Thu, March 4, 2004

Sorry I'm running a bit late with all this, but honestly – just because I said I'd write about every episode this season, doesn't mean I have to write about them each separately. It'll get a lot easier to be enthusiastic once McThursday starts again. (And besides, I can't be held responsible for being so busy working on the Oscar pool. Take it up with Holly for putting so much pressure on me. Really, do it. She gets all flustered and it's hilarious and adorable.)

It can be so nice to have everything stored in a database so you can just call it up whenever you need it. From January 30th of this year:

anyone who doesn't vote to eject Richard Hatch at the earliest possible opportunity deserves to be stabbed in the eye

See that? Damn right! Being 150-200% right is a good feeling. Granted, the lovely and telekinetic Jenna M was ejected before Hatch, but this was the earliest possible opportunity for Mogo Mogo to vote against him, and they did! No matter how much Burnett and his band of merry deceptive editors tried to persuade us otherwise, booting Hatch is exactly what Mogo Mogo was up to – unanimously, even, if you don't count Hatch (which, again, I don't). Good for them. I knew at some point all that sniping and gleeful sabotage of his own team would catch up with him. For a few moments, Burnett had me questioning my instincts, which as we know are never wrong about reality shows. (Oh my god, I was positive Larissa was going to pick Brian Worth, by the way! Not only had I been wanting it for weeks – ever since she booted David Daskal – but I just really started to believe that she had understood the point and knew how much more he had to offer. They got me. They tricked me by editing out the good parts of Gil's last date and focusing on the amazing parts of Brian's. Shame on her, indeed.) Hatch refused to acknowledge that Survivor: All-Stars is a very different game than Survivor – particularly Survivor 1 (Survivor: Borneo). He just carried on being smug and bitchy and he believed that somehow made him the puppetmaster. I'm so delighted that it blew up in his face. I've never been happier to be right. (Although, I must admit that it's a tie with about 15 billion other times.)

But, before we get into CBS's cynical, deplorable "disclaimer" strategy and Hatch's penis-wagging, we must begin at the beginning. After all, despite the fact that rigorous scientific testing at the molecular level reveals no trace of Rob Cesternino ever being on the island, Probst insists that he was there long enough to be snubbed and eliminated by Chapera. (As Boston Rob says, "at least one of three people is going home." Uh, yeah, genius. I think mathematically it's referred to as "exactly one.") Plus I can't pass up an opportunity to rail against my most hated of hateds, couples playing coy at TribCon.

For some reason, that still gets me. Why is it that everyone in the game has this instinctive feeling that Probst is their mom? It's just silly. After much footage of Rob M and Amber snuggling through the storm, Chapera wins the reward challenge and gets to take home the Product Placement Platter – a bunch of shower products and other comforts from Herbal Essences and Scope and other brand names. So we get treated to a few shots of nearly-nude Amber being bathed by Rob in the ocean. Whatever. They hide it from nobody; not the cameras and certainly not the rest of Chapera. However, once they're at Tribal Council, for some reason they feel like they have to deny it. Why? It's not against the rules to make out. Probst can't censure you or send you home. And if anyone were more likely to vote against you as a result of your Coalition of the Snuggling, then they already know by now that you're an item, so drop the charade! I think what happens is that people know they're supposed to be deceitful and dishonest on Survivor but during all the games and other activities they're too busy doing things to be sneaky. At night, in the heavily themed set that is Tribal Council, they are reminded that they're on TV and so they should be making stuff up, so they start lying. It's the only explanation I can think of.

While this is all happening of course, lots is afoot at Mogo Mogo. Lex is endearing himself to me by mocking the dopey poems that the teams receive in their (arg) "tree mail" – "It's a puzzle of some sort." – and Shii Ann is reminding me exactly why I always hated her living guts, even during the Thailand show. For one thing, she really thinks she's Hatch and thinks she can play at his level. (This time around he doesn't really have a level, but in Borneo he clearly masterminded some elegant manipulations of his fellow competitors, and that took smarts. Shii Ann thinks she has this, but she doesn't. Perhaps, like me, she's always so busy trying to prove how smart she is that she falls victim to a lack of concentration, or poor common sense.) But most of all, she just loves to tout her intellectual domination despite the fact that whenever she's counted on to think something out, she always blows it. She's constantly acting like, "If it's a 'thinking challenge' just call on me because I'm a genius," but she managed to fuck up one of the easiest puzzles in Thailand, all the while hissing "Let me think! Let me think!" as though the rest of her team were expected to simply sit quietly and defer to her "wisdom."

See, it was the challenge where there are a number of flags (21, if memory serves) and you want to take the last flag. Each turn, you can take one, two, or three flags, then the other team gets to take one, two, or three, also. It turns out, if you think for a minute before starting, that this is a very easy game to win. Like so many thought puzzles, you just start at the end and work backwards. You want there to be one, two, or three flags left when it's your final turn which means you want to leave the other team with four when it's their final turn. Then, no matter what they take, you can take the last flag. In order to set this up, you need to leave them with some multiple of four at every turn, so that you can always get them down to the next multiple of four by removing however many flags you need to. So, really, if everyone thinks for about 65 seconds, the first team to go can easily win it. Take 1 flag (assuming my 21 was correct); the opponents take one, two, or three; you take three, two, or one, respectively, leaving them with 16; repeat until you win. If I recall correctly, the other team went first, but made the mistake of taking two flags, so Shii Ann's team could still have taken three and started things rolling in their favor. All she (or any of them) had to do was think. But she was too busy saying "Let me think," and so she said "Just take two; do whatever they do." Instead of winning the game. Which is easy if you just think about it. And that's fine if you're Gervase. Or Lill. But if you've been dancing around like Mrs. Niels Bohr, shushing the opinions of others, then you'd better damn well deliver and figure out the way to win the puzzle.

So, that's why Shii Ann sucks. Probst has been saying that all of this season's challenges are based on previous challenges, so I'm hoping her team gets the same challenge again. I guarantee she'll lose it again. Provided she hasn't already been voted out.

In the reward challenge, she manages to pretend like she knows some sort of secret way to do better at Survivor Go Fish, but still fails to produce any impressive results. (Meanwhile, Sue Hawk is gnawing furiously on her third grasshopper while Cesternino shouts "Sue! I was kidding! It's not a bug-eating challenge! Sue!") Then, despite having Shii Ann the Intellectual Powerhouse on their side, Mogo Mogo still manages to almost lose immunity in the Leftover Tetris Puzzle that got scrubbed on the launch pad last week due to Jenna's eerie vibes about her distant mom. It seems to me that with so much of the time spent waiting for the blindfolded players to bonk off of something useful, the guides (Probst refers to them as "Eyes" in a shameless CBS plug – I'm surprised the puzzles don't have big CSI logos on the sides.) should rest their voices and start assembling the gathered puzzle pieces in their minds. That way, when all the pieces are gathered, they can quickly throw them together. Instead, they all holler themselves hoarse shouting a din of useless directions to people who can't really hear them and don't really benefit from verbal guidance until they're within a few yards of a puzzle piece anyway.

It's aggravating to think that this means a perfectly good immunity challenge from later in the season will now be eliminated; somewhere, a 14-year-old girl must be crying into her Bedazzler. (What do 14-year-old girls like? My Little Ponies? *NSYNC?) (Seriously, what would make one want to go out with me?) Especially when the immunity challenge they could've eliminated is the dopey one with the balance beams and the flags to be transported back and forth. (Twenty flags, by the way! Apparently, if any challenge takes Probst less than 45 minutes to explain, then it must take at least three hours to run.) I think the balance beam challenges are gay, especially because you have that stupid "battle zone" in the middle, which could easily be avoided but nevertheless gets employed constantly, for no real gain. Except confounding Ethan's phrenologist. The poor boy suffers so many skull contusions he's going to look like he went a few rounds with a particularly rowdy gang of Grassroots Soccer Hooligans.

However, the gay balance beam immunity challenge provides a context for two important things, at least in the eyes of the producers and the network. One: with Probst on a special platform above all the action, he gets to show off his favorite Probst Dance, which is sort of like a modified, seated Walk Like an Egyptian. "Survivors, ready... Survivors, go!" The right arm comes down as the left arm goes up. He's a cyclist signaling a turn! He's John McCain attempting semaphore! No, no... he's just doing the Probst. Get funky! Two: CBS gets to cynically and reprehensibly turn the recent TV Purity Scandal to its advantage, by using the impending FCC Janet Boob Subcommittee Investigation to justify a sky-high level of hyperbole in two different disclaimers about adult and objectionable material taking place during the episode. One airs right before the show starts and another at the return from commercial just before the challenge. Both make it seem like something saucy is going to go down, and if you think CBS is just gun shy after the Super Bowl, you're kidding yourself. They know that these titillating disclaimers will pique our interest, and they're airing them to draw us in, despite the fact that all that happens is a little heavily blurred jiggling of Hatch's penis in Sue Hawk's general direction. First off, if it's not against the rules of the game for him to do challenges naked, then it's not against the rules for him to wag his genitals at others. Immature, stupid, pointless, and rude? Yes. (And this is me talking!) But it's fair game if they're going to let him take out Little Dickie during the show. CBS has aired it before, and they've always had plenty of pixelation. (A little too much, if you ask me – let's not flatter the man!) There's nothing more prurient about that moment than there is on an average episode of 60 Minutes II, but the network takes advantage of the hyper-sensitive climate to drum up a little buzz. Shame. (And, as much as I love to hate Probst and all he stands for, good for him for rebuking Hatch. From the first reward challenge, it's been like the Hatch & Probst Show, so it's good to see that – when the situation demands it – Probst has the balls to get a little testy with Richard.) (Forgive me; I'm a child.)

In other news, I'm fast falling in love with Alicia. She can wave whatever she wants in my face. Always. Not only is she very cute and in amazing shape, but I love the bemused little smile she has when she's tolerating Big Tom. She's like Nick Lachey on my other favorite reality show, just sort of smiling to herself (and us) and playing along rather than getting all feisty. I love that smile, and it shows that she's come a long way toward the benign getting-along that's politically important in this game. Sue Hawk on the other hand, is peeing on things. Jesus. I have to agree with Tom, "What a hag." I don't really have a problem with her peeing on anything, as unnecessary as it is, but the fact that she asks three other people to wait while she does it within an arm's reach of them is kind of gross. ("Sue! We were kidding! It's not a peeing challenge! Sue! Sue!!")

Shockingly, the pee boat does rather well in its maiden voyage, although perhaps it's more accurate to say that Saboga merely continues to self-destruct (literally, this time – after losing the reward challenge, they're torn in twain). Despite the fact that he's playing for a spear (sorry, A SPEAR!!), Rupert can't channel his unbridled power into a win (or even a place) for Saboga. Of course, that's because the whole thing is rigged. The producers need Saboga to lose because they're the only team that splits evenly in two. This is the big twist this week, and while it's nice that it shakes things up and it's nice that I was pretty much right about it, although my (better) version wouldn't have relocated just four competitors, but shuffled all fourteen into two new sets of seven. It's even kind of entertaining because Rupert is still the poster boy for team loyalty and he has to watch his team be torn asunder. But it fails to make a lot really happen other than the usual inexplicable hatred of the new "outsiders" by the original teams. Whatever. Let's get back to how much I hate Shii Ann.

When Mogo Mogo, wiggly gonads and all, lose the immunity challenge, she says it's the first time they'll have to "go to tribal." What? You're "abbreving" the term Tribal Council, now? Who are you, me? Get over yourself! Then she adds, "the game is on for the first time," which is such a smug Hatch move. Yeah, act like you weren't even really trying up to now, because anybody can coast through the first four eliminations. The game is on every time you fight with all your strength to win immunity, and you know it. What a dope. And to prove what a Hatchy move it is, here's Hatch, sniping about the sub-merge and the way all his little pawns interact with each other. He's just a cavalier little snipe. Shut up, bitch.

But, like it or not, "Tribal" is upon them (the cool kids just call it "Tri"), and it's time for some strategy. Colby gets smart and realizes that anyone who doesn't vote to eject Richard Hatch at the earliest possible opportunity deserves to be stabbed in the eye. So, he sets aside Mogo Mogo's (typical) acute case of Merger Xenophobia and enlists Ethan's help ousting Hatch. This is a very smart move (As I may have mentioned, back in January! Ha!) and I'm glad he pulls it off. Hatch, predictably, uses his conversation with Colby to seed doubt in case Colby is lying to him (which he is). Hatch "reiterates" Colby's position for him, reminding him that Ethan is a physical threat although really it's too early in the game for it to get down to that. It's like Kathy saying that it's good to have the rice because it reduces the dependence on Hatch. You can still fish, also! Anyway, it doesn't work, which is just priceless. And of course, even in defeat, Hatch has to make a spectacle out of himself, because – need I remind you – he's only here to buttress up his fame a little and score some more lucrative post-Survivor publicity gigs. (At this point, there really are enough former Survivor contestants to go around. I think they should be relegated to mall openings and groundbreakings for factories that apply ribbons and brass plating to shovels.)

I'm looking forward to next week, because Sue apparently comes even further unglued (possibly about the penis-whipping incident?) and somebody calls Shii Ann on being a useless manipulator. When you pattern yourself as a Hatch protégé, you shouldn't be so stupid as to be transparent about it.

© onebee · all rights reserved