Grid Effect

Sorry for the late post, I have been incredibly busy the past week and am just now getting caught up with work, school, etc. Anyways, Enough lamenting…

Survivor opened last Thursday with Johnathan proclaiming, “I’m a wondering jew without a tribe”. He admittedly regretted leaving his old tribe and knows he is on the ropes at Raro. To compensate he is doing his best Ozzy impression gathering food and what not. As for the other half of the mutiny, Candice and Nate are still gushing over how much they trust each other, in fact they reiterate the point at least a dozen times before the credits role.

Ozzy is shown fishing and he is like Tom Hanks, 10 years into Cast Away. Aitu gets a board with several different colored flags on it. While looking at it, Yul says, “We don’t really have any other strategical options other than too win.” Which is true, there backs are against the wall, numerically speaking At RC, the contest consists of digging up chests at specific directional coordinates, and spelling a word with letters that coordinate with the different flags. It isn’t nautical based, so it marginalizes Ozzy a little, and one would think Raro has a chance, but they don’t. And it seems popular to call them “underdogs” since after the mutiny they were down 8-4. But Aitu is so much more competent, its getting more and more vexing to refer to them as such. Aitu finishes there puzzle while Raro is still digging. There wasn’t a single redeeming quality about Raro’s performance.

Aitu does not even hesitate sending Candice back to exile. She walks off bitterly dejected. And strangely, I cannot blame either party here. From Candice’s perspective, she left there tribe in the dust too join Raro, so she made her own bed; but Aitu does seem to be taking it really hard, which is insane. From Aitu’s perspective, they have no other ill-will towards anyone else, outside of maybe Johnathan, but he hesitantly followed Candice so the resentment isn’t nearly as strong. Ultimately, if forced too choose I would say Candice doesn’t have a leg to stand on, because she had to expect consequences for her actions, but I can understand her surprise at the degree of Aitu’s vindictiveness.

On Exile Island, Candice gives this “holding back the tears, Why me? I hope I can make it” speech that comes off as entitled rich white girl-itus. She says, “It’s not fun, to know, that people that you like, want to see you suffer.” They have no idea that you like them Candice, considering you hung them out to dry with half as many people as the tribe you left them for.

For the reward, Aitu went visited with some tribe that carried them around on these stick-and-leaf chairs. Personally, I would have been kind of embarrassed yet grateful on this reward. They dance, Yul has two enormous Island women G-rape him. Ozzy continues to hyperbole his way into believing that there is some ideological divide between him and Raro, even going so far as to saying about the reward, “It was a warriors welcome, and we were warriors returning from battle.” When in all actuality he is on an elaborate televised game show competing for monetary gain.

Johnathan is agitated with his tribes constant insistence to “chill”. But he continues to earn his keep by means of playing surrogate paternal figure. Over at Raro, when they have to remember a new diagram for IC, Parvati condescendingly explains it to Rebecca: “do you understand? Should we go over it again?” Essentially she talks to her like a kindergarten teacher. The Immunity Challenge entails swimming out and retrieving a bag full of island names. Ozzy gets to his bag and back to shore before Nate even collects his first bag, effectively ruining any chance Raro had at winning. Aitu beats them, though not as convincingly as in the past three challenges, but a win is a win. Before IC, Jeff said he would give a bottle with a message in it to be opened after TC. Raro takes the bottle back to camp and they all sort of blankly stare at it. And this kind of explains why there tribe is so hapless.

At Tribal Council, Brad is on the jury. And he seems more clueless than I am as to how this team is going to vote. Nate, possibly Parvarti, want to boot out Johnathan, Candice and Adam want to vote out jenny, everyone else wants to vote out Rebecca. The tribe keeps claiming that they want to vote based on productivity, but its not going to make a lick of a difference. Yul and Ozzy are the two strongest players, Becky is arguably third and Sundra doesn’t drag them down in anyway. Those four are better than any combination of four on Raro. And their basis is illogical, considering they voted out one of their strongest players last week in Brad. Never the less, they vote off Rebecca. She is mute throughout her dismissal, TC, and pretty much the entire season.

Now for the moment of anticipation, everyone is under the impression the bottle will be for a merge or provide them with some sort of sustenance… it is actually to vote off another person. And the disappointment is hilarious, because short of Candice they were pretty optimistic it would contain something favorable (a merge would be because they would have two more people than Aitu). Probst couldn’t be more pleased to upset this belabored team. The First two votes come for Johnathan, the next four are for Jenny, so at least they are sticking with the strongest player theme. What an awful way to be booted from this game. When she went to Jeff to have her torch defused, I was giving it a 3-1 shot she put it out on his face.

In the future, I really do not need to see either Candice or Adam in the final four. After the merge Candice should be short lived, with the Aitu tribe hating her guts and all. Also, all the white members voted for Jenny, while Nate and Jenny voted for Johnathan. If the merge happens next episode, Nate might be bailed out as the swing vote. At which point I imagine he would side with Yul and Co. If they wait another episode, depending on how strong his alliance is with Parvati he is most likely the next to go. She may have been under the impression Nate was in on the Jenny dispatching.

Understandably, Jenny is livid about the way she got voted out. And in a moment of great parallelism, Rebecca doesn’t even get a parting words segment. Jesus. She could have made a bitter exit, swung a stick at the camera or something. Then, two weeks from now, I might possibly be able to remember she was ever there. Instead, somewhat fittingly, she isn’t given a single word in her last half-hour in the game.

Next week: no signs of a merge, Candice and Adam make out, Johnathan lashes out at his pathetic team and Yul notifies Ozzy that he has the idol.