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Mike, Matt, and David face off in a Redemption Island challenge. David loses, and so becomes the first member of the jury. Back at camp, with Rob's alliance making it clear that they are two separate tribes despite the merge, Zapato's rice rations are bigger than Onomatopoeia's because they have fewer mouths to feed. Phillip doesn't like this, so he steals some of Zapato's rice. But then karma strikes and Onomatopoeia's rice container is moldy and full of maggots, so they have to dump out all of their rice, pick out the mold and maggots, and find a new container. Shockingly, Steve isn't willing to let them put their rice in Zapato's container, and this angers Phillip so much that he threatens to steal Zapato's container for his own tribe when he gets the chance. Steve says he's crazy (WHICH HE IS) but Phillip takes that as a racist insult somehow. The rest of Phillip's tribe watch all of this unfold and consider voting Phillip out instead of someone from Zapato, while Julie reacts to Phillip's outburst by stealing his swimming trunks and burying them. This further enrages Phillip, and he decides to go to Tribal Council wearing nothing but his pink briefs and his meditation feather, where we are forced to watch Round 3 of the racial discussions until, in a bit of a surprise, Julie is sent to Redemption Island.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's getting crowded on Redemption Island. Matt decides to stay up all night begging God to let him leave this game, as he seems to think he's only still in it because Jesus seems to want him there. "I'm just such a broken man right now," he tells Jesus, who is apparently loving every minute of Matt's pain. Matt then interviews that he's actually starting to get back into the game and want to stay, but then David shows up, surprising Matt and Mike, neither of whom expected to see a third person. The change in the Redemption Island rules throws Matt off and makes him miserable again. They wonder if booted contestants will just keep coming to Redemption Island until the entire jury is there and there's one last duel between them to get back in the game, or if there will be a three-way duel tomorrow. Matt wonders if a three-way challenge is even called a "duel," and David guesses it's called a "truel." Actually, he seems to be right. With that, they sleep.
The day at Murlonio, the remaining three Zapatos eat their spoiled fish and seem to be in good spirits. Steve says he's happy to still be in the game and that David left instead of him. Ralph says David didn't say much at Tribal, and Steve says he didn't really have a chance, what with Phillip speaking the entire time. And Phillip is still speaking, as he takes a seat in a nearby chair and starts saying nonsense words. Seriously: "uma honga homina homina" and the like. He's sewing his feather back into his headband while he chants, and it seems clear to me that the casting department put a crazy homeless man in this game. Steve says Phillip baffles him, as he's annoying and crazy but his alliance seem to like him and stay loyal to him, so Steve has to give him credit for still being in this game. Phillip dons his feather headband and stares at a bird flying through the air as Steve says his alliance's only chance right now is that Onomatopoeia gets so annoyed with Phillip that they vote him out instead of one of them.
Phillip sits on a cliff and meditates and chants while wearing little clothing. And his feather, of course. He interviews about his interpretation of Buddhism, which I'm just going to assume is incorrect. It has something to do with God manifesting itself in different ways and being open to that and channeling it. Fortunately for Phillip, he has that feather acting as a God antenna, so he's more likely to receive God's signals than anyone else in the game. He continues that he meditated again this morning and his grandpa stopped by to say hello and that somehow translated into Phillip realizing that he should trust Rob to take him to the end of the game. So all those promises he made us about how he was going to wait until the right opportunity to take Rob down were, after all, a load of bull.
Back at camp, Steve and Julie cook up a pot of rice. A lot of rice, since their dwindling numbers mean they get bigger portions of their rice supply than the Onomatopoeias do of theirs. Julie says things may suck for them in the game, but at least they aren't hungry. Unfortunately for them, they also have to eat it while Phillip sits like three feet away and stares at them. Phillip interviews that Julie ate like seven and a half seashells worth of rice while he only gets about two seashell's worth from his allies' rice pot, and I'll bet none of them are the crispy kind. He tells his tribe about Zapato's rice bounty and, when Steve, Julie, and Ralph are away, steals some of Zapato's rice from their container and puts it in Onamatopoeia's. He justifies this by saying that all the rice should belong to everyone and therefore, I guess, split equally and not along former tribe lines. Which I would totally agree with if Onomatopoeia weren't the ones who refused to share their tarp or comfort items with Zapato and who, lead by Rob, instituted the separate eating times and food storage areas in the first place.
Andrea and Rob don't seem to care about the rice as much as Phillip does, muttering that he's the "Rice Police" and laughing at him. Meanwhile, Julie and Steve are off getting treemail, which says it's time for a three-way (challenge) - and everyone is invited to watch! The tribe heads over, and Matt, Mike, and David arrive in the Arena. Probst asks Matt how he's feeling right now after being blindsided twice, and Matt says he "never knew strangers could hurt [him] so deeply," but before I can call him a whiny baby, he adds that this is his fault because he let them fool him twice. Which is true, and good for him for being adult enough to realize and admit that. Probst doesn't ask to hear from Mike or David, instead getting right into today's challenge: each contestant has to stack a bunch of wooden tiles into an eight-foot-tall tower. The first two to do so will stay on Redemption Island. The loser will become the first jury member.
The challenge begins. The men build their towers. Mike takes the lead, and tries to place a final tile standing on its side to pass the eight-foot mark, only to cause his tower to wave dangerously. He takes the tile off, steadies the tower, and tries again. The tile falls again. Meanwhile, Matt and David are catching up to him. Mike tries to lay the one tile on its side a third time, and this time, it works. He wins. Matt is right behind him, and puts the final two tiles on his tower. It stays up, and Probst proclaims Mike and Matt to be the winners, which means David is done. He is very disappointed and possibly on the verge of tears, but he's a good sport. He shakes Matt and Mike's hands, tosses his buff in the fire, and leaves. He interviews that he was hoping that Redemption Island would further him in the game, but obviously it didn't. Bye, David! Let's hear from Rob! He says he was hoping that between Mike and David, Matt would be taken out of the game, but no. He's still in it. I don't know who is more upset about that -- Rob or Matt.
The tribe returns to camp. Rob and Grant are hungry, so they decide to make a ton of rice and forget about their rations. They even sing a song about it:
Rice Wars
by Rob, Grant, and Phillip
Gotta eat more than the old Zapatera tribe
Rice wars!
We're gonna eat ourselves out of house and home after one day!
Rice wars!
Hey!
That "hey" came from Phillip, who also contributed a terrible dance. The girls, as usual, contributed nothing. Andrea opens the rice canister, only to find that some of the rice is discolored and also moving. Yes, they have mold and maggots. And the editors seem to think we want to see them in a close-up. Yuck. They have to dump all the rice out on a blanket and separate the maggots from the good rice, but now they have nowhere to keep their rice, since the rice container is gross. Rob says they can just put it in Zapato's container and everyone will eat from that one container, and even Phillip knows enough about human nature to know Zapato won't be on board with that. "I wouldn't want to do it if I was them," he says. Remember that comment, guys. Andrea bravely heads over to ask Zapato if they can put their rice in with Zapato's. Steve immediately says no way. Andrea pretty much figured what the answer would be and walks away, but Phillip is pissed. Apparently he's already forgotten how he said he wouldn't let them use the rice container if he were them, as he interviews that he can't believe how cruel the other tribe is being to them. He says this goes beyond the game of Survivor and speaks to how terribly Steve, Julie, and Ralph will treat other human beings. Of course, this is especially amazing since, as you'll recall, Phillip gleefully stole a good amount of Zapato's rice like ten minutes ago. When Phillip deprives his fellow human beings of food, that's noble. When Zapato do it, it's a war crime.
Phillip strolls up and angrily says that the rice on the towel has been separated out from the "bad" rice and so Zapato shouldn't have any issue with putting it in their container. Steve says they'll ask Ralph when he comes back from wherever he is and make a decision then, but that's not good enough for Phillip. He says they aren't being reasonable. Even though they're being reasonable enough that Phillip himself just said he would have done the same thing. Phillip says this shouldn't be Zapato's decision to make, since the rice doesn't belong to any one alliance, but to the entire tribe, just like everything else in camp. Except, he adds, reward items. Those will stay separate. Julie knows what's good for her, so she just stays quiet. But Steve can't help but stoke the fire, saying that Phillip should have thought about where to put the rice before he dumped it all out. He says, again, that they'll talk to Ralph about it and then let Onomatopoeia know if they can put their rice in the container. Phillip says he tried to ask nicely (which he didn't -- from what we saw, he was confrontational with them from the start), but now he's just going to wait until Zapato leave their container unattended and steal it from them. Steve asks if Phillip is threatening him. Phillip starts swearing and yelling and pointing, concluding that he is a "very reasonable man." Steve says Phillip not at all reasonable, but a "lunatic." Phillip says he sure is, and Steve had better not forget it. Then he decides that he is not a lunatic, but a black man who intimidates racist white people. Uh oh. Over by the fire pit, Rob and Grant immediately snap to attention. "Ooooh, did he just play the race card?" Grant asks, his eyes like saucers. "Did he really?" Rob smiles. Okay, their reactions were awesome.
Various women's voices start trying to calm Phillip down (I think it's Julie and Andrea. Actually, it would have to be, since it's certainly not going to be Ashley or Natalie), but he tells them to shush and continues his rant. Steve is just confused as to how this suddenly became a race issue. Then he remembers that Phillip is crazy and just lets him talk and threaten and right after he claims to be a very rational person and not a lunatic, he says he's "the chief of counter-intelligence," which is something lots of rational people who aren't lunatics say. Steve just sighs and closes his eyes. DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES, STEVE! THAT'S WHEN HE CUTS YOUR HEAD OFF!! Of course, that might just be my racism talking. You see, any time a black man spends a season of this show yelling at people and claiming to be a decorated federal agent and refusing to pronounce people's names correctly and the myriad other crazy things Phillip has done on this show, my racist ass accuses him of being crazy. Phillip leaves Steve with this: "Wing Chun kung fu expert here," which is how I will be concluding all phone conversations and possibly my recaps from now on. Grant gives us his review of the situation: "it's like watching Divorce Court. Phillip stalks off angrily and says that Steve obviously thinks he's better than Phillip, and it's probably because he's white and Phillip is black. Ralph finally shows up and hears from Steve and Julie about what happened. He just shakes his head and clicks his tongue. Phillip continues to interview that he's "like a lot of black men. We're prepared to self-destruct at any moment." And then he can't get through that without giggling, so who knows if he really feels this way or he's just putting us all on? He quickly recovers and says this is why drive-by shootings happen, but he's not planning on going off on anyone like that. Maybe. And, he adds, he figures he can basically do or say anything he wants to other tribe since he already knows there's no way they're voting for him to win the million dollars.
Phillip sits in his chair and keeps ranting, saying that every time something comes up with "the people of the former Zapa-Zapatella tribe," they say he's crazy, even though he was clearly sane enough to think he used to be a federal agent. Steve sarcastically salutes Phillip, who accuses Steve of racism again. Steve just stands there and points at Phillip, who gets to his feet and makes a gesture that is so vulgar that we don't get to see it, not even with a blur. Ralph steps in and asks if they can't all just get along. I don't know why Ralph is even bothering with this. He should just sit back and watch like Julie. There's nothing anyone can do. And the more people try to step in or say something, the more Phillip works himself up into a lather. Oh, and now Phillip just used the N-word. Steve interviews: "crazy crazy Phil being crazy Phil." He says the chip on Phillip's shoulder is so big that it's more like a log. Steve stirs some rice and mutters to Rob and Grant that his alliance is voting for Phillip tomorrow, just FYI. He then returns to his tribe's shelter section and wonders to Julie how someone like Phillip (who is walking on the beach wearing just his pink briefs and his feather headband, like any other rational person would do) could have possibly been a government agent.
Rob, meanwhile, talks to Andrea, saying that it's all well and good that Phillip is turning his craziness on the other tribe for now, but obviously he's going to turn against them once Zapato has been voted out. Rob interviews that Phillip managed to make an argument over "white rice" into a race thing, and he has no idea how he did it. Well, maybe if they weren't all calling the rice "white rice," he wouldn't have a problem. Rob and Grant walk along the beach and talk about the incident and how uncomfortable it made them. But Rob doesn't seem particularly eager to vote Phillip out for that. In fact, he says Phillip is so unpleasant that he'll be "Public Enemy No. 1" when he's sitting to Rob in the Final Three. All Rob has to do now, he says, is figure out who Public Enemy No.2 is and make sure he or she is also at the end with Rob. Ashley, on the other hand, says she'd "rather die than keep [Phil] around."
And then the contestants at the Immunity Challenge. Probst explains: each contestant has a circular puzzle base they must release from its holder by spinning around it. They will then be slightly dizzy and have to complete a puzzle. The first six to do that will place their circular completed puzzle in the middle of another, larger circular puzzle base and complete the puzzle around it. The first person to complete it wins immunity. Probst calls go, and the contestants spin around. Probst can't help but point out that Phillip is moving "very slow," because Probst is a racist. Andrea gets her puzzle base down first, quickly followed by most of the others, except for Ashley, who is so dizzy that she stumbles and falls on her way to the puzzle table, and Phillip, who I'm only pointing out here because I'm racist. Rob finishes his puzzle first. Julie and Ralph are the , shockingly enough. I guess all that rice and spoiled fish are helping them. Phillip shouts out that he's solved it, but then his last puzzle piece doesn't actually fit, so nevermind. Andrea and Steve actually do solve their puzzles, leaving just one spot in the finals. Grant gets it.
Second round: Steve takes an early lead, but Andrea seems to be doing well also. Ralph and Julie, meanwhile, don't seem to understand how to even start this puzzle. Rob suddenly catches up and takes the lead from Steve, but then Andrea has only one piece left and it doesn't fit somehow. "No!" she shouts, as Rob pounds his final piece into place. "Whoa, whoa, easy brother, easy!" Probst tells him. Probst is such a nerd. Just as Steve is fitting his final piece in, Rob manages to get his puzzle solved, winning the challenge. Probst is happy because he gets to touch Rob as he puts the immunity necklace around his neck. He sends them all away, and Steve interviews that he was so close to winning the challenge, but didn't, so now his tribe is going to target Phillip and hope enough people on Onomatopoeia are sick enough of him (or racist enough) to vote with them.
What is going on with the Product Placement Player of the Week? It sucks even more than usual, giving us the choice between Matt, who is on Redemption Island and hates being here and has done nothing except come in second, Mike, who is also on Redemption Island and has done nothing except build an eight-foot-high tower, and David, WHO CAME IN THIRD OUT OF THREE AND THUS ISN'T EVEN PLAYING THIS GAME ANYMORE. So I'm going to vote for him.
The tribes return to camp to cook and eat rice in separate groups. I have no idea where Onomatopoeia is storing their rice, by the way. They never told us. I think they should steal the treemail box and put it in there. Julie smiles over how much rice her puny alliance gets and says tonight's vote is easy for them. They're voting for Phillip, and hopefully two people from the other alliance will flip and vote with them. When Onomatopoeia walk away from cam, Julie marches over to the clothesline, grabs Phillip's swimsuit, and buries it in the woods. She says if Phillip wants to call this game a war, then she'll fight it like one. And that means burying his shorts so he'll have to walk around in his pink panties for the rest of the game. I hate that sabotaging people's belongings has become commonplace in this game now, especially since Julie's actions have consequences to people beyond Phillip. Like her fellow contestants, who have to look at him. And the viewing audience, who has to look at him. Uncool, Julie.
Phillip returns to camp and looks for his shorts. He asks all the contestants if they moved them, and they all say no. Phillip figures that someone stole and hid his shorts, and he is pissed. As Ashley makes faces at him behind his back, he mutters that things can get "real fun and exciting around here." Can they really? Because I would very much love it if this season somehow became fun and exciting. Ashley interviews that everyone in camp is "over Phillip," who makes several speeches about stolen items and how he can play that game, too, and asks if people are from "the Big House," whatever that means. He isn't yelling at Ashley, but she's probably more annoyed by it than anyone else. "Crazy Phillip who wears feathers and pink underwear," she racists. And now Phillip is saying that if he doesn't get his shorts back tonight, he's going to "go off" on someone. "That's kinda scary," Steve says. Phillip tells him he should be scared if he thinks Phillip is so crazy. "This ain't the NFL. In the NFL they got rules," he says. Ashley and Natalie giggle. Steve interviews that Phillip "made a total ass out of himself" and owes everyone, especially Steve, an apology for his behavior. Instead, Phillip is standing around striking poses wearing very little clothing. Steve catches a glance and hurriedly turns away. He concludes that he hopes Phillip has alienated enough people to get voted out tonight instead of someone from Zapato. Yeah. Sure.
Rob, of course, has no intention of voting for anyone except Julie, Steve, or Ralph. He admits that Phillip's behavior concerns him and he knows that his tribe has enough numbers to vote him out without losing the majority, but he's only saying that to try to instill some kind of suspense in what will be an obvious boot.
The contestants arrive at Tribal Council. Phillip is wearing his underwear, his feather, his buff and that's about it. David arrives and takes a seat, and Probst asks the big question: WTF Phillip? He asks if Phillip's lack of clothing is due to another meditation, and Phillip angrily says that this is Zapato's fault, as one of them stole his clothes. David grins. Probst asks if Phillip was looking at Steve. Phillip says he was, because he's sure that he was the one who took his clothes. Probst asks if Phillip is using his Former Federal Agent? skills to determine this. Phillip says he is. Julie smiles. Phillip tells the story of how he confronted Steve over his alliance consuming all the rice, saying that it's been "war between the two tribes" since then.
Probst asks Steve if this is true. Steve says Zapato are eating more rice, but that's just because there are fewer of them. Probst asks Andrea if she agrees with Phillip or Steve, and Andrea says it is frustrating to look over and see Zapato with their big bowls of rice while her alliance is stuck with very little rice. Also, she adds, their rice container is full of maggots. Steve knows how to set Phillip off, so he mentions that Phillip made the rice war into a race war and how he said the N-word when all Steve wanted to do was nap. "Whoa!" says Probst at the mention of the N-word. Julie speaks up and says things got really ugly and Phillip was threatening Steve was physical violence. Steve agrees. Probst just wants to know who brought up the N-word in the first place. Oh come on, Probst. If Steve was the one who said it, I'm pretty sure you would already know. Julie quickly says it was Phillip. Phillip agrees and says he only said it because he was making a "rational argument" about how they should put their rice in Zapato's container, and Steve called him crazy out of nowhere. He thinks that Steve called him crazy because he knew he couldn't call him the N-word, which is what he was thinking.
Probst tries to figure out what Phillip is saying, but Philip keeps going, quoting Richard Pryor and saying that when black people confront "certain types of individuals," those individuals will think they are crazy N-words. Um, or something. I mean, I am all for a race debate, but this is difficult to recap because Phillip actually is crazy [Stop being racist, Sara! -- Angel] and it's hard to understand the point he's trying to make. Probst tells Phillip he's going to have to explain this better, because Probst isn't getting it. "Do you know what it's like to be a woman?" Phillip asks. " ... I don't," Probst says, only momentarily thrown by the question. Phillip sort of has a point, though, which is that Probst doesn't know what it's like to be black, either. Probst tries to stop Phillip, but he will not be stopped. He demands that Probst let him finish. We will be here all night. Phillip says that when he was a federal agent in the unnamed "department" that he worked for, he was the only black person out of 67 agents. I think that's more because the other 66 agents were fictional, and therefore no race at all. He says he knew when his co-workers were being racist just like a woman knows when a man is talking down to her. And he gets that vibe from Steve, who shakes his head.
Probst says that's all well and good, but he's still trying to figure out how Phillip went from Steve saying he was crazy to Steve thinking he is an N-word. Phillip tells us another story of when he moved to upstate New York in 1967 and went to the grocery store with his father, and the grocer called his father "boy." He didn't call him the N-word, but "boy" was the same thing. Steve asks if he can say something. Phillip says he can't until Phillip is done talking. We will be here all night. Steve talks anyway. He says he was in the NFL for 13 years, the last seven of which were on the LA Raiders, most of whom were black. He says he's not racist. Probst doesn't want to give Steve any attention because his rational thoughts and sane and succinct way of stating them are boring, so he turns back to Phillip and asks if he's saying that Steve should have said Phillip's argument was crazy instead of saying that Phillip himself was crazy, because that brought up painful memories of all the other things people who may have actually been racist have said to Phillip. Phillip will agree with that. Probst says it seems to him, then, that Phillip took the argument one way due to his own life experiences and Steve took it another. That doesn't mean that Steve is racist or wanted to say that Phillip was the N-word or that Phillip didn't sincerely believe he did. The entire tribe nods at this. I am impressed with Probst's ability to figure out both sides of the argument, not to mention phrase it in a way that makes Phillip seem slightly less insane for going off like that. But only slightly.
Now that we've figured everything out, Probst asks Rob, who has nothing to do with any of this, how both alliances can move past this and if Phillip and Steve's argument will factor into who is voted out tonight. Rob says both Phillip and Steve are grown men with the right to say what they want, but with a million dollars on the line, this could factor into tonight's vote. Probst asks Natalie the same question, like she has anything to add to this or anything on this show at all. Natalie says it's been hard to listen to this tonight because she feels sorry for Steve for being accused of racism when she doesn't think he is racist, but she also feels bad for Phillip because she doesn't know what it's like to be black. This is going nowhere, so Probst asks the group who took Phillip's shorts. Julie raises her hand proudly and admits it was her and says that "nobody will ever find them." Why did she admit that? Does she just not give a shit if she gets voted out tonight? Does she want Phillip to cut her throat in the middle of the night? I really don't get it.
Probst congratulates everyone on getting through a good therapy session, and everyone claps. Well, that was strange. Probst asks Julie if her tribe finally found the crack in Onomatopoeia, and Julie says she hopes they're seeing that things would be much more peaceful and happy around camp without Phillip. Probst then asks Steve if it would be worth being called a racist if the result of it was that Phillip was voted out tonight instead of him. Steve says Zapato is voting for Phillip tonight and they're hoping that at least two people on Onomatopoeia are as sick of Phillip's antics as they are and vote for him, too. But not because he's black. Because he's annoying. Probst asks Phillip if he would think it was because of his race if he were voted out tonight. Phillip says if he's voted out tonight then that means "the tribe has spoken." That was not what Probst was asking, but whatever. They vote. Steve votes for Phillip, saying he hopes Phillip "finds peace someday" and that his crazy comment had nothing to do with Phillip's race. Julie votes for Phillip, saying he is crazy and it has nothing to do with his race. Ralph isn't going to be nearly as diplomatic with his vote for "Phile," saying with a huge smile that he hopes Phillip has a good time on Redemption Island wearing just his underwear and a feather. Phillip walks past David on his way to vote, and David casts a glance at the back of Phillip's underwear and just smiles and shakes his head. For the third time in a row, Phillip bonks his feather on the roof of the hut and votes for Julie.
Probst returns with the urn. He reads three votes for Phil, then one vote for Julie, who figures she's leaving now. I thought that was the only vote she'd get and Phil cast it out of anger, but then she gets a second vote. And a third. And a fourth. And a fifth. Wow. I assumed Steve was going to Redemption Island tonight, so this is a slight surprise. Julie makes sure to leave Phillip with some parting words: "guess you're not gonna ever find your shorts." Phillip just grins. Julie heads to Redemption Island. Wing Chun kung fu expert here.
You can read more from Sara Morrison at L.A.me, follow her on Twitter, or you can email her at saramorrison@gmail.com.