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Mikey B starts the week off all, "Oooookay," trying to explain to Joel that there was no need for a big power play against him when he was trying to accomplish the same thing Joel was trying to accomplish, but Joel (who is increasingly creepy, to say the least) has convinced himself that he has awakened the delusional Mikey with a baseball bat to the head. No, that's really what he says.
Over at Malakal, Jonathan and Cirie are competing to be first to break my heart by being way less cool than they used to be, because he continues to be blinded by his hate of Parvati to the point where every discussion becomes about getting rid of her, while Cirie is taking her "swing vote" status to an extreme while apparently failing to recognize the extreme danger she places herself in -- both now and in the future -- by making it obvious that her vote is for sale. Despite the fact that Cirie knows, and says, that people had better beg and plead for her vote, she somehow decides to believe it when Amanda and Parvati swear that they're tooootally going to F3 together.
A reward challenge goes Malakal's way, sending Kathy to Exile Island -- again. This time, she's with Ami, who can't figure out the clues to the idol as Kathy and Cirie easily did. Ha! So much for Ami's "smart cookie" posturing. After Airai spends a horrible night waiting out a storm -- unfortunately, this tribe of "superfans" are the worst at sheltering and caring for themselves since Rupert dug his All-Stars tribe into a hole -- they pull out a victory in the immunity challenge, sending Malakal to tribal council. Jonathan's specialty is not diplomacy when cornered, so he comes on sort of strong with Cirie, who acts defensive and self-important in response, and I kind of don't like either of them in this particular exchange, so my little heart is broken.
STOP HAVING ALL-STAR SEASONS OF THINGS THAT RUIN PEOPLE I LIKE.
In the end, Cirie declares that she's voting for Yau-Man no matter what (based, apparently, on his being a big threat), and for some reason, everyone seems to think that going against Cirie is suicide, so the couples and Cirie (and a self-preserving Eliza) get rid of Yau-Man, while Jonathan and Yau-Man vote for Parvati and Ami pulls her usual "I will be unique" bullshit and votes for Cirie, irrelevantly. This season is so bad. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Gimme Shelter, But Not With You: Airai (the tribe of non-fire-making, outdoor-incompetent "superfans" who apparently thought it would be more like one of those island adventures on Days Of Our Lives where the tendency for provisions to magically appear is such that you can wash ashore and into a cave without losing your diaphragm (hey, it's a long story) split into two embittered subgroups, with Chet, Kathy, and Tracy representing dinosaurs and fossils on one side, and everybody else representing youth and newsboy caps on the other side. Or so it seemed, until Mikey B explained how to make sure they avoided any unexpected problems with the idol. His plan made sense -- a little too much sense, Joel thought. Can't have that, so Joel had Mikey's close ally Mary voted out instead, just to reduce the size of Joel's own majority and make it less likely that he can successfully get rid of everyone who currently despises him before the merge. Clap. Clap. Clap. Over at Malakal, "favorites" Ozzy and Amanda got down to some cranium-swallowing make-out action, while Parvati and James seemed well on their way to doing the same. Hey, don't judge; people have needs. Screen time, for instance. Jonathan, Yau-Man, Ami, and Eliza got together in an alliance that seemed weirdly unstable in some way, and I'm not just saying that in retrospect. Cirie emerged as a possible swing vote. Chet did not make any friends for himself at the immunity challenge by strolling out of the water like he was not at all late to an appointment he kind of didn't want to go to anyway. Who will be voted out...tonight?
As Airai returns from tribal council on Night 6, Mikey interviews that his assumption is that Joel "stuck a knife in [his] back...already." And then he says, "Interesting!" in this sort of funny way that weirdly makes him remind me of one of my friends, and I wonder if I might like him a little bit. Fortunately, Mikey is seen talking to Joel about how Joel is risking winding up in a group with "four girls and a kid [shot of Erik]. And...Chet is included as a girl." Whew! Now I know I don't like him, so that takes care of that, at least. I hate cognitive dissonance, so now I can be at peace with my opinion of his ticket-stub tattoos. Mikey tells us that Joel is currently playing a "long game" as opposed to a "short game." I'm not sure Joel is playing either one. I think Joel is playing a "big man make big move; smart people scary; UUUUNNGGGHH" game. Mikey tells us that it's idiotic not to play it to keep the team strong until the merge. Of course, that's only true if you think your team will stick together post-merge. And since Mikey's concluded that Chet, Kathy, and Tracy are "all useless" (by which he means: "girls"), you would logically get rid of them, not the obviously very challenge-oriented...Mary. Joel smugly tells us that Mikey "thinks he's got all the answers" (which: pot/kettle), and says that Mikey believes he has the whole tribe "in his pocket." Yeah. Yeah, that's it exactly, genius. In a night-vision interview more scary than most, Joel says, "I would really, really like to see the look on his face when the baseball bat comes swingin' up on him and wakes him up to the reality that he doesn't have this tribe in his pocket." So...Joel's plan involves the element of surprise and a baseball bat. So this season will be a little different, because sometimes fire represents life, and sometimes AVOIDING DEATH BY BLUDGEONING represents life.
Credits. It seems fitting that both the word "fans" and the word "favorites" are thus, with quotation marks.
Night 6, Malakal "favorites." It's dark. The couples are down at the beach working on making an apparently recreational hanging-out fire, and they've invited Eliza to join them. Eliza reports to us that this started out as "Heeeey, come to the beach with us!" and quickly turned into "SO HOW ABOUT THE VOTING YOU WILL BE DOING SOON?" Ozzy claims that, just for the sake of keeping the tribe "as strong as possible," he would pick Yau-Man, then Jonathan, then Cirie to boot. No, no. Okay, look. There is no way you keep your tribe strong by getting rid of Yau-Man first; that's moronic. Nor do you keep your tribe strong by getting rid of Jonathan before Cirie. Cirie is useless in challenges, much as I love her. Yau-Man, on the other hand, is a genius at challenges, and he's good at a much greater percentage of challenges than, say, James, since Yau-Man is basically good at any one that doesn't involve physical brute strength, and James is good at only those. So Ozzy is obviously lying about his motives here while trying to court Eliza. Somehow, I predict that Eliza is intelligent enough to read the writing on the wall. Oh, hey! So Eliza says, "You dislike Jonathan that much, huh?" Ha! Ozzy claims that it's not that he dislikes Jonathan; it's that "he plays everyone." Spoken like a true beneficiary of Jonathan's playing of everyone, who wouldn't have gone nearly as far in his season if Jonathan weren't such a rat cancer flipper, and who pretty much owes Jonathan a hundred grand, if you think about it. Not that this should inspire loyalty, but: food for thought. Ozzy was a member of an alliance to whom Jonathan handed the game with his last flip, so...maybe something he doesn't want to be too embittered about.
Of course, Eliza explains to us that she listened openly to this pitch that was allegedly about booting the weakest people and clearly wasn't. However: "I don't trust them," she says plainly, with "them" being these two couples. Good for you. That girl's all right, most of the time, you know. She's certainly nobody's dupe. I'm not kidding when I say she's going to make an awesomely scary lawyer. She goes and reports this back to Yau-Man, Jonathan, Ami, and Cirie, the last of whom is happily sitting in on the alliance discussion as Eliza talks about how "the five of us are so tight." Now, as you can see, Eliza is not an idiot, so she got the idea that Cirie was with them from somewhere, although the show has conveniently left that part out. For some reason, they're very determined not to show any of what Cirie has said to indicate that she's with these people, even though more than obviously, she's made a deal with them, since all of them include her in their alliance, and when she's accused of having agreed to be with them later, she doesn't deny it at all. But it's been carefully omitted, which is an interesting editing choice.
Cirie calmly explains in an interview, however, that she's basically stringing everybody along, because she's "still trying to figure out which side is better for [her]." Jonathan says to the group that if there's another vote, they should target Parvati, because she's this year's Amber. I mean, he doesn't say this, but he does say that she's weak (by which he means not helpful in challenges) and yet threatening (by which he means socially positioned near people who will block for her). Note the theory picked up in the season's recap, that Todd = Amber, in that the most threatening person is the person who is bad in challenges, but socially positioned well. So Parvati, here, kind of fits that mold. Also? Jonathan hates Parvati's guts like her guts are made of arsenic, and that factor cannot be overstated. In an interview, Cirie explains that it's all about whom she can "trust." If she can trust you, then she'll stay with you, but if she can't trust you, then you shouldn't believe anything she says. In other words, Cirie's trustworthy as long as she thinks it benefits her to be so, but if she doesn't think it's to her advantage, she's perfectly willing to lie. And then she cackles at herself. Just...make a note of this. That's all I ask.
We visit Airai on Day 7, as they receive some treemail. It tells them to pick three items for their reward, and suggests that they should put on war paint to go tackle people. Excellent! Alexis is really excited about this, like, to an awesomely unseemly degree. The same news reaches Malakal, and then we watch as the two tribes paint themselves up. Eliza once again gives the football coach's pregame "we're ready; we're going to kick some butt" speech to the camera. "There's no way we're losing this challenge," says Eliza. And then over at the other camp, Joel -- apparently missing the irony, if that's possible -- says that you have to fight "logically" and not "emotionally." And then he adds, "Logically, if somebody invades my home, I'm gonna kill 'em." Will these people be invading your home? He...he lost me there. Is this more of the baseball bat thing? There's also something about a war cry, but it's got a combination of lameness and vague, Jungle Book-ish offensiveness going for it that really makes me tired, so can we just pretend I talked about it? Oh, thank you.
When Malakal sees the new tribe of fans and sees that Mary went home, Eliza makes the best "whuuuuh?" face and noise of the season thus far. Alexis, incidentally, has painted her face like Ronald McDonald. I'm not sure she got the point, really. Okay, so the way this challenge works is that each team starts in the other team's "end zone" at opposite ends of a perhaps knee-deep "lagoon." Each team has three canvas sandbags, which are fairly heavy. You have to get your three bags, plus two that you swap from the other team, across the goal line. You can steal bags even after they've been carried into the other team's end zone. First tribe with five bags in their end zone at the same time wins. Jeff originally said you had to get your three bags and two of the other team's bags across, but it appears that it's just five total (it could be two of what were originally yours and all three of what were originally theirs instead, I'm saying; nobody's tracking which is which).
For the reward, Malakal has chosen a shelter, a lighting kit, and a "survival kit," whatever that is. Airai also chose shelter, but they chose a kitchen set and a fishing kit. Winning tribe gets the things they picked. Worth playing for? Oddly enough, Jeff, yes. It is. And then, tragically, Jeff Probst says, "Lez geddit awwn," and he immediately ages about twenty-three years.
By the time the contestants are ready to get going, it's pouring down rain again. So this will be kind of a clusterfuck, I'm thinking. Ready? Go! You'll note that Joel first goes after Amanda and Yau-Man. Because you have to fight logically, not emotionally, and logically, you would rather fight a smaller woman and a little old man than a bunch of big, strong dudes. Interestingly, when James and Joel ultimately face off, James takes Joel down with no difficulty, so if Joel thought he was going to bring an end to the Era Of James Is The Big Dude, At Least With Regard To Big Dudes, he is sorely mistaken. Other highlights include a moment where Eliza is literally holding on to the waistband of Erik's shorts, pulling them halfway down as he drags her while carrying a bag. Eventually, Erik turns and -- in my opinion, as gently as he really can, conks her with the bag to make her let go. Amanda decides to go over and take on Erik, who's got a bag under one arm. Unfortunately for Amanda, she approaches him from the side, and it's the side with the free arm, so it's very easy for him to bend over, slip an arm around Amanda's leg, and lift her up, followed by dropping her in the water. Again, I don't think Erik does that much more violently than necessary, and I can't truly think of a more efficient way he could have dispatched Amanda with one hand when she approached from that side. I mean, she literally comes up from the side and wraps her arms around his neck. I think they teach this at Wrestler College, because it's the most obvious takedown in history.
James takes offense, and he's going to snap Erik in half for daring to, like, compete and stuff. I don't know; I'm not all that impressed with a dude taking offense over the ladies being slammed when the ladies seem perfectly capable of participating. I'm not sure Amanda doesn't weigh more than Erik, to tell you the truth. She's made of girl, and he's made of popsicle sticks. It's hard to tell, with the way people are used to block for each other here, who's really valuable, but when Malakal eventually wins, I'd have to say the most obvious MVP overall is probably Jonathan, though James was also crucial. You know who was practically invisible? Ozzy. Interesting.
So now, Malakal has to send a member of Airai to Exile, and they do the most logical thing, which is to send Kathy again. From their own tribe, they send Ami, who's eager to go. As they leave, Jeff reports that they will rejoin their tribes at the immunity challenge. Airai goes back to camp empty-handed; Malakal goes back to camp with their chosen reward items.
After commercials, we are at Malakal, still on Day 7, where Ozzy tells a story of one of the women getting in a clinch with him and asking him if he had a girlfriend, and Eliza relates a similar story of flirtation during a tangle with Amanda and Mikey B. So the moral of the story, I guess, is that Airai has the fire in the pants for Malakal, while Malakal is busy making out with each other and is uninterested. As everyone stands around having a good time, Cirie wanders off by herself. She interviews that she's not sure whether other people all feel relaxed because they think she's with them, but she herself doesn't feel secure. She looks on as Parvati giggles to James about how "impressed" she was watching him throw people around. Cirie says that because she's in the middle, she has to look at all the options, and she has to try to have alternate plans. Of course, this is true of everyone, even people in secure alliances. Have these people never heard of twists before? Tribal shake-ups? Anyone? [taps on microphone] Cirie -- approximately...40% seriously, I'm going to say, which means 60% jokingly -- tells us that she really thinks she should be getting her ass kissed a little more, all things considered. She could be getting her laundry done and so forth. I think Cirie really...doesn't account for the fact that "swing vote" is something that rests on a set of assumptions. Eliza can make you irrelevant instantly -- instantly! -- and leave you with nothing. Eliza goes with the couples, they don't need you. Boom! You have no choices. Eliza has switched her alliances just like Jonathan in the past, and just like everybody else; why would Cirie assume that Eliza would have some mad alliance to these people (that's the only way Cirie has this much power) just because this is her alliance so far?
Anyway, after Cirie's talk about how she really wishes everyone would pay a little more attention to her power position, she goes out on a boat with Amanda and Parvati. Now, if you're Cirie here, and you're smart, you know that Parvati and Amanda desperately want your vote here, with nine people left. With nine people left, they will say anything to you. Once there are eight people left, all you can do by going against them is force a tie, so now it's your hands that are tied in staying with them, unless you want to potentially go up yourself. So this, potentially, is really the week when they will say anything to you, and therefore, nothing they say should be taken at face value at all. Not only that, but they still have a lot of time to get rid of you before the jury, meaning that their betrayal of you wouldn't even matter. What I'm saying here is that it is ridiculous, at this moment, to make big decisions based on what people tell you they're going to do fifteen tribal councils from now. Nevertheless, this is what Cirie wants to do. So on the floaty raft, Cirie confronts Parvati and Amanda about the relationships they have with their respective boyfriends. Parvati tells Cirie that she would lose against Ozzy or James in the final three, so she wouldn't take them that far. Amanda offers to stop "flirting with Ozzy" (for God's sake, Amanda, you're sharing a shelter with these people! They're not blind and deaf! You don't have groceries, so they know that is not the sound of you sucking the marinade out of a cooked steak!) if that's what Cirie wants, but Cirie and Parvati tell her to keep it up to "keep him close." Yeah, she'll keep him close, all right.
Back on shore, Eliza asks Jonathan whether he's nervous about Cirie, and he says he isn't. Eliza advises Jonathan that, like Eliza herself, Cirie "gets paranoid" and needs reassurance. Jonathan says that they should reassure her, then. On the raft, Cirie is telling Parvati and Amanda that she wants to vote out Yau-Man, because if he ever gets to Exile Island, he'll get the idol, and because she thinks -- as they do -- that none of them would win at the end against him. So Cirie gets Amanda's and Parvati's word that it's the three of them "to the end." So...let me get this straight. Cirie's theory is that if Amanda and Parvati didn't really intend to do this, they would tell her at this point, "Well, no, Cirie, you don't really have our word, no. But we'd still really like your vote." Meanwhile, Jonathan can't understand why Cirie would switch to the couples unless she wants to be "queen bee." Eliza points out that there's no way Cirie will be queen of those people. Which is true.
You know, it's interesting, because it's counterintuitive, but Cirie hasn't figured out the likable-person strategy. If you're a likable person, the only chance you have, really, at actually winning is to align with at least some other people who are also likable. This is how Yul won: the other people were moderately likable, and therefore believed they had a chance against him. This is how Earl won: if he'd been aligned with Mookie and Rocky and Alex, for instance, they'd have thrown him out at F4, just as has happened to so many people who were too likable relative to their late-game alliance-mates -- Cirie herself being the best example, but also Lydia, Darrah, and even Yau-Man himself, to some degree. It's that point around F4 where people will take the opportunity to throw out the lovable person who would clearly beat them at a final vote, and that's where it happened to Yau-Man. You want to be likable enough to win, but you can't be the most conspicuously likable person in your alliance unless you're absolutely positive that you're going to win a shitload of immunity challenges, because they will get rid of you. It's really just one of the many points in life where being awesome simply does not pay. I mean, seriously, Cirie's theory here is silly, because it's so unlikely that the game is going to play out the way she thinks, where either the final five will be her, Jonathan, Yau-Man, Eliza, and Ami; or the final five will be her, Amanda, Parvati, Ozzy, and James, so it's really academic. But if we pretend that it's going to play out this way, what combination of two people from one or the other of those tribes has the smallest chance in hell of winning a million dollars against Cirie? The answer is, to me, very obvious: Amanda and Parvati. Frankly, I'd rather flush a million dollars down the world's biggest toilet than give it to Parvati, and I don't think that's an uncommon point of view. So while it sounds good to pick them, because you have the best chance to beat them in a vote, they're going to know they have no chance to beat you. Therefore, it's very unlikely that they will let you get that far. You've got to take some likability with you heading into F3, or you won't be there at all, you know what I mean? That's why this is hard for me to understand: Cirie is choosing her F3 alliance relying, apparently, on people giving her their word, when that's basically the least reliable way in history to know who will actually do what. What has been reliable? The most likable person getting booted at F4. Remember that, Cirie? DO YOU?
And on Exile Island, Ami can't figure out the clues that Kathy and Cirie already figured out last week. Kathy plays dumb, since she doesn't feel like stomping back and forth between the clues again, so that's about the extent of the idol-hunting this week. Nice work, ladies! I know Kathy drives people crazy, but there's a pretty wonderful shot of her looking over at the camera while pretending to listen to Ami read the clues she's already solved, and she kind of gives the camera the side-eye, like, "Blah blah blah, this is riveting." She's the best completely doomed Greek chorus of all time.
Night 7 hits the Airai camp very hard. Their shelter? Still sucks. You know, based on what I'm seeing of their camp, I'm not sure they could really afford the luxury of choosing a kitchen set as one of their reward items. I'm thinking they could use many other things more than spatulas. As she huddles under a raincoat in night vision, Alexis tells us that it's pretty much hopeless. As one of the EEFPs pointed out (I'd have totally missed it), the producers have fun showing her "Motivational Speaker" chyron while she's basically like, "Abandon hope!"
Over at Malakal, they've made themselves quite a hideaway using their cave and their tarp, so they are not getting wet at all. Ozzy -- with apparent sincerity, and even concerned -- looks around while saying that he's not feeling great about how the other tribe is probably doing. He wants to beat them at swimming, but he doesn't actually want them to die or anything. He's all heart, that guy. Indeed, Long-Haired Jason is curling himself up in his prized cave dwelling, saying that he hopes not to be visited by spiders, scorpions, or rats. Or a late-returning Jon Dalton -- hiyo!
The morning, Day 8 at Airai, does not look too good. At all. They have been out-and-out devastated by the storms overnight. There's a shot of Joel reclining in...what the hell is that? The boat? The music here is very severe, like we're watching an Oscar-winning documentary. Yeah, it is the boat, as you can see as Joel voices over about just how bad last night really was. He reveals that it rained all night, and that their shelter was essentially no help in keeping anyone dry. Mikey crawls out of what shelter he had, and he doesn't look too happy, either. Joel looks at his hands, which, while they're not at Ethan/Rupert levels of white pruning, are not looking good, either. He says that they were beat up twice -- "once by the other tribe, and once by nature." That's deep, Joel. Alexis is shaking as Chet hugs her, and she says that she "didn't sleep at all." Ugh. Those nights when you don't sleep at all are the worst. Alexis's hands are shaking hard as she talks about how pruny her fingers are. Alexis tells us that this is obviously not how you want to go into an immunity challenge, adding, "We cannot lose today." That's a little more motivational-speakerish, at least.
Immunity challenge time! Jeff brings in the troops. There are two big hanging net baskets, almost like giant planters. Jeff brings back Ami and Kathy. Jeff takes back the immunity idol from Amanda, and naturally, they exchange lame jokes about it. So the way this challenge works is that you choose two men and two women to hold ropes that hold up your big rope net. Then the other tribe's other members try to toss coconuts into your basket to make it heavier and heavier. When the basket gets heavy enough that your holders drop it, the other team wins. So essentially, victory is a combination of your shooters being good enough at tossing weight into the other team's basket, and your holders being able to hold your basket up as it gets heavy. Losers to tribal council. The net holders for Airai are Erik, Joel, Natalie, and Tracy. Really? Erik? Instead of Mikey? Maybe Mikey is stuffed with cotton. Or maybe Joel doesn't want Mikey to think he has holding heavy things up all under his control. For Malakal, it's Parvati, Cirie, James, and Jonathan. I'm not sure who's right, but note that the holders are standing side-by-side, each holding a rope attached to the basket, and Airai has put their guys on the outside, while Malakal has their guys on the inside.
Ready...go! The first shooters are Mikey and Ozzy, who both miss. So people shoot, and people shoot, and the first to get one in for Airai is Jason, while the first to get one in for Malakal is Yau-Man. Of course. It quickly emerges that underhand tosses are going to be more effective to get the coconuts up high enough than is trying to shoot them like a basketball. Jonathan spends the entire time both encouraging and razzing members of his own team as well as members of Airai, with my favorite moment being a friendly little "Nice shot, there, squirrelly-boy!" directed at Jason, who does have a certain rodential quality, I agree. But ultimately, I think Airai makes more shots, and it appears to be Chet that delivers the killer blow. Awesome. Malakal drops the net, and they're headed for tribal council. Understandably, the previously demoralized Airai is very happy.
After the commercials, we're walking back to camp with Malakal, still on Day 8, as Ami enlightens us with the information that losing the immunity challenge "sucks." Elsewhere, Yau-Man and Jonathan discuss the upcoming boot, and Yau-Man asks whether they're good to go with Parvati. "She's sleeping with James, and we can't have it," says Jonathan, applying lessons of past seasons involving Survivor winners and the granting of privileges to the Wonderland Of Your Blurred Body. Meanwhile, Amanda fills James in that Yau-Man is going, because Cirie wants it that way, and they need Cirie. James resists having Cirie call the shots to that degree, but Parvati comes over and eyelash-bats that Yau-Man is smart, and that there's a "strong possibility" that he's going to Exile Island before the tribal council. Really? Is that so? Parvati also pouts that she knows there's an effort to send her home, and James reassures her that her sweet ass is under the protection of his manly pecs, et cetera. The amount of dumb that floats around between these two dummies is enough dumb to fuel a dumb factory responsible for manufacturing enough dumb to feed the entire population of Dumbtown. With dumb left over.
Elsewhere, Ozzy is trying to persuade Cirie that Eliza would make a better boot. She whines (seriously, it is whining, which is where I start to get disappointed), "We can get rid of Eliza any day." Apparently, Cirie has not read her History Of How The Person You Can Get Rid Of Any Day Makes It To The End, because it is a long-ass book -- almost as long as Stories Of Eliza Almost But Not Quite Being Voted Off, which runs hundreds of pages. I was watching a couple of episodes from Eliza's season the other day, and I'd forgotten about the time she got rid of Ami; that was a cold, calculated, absolutely correct but really brutal move, because she weepily made it clear that she really loved Ami, but she booted her anyway. She picked up the pen and did it because she needed to, and that makes Eliza formidable in a way that not all of these people are, historically. Anyway, Ozzy argues to Cirie that Yau-Man is better in challenges than Eliza, so for the sake of actually winning some immunity challenges, voting off Eliza is a better move. Cirie is insistent that it has to be Yau-Man. Her way or the highway: get rid of the person who's better at challenges, or Cirie will...DO WHAT?
This is where Cirie's attempt at forcing things should have failed. Because if they don't vote out Yau-Man, what's she going to do? Yau-Man's alliance isn't going to vote out Yau-Man. If Cirie thinks that the couples' alliance is better for her in the long run, she's not going to go to the other one just because this one won't vote out Yau-Man, because the other one won't either. What is she threatening? What do they think she's threatening? Why can't they just call Cirie's bluff and say, "Dude, you're not going to vote for Yau-Man no matter what. You're not going to vote for Yau-Man if it means it's going to be a tie." Because she wouldn't. She wouldn't pointlessly vote for Yau-Man all by herself. They should have realized that Cirie is coming to them because she doesn't want an alliance with the other group of four. She's doing this out of self-interest, not as a favor. You don't have to bribe her; she's doing this for herself already. If they'd simply told her they weren't voting for Yau-Man but were voting for Eliza, she would have voted for Eliza. It's not like being disappointed to learn that Yau-Man is still going to be in the game past this week is going to make Eliza go get into an alliance with Jonathan and Yau-Man if she really fears that Yau-Man will beat her. Think, people.
At any rate, this gets interrupted when Eliza and Ami walk up, at which point Cirie tells this entire group -- including Eliza and Ami, it appears -- that it can be Yau-Man or Jonathan. Okay, so now there are members of the other alliance involved in this discussion that's apparently about Cirie being a swing vote? This is edited really weird, because I feel like they're leaving things out, like the part where they cloned everyone so that everyone is on both teams. I mean, if Cirie is telling Eliza and Ami she wants to vote out Yau-Man or Jonathan, then...I just don't understand how Cirie is this powerful. If Eliza and Ami aren't ironclad tied to Yau-Man and Jonathan, then why do any of these people need Cirie? Cirie is almost as beloved as Yau-Man; why not just get all these people together and get rid of Cirie herself? Jonathan walks up and, having caught on the breeze that Cirie was advocating for either him or Yau-Man, he takes a walk with Ami and asks her which of the two Cirie is really after. Ami says she doesn't know, but she's doing it in a way that seems kind of shifty, so Jonathan's like, "Just tell me," so she explains, "They're trying to decide." They are? Who are? I don't get it. Jonathan interviews that he'd like to think Cirie is "smart enough, loyal enough, happy enough" to stick with what she's clearly told him she plans to do.
So now, Jonathan and Cirie have a chat in which he presents his case to her in an effort to respond to what Eliza told him, which is that Cirie is being told untrue things by Amanda and Parvati about what the plan is: "It's going to be the five of us to vote off Parvati," he assures her, "because she's got these two guys wrapped around her finger. It's that simple." I think he means "it's that simple" as in, "There is no hidden plan; what I intend is that simple," but I think it comes out sounding like "it's that simple" as in "that's the way it's going to be," which I think is a legitimate miscommunication that contributes to sending this entire thing down a very bad road. Furthermore, Cirie isn't aware that, earlier, Eliza told Jonathan that Cirie is paranoid and needs to be reassured a lot, so Cirie doesn't have the context for what Jonathan's doing here at all. So what he means by "It's going to be [whatever]" is "this is what we genuinely intend to do, I swear" (being "reassuring"), and what she's hearing is "this is how it's going to be; you will fall in line." Jonathan continues by telling Cirie that he's not sure what kinds of stuff Amanda and Parvati are saying to her, but that if anybody is telling her they're going to snake her, they're not. "The plan is a good one," he tells her. Yau-Man comes over and adds that these two pairs of people, taken together, are too powerful. I've seen UN Security Council meetings that aren't this complicated to decode.
Cirie gets kind of pissy here, and tells them, "The same argument you're using, they're using the same argument." They are? They're using an argument that Yau-Man and Jonathan and Ami and Eliza are romantic couples, so it's incredibly dangerous to let them advance together? That seems unlikely to be true. Although I'm sure it wouldn't be any more farfetched than some of the fanfic I suspect is out there. Since Cirie is basically telling Jonathan that the two alliances are both using the same tactics on her, he says, "I'm not going to use any argument; I'm going to use common sense." Which again, I think he means to be like, "This isn't tactics; I'm basing my plan on what makes sense for all of us," but it's not coming off that way. He doesn't realize that Cirie has a huge chip on her shoulder about Jonathan, convinced that he's going to try to play her (even though right now, he's not) and that she is just waiting for him to say something she can call bullshit on. You can see that Cirie's sitting there with this bitchface on, all head-cocked, internally dismissing whatever Jonathan's going to say before he's even said it. So although he's trying to make an argument based on logic, she's interpreting it as untrue and, because she thinks it's untrue, she thinks his trying to sell bullshit to her is insulting. So what he thinks is a calm explanation of what he genuinely thinks is playing, to her, like he thinks she's stupid enough to believe what he's saying. And then from his perspective, if there's anything Jonathan is hypersensitive about, it's the "you're a rat" moralistic crap from his original season, and I think he's beginning to sense that this is where Cirie is going with all of this -- that he's an untrustworthy person in some fundamental way (which, just as he pointed out himself, is as dumb as trying to make someone the villain of Monopoly), and as soon as he smells that attitude in the discussion, he starts to get really disgusted by it and he gets impatient, and now you have...a thing.
Now, Cirie is insisting that Jonathan admit that he and Yau-Man have "a little thing," and she basically makes it clear that if Jonathan admits it, then he loses her vote (because: sub-alliance), and if he denies it, then he loses her vote (because: liar), and she's being so incredibly high-handed here, it's really unappealing to me. And Cirie keeps insisting that she knows everything about what Jonathan's plans are, and she talks and talks, and when Jonathan tries to defend himself by calling the idea that he's trying to put something over on her "ridiculous," she sort of sits back, all, "carry me on the chariot-type thing" and snots, "Being like that isn't really going to get my vote." Being like...what? I don't understand this, nor do I understand just how far Cirie expects this "swing vote" bullshit to stretch, nor do I understand why she doesn't get that you lose your power with people when you make it clear that you've already made up your mind. Nevertheless, Jonathan attempts to de-escalate the discussion at this point. Intending to go to a "let's take a deep breath and not get ahead of ourselves" place, but not doing a very good job of disguising his frustration with the power trip Cirie's trying to pull here (the "that's not going to get my vote" threatening tone is really making him angry, you can tell), he says, "Wait a minute. We have a long way to go yet." Cirie cuts him off here: "I know! I know that! I played just like you played! How far did you get?"
So...wow. Yeah, Jonathan mishandled parts of that, but the personal ugliness is all Cirie. There's no need to take a disagreement about strategy and suddenly make it personal, nor does anyone with any kind of head for Survivor actually believe that there's a one-to-one correlation between how well you played and what your placement was. (See: half the brain-dead, strategy-goofed finalists ever.) That's the absolute height of hubris, believing you can throw your fourth-place finish around simply because it's better than someone else's seventh-place finish. I loved Cirie on her season, and I intend to forgive her this one discussion, but she is in the wrong here without question, and she is the one who made this discussion ugly as opposed to just frustratingly lacking in good communication. Cirie's great, but it would take twisting myself into a Bavarian pretzel to justify the personal attack here, so I'm going to just chalk it up to "nobody's perfect."
At any rate, seeing where Cirie's decided to take the discussion -- away from strategy and towards "fuck you, rat cancer" -- Jonathan calmly responds that, yes, she made it farther than he did. And then it kind of winds down, and this woman who's been bitching about not being courted enough decides to get all, "I need everyone to leave me alone for five minutes," and I'm going to go watch some Cirie clips somewhere from some season, because I kind of want to like her again, and right now? No.
Wait, Ozzy is there? Amanda is there! For this discussion! What? WHAT IS GOING ON? Do I not remember who's supposed to be in alliances with each other? Do I not remember which one is Ozzy?
So now, proving that Cirie is incorrect that he has some magic bond with Yau-Man, Jonathan has a discussion with Ozzy (what?) in which he says that they can boot Yau-Man off if that's the right thing to do, but Ozzy says he doesn't want that. WHAT? That's what Ozzy said around the fire! That he wanted! I DON'T UNDERSTAND. Get me a dictionary! I want a schematic diagram! If I press the up arrow and the Menu button, do I get Easter eggs? So then Jonathan suggests Parvati. And Ozzy suggests Eliza. Why does Ozzy think Jonathan would accept booting Eliza? Is there something we're not being told about Ozzy and Jonathan not actually being on warring alliances? At the very least, are these alliances not set in stone? Ozzy tells Jonathan that there's no point in voting for Parvati; that's just going to mean Yau-Man goes home, because "they will have numbers." I originally thought this was "then we'll have numbers," referring to his own alleged alliance, but he actually says "they will have numbers." Making "them," I suppose, Parvati-Amanda-James-Cirie -- a group in which Ozzy does not include himself. This is very confusing.
And then there's a discussion among Ozzy, James, Parvati, and Amanda, except that Ami is there. It's like every alliance is inviting a representative of the other alliances to listen in on their strategy session. Parvati tells Ozzy that Cirie wants Yau-Man out: "We have to vote with her." Ozzy shakes his head: "I'm voting for Eliza." Parvati says that Cirie wants Yau-Man, and then Ozzy says it: "We don't need Cirie." Which is absolutely true. This is where Cirie's entire strategy relies on people being idiots, because there's no way one person is that powerful. There are a million other ways for a vote to be arranged, other than These Four versus Those Four. Parvati insists that if they don't vote with Cirie, "she'll never trust us." "Who's she going to trust?" Ozzy asks. Like, for real. Now Cirie has alienated Jonathan and Yau-Man, at least. Where's she going? Amanda tells Parvati that she's not wild about having Cirie make the decision unilaterally, or about accepting that they always have to do whatever Cirie says, because who knows where that's going, down the line?
So Parvati and friends call Cirie over for a talk. With Ami there. I am confused; see above. Ozzy and James plead with her to vote off Eliza instead of Yau-Man, for the good of the team in challenges. But Cirie continues to insist that it's her way or the highway, because she's determined, at this point, simply to throw her weight around. There's no way that taking out Yau-Man this week is this important. It just isn't. James interviews that he's not crazy about Cirie's insistence on being the boss of everybody: "It feels like I'm in China again, messing with a bunch of dumb-asses." Oh, James. Being a legendary dumb-ass makes that a harder case for you to make.
Elsewhere, Jonathan fairly stupidly argues to Ami and Eliza that they might knock out Parvati with four votes, if the other group is split between Yau-Man and Eliza. Eliza straightens him right out, correctly saying that they're going to settle on something: "They're not that stupid." Seriously, I am shocked that a guy this smart is using this as his plan. Gotta think of something else, dude. Get Yau-Man with you, and tell Ozzy and James you'll vote with them against Eliza, and then Ozzy gets Amanda, and Parvati gets told to suck an egg...something else. Preferably something where Parvati gets told to suck an egg, because...awesome. Because this split-vote thing will not happen, and that's not a spoiler -- that's "common sense."
Tribal council. Jeff asks Jonathan how much it sucks to be back there. They all talk about how hard the loss was, and Jeff asks whether Airai deserves some respect for the win. James says that they do: he thinks they're hungrier, and that Malakal has so much going for them that they're "soft." Well, Parvati sure is! (Sorry.) Jeff asks Yau-Man whether he knows what the problem is as to why they've lost some, and he says that they really just have to drive themselves hard for the victory. Jeff asks Jonathan about, basically, long game and short game, asking whether it's a team game or an individual game. Of course, it's always an individual game, but Jonathan can't resist biting on what Jeff is offering, saying that some people are trying to keep the tribe strong -- which is still mercenary, of course, because the point is not to get trounced at the merge -- while others are already playing like it's close to the end, taking out people who are threats and trying to "take control of the game." Cirie is understandably eye-rolly; Jonathan's not wrong that she's looking at individual threats over avoiding Pagonging too early, but he's saying it totally wrong in a way that's playing into the same asshole morality stuff that makes Jonathan so crazy when people do it to him.
Cirie, unfortunately, can't stay on the right side of this either, and instead of saying she's doing what's best for herself, period, she chooses to say she IS doing what's best for the tribe. Oh, Lord. STOP! Here, "best for the tribe" just means "not being at tribal council any more than necessary, because every trip here is a trip that puts my ass on the line." And that's not what she's doing, because Cirie seriously does not have an argument that her insistence on getting rid of Yau-Man is about that, so she isn't doing what's best for the tribe even in the way in which that makes sense as a thing. She's just doing it because she thinks Yau-Man might win someday, which she doesn't need to be sorry for, but WHY WON'T SHE JUST SAY THAT? Asked about his reaction, Jonathan says that Cirie has decided to take a very powerful position for herself, but he calls her on the fact that, contrary to what she just said, voting out "the person she wants to vote out" is not, according to anyone, going to make the tribe stronger. Which: true. Cirie, thinking she's making some kind of a big point off him, says that Jonathan is just mad because she wouldn't do what he wanted to do. Which...right, but his suggested move of getting rid of Parvati actually would be better for winning challenges, so that's not really relevant. If they're going to fight over which of them can legitimately argue that they're taking the pro-tribe, pro-winning-challenges stance, she's not going to win that argument and shouldn't try.
And then Jonathan tells Cirie that the reason he's unhappy is that they were supposedly in an alliance and now they're not, and she makes it personal again by trying to bring up Jonathan's past history again and how he's a rat cancer again, and then she insists that she was in the fifth position in the alliance, and Jonathan points out that she just admitted she was in their alliance, at least, and OH MY GOD this is pointless and reflecting poorly on both of them. And then Cirie flat-out lies (irony!) by denying it when Jonathan points out that she has pushed hard for the particular boot (Yau-Man) she wants. She gets very indignant and is like, "I didn't push anything! It was a group decision! I wasn't even there that day!" As you know, I don't mind liars, and I don't mind people who call out liars, but I really, REALLY dislike hypocrites, and that's what Cirie's being right now, because she is totally lying while high-horsing Jonathan about being untrustworthy, which is as dumb as it is when Jonathan tries to get after her for switching alliances. She does this whole thing where she's like, "You told me the best thing for the tribe was getting rid of Parvati," and Jonathan's like, "Well...yes," and Cirie's like, "AND I DIDN'T WANT TO DO THAT AND THAT'S WHY YOU'RE MAD," which is...exactly what Jonathan said in the first place. This is why he said he was frustrated. I seriously don't understand what point Cirie even thinks she's making, other than "rat cancer rat cancer rat cancer." It's good for making points with Parvati, because she goes about as deep as the lid on a mayonnaise jar, but you know...nobody else cares, dude. What has happened to Cirie?
And then it degenerates, and Cirie and Jonathan both act like jerks, and she's bitchy (which: NOOO!), and he's all "vote your conscience" (which: BARF!), and let's just get this over with. And then Parvati is asked for some thoughts, and really, she doesn't have any, so that's insignificant. Seriously, it's like, "People think I'm a flirt! I hope I don't get voted off." Thanks, Giggles Barbie.
Voting, voting, voting. Jonathan votes for Parvati, opening with the obvious lie, "I have nothing against you, Parvati," and going on to make a truly incoherent argument about how Cirie led Parvati to destruction that makes him look like a crazypants, because now Parvati is getting eaten, or something. Voting, voting, THANK GOD. Cirie votes for Yau-Man, spitting that he aligned himself with the big liar rat-cancer, and that's why he has to be voted out, which...does she know this is on TV and we know that's not why she's voting for him? I hate this. Cirie and Jonathan are both acting like such jackholes. He was doing fine up until tribal council, so he lasted longer than she did, but now they both suck. At least for now. Perhaps there is still redemption on the way, at least for someone.
Nobody has the immunity idol to play. Two for Parvati, six for Yau-Man, one for Cirie (random -- turns out to be Ami!). So Yau-Man is out, and he leaves. He's gracious, but he really did nothing interesting this time around, which is a disappointment. There are only a few people around who I even have the potential to care much about, and...there goes another.
week: Cirie and Jonathan hate each other, and the whole thing degenerates. Some more.