Tue, February 21, 2006

In their first week of the game without having to don new buffs, the Survivor contestants are taking advantage of the lull and working out the types of relationships they want to have with their teammates. Some will be friendly and helpful, others will be psychotically spiteful – seemingly at random.

As Casaya returns from a particularly grisly Tribal Council, they welcome their newest member, Bruce, who immediately makes one thing clear: he knows a lot of stuff, so much that he has been teaching the things he knows for a varying number of decades. High school, karate, backpacking and wilderness survival. He's done it all, and taught it all. And part of it included filtering water through T-shirts, which he sets about doing at camp. (See? All those contests at Hooters? Turns out, that was science!) Most of Casaya is thrilled to have someone with some skills to share, but Shane finds Bruce neurotic and obnoxious. He mentions that he just wants Bruce to shut up. I'm sure nobody has ever thought this about Shane.

An extreme close-up on the Sea Snail of Harmony, Togetherness, and Immunity Challenge Victory brings us to La Mina, where Ruth-Marie swiftly crushes the snail with a dull rock. The others are moaning about hunger; Nick actually mentions that La Mina is headed "downhill." But I'm sure they're still thinking positively about it. (Whee! Downhill is easier, because it involves coasting!) The team has fishing gear but no fishing expertise. All they can catch are blowfish, and while Bruce has probably prepared fugu for twelve years and taught multiple classes in the art, he's on the wrong team and can't help them. Austin joins the group exalting the spear in its absence and groaning that their days of hunger would be over if they just had the miracle spear to catch fish for them, haul it in, clean it, cook it, and cut it into little bits for easy chewing. If this spear is so great, how come it couldn't survive a simple practice shot? Huh? I thought so. Terry brings in a fish the size of the fabric swatches they give you at the upholstery shop, and almost as edible; he is immediately the team hero. He's really loving the attention, and very sure that he's the man to lead La Mina to victory, despite the fact that he doesn't really contribute more than anyone else.

The reward challenge is adorable, simple, and lots of fun. (Am I watching the wrong reality show?) Four teammates line up on a balance beam in the water, while three more use giant slingshots to hurl balls at them. (Nope, this is Survivor after all – the only show on television that has a sponsorship agreement with the International Balance Beam Federation.) Everyone shoots very well, and their teammates execute some impressive catches. Terry has the most points, including one fancy rolling catch into the water. Shane catches a clutch point for Casaya. For a fleeting moment, he cares about being back in the game, but then Terry catches an important final shot for La Mina, and Shane fails to come up with one for Casaya. Back to sulking and freaking out. Terry refers to the challenge as a "total team effort," but something tells me he's not being sincere. La Mina wins a bunch of tarps and lanterns and blankets, plus the right to choose who goes to Exile Island from the Casaya team. They pick Bruce, because Casaya entered the reward challenge crowing about how he has united the team and showed them how to survive in the wilderness.

So, this Exile Island thing is just entirely pointless, right? So far, the exile has been selected by: the losing team of a reward challenge; the schoolyard pick (inversely); and the winning team of a reward challenge. Is there no rhyme or reason to this? Misty might never have been exiled if a winning team had selected someone from Bayoneta to stay over like La Mina just did. Bruce certainly wouldn't be returning to exile so quickly if Casaya got to pick their own guy, the way Bayoneta did. This isn't some new, exciting element to the Survivor strategy – it's just a vindictive, pointless roulette game. It can strike any time, from any direction. Total bullshit.

Also – how sorry is Casaya right now for jumping up and down with their WWBD bracelets and Bruce banners? Oh, Coach Probst. You spiteful, cruel asshat.

Austin announces Bruce's exile, misusing the word "detrimental" (what a great writer he must be!) and immediately Shane re-quits. Cirie with him. Meanwhile, Dan could not look more pained over at La Mina. He already looks like an AIDS patient with his sunken cheeks and withered frame – this tortured look of agony isn't helping. Why is he so personally invested in Bruce's exile? Shane grumbles, to no one in particular, "These guys are playing for keeps, huh?" Uh, yeah. Aren't you? Or are you just here to hang out, and enjoy the world's most convoluted Nicorette program?

Back at camp, Misty the missile engineer and Dan the astronaut use the new tarp to strengthen their shelter's roof. So now it's impervious to everything except smallish chunks of styrofoam. Just to show off, they sleep under it in a torrential rainstorm while keeping lanterns lit. They observe a moment of silence for Bruce – man, they are really taking it too hard.

Admittedly, Bruce is having a pretty rough time. Edited properly, it appears that Exile Island is being constantly struck by lightning every four seconds. Bruce mentions that he's spent more time alone at E.I. than he has on any actual team.

Courtney thinks La Mina was "evil" to select Bruce for exile. Clearly she joins Shane in never having heard of strategy. "Man!" she wails in an interview, "Did you see La Mina, trying to win that challenge? What a bunch of cheaters!"

What follows is an interchange between Shane and Casaya that positively defies explanation. He's claimed a certain rock as his Thinking Seat, and in the process of another conversation, he jokingly requests than no one else ever sit on it. At least it seems like a joke. The rest of the team joshes with him about it – clearly ecstatic at an opportunity to have a non-crazy interchange with this lunatic. They tease, "How come it's just yours?" "Why can't we use it?" Just playing around, since obviously nobody could care less about which rock to sit on. Shane... for lack of a better term, he loses it. He starts hollering sentence fragments at the top of his lungs, demanding just one rock to call his own. If they want this one, he'll get another. But just let him have one! Is he serious? Is this how he kids? It's kind of hard to describe how swiftly and completely this puts the brakes on Casaya's little bantering moment. Shane's shouting is so incoherent he sounds like a petulant child. I don't see how it would be possible to deal with this guy.

Aras feels like he's "in an alliance with three nut-balls" at this point. Shane and Courtney spat over the fire, each blaming the other for the flame's tendency to consume wood and give off heat. Cirie interviews that the two are at each other's throats all the time. (Which is easy to imagine, since Shane is fucking insane and Courtney's the touchy-feely type who personalizes all conflict and refuses to just leave something alone.) "The funny thing is," as Cirie sees it, "these are the people that you guys decided to ally with. And now you hate each other. How stupid is that?" Well, almost as stupid as allying with no one while offering nothing of value to the team. I'm no fan of Shane's instant alliance – for one thing, it leaves the chance that you won't mesh well with your allies – but it makes more sense to be in an alliance and struggling than to be outside an alliance, fighting for your life, and spending more time poking fun at the alliance than playing the game.

Courtney is struggling with Shane rather than ignoring him and focusing on others. Is he such a fire expert that she absolutely has to seek his counsel when tending the fire? Why doesn't she take care of it on her own? Or can she only work with fire in a dancing capacity? Could maybe Dani help her, or Bobby? It's not imperative that she only interact with people in her alliance – having a fire around benefits everyone equally.

Courtney is "bummed" and finds the situation "not even funny." But at least she understands that he's just lashing out because he's nuts – maybe someday she'll be able to just ignore him. Meanwhile, Shane calls her a lunatic but refuses to break his alliance with her because he swore on his son's life. Certainly no lunacy there. Nobody means it when they swear on their son's life in Survivor. Just ask Twila. Also, under what circumstances is it necessary to be best friends with your Survivor allies? The point of the alliance is to get you to the final four with no worries. It's almost better if you hate your alliance, because then the voting gets a lot easier from the final four on out. The only reason friendliness within an alliance is important is if you follow the moronic line of Survivor thinking that says, "If I don't win the million, I want it to go to someone worthy who I like." Which, as I believe I've made clear in the past, I disagree with.

A commercial break: CBS advertises Firewall and then The Unit and The New Adventures of Old Christine. If 2005 was the year of the box office slump, 2006 might be the year people stop watching entertainment on a screen, period. Not that I don't love Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Clark Gregg, but seriously, can we just have a sitcom that's funny, instead of sitcom concepts that are "funny"? Maybe I'm just bitter at the end of Arrested Development, whose two-hour finale was funnier than all three episodes of every 2006 mid-season "comedy" that will air before they're unceremoniously canceled. And don't get me started on Sons & Daughters – I don't care how riotous the promos are, the second rule of comedy is you do not give comedy shows to Lorne Michaels. (The first rule is just a picture of Robin Williams with a Ghostbusters-style line through it.) The infinitely funnier and more talented Bonnie Hunt has already proved that while improvisation is wildly entertaining on stage, it does not translate to television. Least of all in the hands of someone like Michaels, who reportedly denounces off-book riffing on SNL and seems to have declared war on televised humor over the last few years. (Where did it go wrong? The man executive produced The Kids in the Hall for crying out loud – didn't he take notes?)

Romantic Survivor tootling snaps me out of my frothing rage, as we return to idyllic La Mina beach, where the Sand Crabs of Insincere Romantic Advances lead us to Sally and Misty, making eyes at Austin while attempting to firm up their own instant alliance. Austin agrees, and Misty moves in to give him a shoulder rub. Sally is instantly jealous, but hides it by praising Misty's strategy in an interview. As Misty moves on to Nick, a crowd gathers. Terry squints disapprovingly. Sally sees Misty as a flirt, and refers to herself as "the pal," someone who finds it easy to get along with the fellas. Hmm. She tells Misty, "You're so cute." Hmmmm. Sally thinks Nick and Austin should ally with the girls because Terry will become a target due to his strength. Austin sees the logic there, since Terry will only become a bigger and bigger threat going forward. For those of us who have been spurned by the Survivor editors before, this is familiar territory.

At the immunity challenge, Dan hands the idol back to Coach Probst. I swear, that bottom shrunken skull on the staff is a dead ringer for Dan. The teams must compete in another really excellent challenge, which blends simplicity with strategy and no small amount of brawn. The key is to get three out of five bags back to the team mat; the bags are buried in the sand within five different rings, and each round another set of people from each team will race out and try to unearth that round's bag. The goal is to be touching the bag when any part of your body touches your team's mat – any amount of wrestling, stealing, or dragging is permitted. It quickly becomes a compelling blend of strategy and physical strength, with the two teams quite evenly matched. I have no idea what happened to the guys who normally design the challenges, but I'm too giddy to care. Coach Probst makes sure his presence does not go unnoticed, hollering pissy little half-threats like, "Watch the choke! Don't make me call it!" Most of the teammates who are not participating in a given round are yelling words of encouragement or giving advice about who to tackle, etc. Shane is yelling, "Bring me a bag!" It's just a difference of approach, really; I can't wait to see him at a pee-wee football game. Since a 2-2 tie makes for the best television, it should go without saying that we end up with a 2-2 tie after four bags – no matter how many takes were required to get it right.

On the final bag, it's a hard-scrabble fight for survival. Cirie digs up the bag, but Nick jumps in and pulls it out of the sand. Danielle picks up Ruth-Marie and drops her – along with her own bikini top. Bobby releases the bag... into Terry's arms. Everyone is on the bag. Terry stands up with it, but Bobby has him. Tackled. Twice. Dani jumps on Terry, who hands the bag off to Ruth-Marie. La Mina's hopes for immunity hang on Ruth-Marie outrunning Bobby to the mats. (Or, hang on his natural inclination against tackling frail old ladies at a full run.) For a moment, it seems like La Mina might have it, as Ruth-Marie strides ahead of Bobby. He gallantly trots behind her until the last few yards of the run, then drags her to his mat by the back of her tank top, tagging the mat and dropping his hand onto the bag in her arms. It's all executed so casually it's as though she were on his team in the first place. He moves her as awkwardly yet effortlessly as Schwarzenegger picking up that little Mexican kid in the overalls at the filling station in Terminator 2. Ruth-Marie never even has a moment to react – which is a shame, because she could have thrown the bag back to Terry, or tossed it onto her own mat where he could've met it there.

It's a brutally physical challenge that puts each competitor right in the face of someone from the other side at some point or another. If Burnett had any concern about whether or not everyone hated each other before, he can rest easy now.

Before La Mina starts discussing their votes, it's an ominous glare from the Tree Python of Treachery. I think they should vote for Dan because I'd love to see him go, and also if Austin and Nick vote with Sally and Misty, it will be clear they've abandoned their alliance with Terry and Dan, so they'd do well to start dismantling the opposition immediately. However, Ruth-Marie seems like the easiest to eliminate: her ouster won't tip anyone's hand as to which alliance is staying strong, and she was the last person touching the bag at the challenge, which makes it conveniently her "fault" they lost the whole thing. The guys talk about Ruth-Marie's lack of physical strength at first, but then Austin throws Misty under a bus with a comment about her disappointing performance in the challenge. Hard to understand, because I saw her competing as fiercely as anyone and even getting warned by Coach Probst on that choking violation. But Terry sees her as an intellectual threat, so the vote against her is quickly sealed.

Another good, hard hiss from the Tree Python of Treachery – hoping to satisfy the cameraman so he can finally get back to his tree pythonning – and then Sally and Misty discuss the vote with Nick. (It's unclear whether Nick is yet aware of Austin's pledge to vote against Misty.) Sally campaigns against Ruth-Marie or Dan (just as I'd do), while Nick listens quietly. Then we see Austin, continuing to vacillate between alliances. But, alas, the editors are tired of giving us all this unfettered information – off to TribCon!

In the interview with Probst at Tribal Council, Terry and Dan are all diplomatic – it's like the scene in Bull Durham where Tim Robbins is preparing to talk to the press in small, meaningless sound bites. Everyone extols the team's camaraderie. Misty insists that everyone works as a team, and nobody is out of the loop. Probst reminds everyone that she might have the mini idol. Evidently, nobody was all that convinced by her little skit, though, because they vote against her, 5-2, which means Ruth-Marie would've gone home with just two votes if Misty had produced the mini idol. Shock registers on Sally's face as a target materializes on her back. It's hard to understand this vote entirely, although perhaps there are things that happened in the immunity challenge that we didn't see which really made Misty seem like a liability. Or maybe Austin really thinks he and Nick are better off with Dan and Terry, and this vote was their rite of initiation. Misty is the last person I'd vote off La Mina, because she seems just right. Stronger than Ruth-Marie, smarter than Sally, less of a threat than Terry. Plus – admittedly – the boobs.

Next week: Shane clashes with Dani. Wow, he just insists on antagonizing everyone in his "final four" alliance. He's really campaigning for that final two slot!

POLL:

Work in Progress

The most likely title of Austin's upcoming novel?

	"Detrimentally, She Came"
	"Detrimental Justice"
	"Mary's Detrimentalest Secret"
	"Operation: Detrimental"
	"Juggling Alliances for Fun and Profit"

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