Mon, December 5, 2005

In the past, when we've reached that point in the season where I lose my resolve to complete the Survivor columns in a timely and professional manner, a trick I've discovered is the "live blogging" approach. It's not as meaty as a full column, but it speeds up the process considerably.

8:06:14 - After recapping last week's episode, showing us some pretty commercials, and force-feeding us some overproduced credits, the show finally begins.

8:06:58 - With a unanimous Tribal Council decision, there are no stunned reactions to play out, so the "return from TribCon" footage is skipped in favor of Danni and Lydia, grinding corn together.

8:07:11 - Danni interviews that she's "ready to have her head chopped off" because no Survivor contestant can resist stating the obvious when the numbers and alliances clearly indicate they're next in line for elimination – and no Survivor editor can resist showing that Survivor contestants love to state the obvious.

8:07:46 - Judd, unaware that his boorish antics are slowly distancing most of his teammates from him, regales the breakfasting Xhakum with a ten-minute set of fart material.

8:08:00 - Over footage of some competitive tumbling, Danni interviews that she expects the current dominant alliance to crumble. It could happen, but unless someone stokes it, it probably won't until the final four.

8:08:24 - Probst begins the auction reward. The players receive $500 cash apiece to bid on whatever they like. (Although it's not stated explicitly, I assume they don't get to pocket whatever cash they have left over.)

8:09:08 - For some reason, Steph won't stop sniffing her money.

8:09:34 - Danni bids $20 for beef jerky, and receives no competitive bids, not even a peep from Lydia, who was "starving" all last week. Probst attempts to woo her with a Monty Hall switcheroo, but she opts to keep the jerky rather than looking behind door number two. (Which would have revealed a big jug of uncooked corn.)

8:10:12 - Cindy outbids Lydia, winning cookies and milk for just $40. Lydia is clearly still starving, but she has a very discerning palate.

8:10:49 - Danni and Rafe pool their money to run up the bidding on a mosquito net, but they let Lydia outbid them. Probst makes a comment about Lydia's ass, referring to it as her "booty."

8:21:47 - I finish retching.

8:11:10 - Bidding completely blind, Rafe and Danni pool their money and win a cheesesteak sandwich with ketchup and fries.

8:12:04 - Probst reveals an envelope which he claims will give its bearer an advantage in the upcoming immunity challenge. Bidding escalates rapidly.

8:12:38 - Covered in cheesesteak drippings, Danni wins the envelope for $200, but may not break its seal until the challenge.

8:13:23 - Family members arrive so that the contestants can bid on them. Cindy's twin is adorable, but she's revoltingly named Mindy. Probst reminds the players that they may pool their money for more buying power, but in this case only one family member will get to stay. This could represent a huge opportunity to win the allegiance of a fellow contestant.

8:14:50 - Lydia donates her money to Stephenie. Steph bids $740 to hang out with her boyfriend.

8:15:15 - Judd takes Cindy's money, bidding $880 for his wife. Probst allows Judd to invite two other loved ones. Kind of blows the hell out of that "only one family member if you pool your money" rule. Once again, the challenge is more about politics than reward. I pause the TiVo to scream obscenities and curse Burnett's name for a few minutes.

8:15:56 - Lydia hasn't seen her brother in more than two years, and Rafe hasn't stopped sobbing about the sight of his mother in almost as long. Nevertheless, Judd selects Cindy's twin and Stephenie's boyfriend to join him and his wife. Rafe, Lydia, and Danni head to the abandoned Yaxha camp to spend the night alone. This decision may represent an effective wedge between Judd and Rafe. It's also a key opportunity for Danni and Lydia to be left alone with Rafe and talk his ear off about strategy. Judd definitely could use the goodwill from Cindy, but Stephenie would be smart to decline the boyfriend visit and hand it over to Lydia or Rafe – which would earn her a lot of favor based on how much she clearly wanted to spend the night with him, and it would allow her to keep an eye on the outsiders and prevent a power grab. (It would also win my respect, since the point is to win; you can spend time with your boyfriend after you have the million dollars.)

8:21:20 - The winning players and their guests return to Xhakum. Mrs. Judd is turned on by her husband's transformation from doorman to outdoorsman.

8:21:55 - Cindy and Mindy cuddle and reminisce about childhood wilderness trips. The video evidence indicates that Cindy's sleeper boobs are real, or she and her sister underwent identical augmentations. I swear to God, an hour ago I finished watching New York Minute. It's cute twin day!

8:22:23 - Judd explains his strategy to his wife, including what he feels is a rock solid alliance with Rafe, while the wide-eyed monkey of foreboding looks on from the tree canopy.

8:22:42 - Rafe, Lydia, and Danni arrive at old Yaxha, and are greeted by the crocodile of loneliness and rejection. (Or is he the crocodile of conspiracy and manipulation?)

8:23:33 - In conversation with Danni, Rafe again brings up his lack of trust in Judd. Danni agrees with everything Judd says, and interviews that she sees herself as his backup in case the current alliance should turn on him.

8:24:10 - Rafe sees the importance of turning Steph against Judd, mentioning that he needs to "make backup plans." Channeling Secretary Rumsfeld, he adds, "You can't trust a person like Judd, but you can trust that you can't trust him."

8:25:41 - Around the campfire, Judd leads some contingency planning. He reminds everyone that if Danni's immunity clue helps her win, they'll just vote for Lydia. Mindy seems willing to agree to this plan, if unsure of her role in it.

8:28:17 - The incessantly howling monkeys, which I guess have been out of town on business for a few weeks, return to serenade the visiting family members. Clearly their time at the Interminable, Brain-Melting Howling Convention has taught them some new techniques.

8:30:38 - Rafe, Lydia, and Danni return, and Judd quickly hollers out to Rafe as though they're old buddies, to make up for any perceived slight since he didn't respond to Rafe's choking mom-sobs and pick him at the post-reward popularity contest. The visiting family members admit they've been worn down by rustic life.

8:30:50 - The snake of foreshadowing appears in the context of people saying goodbye to their guests, managing to foreshadow nothing at all.

8:31:27 - After bidding farewell to her boyfriend at the dock, Stephenie interviews that she hates goodbyes. "I can't wait to say hello," she says, and then the editors cut before she adds, "Well, at least wait until the final two. I'm not saying I want to get voted out tonight just so I can say hello to my boyfriend again. That would be crazy."

8:32:15 - Lydia approaches Judd with a plan. She tells him they "know who the players are here," but neglects to mention who "they" are. All the contestants? Herself and Danni? She lies that she was last to know about the vote against Jamie, when in fact she was in on the very first conversation with Rafe and Stephenie about that subject.

8:33:25 - Danni admits in an interview that she and Lydia are just trying to get Judd to say he'd vote for Rafe so that they can tell Rafe and Steph and pull them into a vote against Judd. Why do people let them talk to him alone? Also, why not just do like Julie from Vanuatu and pretend that Judd said he'd vote for Rafe? If Rafe and Steph grill him about this, he'd deny it whether it was true or not, so why waste the effort? Julie convinced Twila that she'd been offered a final four berth when she hadn't, and now she's dating the host! Follow her lead!

8:33:40 - Probst describes the immunity challenge as a "sort of human chess game" – the players will step on tiles, turning them red, and then they can't step on those tiles again. They will be eliminated from the game once they run out of adjacent tiles that they can move to. Rafe pries the immunity necklace out of the immunity-necklace-shaped groove that it has worn into his neck area, and hands it over to Probst.

It's a fascinating game – one of the most interesting challenges Survivor has given us in years. It is more like Othello than Chess, but also has some elements of Risk, in that it's important to plan an exit strategy for any direction you choose to move. Unlike the flag removing challenge, it's hard to craft a single strategy for this one. You'd really have to be able to adapt your strategy in response to the other players as you go. Maybe it would help to make a big ring to protect some inner tiles just for you? (But then you'd also be limiting yourself to those tiles.) Maybe you should move along the edge, doubling back and forth, keeping as much distance as possible from other players?

8:35:09 - Danni opens her reward envelope to reveal a card allowing her to switch positions with any player. The card is redeemable only once, at any point in the game. Probst cautions that if you're not good at this game, it won't really help you. (Jab!)

8:35:20 - The contestants make their first moves. Most of them move sideways, preferring to use up the border tiles first since they will soon become dead-end tiles. Cindy moves forward.

8:36:16 - Cindy continues to beeline for the center of the board, where there is a lazy-susan device that can be used to skip to another part of the board, much like the center of a Trivial Pursuit board, but rotatier.

8:36:45 - Lydia blocks Cindy in. Cindy is out of the game.

8:37:11 - Stephenie is all alone with lots of room but no avenue back to the twister in the center. She moves forward, blocking off a potential path of retreat for Lydia.

8:37:27 - Danni deploys her card, switching places with Steph. Both have about the same number of tiles to work with.

8:37:43 - Lydia's last move. She retires to the bench.

8:37:57 - Only two tiles remain that connect to the twister, and one of them only connects to the twister and nowhere else – so the twister is now effectively a dead end.

8:38:30 - Danni moves in on the same bunch of tiles as Rafe, and blocks him out. (It's her only available move, so she isn't just sabotaging him intentionally. Not that that wouldn't be perfectly acceptable in Survivor.)

8:38:46 - Judd's last move. He argues against this like he's fighting the umpire at a little league game, but Probst reminds him that he's not allowed to move diagonally, which causes Steph to smile. What a big, dumb ox Judd is.

8:39:00 - Danni and Stephenie remain. Danni has more tiles to work with.

8:39:31 - Steph's last move. Danni has turned her reward purchase into a win. "Money well spent," she beams.

8:40:00 - Steph seems to be in a bad mood, like she was after last week's reward challenge. It would suck to have your immunity shot taken away by something you couldn't control.

8:44:10 - Danni and Stephenie are hanging out at camp, and Stephenie asks about Judd. Danni takes the opportunity to feed her the line about how Judd is still stewing about being locked out of the decision to eliminate Jamie. She implies that Judd is concocting his own plans, although this is completely false. If asked, Judd probably wouldn't even remember his conversation with Danni and Lydia from earlier in the episode.

8:45:03 - Stephenie points out that "Judd is clearly playing this game to win." Well, sure, right? I mean, you wouldn't want to play for any other reason. He can starve and sleep in the dirt at home. "He's been caught in quite a few lies," she adds. True enough. "Danni hasn't lied yet." Well, not that Steph knows of – but the conversation they're having right now is at best a misrepresentation.

8:45:29 - Stephanie and Rafe discuss the Judd situation. Getting rid of Judd isn't such a terrible idea, but Judd seems fairly controlled. He doesn't seem to be making a lot of moves of his own, even with Lydia and Danni stoking him. Meanwhile, Lydia is making a move or else she wouldn't have brought this to Steph and Rafe. So that really ought to be a consideration.

8:46:00 - We meet the millipede of destiny. The animals are definitely trying to tell us something tonight.

8:46:22 - Stephenie insists that Lydia must be the next to go if they get rid of Judd instead of her at the upcoming Tribal Council. The next question is whether or not to approach Cindy about voting for Judd. Seems to me you might as well, since the alternative is to have her feel neglected the way Judd did after the Jamie vote, and at a vulnerable time (5 players remaining, very easy to swing the numbers). Is there some Judd/Cindy bond I'm unaware of? They haven't seemed particularly chummy, but then again Cindy did donate all her money to buy Judd's wife.

8:46:30 - Rafe and Danni assure Stephenie that Lydia would be happy to vote for Judd, which gets Steph's attention. This reveals they talked with Lydia about this before bringing it to her. The power dynamic within her alliance is not what she thought it was. She visibly straightens when she hears this, but after pondering it for a split second, she allows it to pass. We'll find out whether or not that was a smart move.

8:46:40 - Stephenie mentions that she likes Judd and he's been good to her, but she has to play the game first and make friends second. God bless her. I don't know if ousting Judd now is good timing, but I like that attitude.

8:47:00 - Hand-pounds. Rafe, Danni, and Stephenie have reached a decision.

8:47:20 - Lydia perches on the ruins with Judd, telling him, "I'm here if anybody needs my vote." Ha ha! Back to her old role and sounding a bit desperate. Judd manages not to shoot ramon nuts out his nose laughing; he just echoes some platitude by rote: "Nobody here is safe tonight." The editors are really laying it on thick with the Judd foreshadowing.

8:47:51 - Lydia repeats, this time to Rafe: "If anybody needs my vote, I'm here." Standing nearby, Judd picks up on this. "I'd appreciate if you didn't vote for me. After all, you pledged that to me first, up there," referring to their conversation a few moments ago. Typical of Judd, this is partly a joke and partly him seriously trying to "call her out," but struggling to make enough sense.

8:48:45 - Judd pals around with Rafe and Stephenie, in footage which (considering the events to come) was probably harvested from a show a few episodes ago.

8:49:00 - Judd interviews: "Somebody goes home, I move up one. I'm happy someone's going; as long as it isn't me, I'll have a smile on my face." The editors specifically leave this in, which drips with thick, greasy foreshadowing. Foreshadowing you could gouge with a spoon. Foreshadowing that no amount of scrubbing with powerful solvents could remove. I'm convinced Lydia's going home, because the Survivor editors only make it this obvious if they're trying to lead us astray.

8:51:00 - At Tribal Council, Probst asks Stephenie about the challenge of voting within a group this small. She says you have to make the right choice, and be able to defend your reasoning. Emotions do get involved, but the game must come first. I doubt she's intentionally distancing herself from her Judd vote by giving herself room to use the "faulty intelligence" defense later ("Well, Lydia and Danni said you were scheming against me!"), but if she is, it's brilliant.

8:51:40 - Judd: "Everybody wants somebody to go home. ... The only way you move on is somebody goes home." The foreshadowing is so thick it has its own gravitational pull.

8:52:35 - The voting begins. Danni votes Judd, so that's still on as far as she knows. If he does go, he really trusted too much, because we never saw him try to figure out what was going on or even clue Steph and Rafe into all the weird conversations he had with Lydia and Danni.

8:52:53 - Judd votes Lydia.

8:53:39 - Probst reveals the third vote, after first showing us Judd's vote for "Lidia" [sic] and Danni's vote for Judd. It's a second vote for Lydia. So I guess Cindy wasn't in on it?

8:53:44 - Probst reveals another vote for Judd.

8:53:53 - Probst reveals a third vote for Judd.

8:54:00 - Probst reveals a fourth vote for Judd. Man those editors are really laying in the foreshadowing! I'm starting to think Judd might get voted off tonight!

8:54:12 - Probst seems to be taking this foreshadowing thing too far. He snuffs Judd's torch. Judd does not accept the news entirely gracefully. "Scumbags!" he mutters, repeatedly. His jury vote will be a tough one to court. If Steph does blame bad intelligence, she'll probably be the only one who can get his vote. He is definitely preparing a Sue Hawk-caliber speech, but sadly his superior command of the English language will make it hard to top Sue's for entertainment value.

8:54:44 - Probst's Weekly Pearls of Absolutely Unintelligible Wisdom (tm): "You can no longer rely on what used to be, because this game just took a change in a very big way." Really? Because alliances shifted? Christ, Probst. That happens every week!

I'm really hopeful that the alliance between Rafe, Stephenie, and Danni with Lydia is temporary and Cindy's immediately reincorporated according to Stephenie's original outline. I think her bond with Rafe might be strong enough after the recent waterfall spa reward. It would really suck to see Lydia pull a Johnny Fairplay and weasel her way into the final four. It would be a huge contradiction for me to say she doesn't deserve to be there after I've wailed about that stupid justification from so many Survivor contestants, but... Yeah. That would be a contradiction.

The scenes from next week indicate Cindy is frustrated by being left out. Monkey howling continues at a level suggesting further howling convention attendance – or at least the full use of the free instructional videos passed out at the previous howling convention. CBS teases another big shock for the tribe, this time "an awful dilemma" that faces the remaining players. Oh, just cut the baby in half and be done with it.

In his final words, Judd says he feels "blindsided" and "lied to" but insists he "never lied to anyone." That in itself is a lie! I love one thing that's consistent about the self-absorbed freaks that play Survivor. In their post-elimination huff, they always compliment themselves by arguing that people were voting out the biggest threat, rather than admitting they were outplayed. I wonder if Jim in week one was thinking that. "I'm 107 and my arm is hanging limply out of its socket – they were just getting rid of the biggest threat out there."

Based on his reaction to the TribCon vote, I'm thinking it was a good idea to get rid of Judd after all. He's clearly a little too hotheaded to be relied upon as the game narrows down. Better to have him on the jury, where his damage will be more confined.

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