Starvation And Lunacy

Previously on Good Night, Female Ladies: Bruce joined Casaya and kept Shane and company from baking like sun-dried tomatoes. Thanks, Bruce. La Mina struggled to make anything of its remaining fishing equipment, but it did win the reward challenge and banish Bruce to Exile Island again. The Casaya Alliance Of Suck began to self-destruct, which was pretty funny, especially to Cirie, because...you know, watching a Vegas casino implode and fall into ruins is pretty entertaining as long as you're not in there playing blackjack at the time. The immunity challenge was fabulous, featuring lots of grabbing and hair-pulling and "Stop choking me!" like we were all in the back of one big car driving to the Grand Canyon. Oh, and like we were all twelve, but: obviously. Casaya won, forcing Austin and Nick to make a choice between aligning with Misty and Sally and aligning with Terry and Dan. They chose the latter, and Misty and her cowboy hat got on the midnight train to Loserland, which was rapidly becoming an all-singing, all-dancing, all-girl revue. Who will be voted out tonight?

Credits. It's nice how they give you that shot right down Chiclets's swimsuit at the very beginning. The breasts of Chiclets are the new ass of Cindy.

A veritable visual feast of tiny wildlife -- highlighted by a yellow-and-black frog so cute it could have been designed by a Project Runway contestant (other than Santino) -- brings us back to La Mina on Day 9, the morning after tribal council. The guys are all sitting around working on the fire as Sally approaches. She reminds us in an interview about Misty being sent home, in case we forgot since we watched the credits. She explains that she had been told that the vote was going to be for Ruth Marie, so Sally's clearly the odd person out at this point. She also says that there's not much she can do except work hard and try to make herself useful. It's no wonder she embraces defeatism; she is from Duluth. Do you know how cold it is up there? It's, like, the "I can't come to work today, because I didn't get my hair entirely dry and after I got outside, I stabbed myself in the neck with some of it" kind of cold.

Behold the hermit crab, how he keeps to himself.

Dan and Ruth Marie take a walk on the beach, during which Dan decides to propose alliance to her. Dan seems to compulsively offer alliances to people in this way I find vaguely unsettling. I understand that they'd be much better off in an alliance of five than in an alliance of four, but I think you have to talk to the other people in your group before you go bringing other people into it. Furthermore, as much as Ruth Marie seems like a nice lady, she has been useless in challenges so far, and unless this crowd likes the idea of being picked off like Pagong and all its children, they need to start winning some immunity challenges, and I'm not sure Ruth Marie is the best bet for that to happen. Even furthermore, what does offering a spot in a five-person alliance within a six-person tribe really mean? "Say, Ruth Marie, if we wanted you to vote with us to get rid of Sally, rather than having us, say, vote to get rid of you, would you be down with that? Take your time; no rush to answer." Of course, Ruth Marie is thrilled, given that she's been without allies since the tribes mixed up. Dan voices over that he'd given this a lot of thought, and that he'd decided she was the one they should go with. I just don't understand why he would think he had the authority to add to an alliance without telling anyone, and I would hope Ruth Marie knows that if the offer comes only from him, he's the only one who's making any promises to her. At any rate, Dan's explanation for choosing Ruth Marie instead of Sally is that he doesn't think Sally feels like part of the group, so he thinks she'll flip as soon as they get to the merge. Ruth Marie, on the other hand, will stay "all the way to the end." There's something that's so hyper about the way Dan approaches the game, you know? I mean, there are still thirteen people left. It's very, very early. You have no idea what tribe switches might be coming up, what bonds are going to form after a merge, if you last until one happens...at this point, you can be thinking F5 if you want to, but you need to have a short-term plan as well, and Ruth Marie is not a good short-term plan.

Anyway, it appears as though President Beefcake was sleeping, just as Chiclets was, so Aras drags them out of bed for a talk about being responsible and blah blah blah your-mother-and-I-are-disappointed-cakes. "We can't be out catching food for a whole day and then the onus of fire is on us," Aras says with disgust. I don't think they were out all day; I really don't. If they were out all day fetching a bag of snails, then there might be a better use for their time. Courtney points out -- and there seems to be evidence to bear her out -- that this is bullshit, because she works at camp a lot. Aras responds by ratcheting the bullshit up an additional notch: "What if me and Shane and Bruce got voted off the island? Would you guys just fall asleep if the fire wasn't going?" Well, no, asshole. Probably, Courtney would tend the fire just as she has in the past, and just as both tribes of women managed to survive for several days without your ass prior to the time the tribes merged. In fact, it is my recollection that it was Aras's tribe of Young Dudes who admitted that their shelter sucked, their fire sucked, and they didn't have a goddamn clue what they were doing. He is lecturing about the fire, and his idea of helping the fire along involved healing touch. It's only when he gets around women that Aras decides he's in a position to deliver lectures about survival. This guy is my least favorite kind of sexist on the planet. I'd rather a guy were just straightforwardly Donna Reed-obsessed than this self-justifying, I'm-all-sensitive bullshit. Have you ever read "One Look At My Music Collection Will Show You How Much I Respect Women"? Aras is totally, completely That Guy. Trader Joe's granola, indeed.

Anyway. "I think this whole question is kind of stupid," Courtney says, and just for a moment, I love her. Aras talks about how he has this Alliance Of Suck, but wishes he wasn't in it with Courtney, and that he wouldn't be "if [he] had [his] druthers." Oh, "druthers." Thanks for visiting from my high school's production of Li'l Abner. As the group sits around eating dinner, Cirie can barely keep from grinning at all the tension, and she interviews that everything around camp is drama, and that she finds it delightful. She says her strategy is to keep working and stay out of it. And: perfect planning, lady.

Challenge beach. Casaya sees that La Mina bumped Misty. Jeff explains that, in today's challenge, one tribe member at a time will swim to a bunch of floating puzzle pieces, unhook one, and drag it inside a frame. Now, these are big, heavy things, so the dragging and moving is no small task. Once all six of your puzzle pieces are in the frame, you solve the puzzle, which requires you to arrange the pieces so that the sides match up. And what are you playing for? Well, this is the bathroom reward, so you get towels, loofah, Charmin, sink and toilet, shower, and five gallons of fresh water. I love the idea that you will have a bathroom, despite the fact that you have absolutely no food to speak of. There will be all the comforts of home, except for the part where you are too weak to stand.

Ready...go! Sally and President Beefcake swim out first. They return with their puzzle pieces, and she's a little quicker than he is at muscling it into the frame, so Dan gets to go just before Bruce. Ruth Marie and Chiclets go , then Nick and Shane, and we're pretty much tied at this point. Then Austin and Courtney, and Austin loses a bit of time when he doesn't quite get the piece all the way into the frame on the first try. Terry and Aras go last, and they get back at close to the same time, so both groups start solving. For reasons that are sort of hard to discern and may involve luck as much as anything, Casaya moves faster in getting the puzzle solved, so Casaya winds up winning the reward. I wish I had more to say about this challenge, but I was so fulfilled on a spiritual level by last week's wrestling matches that it will be a long time before a challenge makes me feel whole again.

Now, Casaya is faced with deciding who goes to Exile Island. Following the "we take your leader" strategy last invoked by La Mina with Bruce, they decide to send Terry. Now, do you see why this is so stupid? I mean, it will be obvious by the end of the show why it's stupid, but you can tell it's stupid now, and if they had a brain in their heads, they'd know it's stupid. Let's review: you know that Misty didn't find the immunity idol. It's possible that Bruce found it, but if he didn't, then it's still there. And if it's still there, you know that the clues are going to get easier and easier, because this is Survivor, and they don't tend to present really difficult brainteasers, and they're going to want someone to find the idol so that it will be in play. Should you consistently send the strongest person on the other tribe to Exile Island, that's who's eventually going to find the idol. Should he find the idol, then if he makes it three or four more tribal councils to a merge, you are suddenly in a very bad position. Because now, you want to start by cutting off the strongest person in the other group, and if you take your shot at him and he has the idol, guess who's going to have the second-largest number of votes? That's right: someone on your team. Even if Terry didn't otherwise survive until the merge, it's still stupid, because now, you're giving him a far greater chance of doing so. And you don't really want to give the strongest opposing force to you a boost in making it to the merge. In short, absent a truly desperate team you honestly believe you can cause to crumble without leadership -- which I think is what was believed about Bruce last week -- the strategic significance of who goes to Exile Island at this point lies almost entirely in access to the idol, and there is no reason -- none -- why you would give a strong player access to the idol instead of a weak player. It's ridiculous. Not that I would expect the likes of Shane to notice. Anyway, Terry gets on the boat that will take him to Exile Island.

Jeff sends the tribes home, where Casaya will await its bathroom.

Later, we find La Mina at camp without Terry on Day 9. Sally talks about how they all knew Casaya would send La Mina's leader off, and then Dan makes this twee speech about making Terry proud of the way the camp is when he gets back. Barf. ["It's like Dan's in love with Terry, but felt he had to hide it, so he hooked up with Ruth Marie so she could be his beard." -- Wing Chun] There's an effort to make it look like they're all at loose ends without Terry, what with talking about whether to get firewood, eat, or nap. Honestly, when you're out in this environment, I imagine there is a fair amount of meaningless discussion about whether to scratch your ass or whistle, so I don't know that Terry's departure is really why that's happening. Austin interviews that nobody's in charge since Terry left, but it's very suspicious how we switch interviews before getting to the part where Austin says he misses Terry and awaits his return.

Over at Casaya, the tribe members return to find that their bathroom has been installed. Chiclets interviews again that they won the reward challenge and got this great little bathroom. Aras decides to call for a discussion of how they're going to use the bathroom. Oh, why don't you lead a drum circle about it, asshole. He wants to use the bathroom for storing firewood and "just keeping things dry." President Beefcake has this to say: "Anyone mind if I break in the dumpster?" Ha! And then he continues: "I've got a deuce to drop." I realize that I am finding this much funnier than would a dignified person. "We should use the bathroom to keep the wood dry," Chiclets snots. President Beefcake interviews that his confederacy of brilliant minds decided they should store wood in the new bathroom. He describes his thinking thusly: "All right. I'm going to go in here and take a dump before you start storing wood in the toilet." Chiclets responds by complaining in her interview that President Beefcake "is not a gentleman." My favorite part is how President Beefcake returns, patting his stomach and saying he feels "about ten pounds lighter," adding, "I'm a whole new man."

See, that whole thing is so stupid. It's not either/or, especially to President Beefcake. I don't think he necessarily thinks they're intending to store wood down the hole; I think he just thinks they want to store wood inside the structure. In other words, I think his attitude was that he was going to get his pooping done before they covered the thing up with wood or whatever. If they really planned to store wood down the hole of the potty, I don't think that's going to be very efficient. There's a shelf where the TP is, and there's a decent bit of space in there -- I totally agree that you could stick some dry wood in there so that you'd be assured of always having some, but I don't see why that necessarily precludes periodic use of the toilet as a toilet, if you see my point. It's easy to argue that President Beefcake could go anywhere in the jungle, but I think unless you've ever tried to have a significant bowel movement in the jungle, you'd probably underestimate how much more comfortable and more pleasant it would be to have a decent outhouse going. Furthermore, Chiclets is off her rocker -- if you want to talk poop etiquette, that's not about being a "gentleman." You're all using the jungle together for this purpose, so standing on ceremony is a little bit dumb, and "gentleman" implies that he's held to some standard higher than the one women would be held to. And really, after all, it's a toilet.