After taking a break from Survivor by recapping old Survivor, we're back! With more Survivor. ("Your logic does not resemble our Earth logic." "No, mine is much more advanced.")
Previously on Survivor: Of Thee I (No Longer) Matsing…Matsing was the new Ulong, except that they only lost four immunity challenges instead of eight and because there were two other tribes, got split up with two members still in the game. Malcolm found an Idol, spit on his old Matstink buff (not too classy) and was immediately accepted by the cool kids at Poontang, although since those included Apeshit Abi, he might have been better off on a tribe of two. At Wounded Knee, Probst continued to blame Katie for the Immunity Challenge loss, ignoring Jonathan/Carter/Dawson not being able to undo the rope, Jeff Kent needing a pinch-hitter on the woodchopping, and Dawson driving too close to the buoy in the regatta…er, grabbing puzzle pieces out of Jonathan's hands at a key moment. Given that Dawson also smirkily kept taunting Jeff Kent about knowing his secret, it was no surprise when she was sent off to film school and Katie stayed, but Probst made such a big "Katie was saved!" deal of it, that (combined with her episode 1 spotlighting) it's reasonable to assume that Katie's here for a good long run…we can only hope that she and RC start making out soon.
Six have been eliminated (including that lousy quitter, Dana) and no longer have the rain blowing in their face constantly; twelve remain. Who will be voted out and rediscover solid construction…TONIGHT?
Wounded Knee shuffle back to camp on Night 13, with Katie saying that they should make sure that's their only trip to Tribal. Of course, she's in a bad position right now, but she's not wrong…any less than five means they would be down numbers at the merge (assuming we even wait until Final Ten for that) and vulnerable to a Pagonging. (Not that this happens every year, but better safe than Pagong.)
Day 14
As the men frolic in the surf, Miss Delaware Katie and Godless Whore Denise confer about who has the Idol; Denise being pretty sure it's Jonathan, given that he brought his bag to Tribal last night "just in case". Miss Delaware tries to convince the Godless Whore that they should vote out Jonathan if they go back to Tribal, but a) they really need not to go back, and b) you'd need one of the guys for that, and they probably like the idea of Jonathan using his Idol to help the guy-lliance, post-merge.
Credits! Short and, thus, not sweet.
At Poontang, they are running out of rice. Even though, with all the rain, they haven't had that many opportunities to boil it. Sneaky Pete interviews that this is because Mike's been eating it raw, saying that chickens eat it that way, and your body temperature is almost 100°F anyway. Pete gripes that Mike makes "horrible decisions" and he's "the worst returning player ever" (ahem, Russell Hantz was a fucking nothing who got TWO returns), wah wah wah. Yeah, but at least he's eating. Any more of this crap and I may have to change Sneaky Pete's name to Weepy Pete.
Mike wants to make breakfast, but Apeshit Abi vetoes that. Challenge or no, she's all about conserving food. Invisible Artis also gets in on the action, complaining that he doesn't understand how Mike, as a returning player, can run through their stock of rice. Well (here we go again) but a) back in Mike's day, the players actually went out and got food (remember his killing the pig?) and b) in his season, there actually WAS a rice crisis and the tribes had to get an extra cache from Jeff, so it's not like he has a great track record on this. Although, IIRC, the rice crisis happened after the merge, after Mike was gone, and might have been due to the flood that washed through camp. But still, some of Mike's former tribemates (I think he was on the Rodger/Elisabeth tribe, if my memory is right) had eaten the rice then, too.
Invisible Artis says that he doesn't even consider Mike a part of Poontang. Which is funny because none of the other Poontangers have ever mentioned Artis in their strategic plans. Maybe he's not as good at diagnosing outcasts as he thinks? (But he did get the spotlight as a "new force" in episode 1, along with Carter and Katie, so he might be unlikely to be cast out any time soon.)
Reward challenge! It's the "roll a giant ball over the other team and into your goal challenge", most memorable for Judd Sergeant crushing Bobby Jon and Gary Hogeboom in Guatemala in Season 11. The teams are playing for food, and because the budget is apparently shot this year, the food is sandwiches and potato chips and instead of going to some "exotic" native cultural spot, they're just going to a dry hut, so that the staff carpenters can show these idiots how you build one. (Or, um, have a prefab one trucked in from Manila, for all I know.) Poontang is sitting two people out and while I'm sure Probst would be fine for for the icky girls to keep sitting out Every Fucking Challenge, apparently the other producers overruled him and are making Poontang bench a girl and a guy, matching Wounded Knee's gender balance.
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| "I can't believe they're actually letting the girls play. This is a MAN's challenge, dammit!" |
Poontang sits out Artis and (surprisingly) RC, apparently having heard the "can't sit out consecutive challenges" rule may be coming back, and wanting to be able to sit Lisa in the immunity challenge. (Presumably Abi can't sit this one out because she sat out the last IC, but it would be nice for Jeff to actually say that.)
First round is 2 guys/1 girl, so that's Weepy Pete, Skupin Bloody Skupin, and the Facts of Blair against Jonathan, Designated (by me) Homosexual Carter, and Godless Whore Denise. Despite the Mike-bashing going on, he beats track coach Carter to the ball, and pretty much holds his own against both Jonathan and Denise, as Pete takes Carter out of the action re-Petedly, and Lisa flutters around before finally being able to take down Denise. Wounded Knee gets an advantage when Jonathan pulls Mike down to make it a battle of the (not-really) babes, but then Mike picks up Carter and carries him twenty feet away, theoretically setting up Pete to bowl over Jonathan…but Jonathan is just as effect at holding the ball by pulling on it as Pete is by pushing it (heh, I accidentally wrote "pussying"…Freudian slip!), so I guess I'm going to have to change Weepy Pete to Wimpy Pete at this rate.
But soon Mike and Carter rejoin the battle and Jonathan has to come up with a…more creative…strategy to deal with Mike:
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| Man, Jonathan's getting desperate for some touch isn't he? First "get out of those wet clothes" to Dana and now this… |
The six contestants now settle into a Sculpture of Non-Effort: Mike sitting on Jonathan, Lisa holding tight to the Faithless Whore, and Wimpy Pete and Twinky Twig Carter entangled but not doing much of anything:
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| And…freeze! |
Supposedly this is going to come down to "endurance", but doesn't endurance mean trying to move the fucking ball? This is just inertia.
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| "Might as well settle in…" |
Seriously, when the spectators are grabbing a seat, you know there's not a lot of action going on.
One hour later, and there's a slight ripple of action when Pete pulls Carter down. Either that or they just fell over, it's tough to tell. But as Mike pushes, Jonathan escapes and blocks it. Jonathan tries to start negotiating, given that even if they win this, there are at least two more rounds to go. Mike says he could consider trading the reward for the rest of Wounded Knee's rice, but the spectating Poontangs (which is four of the seven) don't like that idea. Probst asks Jonathan what Wounded Knee would do for food and he's like "go fishing, duh!" So, even though Mike is, IMO, making a sweet deal here, commandeering the entire rice stock in exchange for a few lousy sandwiches (and Carter is dubious, saying they have like 5 days' worth of rice), the anti-Mike group at Poontang is not having it. As it is Artis's birthday (so that's why we don't see them talking to him…they were planning a surprise party, I'll bet!), Jeff Kent asks what he has to say, and gets back a sulky "You don't wanna hear what I have to say":
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| No, I don't think I do. You seem annoyingly pissy and negative. And lay off of my Mike! |
Artis wants to win, blahblahblah. Of course he hasn't been in the muck for an hour (questionable exertion of effort aside), nor is he going to be, since he's sitting out. Jonathan convinces Carter he can catch enough fish, Mike says that he and Pete are in favor of the deal (Blair doesn't count, I guess) and throws the question to the four non-muckers. Abi completely demurs for all of them, figuring it's easier to react than act, and so Mike seals the deal. It's interesting to note that Pete, who was just as angry with Mike as Suddenly Visible Artis was earlier in the episode, had no objections. Probably because Wimpy Pete had been actually sort of trying to move the ball for an hour. Guaranteed food sounds pretty good, then.
So that's a deal but I-Wish-He-Was-Invisible Artis is muttering about "not seeing the big picture". I guess he believes that deliberately "losing" the challenge will jinx their mojo or something. And, knowing how the producers love to push a "win or else" storyline (remember their hissyfit about Russell's tribe throwing the challenge to vote his producer-inflated troll ass out in the first "Producer's Island" season?), he might be right. I expect the IC to involve hitting a curve ball, just so they can "punish" Mike for this.
Wounded Knee goes and gets its reward. It's nice enough, but that's hardly an ass-load of food. However they do get letters from home, which I'm sure they will throw in Poontang's face at the Immunity Challenge, to throw them off their game. (Probst wouldn't have it any other way.)
By the way, it apparently became
Day 15
somewhere along the way, so I guess that it's only one day until the IC; that suits Wounded Knee just fine, I'm sure. Poontang doesn't get that much rice, just the same as they already had (so I guess Mike wasn't using up the rice excessively, huh, Pete? Huh, Artis?), but RC, the Rice Counter, thinks they came out ahead, since Wounded Knee is now out of food. Lisa and Malcolm also seem willing to glass-half-full it, but Artis and Abi are all tearing their garments and dressing in sackcloth and ashes and shit. Apeshit Abi is particularly bummed about how they "gave up" (or, you know, negotiated a compromise) and says that Wounded Knee would never have made the deal if they didn't have the boat and the fishing gear to tide them over.
Well, yes, brainiac, that's what makes the deal a win-win; Wounded Knee didn't need the rice as much as you did, and thus could trade it. You got what you needed, they got a luxury they were in a position to take. Maybe if YOU had won the fishing gear during that diving challenge (during which, you may recall, Useless Abi sat out [again] and Insufferable Artis and Wimpy Pete let Mike and RC do all the work), then you would be dealing from strength. As it was, there wasn't any point in gambling, so Mike took the sure thing.
Hey, what does Apeshit Abi do again, anyway?
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| "Negotiating? Return on investment? Guaranteed profit? Never heard the words." |
RC, Reliable Confidant, fills Mike in about Aris (and Pete and Abi) gossiping behind his back. She says she doesn't like any of them, but if Abi keeps going Apeshit, maybe everyone will hate her. (Except that her fellow Mean Girls don't seem the type to turn on her and she has the Idol. Doesn't seem like a Reasonable Chance, IMO.)
Day 16
It's sunny, so there's no problem fishing, and a stingray has even wandered back almost onto shore. For a second I think that everything is going Wounded Knee's way…but Jonathan can't spear the ray and only gets two tiny fish. I guess his exploits with the spear in Cook Islands were more about that being a great fishing spot, rather than about his skills. (Which means that Assy Ozzie, who built an entire rep by snotting about how much his tribe needed him for fishing that season, was basically shooting fish in a barrel, too. Fuck you, Assy Ozzie. As always.)
Carter complains that he can't go without food, given that he weighed about 110 pounds when the show started. Most agree with him but Jonathan says he doesn't need food the way the younger players do.
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| Gee, maybe it's because you bulked up with 30 pounds of moobs before the show? Ya think? |
Still, he notes that they really need to win the challenge, so…
Challenge! It's the "launch balls and knock the other tribe senseless trying to catch them" challenge, almost guaranteed to cause an injury. This is where somebody in JT's season lost a tooth. Having this and the "bowl 'em over" RC in the same episode, it's almost as if the producers want somebody to get hurt.
Again, Poontang must sit out a man and a woman and since Arits can't sit this out (apparently; still no overt mention of the Rule) the other three dudes rock-paper-scissors to see who sits. It's Mike, along with Useless Abi, of course, who gets to sit this one out, yet again, because she "participated" in the RC by standing on the sidelines for an hour and not voting on the decision. God, she sucks on so many levels. It's like a Skyscraper of Suck.
Lisa and Denise are shooting the balls; Jonathan is marking Artis, Carter and Malcolm are paired and Pete and Jeff are facing off, although of course anyone can get any ball. First to "five" wins. On the first try, Jonathan races in (as Artis is about 70 years old) and gets to a low ball first, making a good catch with the lacrosse stick they're using. 1-0 Wounded Knee.
Second attempt, both RC and Pete use their respective height advantages (and the fact that Miss Delaware isn't athletic and Jeff has a bum knee) to grab the two balls. Poontang, 2-1
Third attempt, both Katie and Carter miss the balls. Probst criticizes them for this, conveniently ignoring the fact that they were in position to make the plays and Poontang wasn't. So it's not like they got outperformed; they just didn't score.
Fourth attempt. Denise aims another low ball at Jonathan. He again outruns Immobile Artis (who has been off-camera the whole challenge, it seems) but can't snag the shoestring catch this time. Lisa waits until after this and lofts one up, but Jeff outreaches everybody for the point. 2-2.
Fifth attempt. Denise completely airmails her ball, but Jeff is able to snag the high ball Lisa sends up. Denise "whoo!"s undeservedly. Apparently Jeff is pretty good at going for the deep balls…it's almost as though he'd been a major league outfielder or something. (He mostly played second base, but I seem to recall there was one season where either the Astros or Giants put him in center field…I'd have to look that up, though.) And it's almost as if the producers picked a challenge to play to this strength because they want Wounded Knee to win…
Sixth attempt. Katie forgets to have her hand on the pole at the start (to ensure a fair start, all the outfielders start each round touching one of four poles) and when neither she nor RC can come up with Lisa's ball (Katie had the better shot at it, true), Jeff continues his Hate Parade, going "Katie, completely ineffective in this challenge!" She's caught as many balls as Artis, Carter and Malcolm combined, but of course, they're MEN, so Probst isn't going to bag on them. (Nor will he acknowledge that RC, who's Really Competitve at everything, has made a catch, and alleged stud Malcolm has come up empty.) Meantime, Jeff gets yet another ball, and Wounded Knee leads, 4-2.
Mike tells Lisa to shoot for Malcolm, and as much as the editors want you to think this is brilliant coaching, given that Malcolm gets a ball, he actually snagged Denise's shot, while Lisa's crashed to the ground unattended. Wounded Knee, 4-3.
Eighth attempt. Denise aims another long ball at Jeff; Pete can't go back on these like Jeff can, so he tries to jump up and deflect it. He completely misses, but when Jeff muffs the catch, Probst fluffs Pete by claiming Pete knocked it out of Jeff's hands. Yeah, surrre. Anything to praise the hot boy, huh, Probst? Meantime, Malcolm hooks around Carter and makes a diving snag of Lisa's ball. Probst spooges in his pants. 4-4.
Jonathan has skinny, defeated Carter switch with Jeff. I don't know about this; battling for the short balls doesn't seem to be Jeff's forte, and there's no reason Pete can't eat Carter's lunch as much as Malcolm's been doing. Still, best to cool the hot hand, perhaps.
Ninth (televised) attempt. Denise sends a low ball for Jonathan, but the ground is choppy in the front and even though he (again) outmaneuvers Immobile Artis, he stumbles and can't make the catch. Lisa goes short for Malcolm, and Jeff loses the shoving match, also stumbling on the choppy ground, as Malcolm makes the catch (and makes me eat my earlier words), giving Poontang the win. Mike and Abi congratulate everyone who played, Jeff gives the Idol to Lisa, who immediately hands it off to Abi. Because that's all Abi does for the tribe in challenges; hold the Idol.
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| "Gee, it's almost as if I earned it, or something." |
Probst makes her give it to Malcolm, since Malcolm was the tribe's star. Not that he's wrong about that, but I don't remember his making her give RC the idol when River Creature RC did like 90% of the diving challenge. Just sayin'.
Wounded Knee limps home (metaphorically) and considers the vote out. Neither Jeff nor Carter wants to lose Denise, so they consider whether to ditch Miss Delaware or follow the original "dump the veteran" possibility. Carter kind of wants to keep Jonathan because, being gay, he doesn't care how hot Miss Delaware is…er, rather, he thinks that Jonathan would be a target after the merge and "take the heat" off of Jeff and himself.
That's strategic thinking, but more suited for Big Brother, IMO, where an outnumbered faction can win Head of Household at any time, and so you only need to survive one vote at a time. Here, Poontang is going to be up either 7-3 or 6-4 at the merge, and if they want to Pagong you, you're all going to go. Nothing you can do about it. The arguments for keeping Jonathan are more along the lines of the usefulness of his Idol; you can use it to block Poontang's strategy, and knowing you have an Idol may make it easier to recruit dissatisfied Poontangers to your side, which you're going to need to do. Also, if you're down 7-3, they can split the votes and get one of you out, but if it's 6-4, a well-used Idol would send one of them home, so it's still important to win the next Immunity Challenge, and obviously Jonathan would be more use there, because Katie is completely ineffective and…hey, when did Probst start writing this blog?
Jeff might be thinking that Jonathan's Idol will get put back in play and he can grab it for himself, but there's no guarantee of that, and if it is, it would probably only be before the merge, meaning they had three days, tops, to get a clue and find the Idol. And that's assuming they can blindside Jonathan in the first place. Seems like Jeff is just swinging for the fences here, but we will see.
Carter is so blown that he asks Jonathan who it's going to be, "Katie or Penner?". He covers for his error before Jeff can facepalm hard enough to bust an eye socket, and Jonathan, not thinking too clearly either, doesn't know a Freudian slip when he hears one. For him, the decision is about keeping Denise for strength or keeping Katie because they want to be loyal to the original Wounded Knee tribe (and also presumably worry that Malcolm could influence Denise, after the merge). Jonathan "decides" on Katie, who promptly walks up to the guys, prompting an immediate "it's Denise" from Jonathan, who then beats a hasty retreat to go fishing. Katie, who knows an awkward escape when she sees one, asks the other guys what's going on, and while they are non-committal, she urges that they dump Jonathan.
Jeff and Carter confer, knowing that they are the swing votes. Jeff is wavering now, but is just paranoid about "getting screwed" by Jonathan. It's the downside of being a returning player; sometimes you run into people who just assume you're so dangerous based on your finishing seventh and twelfth in your two previous attempts. Seriously, wait until this guy gets beyond being "Juror #3" before you panic about his "skills", okay? Carter pushes back (well, as forcefully as a wishy-washy emaciated twig can push) that "it's [about] getting there, man!", i.e., let's worry about trusting Jonathan in the end game once we get through the middle game. Perhaps unfortunately, Jonathan comes up right now, sees the guys struggling about their decision, and blindly assumes it's still about choosing which girl to vote off. Hey, Jonathan, that's Jeff Kent, not Jeff Probst. He may not be as automatically inclined to lose the icky females as you think.
Jonathan reassures Carter that voting out Katie will make them "a stronger four". Ironically, what he is doing is telling the kid that it's okay to break your word to vote out an ally…when Carter is thinking about doing it to him, not Katie.
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| I guess they won't, at that. |
They head off to Tribal, with Jeff interviewing that voting out Katie would be "an easy play". Hey, nothing wrong with doing the easy thing, Jeff. No need to make things complicated if you don't need to. He continues, unleashing a barrage of baseball metaphors: "you [can] strike out or hit a home run, but you go up to the plate, swing the bat". Ironically, one of the reasons why Jeff was such a good hitter was that he drew plenty of walks…
Tribal! Probst asks who feels vulnerable and Denise and Katie raise their hands. Denise because she's still the new kid, and Katie because Probst practically tells Wounded Knee to vote her out every chance he gets. Probst continues, not at all subtly, "Hey, Jonathan, you know BLINDSIDES HAPPEN, SHOULDN"T YOU BE WORRIED, HINT, HINT?" (Well, not quite that obviously, but close.) Jonathan is like "don't put ideas in their heads, Jeff; I'm trying to not raise the issue of my being a target." Well, he's too late on two counts; his being a target was fairly guaranteed because he's a returning player, and the decision isn't going to be made at Tribal. In fact, given that they know you have an Idol, the only possible shift that would happen in votes at the last minute is if the others back off of a blindside attempt, which they would do if they thought you would play the Idol. Which is a perception that a "gosh, yes, I'm worried, Jeff" speech would aid. Jes' sayin".
Jeff (Probst) asks Jeff (Kent) if this will be a tough vote, and Kent says that they all like each other a lot, so every vote is tough, and they're just going to blindside people because they don't think their friends deserve an honest answer or something. (Really, I can't make heads or tails of the logic here.) Jonathan agrees, blindsiding is simpler, because you don't have any drama at camp beforehand. (What a wimp.)
Probst, never one for the subtle, asks Jonathan "So if IT'S YOU THAT GETS BLINDSIDED, HINT, HINT, HINT, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE DANGER, IDIOT!" (I may have added some of that…) But Jonathan just takes it as a question about being able to deal with defeat and says he wouldn't be happy, but he would respect the gameplay.
Probst asks Kent if he plays any game that's like Survivor. Uh, how many games would that be, exactly? Big Brother and Bachelor Pad are about the only two I know of that use the "contestants vote out each other" format in use here. Kent, fighting hard not to compare this individual game to being part of a 25-man baseball team, says Survivor is unique and that's why it sucks (Probst takes umbrage, rather than accepting this as a shout-out to a certain website…), because you're voting out your friends. "You take on friends and…you know you're going to blindside your friend because you're too guilty to tell him 'I don't want you here'."
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| "Hmm, why is Jeff talking about blindsiding a 'him' when we're choosing between the two girls? That's odd. Oh, I guess it's probably nothing…" |
Probst asks Katie what she's basing her vote on and she plays the "loyalty" card, saying she's going to stick to what she agreed. Probst asks Jonathan about that, and he's saying that she may be sending a message to someone (but he probably still thinks it's a "get Denise" appeal, since he doesn't know about the Day 1 Cave Conclave, where the five newbies agreed to ditch his ass assap), and then goes on a long ramble about "if it was me, and they told me, I'd probably be scrambling and I might get the vote to ricochet on one of them"…and I'm almost convinced he knows what's coming and is taunting the others by warning them it won't work But he goes on about how this is good gameplay and that's why he's voting the way he is, the person voted out will get the message "loud and clear" so there's no need to tell them to their face…it just adds to the "ah-gitation" of it all.
Well, first of all, I think this is bullshit reasoning. Yes, you want to try and blindside someone with an Idol, but as a general rule, man up. Don't be afraid of some scrambling at camp. Jeez. And for a guy who didn't raise his hand because he didn't want to plant the seed of vulnerability in his tribemates' minds, he sure is doing a lot of "if it was me getting voted out" hypothesizing. Time to go, schmo.
Voting: Katie votes for Jonathan (oh, excuse me, "Penner"…Probst's surname-usage for his favorites is annoying if everyone starts copying him), and Jonathan votes for Katie. So clearly he's not playing the Idol, as he wouldn't waste it on her if his closer allies were turning on him. We get the mild suspense of the other three voting, before the 4-1 vote is revealed, almost certainly for Jonathan. (What sort of "new force" would Katie be if she got tossed before the merge, after all?)
Probst goes to "tally the votes", but instead of masturbating, this time he attempts to cross out the four "Penner" votes and write "Katie, Katie, damn it, Katie!" on each of them. But the rest of the producers over-rule him and he comes back with the urn. He mentions the Idol, everybody looks at Jonathan, blatantly, and Jonathan, aware of this…reaches up and flicks his glasses. That's pretty toolish. Not going to miss him that much, after this.
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| "Not a care in the world." Well, either that or "Stacy, baby, I'll be Skyping you from sequester, soon!". One or the other. |
Votes: We see Jonathan's vote for Katie and then Katie's vote for "penner", which makes Jonathan chuckle. He clearly didn't know she was voting that way. And I clearly didn't know she was alone, because here come two more "Katie" votes and she's gone. Wow. I feel as though I got blindsided; I was sure we were seeing the lead-up to Jonathan getting snuffed. I guess Probst wasn't trying to push Jonathan into using the Idol to save his returning-player ass; he wanted Jonathan to burn it out of paranoia, and tried to stoke those fires. Interesting.
Next episode: Malcolm bonds with Lisa, and everyone has to leave Poontang's beach. Merge? Shuffle? Utter randomness? Find out here…unless you already saw the episode back in October. (Oh, you're no fun!)
WRAP-UP:
As noted, I was misled by the editing of episode 1; clearly Malcolm and RC and Sneaky Pete (and even Apeshit Abi) are all turning out to to be more of a "new force" than Katie did, her one attempt at a coup aside. I get the feeling that the girls (well, I'm betting on Dawson, actually) were a bit too obvious about their counter-alliance attempt, and so the guys didn't mind voting them out and sticking with Denise, who seems grateful to be included.
On the plus side, this might mean that Insufferable Artis and Twiggy Carter are not long for the game, either. Carter still has a chance to grow on me, though. Well, not physically…boy must be down to 95 lbs by now.
Leave a comment, or Artis will glare at you, judgmentally! (Okay, he's going to do that anyway. But still.)
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