For Cod's Sake!

Have you ever noticed that in the "Tonight" clip they do to tease this show, they show Probst coming out of the water all wet-haired, as if he occasionally does something besides stand on the beach in his shorts and his nifty hat and say overdramatic things that are only partially true? It's like...dudes, the last time he let his hair get that wet, it was from overzealously bobbing for apples.

Previously on Poop And Circumstance: Terry went to Exile Island and found the immunity idol, which he was able to keep to himself after his tribe decided that the last thing you want to do on Survivor is be a buttinsky about other people's plans. President Beefcake didn't understand why you would use a perfectly good bathroom to store wood, and he didn't mean anything gross by that. Chiclets thought it was very tacky of him to continue processing food through his intestines instead of being a gentleman and expelling pellets out of a sterile flap in his ankle. La Mina lost another challenge, proving that they well and truly suck, despite the fact that they seemed early on to have the man strength while Casaya has...Shane. Very Pale Dan had invited Ruth Marie into his alliance as the Smurfette, but Handy, Hefty, and Brainy all thought it would be better to bring Sally to the upcoming immunity challenges, which La Mina needed to win in order to avoid being pitifully Pagonged/Yaxhaminated. Thus, Ruth Marie took her pink tank top with its convenient carrying handle and headed home. The total number of ovaries on the show continued its precipitous drop.

It is Day 12 at La Mina. Things are not good, in the sense that everyone looks approximately 49% dead (plus or minus 2%) as a result of the lack of food. But things are good for Sally, who announces to the men who remain with her in her tribe that she's feeling proud to be the "last girl standing" in the group. And she's even standing, you know, literally! Her teeth also look unrealistically clean and white for someone who has been without toothpaste for two weeks. Dan looks over at Sally with the kind of white-hot rage that only a guy without pigment can muster. He interviews that he was disappointed by the tribe's decision to keep Sally and send Ruth Marie home. I get the feeling that Dan really hates change, like he's the guy who can't stand it when they change the pop machine in the office from Coke to Pepsi products: "I'm not sure everybody's comfortable with the switch! We should maybe have a staff meeting." He tells us that Terry, Nick, and Austin just felt that Ruth Marie wasn't going to be able to keep up in challenges.

Behold...that thing, how it scratches itself.

Sally and Nick stroll on the beach and discuss the fact that they are already sad without Ruth Marie. Sally calls her "Ruthie," in that warm way that you do when you are already rid of people. Or, of course, when you're voting for them, although in that case, you would call them "ROOTHY." In her interview, however, Sally says that she's "never felt so good in [her] whole life." She tells us that, coming in, she felt like an outsider, and that she's proud that this alliance of four guys decided she was "valuable enough to keep around." I love men who validate, don't you?

"I'm the youngest person on this tribe, and sometimes I feel like I'm the oldest one," Aras laments in an interview. I search myself for an intense hatred of old people, and when I can't find one, I am forced to conclude that Aras is full of it. I have never been as sure about anyone as I am about Aras that while this was being filmed, he was fantasizing about how everyone would watch the show and say he was a saint for putting up with the idiots on his tribe, what with his own overwhelming awesomeness. He goes on to bitch that he needs a break and so forth, and for a minute, I really think he's going to say, "I could really use a Zen rock garden right about now," or that someone else is going to make that suggestion, which would have been just great. Instead, he declares that he wants to be sent to Exile Island, sort of. Is there something more private than Exile Island? Say, without cameras? Because I'm about ready for him to be sent someplace like that.

The tribes converge on a challenge beach. Casaya sees that Ruth Marie was voted off, and all the women realize just how badly outnumbered they're going to be if they manage to get as far as a merge. Jeff explains that the challenge today requires them to transport rice, beans, and fish from a boat to the shore. One person, the "retriever," will run out into the water, where there's a boat floating for each team. That person will get each item out of the boat, and the team will bring it up the beach by tossing it from person to person. You have to really make the tosses, too, because people have to stay on their spots. First you get rice, then you get beans, then you start bringing fish. When the fish come up, the person at the end of the line has to chop off each fish's head and tail before throwing the fish into a crate. If you make a throw and the other person drops it, you have to go and get it and bring it back to your spot, where you'll throw it again. Also, you're allowed to swap people around to different positions. First tribe to finish all the stuff wins reward. The winning tribe gets the rice, the beans, all the fish, and some spices, wine, and cooking oil. The losers will get to choose between their rice and their beans, because these people are starving, and if people start dying, it will throw off the number of episodes in the season. And also, the losing team gets somebody sent to Exile Island. Asked who's sitting out, Aras announces, "It's going to be the two young girls," meaning Courtney and Chiclets. I wouldn't expect him to see it any other way, even though Chiclets is the same age Aras is and Courtney is seven years older. He needed to spend a little less time in college studying Philosophy and a little more time getting beaten with Eleanor Roosevelt biographies and high-heeled sandals.

Ready...go! Austin and Aras are the initial retrievers, so they run into the water and bring back the rice. It goes up the line. The beans quickly follow. This is not what you would call the "breathless excitement" portion of the show. After those two bags, Shane and Nick take over the retrieving, for reasons unknown. When the fish make it all the way up to the chopping boards, it's Terry and Bruce cutting off heads and tails. Both of these guys are just "whacking at it" as Probst says, and they really are just...I don't even know. It's like they're hacking instead of chopping. Terry, at least, gets done relatively quickly. Bruce, on the other hand, cannot make any progress with the fish. "Watch your fingers!" Jeff yells as Bruce chops and chops and his tribe grows despondent. Terry winds up chopping up La Mina's second fish just as Bruce is finishing Casaya's first. At this point, President Beefcake takes over fish-chopping duties for Casaya.

Bruce also drops the fish to come up the line. Not looking great for him. Beefcake gets Casaya's second fish as Terry gets La Mina's third. As just-fine as Terry was with the fish compared to Bruce, he is now the weak link as compared to Beefcake, who has the apparent ability and leverage to take head or tail from a fish in one stroke, much of the time. On the fish, Sally misses the catch from Dan. And she misses it again. And she misses it again. By the time she gets the fish and passes it to Terry, La Mina has lost most of its lead. And with Beefcake speeding through the chopping, it's getting dicey. ("Dicey"! Get it?) Terry takes a few hits to finish the fish, and P. Beefcake passes him. So now, Casaya is slightly in the lead, surprisingly enough. It's neck and neck as the fish are retrieved. Once again, Beefcake beats Terry with the chop, and Casaya pulls out to a slight lead again. Casaya brings back its last fish smoothly, and it wins the challenge. That's got to hurt. Shane immediately leaps up on President Beefcake and starts yelling, "Tonight, we eat! Tonight, we eat!" That's a pretty cool thing to do. Or it would be if you were nineteen, and in a fraternity, and in the Army, and taking over France, and hosting a party where an entire cow would be eaten. So that's four straight challenges to Casaya. It's easy to blame that loss on Sally, of course, and to criticize the decision to keep her over Ruth Marie because of challenges. But I'm not at all sure Ruth Marie could have done any better handling those big fish, and she could easily have done even worse. I sort of think that big fish flying at her might have alarmed her tiny frame a little bit.

Asked to make the loser's choice between rice and beans, La Mina chooses to keep the beans. Asked to make the winner's choice to send someone to Exile Island, Casaya chooses Terry. This isn't as stupid as last week, because once you've picked someone, it makes sense to pick the same person, because it reduces the unpredictability of who might have the individual immunity idol, and it minimizes the information gap between what you know and what other people know. On the other hand, Casaya never should have picked Terry in the first place, as previously explained, and those reasons are only magnified by being sort of compelled to send him again. Terry hops on the boat to exile, not to return until immunity time. I think if they send him there enough times, it will turn out like Gilligan's Island, and he'll have a hut and a radio and he'll be putting on an all-singing, all-dancing revue complete with costumes. Casaya grabs its reward, which I'm not sure is the best reward of all time unless you can figure out how to cook all the fish before they rot. They leave.

When we return, we are accompanying Casaya back to its camp, where it turns out there has been rain while they were gone. Lots of rain. In fact, the place is flooded, and their wood is all sopping, and their fire pit is soaked, and all that good stuff. They're mid-shin-deep in water, so they're not just idly complaining, either, not that they wouldn't. As Cirie explains, they have a lot of food, but they can't cook anything, because everything is wet, so they have no fire. Nevertheless, Bruce starts cutting the fish into fillets. They decide that they'll just eat the fish raw. "Like sushi," Shane says. I don't know if I'd do that without knowing what kinds of parasites the fish might have. Not all fish is sushi, you know? Aras repeats with his usual smirk that they're treating it as sushi. Cirie shares some of my doubts, and asks whether it's really okay to eat the fish like that. She interviews that she's never had raw fish, and she doesn't want to wake up sick tomorrow. She's also standing in a foot or so of swampy water when she says this, so if any parasites have an eye on Cirie, they're going to have an easy time getting to her today. She takes some crap from her tribe about not having ever eaten sushi, people from California are so worldly, nyuk nyuk nyuk. Aras talks about being happy that his tribe won, and he insists that in spite of their troubles, they're "bonding in [their] weird, Casaya, strange-fish way." Well, he should have said something. I didn't realize they were bonding in the strange-fish way, or I would have stood back. It appears that Shane closes this scene by gnawing on a fish carcass, which seems biologically hazardous almost to the degree to which it is karmically satisfying.

We then move to La Mina, still on Day 12, where they are inaugurating their bean supply and have already cooked more than they should have. It's not surprising that you might do that, but it's unfortunate. Austin reminds us in an interview that his pitiful tribe lost again. Back at camp, we see Austin go back for seconds on the beans. The combination of extreme hunger and having made too much seems to have conspired to interfere with people's judgment about how much they should eat, considering that they've barely put anything in their stomachs for twelve days. I don't want to say that what happens here is entirely predictable, but it sort of is. Austin does say that they're "absolutely jubilant" about the food. Well, for the moment, they are. Jubilation over food can be transient.

Very quickly, however, we see Austin and Nick reclined together in the shelter, where they're talking about how they started to feel sick almost as soon as they stopped eating. Sally comes by and asks how they're doing, and Austin gives a very heartfelt "Not so hot." He interviews that his body just did not respond well to the introduction of beans. He claims that he and Nick are "experiencing a little bit of nausea." Welcome to Understatement Theater. The boys loll around the shelter and talk about the reasons they're not feeling well, which is not what I'd want to be doing. Believe it or not, there are a few things I don't think require obsessively detailed analysis. Austin also announces that he thinks he's going to throw up, telling Dan as he wanders off that he wants to be rid of the bad feeling in his stomach. Inside his head, Dan is thinking, "Whatever, sissy. It beats Tang and freeze-dried fettucine Alfredo."

And then, it is that night. Austin returns to the shelter from some sort of intestinal distress call, and he says that he had been feeling better, but now his stomach is making noises again. Nick gets up to leave on his own errand of the same sort. And then Austin has to go again. There is some talk that they probably didn't cook the beans enough, which might have made them harder to handle. I don't actually know, but I'd buy that. When Nick returns, Sally and Dan ask him how he is, and he says, "You guys do not want to know the details of that excursion." Heh. Not satisfied, Dan asks, "You got both ends going?" Nick confirms that he does. Thanks for that, Dan. Every event needs a color man. Or is that play-by-play? Anyway. "That stuff just wrecked me," Nick comments. Austin returns, but says he'll probably have to go again in five minutes. Nick reveals to Austin that he threw up in addition to...you know. Not being a gentleman. Austin seems not to have taken the vomiting route, but he clearly ponders it as a possible strategy. Nick says in night vision, "The gastrointestinal details probably should not be discussed at this time." Aw. And then Nick and Austin both leave again. That's going to be a long night for them.

Casaya, Night 12. It is still raining, and a number of the tribe members are in the shelter. Bruce and President Beefcake, however, are holed up in the outhouse. ("Holed up." Get it?) And they are drinking a bottle of the wine. Beefcake reveals rather drunkenly that he wasn't sure they should drink the wine, but then he realized that he and Bruce had their places taken in the shelter ["which I don't get. Doesn't the shelter have room for everyone to sleep in it? Didn't they build it to accommodate everyone? What?" -- Wing Chun], so he thought they'd just hang in the bathroom and booze. Beefcake also reveals to Bruce that he "can't bond with everybody." He adds that if they make it to a merge, he's immediately going to defect to wherever he possibly can. Anybody but the idiots who are on his tribe, is the idea. At this point, Bruce and President Beefcake reach a drunken, rather pointless alliance in which they promise never to vote against each other. Man, this tribe is boring. Even with wine, they'd be about as much fun as a dental fistula.

The morning at Casaya, Courtney is thinking about cleaning up. She's also wondering what happened to Bruce and P. Beefcake, who seem to have slept in Casa Charmin. Cirie mentions to Courtney that the bottle of wine seems to be gone, and Courtney says, "If they did that, then that is so wrong."

Behold the scorpion, how he represents my astrological sign.

The entire supply of tuba music available at the Burnett production facilities gets a workout as Cirie opens the door of the outhouse, where Bruce is still half-asleep. He comments that there was no room left for him in the shelter. Cirie laughs in an interview about the way Bruce was folded in half in the bathroom. She also spots the empty wine bottle. She comments that she would have to be dead and have the wine poured down her throat for her to drink the wine in that situation. Courtney quizzes P. Beefcake about where he and Bruce slept, and he says they crashed in the potty. She also asks about the bottle of wine, and he says, "I drank it." Not "we drank it," you'll notice. She wants to know if it was both of them or just him, and P. Beefcake continues to take it on himself, saying that he shared the wine with Bruce, but that he's the one who took it. Courtney asks him how he feels about having drunk the wine. "I feel swell about it," P. Beefcake tells her. Courtney essentially has no idea what to say to this, which is pretty funny. She interviews that there was room in the shelter, no matter what he says. She has one of those voices where she drags out the last vowel of everything, often doesn't add the end consonant, and raises everything into a question at the end. So she says, "It was really bad judgmeeeeeh? Of Bobbyyyyy? To open the bottle of wiiiii? And drink it." She claims that all the members of Casaya worked hard for the wine. She also says that nobody trusts the Beefcake anymore. As opposed to the trustworthiness of people like, say, Shane. She complains some more to P. Beefcake about his drinking the wine, until he gets so irritated that he tells her right out that he doesn't feel bad about taking her wine -- maybe everyone else's, but not Courtney's. Heh. Cirie? Oh, she's amused. P. Beefcake interviews that Courtney was right about the fact that he shouldn't have had the wine, but that he didn't care: "She's probably one of the two or three most annoying people, probably in the history of the world." I love that line, because it's so plain and so powerful. Why embellish, you know? That's only going to make it take you, like, eleven pages to describe an hour of television. They bicker.

When we come back, Terry is on Exile Island on Day 14. He is foraging and so forth. He tells us that he already has the idol, of course, so it's one less thing he has to do. He says that, on his own on the island, he has more time to take care of himself to eat and drink to be strong for challenges. He starts his fire and explains to us that he's concerned about whether the rest of his tribe is eating and staying hydrated. "Without me," he seems to imply, "they will forget to drink water." He is brimming with confidence about the people back home.

La Mina, Day 14. Dan and Sally bring a piece of treemail back to camp that is contained in a little coffin. Death imagery really does bring that special something to the game. The treemail implies that there will be paddling and swimming and holding your breath underwater, and you can almost see what blood is left in Austin and Nick's faces draining straight out. Austin calls this "exactly not what the doctor ordered." He interviews that the beans were hell on his system all night, and that he's not happy about the immunity challenge, which they badly need to win, and which comes at a terrible time. Sally says that the challenge will be "the true measure of what you're made of," and I think the editors are smart enough to be intentionally pointing out that Sally doesn't really want to experience all the ways in which this challenge could reveal what Austin and Nick are currently made of. Austin interviews that he figures they're at a disadvantage in this particular challenge, since they suck, and now half of them have spent the night in the bushes, and not in the good way.

Jeff calls in the teams at a new challenge beach. He welcomes Terry on his boat, coming back from Exile Island looking healthy, rested, and like he hasn't had to hydrate anyone but himself for a while. Jeff takes the ugly immunity idol back from Courtney. He then explains that the challenge will involve retrieving skulls from coffins located on the ocean floor. They'll have to paddle out in boats, and when they come across a coffin, they'll have someone dive down and untie it, at which point they can open it and get out the puzzle piece, which will be made of skulls. Lovely. You untie that, and you bring it back. You'll do this with four puzzle pieces. When you have all four, you paddle back, and your last two tribe members assemble the puzzle into a pyramid. Casaya sits out Cirie and Bruce.

Ready...go! Both tribes head out. Terry dives for coffins for La Mina; Chiclets goes for Casaya. She can't get the coffin open on the first try, but Terry does. Chiclets gets it on the second try. As La Mina goes for its second piece, it runs into trouble. Dan unties the coffin, but he doesn't get the piece out, and when he surfaces, he bonks his head on the underside of the boat, forcing him to bob meaninglessly as Terry retrieves the piece. Casaya doesn't have its second piece yet. Further bobbing and retrieving follows. Chiclets is the one who finally gets the second piece for Casaya, and then Dan brings up the third for La Mina. Terry gets La Mina's last piece while Casaya is still trying to get its third. Basically, La Mina returns to shore with a great big lead, and Austin and Sally start trying to assemble the puzzle.

Casaya gets its last puzzle piece and heads in. Sally and Austin unsuccessfully try to build the puzzle. They unsuccessfully try again. Shane and P. Beefcake, having watched Austin and Sally for a while, try the puzzle for Casaya. Sally and Austin finally start turning the pieces vertically, and finally, just as it seems like La Mina's going to give up yet another victory, they actually get it assembled and get the gold skull on top, meaning that they don't have to go to tribal council again. La Mina gratefully takes the immunity idol. Casaya is not looking so hot, because none of them knows what the rest of us know, which is that an opportunity to send Casaya to tribal council is an opportunity to get rid of Shane.

When we return, we are with Casaya on the afternoon of Day 14, as they return unhappy from the challenge. Shane is wearing his bandanna wrapped around his head and a girlish flop of hair over the front that I just cannot capture adequately in terms of its stunning ugliness except to say that Katie Holmes wasn't dealing with this level of unflattering even when her hair was two different colors during the death throes of Dawson's Creek. Shane tells the team that President Beefcake must go. There is to be no discussion. His word is law. Aras talks about the loss as if he regrets that he has to vote someone off, when in fact, he loves this part, because it makes him feel powerful. Aras says that he wants Beefcake to stay, even though the group wants him to go. He thinks that Beefcake is worth enough in challenges not to be sent home. It is almost certainly hard for Aras to process the concept that his tribe might send home someone he wants to keep. Why would they? How could they? Shane has an oddly determined thing about sending Beefcake home, however, and he doesn't immediately go along with Aras. Aras says that he'd go with Bruce to be booted, because he brings nothing "to the table," and they can't "control Bruce." I find the concept of Bruce being uncontrollable very funny in some way. Shane insists that switching and getting rid of Bruce is a horrible idea, but he passive-aggressively agrees to go along with it. Shane interviews that he wants Beefcake out because he came from the Young Dudes, and Shane has always feared that, post-merge, those four would get back together. Aras insists to Shane that Beefcake -- who, you will remember, talked openly about his eagerness to flip on his team at the first opportunity -- will not flip on them. Shane gives a sort of "whatever you guys want," and Courtney misunderstands and asks if this means Shane won't vote against Bruce. "I didn't say that," Shane says as if Courtney is an idiot. "What are-- what are you babbling about?" She clarifies that she just didn't understand him the first time. Seriously, if Shane thinks that's Courtney babbling, he hasn't heard Courtney babbling. That was practically a prcis, coming from her.

Aras takes the time to firm up with this group -- which includes himself, Shane, Courtney, and Cirie, interestingly -- that they'll all vote for Bruce, and that will be enough. Cirie says in an interview that she's just lying low, because she was told a long time ago that she would be , so the fact that she's apparently not in the crosshairs at all is making her very happy.

Shane pulls Beefcake aside for a chat in which he reveals that Beefcake was the original choice to be booted. It's not clear what the purpose of this is, except for Shane to throw his weight around and make it clear that he's part of the power structure deciding who stays and who goes. Shane tells Beefcake that now, however, it's Bruce going. Beefcake tells Shane he knows everyone is worried that if they get to a merge at 5-5, he'll defect. He says he won't. And then Shane says, "Swear on my kid." Wait, swear on your kid? Isn't that like, "Step on a crack, break somebody else's mother's back"? Superstitions aren't any good if the consequences of disregarding them don't come back on you. Furthermore, Shane asking Beefcake to swear on Shane's own child is really...disturbing. I mean, if you really believe that betraying a "swear on so-and-so" promise is meaningful, that means you think that breaking it makes something bad happen to that person. So how could you place your kid in jeopardy like this? Shane's putting his kid's mortal soul in the hands of someone he barely knows? I mean, mostly, it just proves that Shane knows perfectly well that this entire thing is grandstanding bullshit, because otherwise, you don't have someone else gamble your child's...health, chance at Valhalla, whatever.

Bruce, meanwhile, is trying to calm himself before tribal council -- his first one ever, as it happens. He returns from an apparent trip out to the beach to find Courtney standing in the rock garden. Specifically, she's doing yoga. Notice, she's not on the rocks, she's not moving anything, she's not apparently harming anything -- it's the sheer fact that she's there that Bruce now complains about. He calls it "disgusting." What's frustrating about this is that, of course, we have no idea if Bruce ever asked people not to go within the borders of the sand around the rocks, which is where Courtney is. It's entirely plausible that she had no idea you couldn't stand in it. It's entirely possible that she had no idea it wasn't actually a great place to meditate. It's entirely possible that she wasn't meaning to pay Bruce a sort of compliment by choosing to embrace his spiritual place as her own. I mean, it might be that it's none of those things, but who knows? At any rate, Bruce goes on about how disrespectful it is for Courtney to be there, but he never mentions ever having told her that she couldn't stand on his rectangle of sand. "I'd rather be on Exile Island than be around Courtney," he says.

Cirie and Chiclets now have a bit of a conversation. Cirie asks what Chiclets thinks of Bruce, and Chiclets says that she trusts him. They agree that they don't have the same feeling about Beefcake, which is making them wonder about the wisdom of the decision to keep him and boot Bruce. Courtney approaches this conversation, and Chiclets asks her how she feels about changing the game. Courtney is happy, but it turns out that Chiclets doesn't mean the real power move, which would be enlisting Beefcake or Bruce to get rid of Aras or Shane. She means the far less significant move of booting Beefcake instead of Bruce. They decide to bring in Shane to collaborate. Booo!

Chiclets brings Shane over and tells him that she wants to keep Bruce and get rid of Beefcake. Shane is now confident that Beefcake won't flip. Because of the way he swore on Shane's kid. Shane also swore on his own kid, or something, which he keeps doing. Essentially, Shane's kid is not going to make it out of this show alive, if you believe in that kind of thing. Shane now flips out at Courtney for not saying that she wanted to boot Beefcake an hour ago, when Aras was switching the boot to Bruce. Courtney puts up with Shane's griping for a while, and then Cirie jumps in to say that they're all thinking Shane was right now, so now they're all on the same page, so why worry over how they got there? Suddenly, she's the peacemaker. Shane is still bitching and moaning in his interview about how they're all "like women." Whatever that means. I mean, they are women, so...congratulations, Captain Observo.

Tribal council. Everyone files in. Jeff starts off by asking Shane about the fact that, at Casaya's last tribal council, they seemed disoriented. Is that different? Shane calls them "the dysfunctional functional tribe." He says that they can work together, but that the tribe can be tiring. Jeff asks how the shelter is surviving the rain, and Bruce mentions that he slept in the bathroom. "With the bottle of wine," Chiclets mentions. Bruce explains how Beefcake came in with the wine, and that he needed it with everything feeling so sore. Jeff asks Beefcake whether other people were okay with him taking the wine. He says that they weren't, actually, but reiterates that the entire potty party happened because he and Bruce got squeezed out of the shelter. Jeff asks if Bruce and Beefcake are afraid that they've excused themselves from the tribe, and Beefcake gives the non-apology apology about how he isn't sorry for what he did, but for how it made people feel. Which is really not being sorry at all. Jeff asks Cirie whether Beefcake screwed up, and Cirie says that it was a huge mistake, because the whole group fought to get the wine, and it belonged to everyone. She's not buying the "stuck in the rain" story. Aras jumps in to say that it's not fair to put it all on Beefcake, because Brucedrank the wine just as much as Beefcake did. Bruce agrees that he's equally guilty. He apologizes. But again, he qualifies his statement by saying that they should have come and talked to him if they were upset, and Aras says they shouldn't have to, and this is what happens when guys read too much Robert Bly, because God, okay, you're all hyper-aware of your feelings. Drink some chamomile tea and move the fuck on.

Jeff asks Bruce if he feels unappreciated, and he says that he sometimes does, because his tribemates ask him for advice and then challenge him on it, including thousand of students. "But Bruce," Aras says patronizingly, "we are not your pupils." He lectures Bruce that when he's challenged, he "can't look at it as some sort of ego blow." I am so over having Aras in charge, can I just tell you? He and Bruce fight back and forth until Chiclets breaks in and says that she thinks Bruce deserves a little respect for being so old and experienced. Bruce apologizes again, and says that he'll take everything they say to heart. He and Aras share a knuckle-knock, and I just don't get that. I hate it when they all feel obligated to pretend not to hate.

Jeff reminds the group that Bruce might have the immunity idol. I wonder if any of them even thought of that when they were talking about booting him.

Cirie votes. Bruce votes for Courtney. Chiclets votes for President Beefcake, calling him "egotistical" and "selfish." Courtney votes. Beefcake votes. Aras votes for Bruce. Shane votes, saying it's a "throwaway vote." Jeff heads off to tally.

Ready? Okay. Courtney. Bruce. Beefcake. Aras. Bruce. Beefcake. And the final vote goes to Beefcake, so he's done. He comes up to be snuffed. Adios, President Beefcake. I enjoyed your term of office. Jeff tells the rest of the tribe that they did seem to be in distress originally, but maybe now they'll be able to pull it together. He sends them away.

Beefcake is surprised in his post-game interview that he's gone so soon, but he thought his tribe was made up of weaklings and losers, basically. Cheers!

week: the anti-Shane maneuver happens at last. La Mina is still starving. Something shocking happens at tribal council.