Mon, March 26, 2007

At last, the familiar team shuffle "twist" is upon us, which means roughly half of Moto has to leave the cushy luxury of their camp and half of Ravu gets to eat for the first time since August. Also, this means Rocky and Andre are now on the same team, burying the hatchet of their frenzied rivalry that has gathered intensity and vitriol ever since it started that time Andre said something kind of loud.

Last week (which was many weeks ago, thanks to my laziness and also CBS's brief institutionalization for a case of March Paranoid Schizophrenia), Burnett and his challenge designers went full-on with the games designed to maximize teams' hatred for one another. First it was the American Gladiator-style pillow-fight-on-a-tower (with added mud pit), then it was a Concentration-type memory game. Ravu, of course, lost both. And the reason – this time at least – is that they're fucking morons. There are three ways to win the pillow fight thing: pure brute strength; keeping your center of gravity low and digging in; stepping aside, matador-style, and letting a charging opponent fly past you and into the muck. The third is unlikely to work more than twice, unless you mix it up with the other two to keep them off guard, but it will work. Given the physical weakness of Ravu, it seems like they would have hit upon this idea. Pure brute strength is not really an option for them. Theoretically these people saw Ulong and Koror go through the same thing when the challenge designers needed to light a fire under their mutual animosity. Even if they didn't, it's not that hard to figure out. In the memory challenge, they get really really close to winning, which just makes their eventual loss all the more heartbreaking. Also heartbreaking: that they couldn't put together a decent strategy for this game either. Both teams make the mistake of flipping cards randomly, rather than proceeding in order, which would make it easier to remember where each word or number is hidden. Both teams also make the mistake of yelling excitedly at their teammates when it's time to send them out to make a guess. (After they leave the platform, the teammates are prohibited from communicating.) Seems like the smart approach would be to quietly form a consensus on which numbers and words are under which cards, and then review with the teammate, then send him/her out there to flip some cards. Instead, this poor confused soul is barraged with shouted instructions in all kinds of different directions – so much that they can't even trust their own memory any more, and all is lost.

This week, there is no reward challenge. Both teams get some fruit and wine to enjoy after the shuffle – and, oddly, there seems to be no attempt to divide this booty equitably at New Ravu. The original Moto people and the original Ravu people share alike. I can't say I'd offer to forgo my snack if I were a Moto person, but I would definitely demand that the Moto people sit out if I were a Ravu guy.

The new Ravu – which is decided by a Rock, Paper, Scissors and a blind buff pick, so you know it's fair – will be Mookie, Alex, Rocky, Andre, and Anthony, and they'll be headed by Edgardo (or as I like to call him, "We are out of 'Edgardo' license plates in the gift shop"). Earl is the leader of new Moto which also includes Boo, Michelle, Yau Man, Stacy, and Cassandra. Lisi is picked by no one, which is just perfect, because she's horrible and awful – and even more perfect (?) because she had convinced herself she was Li'l Miss Strategic Powerhouse and never had to worry about her alliance ever again. Ha! (I mean, regardless of this "twist," that wouldn't have been true, but still – ha!)

She starts blithering that she had come to the conclusion that whoever wasn't picked for either new team would just be sent home, and she had apparently very rapidly made her peace with this. It's not stated explicitly, but it seems like her reason is that her "Final Five" alliance has been divided up and so she is ready to just throw in the towel and not try to win any more. (By the way, don't confuse that Final Five with the Final Five Cylons from Battlestar Galactica. Just the thought of an immortal Lisi makes my skin crawl. But it's interesting how many parallels there are between Survivor: Fiji and Battlestar Galactica, season three. I'm beginning to think they were written by the same people. If only the Survivor contestants had some sheets of paper – we could compare the corners and have our answer!)

So, anyway, Lisi's content to go home and let the other twelve people "do what they're gonna do," but Probst says no, good news, she still gets to stay in the game. On Exile Island. ("Pfft! Yeah! That's great! Thanks a lot!" Lisi squawks, becoming further unhinged.) He says maybe she'll take this time to "get her head right" and return to the game with an interest in playing. This is a nice battle of wills between two people with utterly maladjusted priorities, all the more entertaining because they're just as incompatible with each other as they are with the rest of us sane people. To Probst, there's no point in living if you don't want to play Survivor. Anyone who isn't gung-ho about playing the game is just a silly fool to be dismissed. To Lisi, there's no point in playing Survivor unless you have four people you can bend to your will (one who agrees with you and three who inexplicably fear you) and cushy furniture and plenty of snacks. Probst, who seems to have been instructed by Burnett to be more like Simon Cowell, won't let up on the ridicule. (Not that Lisi deserves a break.) He explains that she'll find clues for locating the mini idol and if she still doesn't want it, she can give it to someone who does. Giggles all around. Probst, you dog!

As Lisi explains later in an interview, she "felt like my comfort zone was yanked." Score one for the luxury/poverty experiment. After consideration, she regrets that she didn't pause and absorb the news before flipping out, but hey, she explains, "I'm more of an abrasive character." That's just Lisi being Lisi! Don't try to change her! Remember Alex and Edgardo, trying to talk Lisi and Stacy into treating Andre and Cassandra with a modicum of human decency last week? How Edgardo fretted that the girls weren't thinking far enough ahead? Ah, that was fun.

Ravu is now all dudes! Rocky and Alex are kind of happy about this, which leads to some very entertaining footage of them describing how happy that makes them and realizing mid-sentence that many women will later see these moments on TV. Women like their wives, sisters, and mothers. Or random other women that they may someday want to sleep with. It makes for some fun backpedaling. Alex also gives Ravu a pep talk, using a quote from The Count of Monte Cristo. (He actually says, "You know? That movie?" which is just hilarious, and reminds me of the way in Clueless Cher learned her Shakespeare from watching Mel Gibson.) Anthony is uncomfortable being the only introverted weakling among all these muscle-bound chest-thumper types, and he doesn't feel any better about it after Rocky's suggestion that Anthony stay at camp and tend the fire while everyone else goes out to fish and hunt for crabs. Over the last few episodes, Rocky has really been focusing on his problems with Anthony, and he seems eager to convince the new guys that Anthony is a wimpy, whiny liability.

Alex spends his fishing time feeling out possible alliance partners. It's assumed that the Moto guys are all together (even though Andre was excluded from their group previously), so he just needs to find one swing vote, and Mookie seems like a viable candidate. Rocky interviews that "on paper" the new Ravu is a superpower. His mood is highly susceptible to prevailing winds. When the old Ravu lost a third or fourth challenge in a row, he was convinced they would all die of starvation within minutes. Now that he's seen someone catch a fish, he's invincible!

The immunity challenge basically recreates the difficulty of moving a sofa up a narrow stairwell ("Pivot! Pivot!"). The teammates are belted together in a set of harnesses attached to a sliding hub, so that three pairs of people are shackled to the opposite ends of three poles, and the three poles are all connected in the middle – they can slide back and forth, but they all must move together. They race through an obstacle course of poles and "gates" (two poles with a third pole across the top) in crisscrossing paths toward a finish line. According to Coach Probst's handy Teacher's Edition, this task tests "how effectively you communicate with each other!" Good, so we'll finally get that question settled!

Watching this challenge, I'm reminded of how much I love the team-shuffle "twist," because even though I have already concluded that I hate all these people, shuffling them reminds me which ones I hate more. Suddenly I want Moto to win this thing, which means deep down I dislike Mookie and Rocky (and the macho half of Alex) so much that it cancels out my appreciation of Anthony (and the thoughtful half of Alex). I'd like Moto to win (I kind of have a soft spot for Michelle and her challenge bottoms) but mostly I want Ravu to lose – for two reasons: Rocky will probably become even more unhinged; and Lisi will have to live on the poor beach. Which will be awesome.

And that's how it goes. Sadly, this puts Anthony on the chopping block and even though he spends a lot of time explaining to a clearly receptive Alex and Edgardo that Rocky is a maniac and a loose cannon, it seems that the team is committed to removing its physical weak links before its mental ones. (I'm not clear on how Rocky is "stronger" than Anthony anyway, at this point. He's so starved, he's not really powerful any more – he's just scrawnier, which means his muscles show up.) He begins philosophizing about the value of Anthony – returning always to this accusation of "whining" which seems baseless and weird. There seems to be a more or less constant stream-of-consciousness diatribe from Rocky – to interviewers, other teammates, or just to himself – about how Anthony is going to be voted out and how he's a whiner and a liability. If I were voting, this side of Rocky would definitely cause me to consider giving him my vote.

Rocky is hung up on the idea that Anthony will talk to people (like Rita or Earl, or currently Alex and Edgardo) and try to "finagle his way through things," which seems to be Rocky's term for attempting to suss out people's voting strategies and maybe convince them not to vote for you. Which... is kind of part of Survivor, you know? I don't understand why that equates to "whining." What should Anthony do, give up, and quit the game? Magically win immunity, with no help from his squabbling, scatterbrained teammates? Or should he follow Rocky's lead and conduct all his voting strategy sessions under the guise of barking "philosophy" lessons, accusing others of whining, and demanding they do his bidding?

Tribal Council begins with a great quote from Edgardo (no, not that Edgardo you know from work – the one on Survivor): When he first got to Ravu, he thought to himself, "Now I'm going to start playing Survivor." I'm very fond of this way of describing Moto: that Survivor wasn't even happening over there.

In front of Probst, the latest tack in Rocky's crusade against Anthony is that he doesn't stand up for himself enough. I don't even really know how to parse this. Is Rocky saying that he's been testing Anthony all this time? Mistreating him just to see if he'd get in Rocky's face (like Andre, whom Rocky apparently now respects)? And since he didn't, since he backed down, recognizing that Rocky is unstable and he'd do better to choose his battles – that qualifies as whining? As Rocky sees it, he was trying to teach Anthony something. "...maybe if you take some of those words, you can use them later on in your life, or tomorrow or the next day, or ten minutes from now, whatever you want to, you know what I mean?" I swear to God, this guy is the new Shane! Having the word Boston tattooed on your body is the Survivor insignia for degenerative mental illness.

But this "testing him" tack carries at least one benefit: Probst is suddenly Rocky's biggest fan. ("Me too! I'm always trying to teach these people something! Why don't they just thank us? The intricately art-directed reality-show jungle is our classroom!")

Anthony tries to defend himself on these charges, and it seems like his only problem is that he's an emotional thinker. He doesn't fly off the handle, because he's better at assembling an argument thoughtfully on his own. If he were to respond with a quick come-back, it would be something snitty like, "No, you are!" because he doesn't think on his feet. He knows his feelings are hurt, but he can't put it into words until he takes some time (on his own, or in an interview) to reason it out. And this isn't made any easier by someone like Rocky – how do you reason with this guy when he defies all logic? Anthony responds to Rocky's tirade: "This is why I don't talk to him." So Rocky screams, "Why don't you just say something?" I thought that's what he was doing?

Alex, who can be a bit "manly-man" sometimes, especially when he's celebrating the fact that there are no women around, is generally a good guy. He is embarrassed by all this conflict, and sort of buries his head in his hands. Probst calls him out. "Why is this bad?" Seriously? Why isn't it bad? Are we supposed to enjoy this uncomfortable shouting match because it's building Anthony's character? Clearly a lot is edited out, because I don't know how Probst could agree with Rocky's take on things, here. He ends up giving Anthony a lecture about "owning" his anger and claiming his rightful spot on Survivor. While I get the whole Coach Probst/Coach Rocky simpatico dynamic, I'm still surprised Probst is on board with this whole crazy notion of Anthony as some whiny malcontent who is ruining the game for everyone else.

Anyway, as you can imagine, they vote Anthony out. Of course they do. How could Rocky possibly become a liability? Look at his sinewy physique! I don't care how crazy someone is – if he can swallow a grape and you can watch it move through his body, he's a bona fide Hercules, and he'll take on any balance beam you throw at him (as long as it's not in the first ten challenges). If I were Anthony, this is when I would suddenly flip out and just dive headlong into the rest of Ravu like that guy with the sword in the 300 trailer. It seems like the only response they respect is crazy defensiveness.

Next week, Lisi comes to join Ravu. I think Anthony just dodged a major bullet.

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