Thu, March 16, 2006

Is it just me, or have these "previously on" recaps become longer than my own articles about Survivor episodes? This week, it seems like every single story point is reiterated. Not everything that happened last week will bear on future events, people!

But one thing will, and that's not voting Shane off the island. Casaya returns from Tribal Council, tucks itself in, and goes to sleep. Shane lays awake. In time, Shane's interior monologue explodes out of him, and he begins ranting about how stupid it was to boot Bobby instead of Bruce (an idea which was originally his, by the way). He places the blame squarely on Danielle, although the idea was hatched by Danielle and Courtney, and presented to him by both women along with Cirie. Danielle and Cirie snuggle comfortably under the protective arms of Aras. I'm not sure, but I think they're sleeping through most of his lecture, and only awake toward the middle, at which point Danielle tells him to shut up. Shane won't do that. He wants to get rid of Bruce (who is listening, by the way, but Shane says he knows that and he doesn't care). He wants out of his alliance, but he needs them to allow him to take his kid's name back.

This all makes sense to me and seems like the sort of thing that should be happening. I'd like it more if it weren't playing into Cirie's dopey fantasies.

Of course, it's preposterous that Shane places so much importance on the value of his oath – and he's the first in Survivor history to do so. What should happen is that the alliance refuses to release Shane from this oath that he values so dearly. They force him to do their bidding at TribCon, even though they hate him all the other times. But they're not that creative, though. They just want to vote him out. Which, in a pinch, will do. It's just an emotional move instead of a strategic one – which is the same as saying "bad instead of good."

The Boa Constrictor of Strategically Unsound Reasoning squirms in its tree. (Behold!) Off screen, the Chinchilla of Post-Merge Opportunities quietly grooms itself, unaware that it's about to be devoured in one gulp.

Danielle stumbles groggily out of the sleep hut to find Cirie and Courtney whispering about the previous night's events. By way of commentary on Shane's situation, she performs an exaggerated baseball umpire "ejection" gesture. Nice thinking. Shane obviously represents no threat, since nobody wants to be in an alliance with him and nobody has any problem voting for him. He's got no chance in individual immunity challenges. So of course, he's the perfect person to keep around, especially since he has this strange notion that his kid will be taken away from him if he breaks his alliance. (And, frankly, at this point, CPS is probably already on its way. Alliance or not.) Instead, Danielle prefers to react to the fact that she can't stand him and he says mean things. Ultimately, it's unlikely that voting him out will create a huge problem for her – but it's silly to turn her back on the better option just because he rubs her the wrong way.

The Termites of Freaky Retroactive Self-Fantasy crawl dutifully through a hollowed-out log. Dan sits on the beach and makes a cute joke about how he's been within 200 miles of the spot he's in right now: straight up! Ha – get it? Because having orbited the Earth, he's been everywhere. Imagine the passport stamps.

Terry is eating handfuls of brine filled with baby minnows. "Protein," he calls them, although they're mostly backbone and eyes. Austin has begun fantasizing about food. Batten the hatches, people. One or two reward challenges from now, prepare yourself for some of those familiar Survivor choco-gasms. Usually, they come from the women, but Austin is already showing the signs.

Out on their raft, Dan wants to confess his spacewalking past to Nick. Dan, you ass. If it was so important to keep the astronaut thing quiet, then why are you telling everybody? If it's something you like to talk about this much, why make such a big deal out of giggling behind your hands and hiding it? The strangest thing is: what is it about these particular moments (minute one with Terry, now with Nick) that makes him think they call for disclosure? Is it strategy? Or is he just so in love with his former, gravity-defying self that he's bursting at the seams to reminisce about it?

When Austin finds out, he facetiously drops a bombshell of his own: "I'm John Grisham." Oh, that clever Austin! He would think of John Grisham as a writer to aspire to be.

At Casaya, Courtney has one responsibility regarding the decision to boot Shane: shut up about it and don't let on. But every time Shane walks by, she's bouncing with glee. Nice job. She and Danielle are corralled by Shane, and he asks them to please give him back his kid. Danielle, an idiot, interjects, "Done," before he can even finish. Courtney says he's making a mistake, and an argument follows in which nobody makes a single coherent, comprehensible point. Bruce tends his rock garden. (You've gotta know that's pissing Aras off.) Defending his treatment of Courtney, Shane actually says, "I haven't lashed out at you in... days."

Dani and Courtney decide to halt everything and stage an intervention about Shane's antisocial behavior. This could take the rest of the 39 days, and you still wouldn't make a dent. Why bother? Just ignore him, use him, and then get rid of him. He's practically begging you to. I guess it speaks to the personality disorders that cause people to apply for Survivor and, subsequently, catch the eye of the soulless Survivor casting team, but I can't understand how it could be more important to them to get along with everyone than win the million dollars. Hell, they should be having fun with how crazy Shane is, pressing his buttons and making him miserable. I'm shocked to say it, but I kind of advocate the Richard Hatch style of play at this point.

Aras interviews that he wants out of the alliance. Why does everyone think of it as an alliance? At this point, it's just a way to control Shane (and thus, the numbers). Nobody should feel beholden to him. I can't tell if they do, or if they just have a really weird concept of how an alliance works on this show. But they need to just do their own thing and not give this "alliance" another thought.

Buzzard of Survivor Strategy: What's with these people?

Bee of the Dictionary Definition of "Alliance": I know! I really don't get it.

Iguana of Very Awful Survivor Challenges: [urp]

Bee of the Dictionary Definition of "Alliance": What's that?

Iguana of Very Awful Survivor Challenges: Oh, nothing.

But it's not nothing. It's a fucking remmunity challenge. The nerve! Teams collect puzzle pieces that are dangling from hooks, race them back to an elaborate puzzle board with rotating obstacles, then hand them over to their teammates who must fit the pieces together. Dan correctly figures out that once you fit in one of the four puzzle pieces, the puzzle solves itself. The rotating obstacles that fit between the pieces will only fit one way, so once you've rotated them to fit one piece, the pieces to either side of it will be indicated by the rotating obstacles, and when you rotate the remaining obstacles to fit those pieces, they'll create an opening for the final piece. According to later interviews, he apparently also pre-solves one of the puzzle pieces, which is something I always think the solver people should try to do – especially in this case, where you have symmetrical puzzle pieces and only a few of them. It seems pretty easy to figure out where at least one of the pieces will go before you can even start.

For some reason, though, Dan has it wrong, or his piece won't fit the way it should. Because despite besting Casaya at the piece-collecting half of the challenge, La Mina makes no progress whatsoever in the puzzle assembly, while Casaya fits one piece into place and then – following Dan's prediction – the rest is easy.

So, Casaya will be going for a feast with the locals, and they'll be picking someone to send to Exile Island. But, because this is a remmunity challenge [grumble], the rest of La Mina will be going to Tribal Council. Casaya aptly perceives that there is one woman and four men on La Mina, so they exile the person La Mina would definitely vote for: Sally. Perhaps Cirie, Courtney, and Danielle realize they'll need a sister around post-merge. Because the person they should really be sending to E.I. is Dan – whose only contribution to challenges, mental acuity, has just failed La Mina miserably. Sure, La Mina doesn't want to vote Dan off, but as their opponent, would you rather mess with their voting strategy, or stick them with a weaker player?

Casaya heads off to its water taxi. Oh, first, let's pause for a moment. Danielle used her teeth to loosen some knots during the puzzle-collecting part of the challenge, and let's observe a moment while Miss Alli makes a joke at the expense of Danielle's choppers, which she finds to be comically oversized. I don't really see it. (My eyes tend to be focused on other comically oversized elements of Danielle.) But we know she'll miss no opportunity to joke about it, so we might as well wait here for her to catch up.

Okay, good. The Hawk of Celebrating the Extraordinarily Obvious circles high above Exile Island, and then we see Sally, who celebrates the extraordinarily obvious advantages of being exiled at this point. Multiple Boas of Suggestive Phraseology slither through the jungle, while Sally appreciates "some girl time." She's glad to "get away from all those boys for a while." Hmmm.

The Fishies of Bothering the Poor Local Children with Your Dumb Reality Show swim together, while Casaya heads to another island and a village that's seemingly inhabited exclusively by children. Who raises the children if the village is children? Someone get Hillary on the line.

Multiple shocking interviews with Casaya indicate: a) the food was tasty; b) the food was welcome to their hungry, empty stomachs. Having filed away this critical information for later analysis, we follow Shane as he quits yet another endeavor. This time, he's quitting quitting smoking; he bums a cigarette from one of the locals, with some comical gesticulation, and sucks it hard. Aras goes ahead and puts his Dad hat back on, chiding Shane on his regression. Shane, his personality momentarily restored to non-sociopath levels (barely) by the nicotine infusion, apologizes to Danielle, who pretends to accept. Cirie grumbles that all her best laid plans may be going awry. That's what you get when you do absolutely nothing to nurture your "best laid" plans.

At La Mina, Austin plants the bug in Terry's ear about eliminating Dan. His NASA smart-guy intelligence hasn't lived up to the hype, and he can shatter a hip just looking at a balance beam. So, alliance be damned, Austin thinks La Mina might have a better chance of surviving the merge with Sally rather than Dan.

Dan and Nick are also discussing the vote, and they both expect a vote to result in a 2-2 tie. Captain of strategy, Dan tries this one: "Hey, Nick. Do you think Austin might just want to quit?" Wow, can you tell he's been racking his brain all day to come up with this angle? That is a long shot. Nick, approaching Terry, elicits a team-based vote against Dan. Terry certainly plays smart. Of course, when considering the vote, his list of cons includes things like "we're friends" and "we both fly large metal objects through the sky." Not exactly stellar points.

Dan is down on himself for not having a backup plan – not being able to adapt on the fly when the first puzzle piece he had planned wouldn't fit. And he's absolutely right. NASA engineer or not, he should've been able to come up with something other than "Maybe if I stomp on it, it'll fit." He adds that if he'd committed such a blunder in space, lives would be on the line. Well, duh. To his credit, Dan is able to accept Terry's update that he'll be going home at Tribal Council. He doesn't get into a whiny snit about Terry breaking their bond, because he understands why the vote is necessary.

Terry is touched by Dan's ability to man up. "Dan has the right stuff," he says in an interview. There he goes, quoting New Kids on the Block lyrics again. Such a softy. (From off camera: "Apu! Apu! Would you say you have a 'love/eight' relationship with your octuplets? Seriously, would you please say it?")

At Tribal Council, Terry tells Coach Probst that Casaya's protective exile of Sally forced them to get rid of a stronger player. Actually, a stronger player would be going home if Sally hadn't been exiled. They'd have kept weak (and very pale) Dan around just because of friendship, really. And then, Probst wasn't lying last week, an unparalleled Survivor first: Dan owns up that he's the one going. We've never seen honesty like this before. Sure enough, that's how the vote goes. In his final words, Dan admits some surprise at Terry's decision. "I wouldn't have voted for Terry," he says. Well, yeah. Terry can lift a soup spoon unassisted. Nobody wants to vote for him right now.

Next week (uh... yesterday): Never-before-seen footage! Interspersed with very-very-before-seen footage. Experience the Viveros stickball game in its entirety! Fill out your box scores!

Then, after that: Bigger rewards and greater risks! (Read: larger buffets and narrower balance beams.) And someone goes home in a body bag. Please, please be Shane! And Cirie and Courtney and Aras! And Probst!

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