Eruption Of Volcanic Magnitude

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.

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.