Grid Effect

So, we didn’t take any notes during the episode last week, was James referring to his injured digit? Or was he trying to be menacing with this faux-threat? At this point in the game with no numbers and no strategy, the only way James could be menacing is if he was physically so a la Joey on this season’s Real World. Yeah. I watched the Real World last night after basketball because Orlando was pwning Detroit, fucking sue me.

Anyway, James’ untimely and unwanted (at least from the producers standpoint) departure from the game was only a small fraction of this episode. He probably had the best reappearance of a medical evacuation ever though, showing up to tribal with an IV. It reminded me of South Park’s parody of the 2000 election in which Mr. Garrison brought in the dying kindergartner to vote for class president.

His appearance at Tribal Council was only the tip of the iceberg, because this episode was probably the best use of the immunity idol since Earl turned it against Alex and his gaggle of cronies. Mainly because it was nice to see it effectively used for once and Amanda was absolutely radiant when she played the thing. It’s nice to see that while my one Survivor (semi but was fading quickly) crush is dispatched, a new one is making a name for herself.

It wasn’t so much that she played it as it was how she played it. From the get-go when she came back from immunity challenge to empty her bag (presumably a little over-eager to do so, but those are bygones at this point), to aligning with one other person (Parvati, bleh) to assist in distracting everyone else while she dug for the idol, to seeing where everyone stood before she actually went in search of the thing, to that fucking Oscar worthy performance at Tribal Council and her subsequent strut up to Probst to put the idol in play, we thoroughly enjoyed the entire spectacle. The only way it was getting any better is if they voted out Natalie instead of Alexis who was literally on her last leg anyways, or if Natalie just spontaneously combusted into flames.

It looks like they’re posing…whatever, do your thing doe (dough? I’m never certain) eyes.

But I think the decision to vote out Alexis was part of the strategy on Amanda’s part. Since Amanda wanted vile Natalie out of the game and Parvati wanted Alexis (I have no fucking clue why, and just when I’m beginning to change my opinion of Parvati, she insists on some shit like this and kills any perceived good will), it was a good compromise to make so Parvati doesn’t run off and tell the other four people about the idol. So even though I disagree with the actual final decision, I concede that it was phenomenal game play.

In other news, Erik could make a bit of an immunity run in the next few episodes. You wouldn’t expect it because he has the hair of a 55 year-old woman and the physique and mindset of a twelve year-old boy (look at his squealing excitement to have is brother and Jeff Probst within close proximity of each other), but he’s deceptively competitive, and aside from Parvati in challenges that require balance and agility he’s in pretty good standing in everything else. We actually let out an audible yelp when he took the target challenge in such convincing fashion.

We’ll never figure out why all the women didn’t just aim for only one person’s bottles in their alliance if their ultimate goal was to have an all female final five. But we suppose that their SURVIVAL instincts kicked in (Huh? Am I right or am I right, people? High five!). Either that or they are over-confident, unoriginal idiots. Historically speaking on Survivor, that has traditionally been the case.

The reward challenge and actual reward were kind of bland. We never much care about the “besmirch each other behind their backs then embarrass everyone by way of Jeff Probst” challenge. At least Alexis got that one taste of victory before being ousted, but ironically enough the person she sent to immunity ended up leading to her torch being snuffed. Why is everyone this season so apprehensive to go to exile island when they know damn well that there is an immunity idol to be had?

Nothing much else happened, we were happy to see that alliance have to turn on each other after their ugly cockiness last week, and judging from the previews last week we expect to see more of the same.

We’ve already covered the major events of this one pretty extensively over here, and it still pisses us off to no end. Between the four of them, how could James, Amanda, Erik and Jason not put together some kind of scheme to form a new alliance instead of hanging on begrudgingly to the already established core alliance. It was so fucking simple. Sure, you could make excuses for all of them sans Jason, because the other three had to know that he had the idol, but Alexis, Parvati and Natalie were scheming right in front of the three of them while they rolled their eyes. Don’t just act all passive-aggressive you fucking humps, do something to rectify the current situation!

According to this interview at Entertainment Weekly Jason was apparently under the impression that it was in Natalie’s best interest to align with him. And although we were never shown why he would think that, he has proven to be rather dense at times before so we’ll let the shoddy editing slide. He said that James didn’t like him so he never offered to align with him. Well, fuck James then. If he had played the idol and gotten Erik and Amanda to vote with him, that would have been the majority after all the votes had been discarded when he played the idol. I mean, why would you just want to desperately cling to that fifth position, when did that become so fucking lauded?

Anyhow, to the finer points of the game. Like, say, the reward challenge. We’ve been repulsed by this show many a time, but probably none more so than the incident with the chocolate cake. The incident was two-fold in establishing my repulsion. First Alexis, Parvati, Cirie all eating it with Natalie after she purchased the thing and was given three people to share it with. And not eat it with a fork or anything remotely civil like that, but pouncing on it with no eating utensils like a diabetic on her death bed. In other words, it was horrifying. Probst gave them I believe two minutes to eat this thing, and they took that very literally as they more or less just jammed their faces into it in unison. Even James, who had voluntarily taken the bats that Natalie unknowingly purchased, thought it disgusting.

The second half of my disbelief came when Erik paid Cirie $40 to lick her fingers/hand. That was, in and of itself, probably the weakest thing I’ve ever seen. It was pretty indicative of his position in the game, “I’ll pay you cash money if you’ll let me lick the scraps off your hand” is basically what he said. To his credit, the game ended right then and there, so Cirie’s newly acquired $40 was rendered worthless.

These people make Joel look desirable.

But is it just me or are the Survivor’s more gluttonous this year than in recent history? We had this train wreck, Ozzy dropping out of an immunity challenge for fucking donuts shortly after he had eaten a rather large meal at reward, people being unable to contain their excitement over an unseen food item that they accidentally dropped out of a challenge, and just a general entitlement and bitchiness that at least we’ve never seen.

Anything else happen? Oh, and while we do believe Jason to be a bit of an airhead, Survivor production really did a hatchet job on him. I mean, they might as well edited a clown outfit onto him, because what we saw in that EW interview, versus what we saw on the show, really didn’t seem like the same person. We fault him for poor game play and a general vapidness, but not for being unlikeable or intolerable. And the four women generally had to dislike him to say the shit about him that they did. It all seemed very juvenile to me, even for a Survivor episode.

All in all this season has had some great moments, but we doubt we’ll be able to handle a final three that involves any of the four members of the dominant alliance. The real shame in Jason & Co. not counter-attacking this episode was that if the three on the outskirts were ever going to make a move, it had to be here. Now their best bet is to sit it out and hope the four of them implode, which at this point doesn’t seem likely.

They can try and persuade someone else to switch allegiances, but that seems like it would only solidify their resolve. Still, an F3 of say, Parvati, Alexis and Natalie would be less encouraging than last season in China with Courtney, Todd & Amanda or Exile Island with Aras and Danielle. That is to say, we’d only watch for the interrogation from the jury. We’d like to see a female alliance, because we haven’t seen one successfully play out yet, but not with this miserable troupe.

We’ll try to post some links today but we’re abnormally busy, so don’t hold your breath.

One might think that hosting the second most popular game show on television would make for a charmed life, but you would be wrong. Living a life that is akin to a constant vacation with intermediate working stints in tropical locations isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Just ask super-models.

For one, Jeff Probst, host of Survivor, has been in and out of therapy. Yes, I’m afraid that due to the abnormal nature of his career, being in and out of the country with only brief periods of familial contact can be quite trying for most millionaires. You might counter by arguing that their are plenty of others who work jobs that separate them from their family, but they aren’t fortunate enough to bring down seven figures, so he really doesn’t have any room for complaining. Which is just totally unfair. Those people don’t have the anxiety that comes with making all that money, they usually have to work two jobs and it’s definitely not a matter of vanity. They aren’t required to travel all over the globe either, because no one wants to put their expenses on the company tab, and they are fortunate enough to be unable to afford such expenditures on their own, so they don’t have to see everything the world has to offer.

The sacrifices some of us make. And obviously his judgment wasn’t influenced while she was in the game, if that’s what you were thinking.

He also dated one of the contestants from a past season, do you realize how tedious that can be? That’s like Violette Palmer dating Kevin Garnett. Sure, some might call that a conflict of interests, and Palmer would probably lose her job as a result, but think about all the domestic drama that must entail. Sadly, Probst ended his relationship with Julie Barry from Survivor: Vanuatu, and have opted not to be friends. That’s a shame, when two people share what I’m sure was three years of blissful monogamy only to decide that not only is the relationship over, but so is all contact with the ex-girlfriend must be really discouraging. Usually when I break up with a girl, we still enjoy everything a relationship has to offer minus the sex, and who doesn’t want that? Maybe Probst is dating a new, current contestant. I have my money on Parvati, because this guy just cannot catch a break*.

Still, he valiantly soldier’s on. Doing the unfathomable like sleeping in tents and while looking for new women to sleep with. One thing I’ve learned from this article, though, is that if there were more people as selfless as Jeff Probst, this world would be a much better place. There’s no denying that.

*= This entire article was facetious, but I truly pity anyone that dates Parvati.

For those who haven’t seen the movie To Die For, then don’t worry about that post’s title. But essentially it is comparing her to a woman who convinces a high schooler to murder her husband so she can advance her career without the hindrance of a spouse. That might seem a little harsh, I mean, Maretto at one point in time was at least expected to be charming.

Usually we wait until the day of the following episode to write about this. But last night’s episode was probably one of the bigger jokes we can remember from the show, and it can’t be put on hold for a week. Besides, that episode of The Office was too bizarre, we’re still trying to decide if we liked it or not and need to wait until later in the day to transcribe our thoughts on it.

Do you mind if I pull a Stephen Colbert for a second? Good, I CALLED IT! But I really wish I hadn’t. For starters, Natalie either got the worst edit in the history of reality television, or she is the most abominable personality to ever appear on Survivor, either way it is an unflattering debut for someone we were supposed to be watching for the past two months. Is this how all her interviews went and since she was such a peripheral player the production team thought better than to put her on camera talking about how integral and conniving she is? Or did she spend the majority of her camera interviews picking her giant pug nose and scratching her head with a rock?

We spent all night having nightmares about it, we figured our few readers should at least experience some induced nausea.

We mean no disrespect, but it was entirely preferable when she was seen and not heard, and presumably let Alexis do the talking for the both of them. Of course, looking at her is not something we aspire to do either, so please, by all means Survivor contestants, feel free to send her home as soon as possible.

Now, some might consider this sour grapes because we stated yesterday that Jason was now our vested rooting interest, if for no other reason then how maligned he’s been all season. To which we would respond: Please tell me you’re kidding. No, the reason our tone is so disapproving is the manner in which everything was carried out. “Blindsiding” a person who hasn’t had any alliance members for the past week seems mislabeled, we think calling it an overly complicated tedious mess is much more accurate.. Sure, Jason wasn’t expecting it, but he’s a moron. This is the same kid who thought the immunity idol was a stick with a smiley face on it, who thought last week’s vote was about saving him rather than booting Ozzy, who just seems vacant on a general basis. Nice job in booting the most gullible of all the gullible players who’ve ever played this game.

Again, we have no problem with them voting him out, because he was entirely too trustworthy, and too desperate to make any rational decisions so he was just stalling the inevitable. But the way the girls carried it, particularly Natalie, and to a lesser extent Alexis and Parvati, was nauseating. I don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone quite as vile as Natalie on this show, while others have been smug or dislikable, she has both those qualities plus the additive bonus of being undeserving, condescending, misinformed and egotistical all at the same time.

Shouldn’t there be a limit to how many crap metaphors one uses that mean exactly the same thing, and just become more and more convoluted? (This is asked of James as well, who has a real aversion to apples.) And better yet, does Mark Burnett have to keep throwing them on the air? Her interviews probably ate up a solid ten minutes of camera time, and if she were explaining the cure for cancer, then sure, it would be justified. But when every interview is some morbid explanation of how they’re, “picking off the guys one by one….flossing her teeth with his (Jason’s) jugular”, then we probably only need to hear that once.

We have no idea what Amanda was thinking. Of the bottom four left (Amanda being five), she is the only one we considered having the capacity to make a power play against what’s probably the most pitiful “power” alliance we’ve ever seen this late in the game. So either she is content with aligning with the women, thinking even if Cirie and Parvati are lying to her (I really have no idea where there loyalties lie), she should be able to run circles around them in challenges, or we were giving her too much credit. It may be the former, but when the competition is so underwhelming, Parvati and Natalie are actually immunity threats when standing next to her.

So why even chance it? Would it really have been that difficult for either Amanda, Erik or James to tell Jason he is getting played, implore him to use his idol and the four of them can boot Parvati? Now that would have been a blindside. Not going to such great lengths to boot someone with no friends and no brains.

I don’t expect a game plan like this from James or Jason, since history has proven them to be a little too dimwitted to pull it off. Erik seems like an idiot to us, though we don’t really know anything about him. But Amanda? Didn’t she seem at least remotely impressive in China? No? It might be a situation where from the inside looking out, it seems a lot less obvious than from the outside looking in. We really have no idea what the editing left out, but she said she exhausted all options without us seeing her do anything, are supposed to just take her at her word? Because as far as we can tell, neither Erik, James or Amanda did a fucking thing, all content to just “not go home” on that particular day. As if going home four days from now will be anymore rewarding.

We’ll leave it at this, and recap the finer points from last night’s episode next Thursday, but damn it was frustrating to watch when the solution seemed so simple and favorable for anyone we would consider even remotely redeemable.

Office review later.

Wow, that was chock full of Survivor goodness. If anyone took issues with the content of this episode, then you might as well quit watching the show. That was, without a doubt, one of the better Survivor episodes ever, and certainly the best we’ve seen from the past two seasons.

For one, we didn’t like seeing Ozzy go home. He brought an element to the game that I don’t think anyone else has brought. And I don’t necessarily think it’s just the fact he was so good at challenges, but how he was good at them. There was a certain amount of grace that Ozzy won with on a challenge course. Albeit that didn’t translate back to camp or tribal council, but when he was fully invested in winning a challenge, be it a group or individually, he was virtually unbeatable. Consider this paragraph and in memoriam, because from here on out we’re going to be fairly unmerciful.

For the most part, we can understand why he didn’t play the idol, and at this point in the series, when the idol can only be played before the names are read, it is a significant disadvantage to find the thing. Essentially it puts a giant target on your back. Sure, discretion is always an option, but either the one or two people you told eventually tell everyone or everyone deducts that it has come into your possession. Of course if you know exactly when to play it because you are definitively being voted out, then by all means it is a valued asset. But have we ever seen that? When the idol actually worked in the favor of it’s beholder when they must play it before the votes are read?

The only person who has no legitimate excuse is James. He actually had two idols and only three TC’s left in which they were playable, and admitted as much during the same episode that he had cause for concern, but stood PAT nonetheless and was sent home. Ozzy, who also should have realized something was afoot, and seemed to acknowledged as much, also inadvertently admitted to rarely (if ever) bringing the idol with him to TC. I’m sorry, but when you are that comfortable with the idol and have the reputation as a power player and a camp favorite, you are begging to be be ousted early.

At least he conceded as much in his exit speech, even if he was somewhat bitter about it. And really, who can blame him? There are times when bitterness is justifiable, and this is one of those times. I watched an interview on Entertainment Weekly’s website, and he certainly seemed to be in good spirits. So a short-term moment of petulance is definitely understandable.

And while we commend Cirie and Parvati (mostly Cirie) for hatching the plan to have Ozzy blindsided, we don’t particularly like either of them. Cirie has destroyed the good will she built up in her inaugural season and Parvati has always been a detestable bitch (for lack of a better term). Ozzy’s departure makes the game much more unpredictable, but it also cirtually guarantees that someone we don’t like is going to walk away from this experience $1,000,000 richer. And that is never a good feeling in reality television. I’m looking at you, Erik, Amanda and Alexis, to make the eventual memory of this season a fond one.

Speaking of Alexis, the Immunity Challenge was probably our favorite moment in the episode. Just back-to-back-to-back eliminations from Alexis, then Natalie and then James as they both mocked the person whose exit preceded there’s. And we have to confess, we were downright frightened by Alexis’ bitchface. It was like something out of Heathers, only a hundred times more blinding. I feel like this last sentence is a compliment, does it come off that way? Anyone who can do anything so intensely and so perfectly I feel like deserves recognition.

Congrats, Jason, you’re the first to earn the vaunted Grid Effect half-pity vote.

Notice how she has gone from virtual obscurity to round the clock coverage, that’s a good sign for an eventual winner.

And though there is much one can fault Jason for, giving him shit for being gullible enough to believe the rest of Dabu’s guarantee, especially while everyone was snickering during the decision process is somewhat unfair. He recognized he can’t win all the immunities, and and rationally asked everyone to give him their word, mistakenly believing that the majority of people on reality television are even remotely honorable.

As far as dirty moves go in Survivor, we never get self-righteous about it because everyone is just looking to prolong their stay, but for someone outside of all alliances and at the time was obviously next on the chopping block, find some other way to get him out of the game. Or maybe, don’t bow out of the challenge for donuts, or fucking candy. Idiots. Actually, scratch the above, we’re rooting for Jason from here on out.

Anyhow, if the previews are any indicator, it looks like we are heading towards and all girls alliance assuming there isn’t any ill-will towards Parvati for aligning with two different groups, or Amanda for being unaware about the decision to boot Ozzy, etc. But in situations like these, when the majority recognizes that they can stick around for a few more days simply by voting out the minority and the two are as easily discernible as gender lines, then usually everyone stays in tow. Especially in this circumstance, when the male brain trust remaining on the show leaves a lot to be desired.

Back tomorrow with Office recap.

Ugh, the above is a Parvati quote, and it pains me to give her credence in any way, even if it comes in the shape of a formality. Needless to say, this episode sparked some promise, then let us down, then got our hopes up even though we knew what was coming wouldn’t be pretty, then the curtain finally closed with one of the last two likable favorites leaving the island (the other being Ozzy).

In case you missed the episode, or haven’t been able (or cared) to ascertain who I am referring to from my previous posts, Eliza was last Thursday’s TC victim. And while we found ourselves with a vested interest in her outcome, we weren’t terribly surprised with the result. She is one of the better challenge performers, for some reason manages to regularly isolate herself from the group and any one she attempted to form an alliance with has either been voted off (Ami, Yau), sent home per medical emergency (Jonathan) or is a complete fucking dipshit (Jason). So yeah, considering all the variables her ouster is long overdue.

The dipshit in question for one reason and one reason only: the fake immunity idol. Now, we give him a little leeway because he is a newbie, has never had any physical contact with any type of non-challenge oriented immunity idol and plausible deniability (i.e. he desperately wanted to believe what he attained was legitimate). But Even though Eliza’s something of a veteran, her reaction to the pathetic smiley faced stick that Ozzy made kind of sold us on Jason’s ineptness. Mainly because it was so emphatic (”It’s a fucking stick…I hope some miracle happens with this Stick at tribal…what are you trying to pull here?)”.

Still what a horrible way to go out. I mean, there probably isn’t a whole helluva lot she could have done to have saved herself, but Jason constantly delaying actually giving her the idol negated any opportunity for her to talk her way out of her predicament. Maybe she could have gotten Jason to go along with Cirie and Amanda to vote out Alexis or aligned with Alexis and Natalie? The game feels so parsed at the moment that her options were vast if actually given a moments notice.

I know people say alcohol can lead to depression and everything, but honestly, what would the suicide rate be if it wasn’t for the liquid spirits?

Speaking of Amanda, the whole thing with Ozzy and Alexis kind of sprung from nowhere, and she seemed as shocked as we were. As in any typical lover’s quarrel, she blamed her competition rather than the reason for it. Still, Ozzy might be playing with one too many hands here. He knows not to trust Parvati, but having Erik, Jason, Amanda and Alexis in your pocket can being just as detrimental as it is beneficial. What if they start some sort of back door alliance and get to talking about whatever you may have said about your strategy, about them personally, etc. We do know one thing, Ozzy finds the scent of an unshowered motivational speaker intoxicating. That was some weird shit.

Kind of in the shadows this episode were the same culprits that have been the past two or three episodes sans Alexis: Natalie (seemingly Alexis’ lapdog), Cirie (low key works much better for her), James (it’s hard to be discrete when you have forty pounds on everyone there) and Erik (he came up with the tribe name and still managed to be virtually forgettable).

We do not know what to expect tonight other than for Jason to be voted out, as he seems to be playing the game independently now. He’s kind of like Omar Little, expect for the lack of confidence he inspires. And maybe a little verbal sparring. Honestly, if we were on this island our main goal would be to instigate scenes, that would take precedent over winning. Because right now, Amanda probably only needs someone talking in her ear to pick a fight with Alexis.

But all in all, a decent merge episode. We suspect now that Eliza is gone Ozzy and James will win the predominate amount of individual immunities. Or, in other words, whichever ones Ozzy doesn’t win because they involve brute strength, James will take home. Jason has proven he might be able to steal a few, but I think last week will prove to be an exception rather than the rule. As far as mental challenges are concerned….umm, maybe Amanda or Alexis can compete for a couple? I don’t know. The dismal competition in this regard probably speaks to why our interest is waning this season.

Back tomorrow with an Office review, maybe some links as well.

We’re still in the precipice of a hectic work week, so bare with us as we offer up day old news for the first three days of this, the third week of April.

Now desperately seeking an edge to regather its once dominant Nielsen score, Survivor is going HD. Assuming this is the case, the editing team better be working around the clock to verify there are not any exposed body parts.

TV critic Tim Goodman sums up the mentality of NBC comedy fans quite aptly in this op-ed piece. In short, he says we’re comedy elitists who denounce more traditional CBS comedies without giving them a chance. This describes the attitude on Grid Effect almost to a tee, and the odds of us changing up are about 100/1. Call us a snob if you will, but we’ve watched Big Bang Theory and we were mightily unimpressed.

Albert Brooks will play Nancy Botwin’s father-in-law in the fourth season of Weeds. Now, if only they would release the third season DVD’s so I could prepare to watch the fourth season, I’d be all set. But no, Showtime keeps me in suspense, at least with DVD releases and not actual storytelling.

There’s a picture of Mary Louise-Parker’s digitally enhanced naked ass that we wanted to use, but chose this instead. Mainly because violence is so much less-threatening than sex.

Here’s something you don’t see everyday: A reality TV director has been arrested on charges he falsely imprisoned eight women. Apparently he led them into his house with the promise of putting them on a series. A few things about this, first, I thought people that lied about being in showbiz to get women actually had no affiliation with the industry. If you actually have some kind of pull, what’s the point of promising a woman a spot you never plan to give to her, if you can actually put a good word? I suppose you can always be a sick fuck, so maybe that’s the case. Secondly, I think this is another argument for the abolishment of reality television. If it is so mind-numbingly boring for the people involved that they resort to multiple kidnappings, then it’s time to rethink the genre.

A.O. Scott, who we’ve sometimes felt to be pompous, writes a piece about Roger Ebert’s television career that is anything but. Regardless of your opinion of Ebert’s approach to movie reviews, his contribution is undeniable and hopefully a “Better Know a Congressman” segment.

Stephen Colbert is doing his show from Philadelphia all week. We watched last night as Colbert always brings his A-game for the away crowd, and last night was no exception. We recommend tuning in tonight to see an interview with Michelle Obama.

It seems like state employees were really fond of The Wire. Which is strange since that is who the show is usually hammering away on, even with the obvious degree of affection the series portrays the majority of its characters with, they are still perceived as ineffective at best and expendable at worst. But yeah, City Hall in Nashville is still in mourning over its conclusion. I guess that speaks to the caliber of programming that The Wire brought every week.

And finally, Newsday has a column about the difficulties sports-oriented TV series face. We mentioned it yesterday with The Contender, the article focuses mainly on Friday Night Lights, the problems the two shows face might vary, but we think a lot of it is related to sports movies being such a staple in US cinema that diverting from that is unlikely. Sports fans generally have amazingly short attention spans, we think FNL’s ratings failure stems directly from that mindset.

More of the same tomorrow.

This was an odd episode if not an enjoyable one. Since we didn’t see much in the way of plot development that seems to be a minority opinion, but at least we saw one of the more pathetic or heartfelt farewells ever, depending on either your level of gullibility or suspicion of Ami.

It’s a shame she had to leave too. Between the crab hunting and the intimidation of Erik with the machete, I really thought we might see the first ever Survivor castration. If her tears were even remotely sincere they seemed more out of anger than genuine sadness. But there was an abnormal amount of knife play in this episode. Seriously, I felt like I was watching 300 again.

As opposed to eating like rats, Airai is now eating the rats themselves. In a scene accustom only to this season Jason is rather impressed himself when he catches one and wants so desperately for the favorites to like him, but I’m assuming no one ever told him that Amanda wrestled a shark to shore. Just so I’m somewhat incensed by this whole scene, Parvati calls him a loser during a camera interview. And she is in a position to deem who is a loser and a winner, being a foxy boxer grants you such privileges.

One thing that was almost clumsily good play was Parvati approaching Natalie about her and Alexis forming an alliance post-merge, but they do it in the most nauseatingly conceited way possible. Natalie looks like the girl that sleeps with her friends boyfriends when they’re hammered. And somewhat coincidentally, I imagine Parvati just sleeps with whomever is hammered, regardless of relationship status.

The question is, how many pictures can we find of Jason not staring at Eliza’s ass.

Kind of a peculiar decision by Malakal to have Alexis sit out the challenge, though it’s indicative of why they keep losing even with the superior camp life. I mean, the other team is “feasting” on rats while they have Ozzy pulling his “Lord of The Flies” impression out there and killing anything that breathes and is edible within a 300 yard radius. Some people have faulted them for not going with Jason given that he coaches gymnastics and all, but to be fair I’m not entirely certain they were aware of his history. Still, to go with Alexis, the girl who’s never talked or demonstrated any real challenge ferocity, regardless of what they assume it consists of, is flummoxing. It’s a shame they picked these two considering that during challenges there isn’t two people I’d rather be staring at. I mean Ozzy was obvious, he’s like Cirque de Soleil on Survivor, but Alexis? Why the resident eye candy left this season? Throw me a bone, Malakal. You fuck ups.

And the immunity challenge itself must have been a tough one for Malakal to endure, because had Ozzy been available it would have been a shoe in. The god overseeing this game for them is clearly a vengeful one. Maybe it’s positive karma for Airai after the Penner departure. During Malakal’s weekly failing, Ozzy and Alexis went looking for the idol. Alexis, because she’s genuinely without a clue, and Ozzy, because he wants to see if his bait is still fresh. Surely enough, it isn’t.

In the seemingly least effective strategic move in Survivor history, Erik approaches Amanda and Cirie about Ami’s back alley dalliances with some of the departed fans. He is being honest but comes across so unconvincing, which I always thought was impossible to do, but he is so eager to please. In this scene, Erik reminds me of the kid who would let you play with all his toys just so you’d hang out with him. It’s essentially ninety seconds of Amanda and Cirie failing to control their laughter.

Ami’s sneering fuck off towards Erik after she seemingly aligned with Amanda and Cirie was probably one of the more distasteful things of the series, and certainly of the season. Which in both instances is saying something. That’s like being the shortest keebler elf. But it does take some stones to be so condescending.

Given that it’s their forth tribal council everyone seems a little discouraged. Basically it devolves into Ami sobbing, then everyone trying to ascertain why she seems so isolated. Then everyone voting for her and not caring. Sorry Ami, while we appreciate your attempt at redemption, those tears only work for Hilary Clinton. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the above confrontation with Erik, we might feel differently. But it happened, so we don’t. It seems worth noting that when he was casting his vote, Erik says, “this game’s hell”. It might seem a little dramatic, but when someone is voted off, they do have to spend the next couple of weeks in what’s probably a secluded tropical island luxury resort. Brutal.

Pretty much a ho-hum episode but provided some oddly memorable moments. Which might say more about us than we’re willing to admit. New episode of this and The Office returns tonight. Enjoy!

This Survivor recap is going to be eloquent in its brevity, or rather just really fucking short because we haven’t watched the episode since it aired over two weeks ago and we didn’t write any notes then. The manner they went into a fifteen day hiatus was pretty dull. Then again, nothing all that groundbreaking can really take place this early in the game, so it was just sort of victim of circumstance. But still, is this the best their editing team can do?

Anyhow, I suppose the highlight (or one of the few things I can still remember) from the episode was Kathy taking her leave. She did seem genuinely distressed over the environment. I mean, To be honest, sleeping in that cave does seem more severe than some of the other things I’ve seen on this show (I might rather sleep in the rain), but she is on this show supposedly as a result of her fanaticism with it. I know no one can really grasp the conditions, regardless of how legitimately trying they may be until they are there. But if you watch the show so feverishly and passionately, then why the hell would you be going apeshit because it continues to rain? I can’t decide if she’s crazy, stupid or both. But right now she just seems regretful, so whatever tickles her fancy, then. So long Kathy, I’m glad you got off the show before you started developing imaginary friends. Best of luck.

But with her departure, it doesn’t seem to matter that her former tribe continues to win challenges. That is now two (or three?) that Airai has won since the mix up, but the team numbers are still even. So, I’m having a difficult time discerning whether or not Malakal should have followed through and voted off Ozzy instead of Tracy. Given, if they vote off Ozzy in this situation, their dismal challenge performance will only depreciate, but if the merge is happening sooner rather than later, then getting rid of the best challenge player in the history of the game is probably a wise move. But, if they merge at eight instead of, say, ten, then they are putting themselves at risk. To play it safe and to give themselves a fighting chance in the upcoming challenges, I think they made the right move. But when exactly do they plan to vote him off? Even Amanda is beginning to come around on him.

Look at him. As he goes to collect supplies for the rest of his team, he thinks he’s sooo cool. Clearly he’s subjugating Amanda.

Speaking of which, was she actually falling for Cirie’s weak power play of the conceited Ozzy? Or was Amanda just conceding everything to end the conversation quickly. Why the fuck was him going out to the reef, to go fishing and feed all of you fucking people so out of line? Because you actually had to contribute in a minimal way? She really, really needs to get over herself if she wants to be redeemed from this website (whatever that is good for). Because right now she is on our shit list.

It seems this is almost a situation where one is so contributive and helpful that everyone else is beginning to resent it. Given Eric, who was gun ho about voting off the challenge demon two weeks ago, was overselling his importance a little too much (might be why so many of the women resent him), but when someone provides that much in way of sustenance and competitiveness, it seems odd to hold him accountable for every little foible.

That was the episode in a nutshell. I think. It’s been fifteen days and though my life is rather hollow, remembering the nuances of a Survivor episode from two weeks ago is something I don’t occupy with my cerebral cortex. So long Tracy, so long Kathy. The former deserved better and the latter got better than she deserved.

Links tomorrow, as much has happened since I stopped posting them.

We are preempting our Survivor recap by a day because CBS is doing the same thing due to the NCAA tourney. Which, as a result, we’ll be taking Friday off because we’ll have nothing to write about (again) and potentially be nursing a hangover. Either way, this site is starting to feel redundant and we need a long weekend to watch basketball and forget about it.

Pre-credits scene, Erik is pontificating about the depths of the favorites sleaze. I guess he hasn’t been around long enough to be seasoned, but he is a fan allegedly, maybe one can’t fully grasp the betrayal until he is at ground zero of this game. Or maybe he’s just and idiot. Yeah, I think the latter is accurate. That’s pretty much it before the credits role.

Back from commercial at Malakal, Tracey and Chet are contemplating the decision to get rid of one of the fans. Tracey confronts Erik about the situation and is gun ho about getting one from their the favs to vote with them, and she’s right. She claims she had to do it because Chet wanted too and to make it this far in the game. After being approached, Ami appears to be considering the tribe switch, because everyone else from the favs was on her rival alliance in the original Malakal.

Over at Airai, Jon’s struggling with his leg, and James recognizes Penner’s contribution to the tribe and sorely wants to keep him around. And Eliza needs him as a member of their core alliance. It’s a great scene, James even adds his usual touch of misogyny, claiming to need Penner around so to avoid being the lone male tribe member.

At IC, the challenge consists of collecting materials in the water (Ozzy’s team wins) to build a blockade for the other team, then they have to plow through the blockade the other team built for them, first team to cross everyone through the blockade wins. They are playing for the natives words of wisdom. Penner can barely drag these blocks ten feet before he falls on his ass. Apparently they only have ten minutes to build the blockade. It’s a bunch of camera switches and quick hits, a few quotes here and there, it’s a good challenged but bad television. There is this really odd transition when they switch from building the blockade to tearing through their opponents.

Here’s the blockade’s that were being built, it’s such a ridiculous thing to describe I figured a visual interpretation would be much easier.

Cirie and Ozzy are crawling through for Malakal. And…Cirie? Really? They only need to move a couple planks? Airai is storming through the tunnel after falling behind and they end up winning in a landslide. Some big dense meathead might have been beneficial in this one. You know, to rip out all those strategically lodged wooden planks and such. Anyhow, Chet and Jason end up going to exile.

The medics take a look at Jon’s leg and ultimately decide he needs to go home, it’s pretty emotional and kind of epitomizes why I like the guy. At least three people in addition to Penner are reduced to tears. Hard to understand why he takes it so hard, but he came back for a reason and knew what he was getting into, which makes it all the more regrettable I suppose. He’s an actor, so melodrama probably comes natural to him, but when the options are compete for a million dollars and literally run the gamut of losing your life, the choice is kind of made for you. So long Penner, you deserved better.

On reward, Parvati asks one of the natives, it looks like the patriarch, if he is married, which seems a little forward but in character. It could have been idle small chat, but were jumping to conclusions that she totally wanted to sleep with this guy.

James laments Jon’s absence, apparently he needs his presence to deal with women and his diction is that of a confused fourteen year-old. It’s relatable though, most men would hate to be alone on an island with six different women.

Cirie over at Malakal is getting all elitist about having to deal with newbies, it’s really unpleasant. Ami takes her annoyance to Tracey, because frankly it is annoying as all hell. Why does she think she can’t be hassled? Ami and the fans seem to form an alliance and it makes me like Ami whose seemed non-existent up until now, all the more.

At exile, naturally Chet is just lying around on the island because of his leg and he believes Ozzy already has the idol. He would be right, but for all the wrong reasons. Jason finds the fake Ozzy-planted idol and goes on a long tangent about how great this development is for him. When he goes back to his old tribe, we’ll see if he isn’t informed otherwise before he has to play that pathetic looking thing. It’s seriously looks like something made by a boy scout, only if that boy scout was hammered at the time.

Apparently the natives are still on the island, showing them how to acquire food through the night and damn if it wasn’t beneficial. Will they actually be able to apply this newfound knowledge when the natives leave? I’m skeptical.

At IC, I guess, are they really sending two people home in one episode. Chet and Jason don’t really seem to mind too much. We here that he is doing alright. Probst inquires about the idol. Jason lies his ass off and says he assumes Ozzy has it (which he does, but he apparently doesn’t know that), and Ozzy lies his ass off saying he doesn’t.

IC consists of gathering really narrow platforms and carrying teammates from one balcony to the other, Airai uses only one of the platforms to take Eliza across with James holding the thing up and all the women and Jason balancing the thing. Probst expresses his adulation for James by name dropping him during all this, which seems a little too appreciative. Does he scream out his name when he cums as well? They get two people across the space before Malakal gets one and win before they even start with their second person.

Boy, it looks like voting out that lunkhead Joel might not have been the best decision. It’s like, when there is still over fifteen people, the best solution is to keep the tribe strong, thus avoiding losing too many tribemates. Not that Joel lived by that or anything (cough, Mary, cough, cough, Mike, cough). Oh well, at least we have a chance to see Cirie get booted.

Back at the now permanently defunct Malakal, they are discussing the newly dispatched Jonathan, who’s all better by the way. Chet decides to voluntarily leave because of some puss that may or may not be spreading on his heel. Tracey is a little bitter, considering she just got Ami to come over to their alliance and now this evens out their numbers once again. Tracey refuses to vote him, so Jason, Tracey and Ami all decide to vote for Ozzy when he’s least expecting it. And it is quite brilliant since he has to play it before the vote is read. Jason pours it on the convincing a little thick, and Chet does kind of owe the old broad for undeservedly saving his ass. Twice. We go to tribal not knowing which way this is going to swing.

At TC, Cirie reflects on Penner’s exit, and says if he could argue it down, he would have. At least she reflects on this pleasantly. Jason, for whatever reason, opens up about the idol and Ozzy’s supposed (and viewer known) immunity idol. Probst asks Ozzy about the vote tonight, and he goes all hyperbolic on us saying he would jump naked into the water should Chet not be voted out. And that if he (himself) was voted off, he doesn’t deserve to be there anyways. Chet has to counter with something along the lines of, “its never the person you think will go home”. Should raise some eyebrows since he all but forfeited back at camp. Ozzy votes for Chet, wishes his foot well, Ami apologizes to her vote and it’s left unseen, though the camera suggests she voted for Ozzy. The rest read as such after Ozzy does not play the idol:
Chet
Chet
Chet
Chet
Damn. They backed up on the Ozzy idea? Usually all those indicators of him not being voted out means precisely that he will. And what the fuck? People are defying Tracy’s wishes now. Oh, you will feel her wrath, and you will not enjoy a second of it. Their next vote should be very interesting. They have six people and a 3-3 alliance assuming Ami stays alongside Jason and Tracy. But I imagine she’ll wise up (for her own best interests, not mine) and go back to the other favorites that she seems to despise.

In his parting words, Chet is somehow proud of himself and considers himself part of the “Survivor family”. He thanks everyone for bringing him on and exposing all his vulnerabilities, which we all would appreciate, I’m sure.

Tonight: It looks like those lessons taught by the natives didn’t stick, as they refer to their situation as “torturous” and “savage”. So it would seem the favorites entire food supply in the past was a result of Ozzy. That’s essentially what I figured. Hey, as long as they keep winning challenges, they can keep living in squalor.

South Park review tomorrow.

Probably no time for links today, as we forgot that South Park returned last night and need to review the episode later this afternoon. But we’ll have our last Wire review of the finale tomorrow, and a Wire-centric post of links. Onto the recap…

Pre-credits scene, Walking back from camp the fans are dejected, particularly the two kids who look almost identical. The following day, Chet and Tracy are already strategizing getting rid of Jason, who does seem like a bit of a pompous dickhead. No love lost here at Grid Effect.

The favorites are enjoying the offspring of their chicken and are looking forward to the parents. Ozzy agrees to chop its head off and does so almost gleefully, and PETA is sure to chime in at some point this week. Ozzy hid the immunity idol in a cave, he says in a camera interview that he’s going to withhold this information, then immediately tells James, then Parvati and Amanda. Amanda regals how they are the powerhouse, which can be entirely attributed to her, obviously.

At IC, we discover they are mixing tribes, Ozzy and Natalie are randomly selected captains.They break down as such:
Natalie takes James, James takes Alexis, Alexis takes Jonathan, Johnathan takes Jason, Jason takes Parvati, Parvati takes Kathy, she by default has to take Eliza
Ozzy takes Joel, Joel takes Amanda, Amanda takes Eric, he takes Ami, Ami takes Tracey, Tracey takes Cirie, she by default has to take Chet.

So your new teams are the following:
Malakal:
Ozzy
Joel
Amanda
Eric
Ami
Tracey
Cirie
Chet

Airai:
Natalie
James
Alexis
Jonathan
Jason
Parvati
Kathy
Eliza

They go right to the challenge with the new teams, and its like something out of a 80’s movie bar fight with the degree of injuries incurred. Two team members are harnessed together and have to pull the flag off of two opponents who are also harnessed together. They are borders which they can’t exceed and it’s in the woods, so the hazardousness is pretty damn high, especially if one teammate cannot keep up with the other.

I’m fairly certain that if I was dating his ex, I’d be walking around with a gun.

They’re playing for a feast of sorts and no one is going to exile. In the first round Erik and Ozzy are chasing Kathy and Natalie and run them down like wild dogs to grab the flag. Parvati and Eliza are chasing Chet and Joel and snag the flag in a little more dramatic fashion, Ami and Amanda are chasing James and Jason, Ami bangs her ankle but they capture the flag anyhow, to give you an idea how easy this is for the offensive side. Penner and Alexis take the next flag making it 2-2, but not before Penner’s leg is penetrated with some woodland object.

Chet and Joel are running down and Eliza and my lord is Chet a liability in these physical challenges! Chet smacks his head on a wooden plank and never recovers, or at least Joel never gives him the opportunity too. Eliza and Ami actually escape their would be captors (the first time it happened in this challenge), which makes sense since they would excel at communication having already spent a season together, and Chet and Joel summarily hate each other.

Malakal was the losing tribe, but the fans are ecstatic that they get to return to the favorites camp, which is rather lavish for a reality game show. Joel calls the loss poetic justice by his choice to get rid of Mike instead of Chet, and it’s kind of enjoyable to watch him totally befuddled and completely unwilling to take any blame for the loss. But he also sees the upside in having deadweight, and someone to vote off rather promptly. Ozzy levels with everyone, and he has to be glad to be at the same camp for the sake of the idol that I don’t think he’s allowed to recover if he’s shipped off to the other island. Ozzy calls Chet a sack of potatoes, and like everyone else, realizes he needs to go. Chet relates his place in the game to that of chickens natural pecking order, I guess he is lucky he didn’t see the beheading, then.

Over at Airai, the fans are a little disappointed with the surroundings and as if God is playing a joke on them, the water washes up too high and takes out the fire they are using to cook their newly acquired food. Jonathan is worried about the injury he sustained in that brutal challenge. Enough so that the medics show up and shoot him with some sort of numbing agent that looks remarkably painful, then stitch him up, which we “get” to see the entirety of. Apparently it could still be infected, so the stitching doesn’t make much sense, but I guess it’s the only short term solution if he wants to stay.

We cut to Ozzy beating the fish at their own game, meaning he is going about 12 feet below the surface of the water and spearing them at eye level. After this impressive display, Ozzy has Jason at his beck and call. Ozzy wants to get rid of Chet and Joel shows a little sense, wanting to get rid of Cirie beforehand, then wants to vote out Chet to even out the fans vs. favorites numbers. It’s pretty damn preemptive, but I like it. He’s covering all his bases and attempting to do what the googily eyed blond and PG tried in China, but in a less sinister way.

Jonathan is trying to get a new camp built and everyone is more than willing to pitch in. Surprisingly enough they don’t built it on wet sand. Brilliant. The fans really need to get over the favorites, a la Joel and Tracey. All this fanfare can’t be helping their cause.

Over at Malakal, Amanda has become the second survivor contestant to catch a shark, but she wrestled hers whereas Tom speared his. Ozzy finds it attractive, which has a tinge of bestiality to it somewhere, but I can’t figure out how. It’s like he wants to pull a Zeppelin on her or something.

At RC, the challenge consists of throwing rocks at ceramic targets then solving a puzzle. Ozzy murders the first, James continues to disappoint and whiffs, but partially breaks the second one. Malakal only has one to break, James partially breaks another one and Jason finishes it off. Jonathan gets into an exchange with Probst after he blatantly misinterprets jonathan’s bitching. It’s worth pointing out that Jonathan is hobbling around like Forrest Gump in leg braces, so this challenge couldn’t be more timely. While solving the puzzle, Chet is completely useless giving directions perched atop the layout on a lifeguard chair of sorts. Eliza proves those comprehension skills she needed for her LSAT by blatantly outclassing him. At this point production almost has to send him home to end this national humiliation.

Coming back from the challenge, Malakal is looking dispirited as they should. but it’s a pretty quick fix, just rid yourself of the saboteur and all will be right with the world. Joel and Jason are agreeing they want to get rid of Chet. Joel’s claiming he’s never been around someone with so little backbone, and says if they went back to medieval times they would finish him permanently. It’s funny, we make jokes about them being medieval, and then they make literal references to it. Cirie, feeling next in line on the chopping block if the motto is indeed weakest is first to go, makes a move to get rid of Joel first. she seems to be actually be persuading Ozzy after approaching Chet and Tracy about the prospect. We go to Tribal with Ozzy and Amanda being swing votes of sorts.

At TC, we discuss the selection process. Ozzy says he took Joel with the intent of just countering Natalie’s pick of James. Tracy defends Chet in the reward challenge, she claims communication and that seems thin but arguable, as Joel is something of a blockhead, though we couldn’t really hear what (if anything) was being exchanged. Everyone gives non-committal answers that explains in one way or another who they are voting for. Jason votes for Chet, Chet votes for Joel, Tracy votes for Joel for calling her “weak one too many times”, the rest read as such:
Joel
Chet
Chet
Joel
Joel
Joel
Joel
Well, I guess should they lose another challenge, at least they still have a scapegoat. Really, I can’t believe Ozzy agreed to that nonsense, don’t get me wrong, Joel’s a schmuck-face, but he just said at tribal that he picked Joel to counter James’ strength, and now that is gone. It’s no wonder the tribe with Chet and Tracy on it continues to lose challenges. At least it keeps things interesting. And somehow Cirie again has executive control over the game. Again. We still have Ozzy and Amanda who might come to their senses.

Tonight: Eric apparently believes he found the the immunity idol, apparently not realizing its nothing more than shaved wood. And Jonathan has an infection that could potentially be fatal, so it sounds like we won’t have a tribal council.

in his parting words, Joel is humiliated and feels insulted. He’s actually a touch bitter. One thing you never learned, Joel, is to be a leader, people have to find you somewhat likable. As a result of his outing, he wants to “ring a few necks”. How else did you expect him to leave the game but to physically threaten someone?

South Park review later.

Continuing our day long break from Wire irreverence, we bring you this Survivor recap of last weeks episode. It’s eventful yet telegraphed. Outside of Tracy arising from fans tribe purgatory, we probably could have mapped out the entire episode for you after seeing the first ten minutes.

Pre-credits scene, the favorites are not exactly jubiliant about the results from the night before and Cirie is still on a bit of a power trip. Jonathan and Cirie are still arguing and she is really killing any good will she earned from her original season. If she is voted off tonight it wouldn’t be too soon. Plus, I didn’t watch the original all-star season, but was it also this contentious? They all seem regretful about not winning originally and will regret coming back for a second go-around even more if they lose again. Have these people never heard of the double transgression theory? I’m not sure it applies to appearing on Survivor twice, but you can make it work.

Back with the favorites, they are all speculating about who was booted and they speculate correctly with either Yau or Eliza. Someone catches and eel while Alexis encourages them to behead it, she is quite medieval, that girl. Natalie (I hate throwing these names out here like anyone knows who I’m referring to, just know that Natalie is the half-pug) is voicing over Chet’s lack of contribution around camp. He does seem to just be idly sitting in the water, Mikey seems to take this, much like everything, too personally. Of course all these contestants do. 90% of the time, when someone does nothing it’s either because they are fatigued (the case here) or because everyone lets them (Jenna Morasca).

At the favs, James is offering Eliza some help with her weakened state. He and Ozzy discuss how they made a mistake voting out Yau instead of Eliza, and despite his awesome lack of perception, even James realizes this. They even talk about it right in front of her, which draws an eyeroll that shifts the earth’s axis (it’s funny because her eyes are like bowling balls), James responds to her petulance in kind, “your sick and you’ve got attitude?”. She voices over that nothing would make her happier than to see her entire tribe become stricken with cancer. Lot of morbidity from this season’s cast.

At RC, the fans revel in amazement that Yau is gone. Once that os over, Jeff explains that the challenge is taking colored coconuts each with a letter from an underwater bin then unscrambling a one word puzzle. They’re playing for live chickens. Ozzy and Jason are the first out to the cage while Ozzy spends about five minutes under water while moving all the coconuts towards the opening his teammates will subsequently take there coconuts out of. If there were a challenge God in Survivor, it would most definitely be Ozzy, he’s like the fucking terminator.

Are we sure he isn’t Aquaman?

The strategy works as the favorites finish their puzzle before the fans even finish gathering their coconuts. We liked how James solved the puzzle for his team by asking if the word it spelled was actually a word, then mocked his teammates for letting him be the one to solve it. A little, shall we say, cocky self-deprecation goes a long way on our book.

Over at the fans camp, who have yet to win a reward when it isn’t inclusive with the immunity, lament the state of their tribe and camp. Again. That pretty much sums up every interaction with these people, really.

On exile, Kathy has thrown in the towel in regards to finding the idol. Ozzy, being the competitor he is is now looking for the idol himself. He doesn’t really understand how immensely strenuous this finding this thing is, but if anyone can endure it handily it’s him, since it involves swimming from one island to the next, and naturally he discovers its locale in about two minutes of camera time, with limited sunlight. He shoves it in his hat and holy Christ, he shoves it in his bag without Kathy being any the wiser. It is fucking. bad. ass. he also assembles a fake idol and puts on a ruse that he is looking for food, even at one point plucking some sea vermin out of the water and jokingly asking if she wants to eat it. Since Kathy for whatever reason doesn’t think any of these people she for some reason admires would ever lie to her, she doesn’t even look or act suspicious. He plants the fake idol where the original was, and it is outrageous. He, of course, is assuming there is anyone left in this game that can still find the thing, or that if anyone can they’ll actually buy that the wooden log he carved is an idol.

With this, I think we have a new frontrunner. Ozzy is in a strong alliance, is a challenge beast and now has an immunity idol that no one knows about, at least not at the moment. In addition, he knows of a fake one as well.

Back at the favorites, Cirie is harassing the chicken, and for whatever reason Eliza follows suit. She and Parvati discuss Jonathan “the liar” and Eliza points that out emphatically. Jonathan sidles them intentionally and describes how painful it is, and it’s pretty apt. If anything Jon needs to approach Ozzy and James and try and beat some sense into them should they try and vote out Penner. They can pull Amanda in with all the guys and get rid of either Elize or Cirie, but that is probably wishful thinking.

At IC, they hand back the immunity idol without joking around about it. Incredible. Probably the biggest surprise this season. The challenge consists of collecting necklaces and placing them on a decoding wheel that creates a three word phrase: “Tribe stays intact”. Chet isn’t allowed to sit this challenge out so they bench Kathy. I’m sensing a theme with this tribe. The favorites begin unlocking their, uh, locks beforehand and take a decent lead. Ami is really under the radar this season, I just saw her for the first time I think. The favorites are in this large contraption they have to maneuver through the woods with, they’re doing it pretty masterfully and it looks like Chet is going home unless Joel decides to save him for no reason again.

In short, the favorites win in a landslide as Probst makes abundantly clear for us. They do everything they can to ratchet up the suspense, but the fans are sending one of their teammates home. It seems like the challenges that involve the most luck are the ones the fans thrive in. Its amazing we’re going to be at a dead 8-8 heap here.

Back at the favorites morale is low. Once again. This tribes temperament fluctuates like Carcetti in his primary race. Mikey wants to keep Joel around for as long as possible then “chop his head off” right before merge. I hope his powers of foresight are powerful that he knows exactly when the merge is coming. Now that would be impressive.

The old birds are sitting in their cave and worrying about their fate, at the very least the older blond wants to attempt and maneuver some. Joel is explaining to all the female contestants what’s going to happen and the older blond plays him like a fiddle putting it in his head that he has to get rid of Mikey like he said he would and just all but calls him a pussy. She even refers to herself as intuitive as a reason he should listen to her, which is somewhat meta, because her intuitiveness is impressive as she is playing to his insecurities right now. If anything, her intuition should be a reason for him not to listen to her. She breaks down the simple math that Joel needs to get one more vote with the three of them in order to vote out Mikey. We go to tribal with Chet saying he believes he’s going home.

At TC, Mikey voices his disdain with ineffectiveness at challenges and Tracy wisely points out that in both of the challenges they lost this episode the older teammates were sitting out, so his logic is faulty. Joel is quick to concede that his physical strength, and physical strength in general isn’t the be all end all of challenge skills. Jason halts Probst from sending everyone to vote, emphasizing the importance of the vote they’re about to cast, which upsets Probst and annoys me. We go to the vote, Chet votes for Mikey and Jason (I think) votes for Chet asking him to please leave. Well, its not really his decision now, is it? They read as such:
Chet
Chet
Mikey
Mikey
Chet
Mikey
Mikey
Mikey
What in the hell, Tracy is my new favorite contender on this tribe. God, that handily was like the easiest manipulation I’ve ever seen in this game, she convinced it was in Joel’s own best interest to keep her and Chet around. Who the fuck did they convince to vote with them? Did I miss it because I was looking at my keyboard? It’s interesting how they keep shooting their tribe in the foot at the insistence of the physically strongest yet least reliable teammate. Or I suppose this was more at Tracy’s insistence.

In his parting word, Mikey talks about the weakness of his current tribe and while it is self-congratulatory and an ill-advised attempt to save face, I can’t say I disagree with him about the description.

Tonight: We’re already switching tribes and people start to get a little intense, Joel talks about his insatiable desire to murder yet again.

Not for nothing, but we were impressed with last night’s Survivor, even if it was one team completely destroying another (I was kind of hoping the favorites would lose as comeuppance for getting rid of Yau-Man prematurely, but that wasn’t the case). And the idol discovery was probably the best they’ve had since its inception, probably because it was done so effortlessly and secretively. Cirie should have known better considering all the traveling through water that the retrieval entailed. Considering how easy the clues were for seemingly everyone but Ami, the only real challenge here was the foot and aquatic travel, and no one is swimming from one island to the next quicker than Ozzy.

But anyhow, you may have noticed were not doing the Wire recap in our usually designated spot. This is mostly the result of us having watched episode 59 a couple times since, and hoping to avoid accidentally spoiling anyone without backtracking and watching episode 58 again so we know what not to include. And even though we could probably avoid this just by doing it from memory this fine Friday morning, we’re at work and don’t really have the time. So, as is our motto, here are some links:

It would seem that Charlie Sheen called Ryan Seacrest to assist in halting the production of his estranged ex-wife’s reality show. While I can understand Sheen not wanting to have his kids exploited in any way (though they clearly haven’t dodged that pickle), does Seacrest really have any pull? It would be like calling Bill Bellamy at MTV to prevent Daria from airing in the early 90’s. Oh, or remember The Maxx? Yeah, like everything it may be on youtube, but I’ve got that shit on VHS.

Probably the coolest cartoon of all time.

A bit of a Wire teaser for you, and absolutely do not watch this if for some reason you haven’t seen any of this season or episode 58: an interview with the child actors who play Bug and Kenard for some Baltimore radio show. They seem to be cast in their respective roles for a reason, as Bug has to be forced into talking while Kenard just does so without any suggestion. And my apologies for not knowing their actual names, but they’re peripheral characters and I’m not even sure if they’re in the opening credits.

An interview with Michael K. Williams, the above bold print applies to this link as well.

Oh, and just so no one’s upset when they flip to HBO on demand Sunday night at midnight and do not see the new Wire episode posted: it’s because it won’t be, at least not until after it airs on HBO. So if you’re like me you have two full weeks (or 13 days and 21 hours if you want to get technical about it) in between the penultimate episode and the ninety minute finale.

More evidence that despite my hatred for ABC, it’s the best run network of the four: they’re now offering on demand services. While this is a great service, I’m just not sure how many times over I can watch the same Dancing With The Stars episode. This does affect ratings though, look at The Wire as case in point. I doubt ABC will post episodes a week in advance, but if people feel like they can tune in at their convenience, fewer people are going to watch when Nielsen’s are being measured.

Speaking of the pay network, here is HBO’s intro from 1983. See I told you everything is on youtube. This thing is so fucking dated they do everything but have a narrator hype the age of colored television.

Registration is required for this article from the LA times, but it pleads the case for a total revamping of the Oscars. We don’t really understand this prevailing attitude. They had limited time to prepare because of the writer’s strike, the movies were mostly obscure indie-flicks that the overwhelming majority of the movie going public did not see, and they were four hours long. Can’t we just chalk it up to a disappointing year for the Oscars and move the fuck on? Do full articles from national publications about the shortcomings of an awards show really need to be penned? Well, yes, I have been watching this Wire season, why do you ask?

I love this article about the misguided attempt from HBO to post Wire episodes a week in advance on demand. We’ve mentioned consequences of this before and this article is nothing more than validation, because it does seem to lead to premature online leaks and contributes to probably thousands of loyal fans being unwillingly spoiled (either from said leaks or message boards). We try to keep it really discrete around here as we never watch online episodes, but are on the on demand schedule. There is only one episode left that no one but critics and show creators have seen, so it’s too little to do anything about it now, but hopefully with their next critically acclaimed series they’ll keep the interests of their fans in mind.

For girlfriends who would find it entertaining if their boyfriends killed themselves, here’s an article tossing around the idea of a hybrid Friends and Gilmore Girls movie. Sure it’s all fun and games now, but how do you think a Bratz movie gets made?

Speaking of suicide, which is always a cheerful topic, if this woman from Moment of Truth doesn’t leap off the Chrysler Building then she’s getting off easy. Cheat on your spouse? Yeah, whatever, obviously you’re not the first. Completely humiliate and berate him on national television about your infidelities, well, that’s an entirely new breed of satanic. I guess it’s appropriate that the question she lied on was, “Are you a good person?” Also, I’m completely OK with the FOX entertainment branch being burning to rubble.

And finally, SNL is preparing another Obama-Clinton sketch for this upcoming episode. While we watched last week and chuckled a couple times, it is really hard to watch the sketch comedy show trudge along knowing how great it was from 1991-1998 or so. The sketch that Senator Clinton awkwardly invoked in her debate on Tuesday didn’t really strike me as all that hilarious because it lacked any sort of nuance (like every SNL skit from the past six years), and seemed to actually believe that Clinton’s recent primary woes have been the sole result of media bias.
Obviously the media likes him over her, it’s undeniable, but she has a solid amount of journalist advocates and the lambasting she’s received (if you can even call it that) is nothing compared to what they’ll do to McCain. Somehow we doubt the vitriol from Clinton supporters will be as venomous.

Anyhow, before we get too far off track, look for the Wire recap later this weekend.

If you’re wondering, that above acronym stands for, “I should be carried on the chariot-type thing”, we would have spelled it out, but it seems needlessly long and idiotic for a blog post title, or really even for an episode of television. In fact we hated typing it out in this intro, but the acronym looks equally ridiculous so warrants an explanation.

We’re having a tough time with this season now. We find the entertainment value on them fairly high but the decision making questionable. This is particularly disappointing on the favorites side, for the amount of time these people have invested in competing, rehashing and reconsidering their mistakes and triumphs, you figure they’d bring more to the table, instead they’re acting like their at final eight or nine when there is still eighteen people left on the island.

Pre-credits scene, arriving from TC, Mikey suspects Joel of the blindside, and in doing so he calls the gay guy a girl. Its really hard to determine which one of these two is more reprehensible, right now I’m Joel, given his overtly violent metaphors. This guy is like some mafioso attempting to intimidate a juror, “I’m not saying something bad is going to happen, but if it did…” and so forth. Only he’s amazingly less subtle.

Malakal is on the beach and starting a fire like clockwork, the couples alliance is attempting to persuade Eliza, given that she only looks like and idiot we understand the motivation here, but Eliza is anything but and immediately reports it back to Ami, Penner and Yau. Cirie voices over while listening to all of this that she’s still in limbo and my God does Penner hate Parvati. He actually has to deem her a threat to get the rest of her tribe on board.

While reading tree mail at Aarai, Alexis is ecstatic that it’s a physical challenge and Joel looks like he feels it’s long overdue despite only being there for about six days. Everyone applies face paint and exaggerates how seriously they should take this. Personally, I’d put my money on the fans, Joel might not be as fit as James, but the edge always goes to borderline psychotic.

No one on Malakal realizes who Mary is when Jeff announces she’s been voted off, proving even further that they should cut the contestant number down to 16. At our first reward challenge, it’s essentially tackling each other and throwing bags into an end zone. It’s everything happening at once, so we’ll just throw in some highlights:

Amanda’s getting her ass kicked by every guy on the favorites tribe.

Eric pulls Eliza into the end zone, then smacks her in the head with the bean bag.

James take exception to Jason flipping Amanda over and hones in on him, manages to keep it practical and just take the bean bag.

Penner scores the winning point.

Favorites take reward which entails some camping utilities. They send Kathy to Exile and she looks disappointed. Why? I don’t know, she’s already recognized her ostracizing, why not take a stab at finding the idol again. Ami volunteers herself and is giddy about it. We’re not so certain Kathy will come back with the same enthusiastic demeanor after hanging out with Ami for a day that she did with Cirie.

Cirie sits around listening to the couples alliance bragging how much the other tribe members wanted to fuck them during the ultra physical challenge. Parvati admits to excessively muscular James that she is impressed he is excessively muscular. Cirie is mad she isn’t being courted for her vote. She’s like the Ohio of this Survivor season. And this is where the episode title comes in, for the most part she’s kidding, but you can tell a part of her is being serious. It’s something we haven’t really seen from her yet, and it ends up being just a tip of the iceberg.

Later, out on a boat, Amanda and Parvati are convincing Cirie to go all the way to the end as a core three alliance with Ozzy and James as their piggy-backers. If this comes to fruition it would be really disappointing. But Amanda and Parvati (especially Parvati) are fairly convincing in saying they would drop the prospective boyfriends in a heartbeat. Jon and Eliza fret (Eliza: they’re filling her head with lies! All lies!).

Kathy and Ami have to throw in the towel on idol searching as there is a monster storm coming in, and everyone has their own experiences with it. Ozzy sympathizes with the fans tribe, and that’s what makes him so likable. Jason on said fans tribe, is quite insecure about the whole thing, playing the, “Their probably all laughing at us card”. Well, I know you don’t have a mirror, but can you feel your body curled up in the fetal position?

Back at the fans camp post-storm, spirits are down, morale is at an all time low, Joel said the storm felt like it was his second beating of the day. Alexis is shivering pretty violently and says they cannot lose so apparently her spirit isn’t entirely crushed. Though her shaking indicates some lifelong repercussions from being out here.

At IC, Jeff explains to us that four people from each tribe, two men and two women are holding a basket in place with ropes, the other team is going to throw coconuts into said basket, the more you get into the other teams basket the quicker they drop it and thus the team who drop their basket first loses.

I felt like I did a shitty job of explaining the IC above, so here’s a visual interpretation.

Yau and Jason seem to excel and eventually everyone gets the hand of it, except for Joel, who never seems to do anything but stand around and glare, I’m assuming he’s holding a rope, but its hard to tell because the camera finds the favorites oh so hypnotic. The fans look like they’re starting to pull ahead, and about twenty seconds after I typed that the favorites drop the basket. Favorites are going to Tribal Council and if Cirie does side with the couples alliance, this season is going to take a turn down dipshit alley (minus Ozzy), and that is a Judgment Night-esque change of direction.

Back with the favorites who are about to send home another contestant, Ami is frustrated from the storm and the loss, while Yau and Jon decide to send home Parvati and the other alliance wants to get rid of Yau. Supposedly because he’s Asian and will obviously find the idol on his first visit to Exile. Penner is wise to the entire Parvati manipulating the two other men in her alliance. Penner and Yau really attempt to convince Cirie that they are not planning on going to the final two and Penner’s pleas fall on deaf ears. Cirie is really on something of a power trip. She’s pretending not to be, but her tone and demeanor would suggest otherwise. This woman apparently didn’t like being low on the totem poll in her original season.

Penner immediately goes over to Ozzy, because he has a modicum of sensibility and stands strong on voting for Eliza, and when he returns to his alliance, Amanda and everyone else does a really shitty job of convincing him for Yau. Mostly because voting out Yau makes no inherent sense. They’ve lost two immunity challenges already, Yau, though tiny, is fucking dominating in challenges. And I’m going to take this moment to say how annoying and absurd it is that Parvati and Amanda are controlling this game (minus Cirie). For whatever reason, the women want to vote for Yau and the men sensibly want to vote for Eliza, James uses his trademark and calls all of them dumb asses. He’s no different, because they should all turn around and vote out Cirie, hope to run through the rest of the challenges undefeated or just go into the next tribal council 4-4.

At TC, people summarize their situation and it sounds like we’ve known for the past fifteen minutes, its going to be Yau, Eliza or Parvati. At the moment I’d put my money on Yau, but he hasn’t been on camera at all really, so maybe not. Everyone gives self-absorbed answers and Cirie and Penner get into a heated argument. Penner is accusing Cirie of casting her vote out of self-interest and not in the best interest of the tribe, Cirie is claiming it’s nothing but sour grapes. Very well may be, but when you lie to get ahead, even in Survivor people are going to call you out on it. Penner isn’t making much sense and might even be acting a little self-righteous at the moment, but people aren’t going to thank you for completely fucking them over. We go to the vote, and Penner cast his for Parvati calling her an idiot for trusting Cirie, and Cirie votes for Yau calling him the biggest liar, they read as such:
Parvati
Yau
Yau
Parvati
Cirie (what the hell?)
Yau
Yau (fuck)
Yau
You have to be kidding me. Aren’t these people having supposedly played this game before? And just to show how graceful he is, he reassures one of the girls and tells her not to cry, then after he is “deflamed”, tells his teammates to have fun. This is a disappointment. He goes, yet everyone on the tribe minus Ozzy and Penner stay? Right now I could probably predict the pecking order, Penner is going to be the next out, then if Ami can convince all the women in the tribe to do the female empowerment thing, James and Ozzy will go next (in that order). If she cannot, it will be Eliza and Ami (also in that order).

Tonight: Penner and Cirie get into it again, Mikey’s now the one bringing the violent similes and presumably someone finds something at Exile, though it isn’t explained what.

Yau goes out as gracefully as Mary, if not more so and recognizes his ouster is part of a “cruel game”. He even acknowledges how lucky he is to have gotten to play twice. Just depressing in its earnestness.

Wire recap tomorrow.

We’re really looking at an entertaining episode this season. Two episodes in we have two entertaining (if non-commendable) episodes in a row. Here’s last week’s recap, let’s just jump right into this week’s.

We return with the favs walking back from TC, Ozzy snagged a fish on his way back with his bare hands. Seems like an even swap. Penner seems to be the only one that’s disappointed on a personal level, since he wanted to try and take him to final two (seems a little early to be making such grand plans, something tells me Penner doesn’t believe in the one day at a time approach to sports management) but on a team level he’s indifferent.

Over at the fans, who apparently haven’t been swept away in a hurricane, are trying to revamp their shelter. Alexis attempts to starts a fire with the flint and everyone sort of gathers around. Apparently none of these people have personalities because this all too close to Space Odyssey. For some reason, the fire isn’t coming so naturally now and it’s causing some strife. Kathleen is bitching about not having a place to sleep, the behemoth calls her out on her lack of productivity. Tracy, Chet and Kathleen are being maligned by the younger seven members. Its a standard two riffs in this game, somehow both working their way into this tribe before a single tribal council.

Ozzy is dicing up some sort of aquatic life and camera interviews how hot Amanda is but attempting to avoid a target on his back. Parvati and James aren’t nearly as concerned with discretion.

Man, James has really let himself go.

The older alliance at the fans has built there own little mini shelter, and the younger crowd asks Tracy for assistance with their new tribe. After the manner in which they vilified the older tribe members, this fairly embarrassing for the younger alliance even if they do not realize it. They put up close captioning for a “please, please, please, please” while trying to start a fire, I guess it was too illustrate their desperation but It was completely audible. You see Survivor? This is why Amazing Race always takes home the Emmy, because of weird shit like that. Now that everyone is eating, they’re all in good spirits.

Mary and Mikey are hitting it off, and he wants to simply use her to his advantage in the game. Muscle man Joel is observant enough to recognize it as a threat and suggests the three older tribe mates will still be the first to go, which means it will probably be him.

Aaannnnd Ozzy is already making out with Amanda, Cirie is amused. James is really putting forth his best hand to get a piece from Parvati. Penner wonders about the practicality of two couples hooking up in a cave with five other people that you’re trying to systemically eliminate from a game. Cirie gives a vote of confidence to the Penner-Yau-Eliza-Ami tribe. She’ll play her best hand though because she’s not an idiot.

At another Immunity and reward challenge, because we want to give returning members even more camera time, they’re collecting keys that they bat into the water after running across several lily pads and swimming to a platform which they leap off. The keys unlock — but what else? — Pieces to a puzzle, which forms a map of Micronesia. The reward is fishing gear and sending someone to Exile, plus a cliffhanger for a twist at the end of the challenge.

Ozzy and Jason kick off the challenge, Ozzy smokes him b/c Jason (the flying tomato kid who beat him to the island last week) was probably nervous and Ozzy is like the Michael Jordan of contrived obstacle courses. I imagine Ozzy was the most popular kid in his elementary school. Don’t worry, no shame in finishing second to Ozzy in one of these things.

In short, Alexis loses ground to Ami, Chet gains a little on Amanda until he loses track of the key and is completely incapable of finding it. Parvati gets the fourth key which leads Penner out. Mikey heads out for the fans and snags his on the surface of the water while Penner slowly but surely finds his. Eric ran the last leg and gets it rather promptly. Favorites get their puzzle open and solved before the fans even return with their key. The favs send Kathy to exile, then the aforementioned twist is favorites have to send one of their own, they go with Cirie because she is the least solidified with an alliance. And also because Cirie sort of volunteers herself, because the built in advantages are obvious.

At exile, Kathleen dawns her relief that Cirie was sent to Exile with her. Ironically, Cirie was on Exile Island. They decipher that the y need to go to the original island and find another clue, then to another island, then back to the first island that they were sent to from Exile Island. I guess they’re not taking the exile part entirely too seriously. The fourth clue sends them back to another island, and this whole thing is almost like a parlor game. They kept insisting they were close but how the fuck would they really know?

Back at the fans camp, Erik the ice cream scooper is petrified of going to TC. Mikey wants to split up the votes in the small chance that Kathy found the idol. His plan is pretty simple: the woman vote for Tracy, the guys for Chet, and the three older members will vote for whoever they vote for, but Chet should still go home because those four vote rules the day, and the three votes for the second person will at least ensure a tiebreaker for the member from the elder alliance play an idol. Joel plans on mixing things up because his brain hurts from Mikey’s “complexity”, which I guess means he’ll align with the older alliance? Not really sure what one person can do amongst ten that is all that beneficial to himself or the tribe in this situation.

Joel, Jason and everyone else want Mary home because she is Mikey’s closest ally. Not a terrible idea if they feel like Mikey is trying to make a power play. It keeps him in check and they still retain whatever challenge prowess he may have. There is no evidence he’s any more valuable in that regard than Mary, but who am I to judge? Kathy gets back and like everyone whose ever met her, loved Cirie. Joel immediately tells Kathy not to ask any questions, and just vote for Mary. It seems like he’s telling one too many people, but we cut to TC with that being the final plan laid. Mary also said she felt safe, which is never a good omen.

At TC, Probst makes it abundantly clear how annoying it is for everyone that Kathy stumbled into the senseless one time immunity idol. Mikey exalts his annoyance with Chet and he takes his inability to swim way too personally. Amazingly, two shelters have been built and they’re acting like there is a sense of unity amongst these seven. Jason warns Chet to be extremely nervous. Joel is a little too blunt for my taste, and the producers play some odd sound effect when he wraps up his tirade. They go to the vote, Mikey really diminishes Chet for one poor performance at a stupid fucking challenge. Alexis says, “I just went with the majority, I’m sorry”; but her vote is left unseen:
Chet
Chet
Tracy
Mary
Mary
Tracy
Mary
Mary
Mary
Oh! That has got to hurt. Joel cannot help but laugh which is pretty sinister considering how he just did a complete stranger. Have to love Probst’s summary of what transpired: “First tribal council, first blindside”. He might as well just urinate on her.

Anyway, so long Mary, we hardly knew ye, and very well might have been the best eye candy this show has seen since Michelle in Fiji. Honestly, I almost sympathize more for Mikey and the male viewers than for you.

Tonight: Cirie plays the hell out of that swing vote role, Joel plows over Yau Man and wraps up either Parvati or Amanda in a physical challenge while explaining to us, “If you come into my house, I will kill you”. I would say something disparaging and sarcastic about the lug, but I imagine he would be reading this in his house and I don’t want him to feel threatened. Plus, for whatever reason, my real name is on this page.

In her parting words, Mary is gracious in admitting she was totally shell shocked by her ouster, and is still rooting for her teammates. Now that, my friends, is an exit speech I am incapable of mocking.

Wire recap tomorrow.