Tue, October 4, 2005

After Yaxha votes unanimously to eliminate Brianna at the team's second consecutive Tribal Council, Probst warns that it's "risky" for them to keep basing their votes on physical strength. Ah, Probst. He's so fond of the pithy aphorisms he cribbed from Jonathan Kent on Smallville that he's blind to their utter fallacy. If Yaxha were voting purely on physical strength, they might have eliminated Rafe (who performed decently this week, but has still given us the weakest display in Survivor history, at last week's reward challenge) or maybe, I don't know, the freshly crippled Amy, who – needles in her eyeballs or not – is still pretty much down for the count. Probst is too busy folding his arms with the same self-satisfied smirk you see on whichever precocious kid is headlining the latest Disney Channel movie about precocious, smirking, self-satisfied kids whose antics keep their bumbling parents from burning down the house or selling nuclear secrets to North Korea, yet they still have time to finish their math homework. All Yaxha can do is shake their heads and walk back to camp (or, in Amy's case, hobble back to camp while exclaiming how healthy her ankle is).

What Probst also fails to consider is that Yaxha hasn't yet eliminated anyone with any other strengths beyond the physical, either. It's not as if they've voted off the nerdy kid who can't lift much but is brilliant in the strategy challenges. They've gotten rid of people who – cute as they are – don't serve the team in any way. There aren't likely to be any makeup challenges. (This week's immunity challenge with the warrior paint is as close as we'll get, and Brianna didn't exactly step up.) The teams won't be asked to saw each other in half. Yaxha hasn't eliminated the contestants I'd have targeted first, but neither have they eliminated anyone who might be of use to them later. Probst is mistaken to think they're focusing too much on physical strength; they're actually focusing too much on the events of the past three days. The voting is never part of a cunning strategic plan to craft the team into a small group that has been preselected for success. Instead they treat each three days of the game as though there were no TribCon before and there will never be another one hence. Rather than looking at smug assmunchers like Brian and Rafe, and booting them immediately for the greater good of the team, Yaxha just looks at who screwed up most recently, then writes her name on a card. (Sure, this is in accordance with Survivor tradition, but if you're going to give anyone a hard time for unrelentingly harping on dumb stuff that Survivor contestants always do, you can start with Probst.)

(And now for a device that absolutely drives me up the wall when it's employed on Lost or The West Wing...) Three days earlier, Lydia is whining about the close call she had with the Tribal Council vote, and Brian is dancing around slapping himself on the back for "engineering Morgan's ouster" instead. Whatever, ass. Why'd he hate her so much, anyway? As far as he's concerned, Lydia and Morgan are exactly the same person. I think he just wanted to show that he could switch a lot of votes. Ass. Next, Burnett's plucky editors start showing us footage of Brianna (Who?), marking the first full sentence we've heard her utter on the show. This is known as "pity airtime," like on Celebrity Poker Showdown when they air players' intro videos really early, because they'll be out soon and the footage must get in before they go. Brianna's doomed, and it's her own fault for being a wallflower. If she's not going to shock the pants off her team with rabid dedication and physical prowess (cf. Angie from Palau), her best bet is to be friendly with everyone, particularly someone like Jamie who might take a liking to her and then peremptorily strike her name from any TribCon pre-planning discussions before the idea can take root.

The reward challenge is a rehash of the now familiar game in which teams are blindfolded and lashed together, two by two, and must retrieve puzzle pieces from a small obstacle course, guided only by the voice of their team's sole unblindfolded member. Then they put the puzzle together and win some pillows and blankets. Gary serves as the "eyes" for Yaxha, and over at Nakum it's Brooke (Who? Oh. Ohh!). I'm dying for Gary to slip up here – "Red rocket right, slant 42 Z out... Hut! I mean... uh... turn left! I am not a quarterback!" – but sadly, he manages to keep his cool. Yaxha gets all their pieces back in record time, but Nakum builds the hut faster, and they win. (Learning from Yaxha's mistakes by starting later? Definitely a factor.) When exactly did Yaxha become the underdog team? Is it just because I want them to win? Nakum holds the all-county power-vomiting title, and they're losing sleep because although their camp is the "better" one, it's located smack in the middle of the non-stop monkey-howling district. From whence do they summon the pluck?

Annoyed by the oppressive heat, Nakum's more adventuresome members decide to do some swimming in the lake to cool off. Cindy, passing up no opportunity to zookeep, cautions them about the crocodiles ("hundreds or more") that are out there. She's also explained why the team's ersatz mascot keeps howling his brains out – but conveniently skipped over the part on how to shut him the hell up. She loves to relate her vast animal knowledge, but there's a difference between the Guatemalan jungle and some zoo in Florida. These animals aren't in captivity; it's kind of a different world. The most important expertise in zookeeping is, "When you hose the shit out of the bear pen, start in the corners and work your way out." (The swimmers, by the way? Encounter no crocodiles.) Cindy might be of use over at Yaxha, though, where she could help Stephenie talk Rafe and Gary out of eating termites (their follow-up to last week's ant snack). It's really hard for Steph to watch these guys eat bugs, but apparently not as hard as it is to walk away and not watch them eat bugs.

To psyche Yaxha up for the immunity challenge, Brian starts yelling a lot of nonsense in their pre-challenge huddle – enough to make me hate his guts forever, and I'm not the only one. Jamie reaches over to try to shut his mouth. This is good. Hopefully tides will turn against Brian and he'll be gone soon. At the challenge (a game called "courtball" that's quite a lot like Calvinball), all the motivational hooting and termite eating fail to secure Yaxha a win. Also contributing to their downfall: Amy snaps her ankle (audible pop); Brianna aimlessly stands around, giving Stephenie no one to pass the ball to; and Lydia ignores the rules and starts running with the ball, costing Yaxha a hard-fought possession. Wow, it would have been cool to lose her last week.

This heartbreaking loss – Yaxha's fourth in a row – immediately focuses their attention on the physical. "Athletic ability means the most," Gary says in an interview, before quickly correcting himself, "–I mean, landscaping ability!" Brianna draws every vote, even though Steph puts a frowny face on hers – she says she "can't be on a losing team any more." I'm all for that; I just hope this is the smartest way to fix it. Yaxha definitely feels like their least athletic teammates are their greatest liability, but I hope Steph will organize a female voting bloc soon, before the guys' 4-3 advantage becomes entirely insurmountable. Of course, it would also be nice if Yaxha would just win an immunity challenge.

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