looking at? Ami, I do believe, whose approval she apparently still is seeking. And only then does she look over at Chris, who looks a lot more miserable than Eliza did last week. In fact, as Julie is snuffed, Chris stares at the ground, so he either feels like shit a little, or he wants everyone to think he does. I suspect it's a bit of both. Jeff reminds them that they're heading into the home stretch, and they all take off for camp.
In her exit interview, Julie is all unhappy, because she thought that she and Chris were close and so forth. My local station cuts off her interview before she gets to the end, so I probably miss the part where she's gracious and admits that she got outplayed by hooking herself to Ami's alliance, which then was not properly managed. Because if there's one thing that's common to all exit interviews, it's admission of your own role in your loss based on something other than an overdose of "integrity." ["Actually, she didn't say that, to her credit. She just said she was curious as to when exactly Chris decided not to vote for Twila after all." -- Wing Chun]
On Sunday: Who will win? Who will spout off? Who will give the most obnoxious jury speech? Somehow, I think I know the answer to the last one.