In the wake of the Jonas elimination, the women hold a 6-5 majority, which has Kim pondering her options (stay with the original women's alliance or her more recent Salani group?) and Troyzan and Jay the Model fretting that, among other things, Kim may be pondering her options. Jay hopes their vote-out will be a girl, thus restoring the gender balance.
At the reward challenge, a giant waterslide and oversized puzzle cubes came into play, and the team of Mike, Kim, Leif, Christina, and Sabrina eke out a narrow victory, earning themselves an isolated getaway with all the 7Up they can drink. And while the Survivor rewards are mostly you-had-to-be there affairs, I totally get the appeal here, as I would probably go running into the ocean for a cold glass of 7Up right now. Anyway, on the reward, while Leif is pigging out loudly, Kim pulls Sabrina aside and they talk options. They decide that it's more advantageous to them to stick with the women alliance (more advantageous, maybe, but more boring TV, and if it means throwing Jay the Model over for Alicia, count me OUT). Their first target looks to be Mike, the biggest and the strongest of the guys (also the in-their-alliance-est of the guys, so voting him out would certainly make a statement).
Back at camp, Kat talks to the reward-losers about voting out Mike as well, which makes Troyzan privately wary about depleting the supply of dude on the island. But when the rewarded return to camp, it takes Kim about three seconds to convince Troyzan that Mike has been campaigning against him and that he should be to go.
So suddenly, Mike needs to win immunity desperately, though he doesn't know it. But he chokes in the knot-untying part of the challenge, and then Jay the Model makes a most unlikely comeback in the puzzle round to take individual immunity. Which leaves Kim with a big decision (as far as the show is concerned, Kim is running the girls' alliance). She seems set on ditching Mike, until Chelsea makes the big blunder of asking Jay to vote for Mike in front of Alicia and Christina. Jay (rightly) assumes that letting the women who are ostensibly not in the Salani alliance listen in on strategic planning means there may not be a Salani alliance. Maybe go back to squabbling with Tarzan about stupid stuff, Chelsea. Kim gets word that Jay is twigged and manages to nimbly convince both Mike and Jay that they're all voting Christina, all while keeping the two of them from talking about how fishy Chelsea was being. Kim's good.
At Tribal Council, Jeff expends a whole lot of energy trying to harsh the tribe's good mood and underlining the fact that nobody thinks they're the one going home tonight. Jeff Probst gets more worked up over really standard gameplay than anybody I know. The breakdown of the TC votes is another point in Kim's favor, as far as I'm concerned: Mike and Tarzan vote for Christina, fine. Kim and her alliance vote for Mike. And then Alicia and Christina throw their votes to Tarzan, which gives the women plausible deniability that they're a solid bloc. Also, Kim managed to get Jay onboard with voting Mike, which is a conversation I really wish we'd seen. Anyway, later, Mike! You were pretty boring but not terrible!
Previously: Colton was probably the worst thing the show had foisted on the public since Elisabeth Hasselbeck (oh, calm down -- she's fine), but he was felled by the most heroic stomach bug of all time, so the show panicked and merged the tribes super early and thus the 12-person monstrosity voted Jonas out last week because... no reason, really. Also, Tarzan washed his poopy pants with Chelsea's non-poopy pants.
The Jonas vote-out was pretty standard, so there were no late-night rantings and ravings after tribal. The morning, Troyzan and Jay the Model are beach-walking and talking strategy. I have to admit something right off the bat: I am, much to my surprise, really into Jay the Model. When the season started, he seemed a little dumb, a smidge stupid, perhaps a bit of a dim bulb. But as One World went on and almost all of my hatred was funneled into Colton and Alicia (with a bit held over for Tarzan), Jay started seeming like a better option. And while he's not going to be giving up his cushy gig wearing underpants for a living to go to grad school or anything, it turns out he has a decent grasp of what's happening in this game. Case in point: this talk with Troyzan, where they're appropriately wary of being on the shallow side of the gender imbalance. The show kind of plays it like it might be a sexist thing -- Jay's askeered of the powerful castrating women -- but considering the game started with gender-aligned teams, Jay's absolutely right to be worried that whatever original women's alliance there was would re-form now. Anyway, on the ominous note of a women's alliance (and after a generous shot of the boys' butts from the POV of, perhaps, one of the island's free-range chickens) we hit the credits.
After the break, we're back with Jay and Troyzan, who have reached the tree-mail tree and have re-tree-ved (sorry) a message in a bottle. Specifically a 7Up bottle. Troyzan, who's more of a wild man than I gave him credit for, is all, "Someone's havin' a party!" Because: 7Up! Also, Jay obligingly says "the un-cola" at least twice, which is hilarious to me because A) I love when reality TV people pitch the sponsors without even having to be asked, because they're that well-versed in TV, and B) hasn't "the un-cola" been 7Up's marketing pitch for at least ten years? Doesn't 7Up itself seem like an antiquated brand that we'll soon recall like we recall RC Cola or Tab? Didn't Sierra Mist totally cut 7Up off at the knees? Remember when those little red dot characters were everywhere? For this and other remembrances of pop commercials of yore, please visit my web site, YouGotTheRightOneBabyUhHuh.tumblr.com. Anyway, the tribe correctly guesses that the 7Up bottle means that the reward challenge will be for some 7Up. Guess Jay's not the only one who's smarter than he seems.
(Okay, one more modeling photo of Jay before I move on. Just because underwear models wearing clothes is the most hilarious thing to me. Enjoy it, folks! Enjoy that cowl-neck.)
At the reward challenge site, the most dominant images are a pair of giant slopes that resemble sawed-off ski-jump ramps. They are steep as fuck. Everybody oohs and ahhs. The headband that Jay has to wear to keep his luxurious, surely bug-infested hair out of his chiseled face is even in awe of these slides. This really is the part of the season where everybody's wardrobe quirks start to feel like they're actually tormenting you. Or is it just me who's sick of seeing Alicia's un-supportive bikini top, Chelsea's ratty camo ballcap and Leif's nipple studs? Jeff explains the challenge: the contestants will split into two teams, who will slide one-by-one down the waterslide, then sprint out into the ocean, retrieve these huuuuge crates and bring them back to the beach. As each crate is brought back, another teammate can then slide on into the game. Once all crates are retrieved, the tribe then assembles them according to the pattern painted on them. So your standard physical + puzzle challenge. Winning team gets taken to a "7Up Oasis," and I wish you could see Jeff's face when he says "oasis," awash in ecstasy and lemon-lime-flavored bubbles. Jeff has spent some time at the 7Up Oasis and he's been more than satisfied. (The 7Up Oasis has now become a strip club in Santa Monica, in my mind, and you'll not be changing that any time soon, sorry.) Basically, they get to go to a cabana and eat food and drink endless bottles of cold 7Up. They all get to split one bottle as a sample of what they're playing for. Crisp, clean backwash from the mouths of the filthiest people on television (non-E! division).
The teams are divided off-camera, which is a bummer. It's done, as Jeff is so fond of saying, "schoolyard pick-em" style and those are always fun to watch and see who likes who best. Anyway, one team has Jay, Troyzan, Chelsea, Alicia, and Kat. The other team has Michael, Kim, Sabrina, Christina, and Leif. Important note: Jay splashes water onto his chest and arms before he begins, so as to reduce friction on his slide down. I watched it twice to make sure, and... yep! That's what he did. Okay! Let's reward-challenge it up!
So Jay and Troyzan give their team a bit of a lead, but that's squandered by the time Sabrina slides in for the other team and Kat struggles to un-clip one of the boxes. (Also, Tarzan is rooting pretty vocally for the Jay/Troyzan team, for whatever weird Tarzan reason.) The lead is built up again by the time the teams get all their boxes back -- in part because Christina decides to abandon the final box-hauling so she can scope out the puzzle pattern. You figure that's going to get Christina eviscerated back at camp, but maybe it turned out to be a good idea, because despite the TroyJay headstart, Team MiKimBrina comes all the way back and wins it. Leif celebrates kind of a lot, earning him a muttered "shut up" from Chelsea, which I can't entirely blame her for. He does tell Jeff it's his first reward of the season, so fine.
At the reward -- amid lots of product-placed glamor shots -- there's a feast and a cabana and a pool, the latter of which I'm not sure holds quite the appeal after being on a beach for two weeks as it does for, say, someone trapped in an urban frying pan in the middle of summer. Sabrina says a rather thoughtful prayer before they eat and they dig in. Kim talks about what a boon the food is, even to her thinking process, which I think is a totally underrated aspect of the game. I'm sure half these people would be walking fools anyway, but the hunger can't help their states of mind.
A bit later, as Leif and Mike continue to pig out, Kim is lying down like maybe she's weary from digestion. But then she invites Sabrina to recline near her and they begin strategizing. They both admit they're planning for well down the line and they need to figure out now which direction they want to go. Sabrina says something about there needing to be three "good people" at the end, which is the kind of talk that always annoys me, but I think ultimately it boils down to the fact that Kim and Sabrina can't trust anybody to take to final three more than they trust Chelsea, so that's what they want. Kim wants to take Mike out , but she doesn't exactly want to blow up the Salani alliance either, so they make a plan to tell Troyzan that Mike has been conspiring against him. Kim figures Troy will immediately come to their side and vote Mike out. Then, along with Alicia and Christina, they'll have six girls to four boys "and then we'll just annihilate 'em." Sabrina likes that idea as much as Leif likes the burger he's chowing down on.
Back at Tikiano beach, the losers are bumming. Tarzan is literally chewing on bamboo. It's a bad scene. Chelsea, showing flashes of her later indiscreet gameplay, wants to talk about whom they should vote our . Troy and Jay want to vote Christina, but Kat makes the case for Mike, which makes me think Kim had discussed this plan of hers before just now with Sabrina. Jay interviews that this talk of eliminating Mike is making him nervous. He says he's going to have to keep checking back with his alliance to make sure they're all on the same page, comparing it to "a teacher just keeps smacking a student, making sure they're on the same page." An indelicate analogy, to be sure, but I think it's a stretch to read any kind of physical threat into that, as I've read in certain places.
The rewarded return home to camp with a giant crate filled with 7Up (which I read somewhere was a condition of the sponsorship, that the winners would bring a cooler back that could be shared for days to come). It really is genius to get your product on Survivor. You'll never have a more receptive focus group. Meanwhile, Troy interviews that he's going to have to check and make sure Kim, Chelsea, and Sabrina are still on the Salani plan.
After the commercials, it's time to check in on Survivor's very own spinoff series, The Adventures of Tarzan Poopypants. This week, it's been very stormy on ol' Survivor Beach and the other survivors are scrambling to make sure their shelter keeps them safe from the elements. But not Tarzan! Instead, Tarzan starts removing bamboo that is leaning on the shelter and begins chopping it for firewood. This despite, as Chelsea points out, the fact that they have plenty of firewood already chopped. Why does Tarzan do this? I dunno, why does ALF eat cats? He just does! Now shut up and find him addled and hilarious! Chelsea, still reeling from last week's trip to Skid Row and no longer inclined to give Tarzan the benefit of the doubt, questions his foray into literal slash-and-burn, which earns her a short-tempered, unpleasant response. He's all "do you think I'm that stupid?" about it, which clearly she does and the whole time he's still holding the machete and waving it all around. I don't think he intends to be threatening, but the point with Tarzan is that it's often so hard to know exactly what it is he intends, because he's always going off half-cocked.
Oh, but THEN! The best part. So Tarzan interviews that Chelsea has been "subliminally harassing" him and that he feels "unfairly maligned" (I don't think these are big, advanced-vocab words, but just in case Jeff Probst ends up reading this, I put them in scare quotes). And he thinks he knows why! So he pulls Chelsea aside and levels with her -- he knows she's dissatisfied with the boob job she got and that has consequently made her hate all plastic surgeons, such as Tarzan. Who is a plastic surgeon. This is not news, of course, but it flips me out every time I hear it. Poor Dr. Will onBig Brother worked so hard to establish the image of plastic surgeons as vain, handsome and almost sociopathically self-obsessed and Tarzan's just tearing all that work apart. Chelsea is, as you might imagine, speechless at this assertion and to her credit, she doesn't make a huge fight about it; she just kind of shakes her head and tells him how incredibly off-base he is and then walks away. Clearly, Chelsea would be fine with getting rid of Tarzan sooner than later. But she knows that, rationally, he's not a high-priority target at this stage of the game. Super bummer.
Meanwhile, Kim gets to the work of convincing Troyzan to vote against Mike. Now, given the earlier segment where Troy seemed awfully wary of the women rising up as one and getting rid of Mike, you might think this would be a hard sell. Nope! Kim barely gets through her bald-faced lie about how Mike has been going around the tribe talking about getting rid of him before Troyzan is beating the drum for getting rid of Mike. "I hate that guy," Troyzan suddenly decides. Then Kim's like, "But don't say anything about it, okay?" I mean, props to Kim in general for going with the Big Lie strategy, but it's hard not to think Troy's being a credulous dummy right here, as he interviews about what a terrible person Mike suddenly is and how he "should've been gone on Day 1."
At the immunity challenge, the survivors have to race down a ladder bridge while guiding bags of puzzle pieces (this show LOVES it some bags of puzzle pieces; Mark Burnett ended up in the pocket of Big Puzzle so gradually we barely even noticed) along a rope. The first four to make it to the end of the bridge with their puzzle pieces get to advance to the second round, wherein the puzzles will be solved and nothing will be the same again. The usual suspects (Jay, Troyzan, Mike, Kim, Chelsea) get out to an early lead. Jay gets to the end first, followed by Kim. Mike's super-close, but he's gotten hung up on one of the bags, which does not go unnoticed by Jeff, who likes nothing more than to call out failure while the challenge is still in progress. I dearly hope one day Jeff Probst has to walk through life with someone screaming into his ear about everything he's doing wrong. ("That flossing motion is NOT GETTING IT DONE!") Troy's stuck too, but he finally makes it to the finish line. Mike's not so lucky, as he's ultimately taken over for the fourth and final slot by Alicia. ALICIA! Might as well just pack it in now.
In the second stage of the competition... well, it's a puzzle. YOU try recapping four people doing puzzles. I mean... it's a 3D puzzle... that's supposed to end up looking like a cube... and you can think you've got it totally figured out until the very last piece doesn't fit. And it looks like the whole thing takes forever. That's really all there is to say. So instead, let's discuss Jay's tank top. A friend mentioned to me the other day how the teeny little spaghetti straps really make him look even more muscular than he already is. Also, dingy-salmon is so in this season. Looking sharp, Jay! Anyway, Kim is the first person to seem like she's got it solved, but her last piece sticks out of the top of the cube like a beacon of failure. Meanwhile, Jay is going really slowly and lagging waaaaaay behind the group. But as Kim and Troy and Alicia get thwarted by those last few stubborn pieces, Jay creeps closer and closer and before you know it, Jay wins. The show/Jay tries to sell it as a "slow and steady wins the race" kind of thing, which I'm not sure I totally buy but fine! Well planned, Model Jay! Enjoy your immunity!
After the break, Jay narrates that given Jonas's ouster last week, it's only fair they vote out Christina this week, basically as a gesture of good faith by the Salani women. Of course, Jay has no idea that the Salani women are planning to jump ship. Kim solidifies with Troyzan that they're voting for Mike, then interviews that her one concern at the moment is Jay. She's not at all certain how he'll react to the news that Mike is the target. She doesn't need him figuring out her plans or queering the deal with Troy. So pretty much the last thing Kim needs to happen is what happens . Chelsea and Jay are in the shelter with Alicia and Christina and Chelsea asks Jay what he thinks about getting rid of Mike. Jay says frankly that he's scared of all these girls; what's to say he's not the target after Mike goes? Chelsea does the world's worst job of assuaging, monotoning, "That's not necessarily true." Jay gives lie to the prevailing stereotype of boys with chiseled facial features and a killer pout being dumb when he correctly intuits that "not necessarily" is not the most ringing of endorsements. Chelsea clams up after this, and the other two women dare not speak, which leaves Jay to do a lot of assuming. He recaps the situation in an interview, noting that the fact that Chelsea said this in front of Alicia and Christina -- two members of the supposed opposite alliance -- makes him wonder about how tight Salani is right now.
Chelsea goes to Kim and Sabrina and reports the conversation. They're not happy. Kim interviews much to the same effect as Jay, saying that talking strategy in front of two women who aren't supposed to be in their alliance was "asinine," and it leaves it to her to clean up Chelsea's mess. Kat tells them that Mike and Jay just went for a walk, which sends Kim darting out into the jungle. She's already holding onto this plan with both hands; now she has to keep Jay from telling Mike what happened. And here's the craziest thing -- she does! The way the show presents it -- and I understand there are concerns about editing, but this is the show we've all signed up to watch so let's accept what we're seeing -- Jay starts to say, "So check this out, we were sitting back at the shelter..." and before he can even finish his sentence, Kim's like, "Let's do Christina." With all the authority of Hera on Olympus. And it shuts Jay up and it gets them to talking about how Christina, Alicia, Leif, and Tarzan are all sitting ducks that they should get rid of those four and put everyone else at ease. She then instructs Jay to take her to see Jabba now.
So Mike is feeling totally at ease. Christina's going home tonight. No worries! No scrambling. Everybody can just take it easy, enjoy a Cool Refreshing 7Up Beverage and not even worry about it. What a fun game this is! "As long as it's not happening to you," he allows, "it's okay." He does mention that it would be ironic if he were to say this and then get blindsided by his own alliance, but "I don't see that happening." I wonder if when people say stuff like that on reality shows, they know just how much they've fucked up like the second it's out of their mouths. Don't tempt the depraved gods that live below Survivor Island! They subsist on a diet of schadenfreude and scraps of product-placed foodstuffs! They live for this shit!
Kim returns to the girls and tells them about how she mind-zapped Jay into not saying anything to Mike. The she lays out their options, saying they need to decide whether they're going to pull the trigger and turn on the Salani guys this early. As Kim correctly says, if Mike goes home camp life is going to get pretty turbulent. It would probably be an easier decision to make if the strongest guys weren't the ones in their alliance, but they are and I can see why Kim wouldn't want to wait around for them to realize that, even under the most ideal circumstances, they're still outnumbered 4 (Kim, Sabrina, Chelsea, Kat) to 3 (Mike, Troyzan, Jay). I still wonder if Kim might have considered a third option and played the "this situation with Tarzan has become untenable; he and his underpants need to go for the good of the tribe" card. It buys herself another three days of Salani unity while still cutting a guy loose. But whatever, it's not like I'm not going to respect a Big Move like this when it happens. The women Pagonging the men isn't going to be great TV, but it's great game -- especially on Kim's part.
Tribal Council. Juror #1 Jonas gets a big smile from Jay, whose face is gleaming almost as much as the giant hubcap hanging around his neck. Yet another rainy council, so Jeff Probst has to ask smug, loaded questions while looking progressively dewier. He starts off by asking who among the eleven thinks they are the one going home tonight. Nobody raises their hand, which Jeff finds absolutely fascinating and proceeds to harp on it for the rest of TC. Is it really that shocking that no one raised their hand? The way the game is played, you're not supposed to know if you're the to be eliminated. Sure, it happens that the writing is that clearly on the wall, but more often than not, the smart play is to mislead the intended victim. It's happened literally dozens of times. Yet Jeff remains transfixed by the notion of a "blindside." Please God don't ever let Jeff play Old Maid because you just never know when that ol' bitch is going to show up and Jeff might never recover from such a shocker. He then uses his inside information about the goings on at camp to "intuit" that this means there are a lot of alliances back at camp and that everyone feels secure in them. Jeff then decides to essentially poll the tribe one by one to ask if they think they're in danger. They all would be very surprised to be voted out, including Mike, which is really the sound-bite this whole endeavor was designed to produce.
Jeff's still having trouble wrapping his head around the concept of misdirection, so Kim breaks it down for him: the reason nobody seems worried is that certain people currently have faith in an alliance that's not really an alliance anymore. She chooses her words very carefully so that both Troy/Jay and Christina/Alicia will hear confirmation that Kim's aligned with them: "We all did have our first alliances, but then we had time to develop new relationships. I think you always have to keep your options open and then know when to stick with a plan." Of course, Jeff has to call her out for giving a "carefully worded" answer, because at some point Jeff decided his role at tribal council was to affect change and blow up people's spots. Anyway, Chelsea follows up with a response that is as clumsy and ham-handed as Kim's was delicate and clever: "I think in a way you want to be aligned with more than two groups. Maybe you want to be aligned with three groups and just see which has more trust." Now, seriously, what the shit is that? Chelsea just straight up told everybody that she is working multiple alliances and that she's even now undecided as to which one she trusts more. On top of that, does Chelsea even HAVE three alliances? Why would you call yourself out for having more alliances than you do?? If you're wondering why I'm all over calling Kim a master strategist this week, it's partly because we're realizing that the other members of her alliance (save Sabrina, who seems pretty on-point) are clearly not the brains behind the operation.
Alicia then babbles something about not knowing who to trust. Remember when it seemed like Alicia was Head Bitch of the girls' tribe? Until everyone realized she was heinous and got over her? That was fun. Jeff then goes to Tarzan, so this should kill some time with inanity. In classic Tarzan style, the actual content of what he says is true -- nobody's going to tell Jeff the truth while they're juggling multiple alliances, which is why they all clammed up -- but he delivers it in such a cock-eyed manner that you just assume he's a nutbar. Also, he keeps saying "the game is afoot," which makes it seem like he's doing dinner-theater Sherlock Holmes. "You're being played!" he concludes, which gets a look of smug amusement from Jeff and a lot of condescending laughter from the tribe. Jeff tsk-tsks them for laughing when SO MUCH is on the line tonight. Kat, making me like her, basically tells Jeff to calm down, as laughing at Tarzan and his "rantics" is pretty much the only sane way to deal with him. They refer to these "rantics" as getting "Tarzanned." Which seems about right.
Mike gets one more moment in the spotlight to talk about his awesome truthfulness and how he believes everybody in camp is lying and scrambling except for the people he's with. I'm also very glad to report that I only just now realized how much Mike resembled Bill and Barb Henrickson's oldest son from Big Love. Thank God I won't have very long to dwell on it, because it's votin' time! We are not made privy to anybody's votes, which keeps the suspense alive. And even as Jeff begins to read them, it seems like anybody's game: two votes for Christina, two for Tarzan, two for Mike. But then there's a third vote for Mike. And then I spot his adult braces. It's all gone wrong for Mike at once! The rest of the votes are for Mike and at the last one, he kind of raises his eyebrows in exasperation, like, "Whatever, if you guys want to be STUPID about it." Boring and entitled. Not gonna miss him.
Jeff then tries to do his little Final Thought, which is as off-base this week as it usually is. He tries to sell three people getting votes as cause for much tribal unrest, because he's too stupid to realize that Alicia and Christina's votes for Tarzan were likely completely strategic and designed to throw folks like Troyzan and Jay off the scent of an all-girls alliance. Far more significant to me is when we find out over the credits that Jay voted for Mike (the second Christina vote came from Tarzan, likely because nobody wanted to chance letting Tarzan in on the real plan). I would be VERY interested to see how Kim swung Jay's vote. Alas, I guess we needed more time for Tarzan's Plastic Surgery Intervention.
week: the men appear to have caught wise to the women's plan, and Jay appears to be courting Kat as a swing vote.
Joe R is hoping the girls string Jay along longer than Tarzan. He's not optimistic. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com, and you can listen to him yammer on to his heart's content on the Extra Hot Great podcast.
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