Grid Effect

Didn’t have the time nor the strength to rewatch this episode, so we’re just going to bullet point it from memory here:

-The Reward Challenge was especially unique, or at least I’ve never seen anything like it on the show before. It consists of a tribemate floating around in a teeny wooden raft, while members from the opposing team chuck water into it and attempt to sink the raft. First to two players sunk wins, the reward is going to an ancient village for a meal and some other shenanigans. Oh, and they are picking their teams, with each person picked, picking the next teammate. So, what do they do? They pick along alliance lines, leaving the other alliance back at camp to game plan in the open. The winning team ends up being James, Amanda, JR and Todd, and back at camp ends up being the losing team consisting of Courtney, PG, Frosti and Erik (it took me a solid two minutes to remember his name); and Denise, who went unpicked and was pretty unpleased with the whole ordeal.

-I kind of assumed for them to man up and form a dominant five person alliance here, and blindside James since at least three of them are aware of at least one idol (if not both of them). But no, they meander around and somehow all of this goes unsaid. Sans, PG, who god bless her, couldn’t be anymore transparent or unsubtle.

-On the reward, JR gets his first clue, which I suppose are just handed to the winning team now. And while everyone he’s with knows about the two being found and that James owns both of them, it is just dawning on JR that he never considered a hidden immunity idol as a possibility. The three of them try to keep from laughing, which, I don’t know exactly what Todd and Amanda have to snicker about. They had the whereabouts of two idols and gave them away for nothing. Not exactly a meeting of the minds here.

-As for the reward itself, it’s probably the most historical reward any Survivor season has partook in. And Amanda decided (or unknowingly decided might be more appropriate) to show her entire ass to the quaint little village. Nothing like bringing western culture to a subset of people who probably wanted nothing to do with it. Oh, and JR gets drunk and tongue tied, and refers to the HII as the AII. As in: American Immunity Idol. It’s probably the first time on of the participants on a reality series have ever confused his show with another reality series.

See, its Chinese oriented because the barrels form one of those elongated Dragon thingy’s so prominently associated with Chinese culture.

-At the Immunity Challenge, it’s one of those tailor made for the diminutive participants to try and compensate for all the challenges that will naturally favor larger participants. In other words, it’s a balancing challenge, where they straddle these barrels and water leaks out of them, and as the barrel gets lighter and lighter, the barrel is more and more likely to tilt off it’s axis. Long story short: Todd, Frosti and Courtney are the final three, and Courtney wins without even a semblance of a chance that she might fall, because she’s probably anorexic.

-These contestants (as in, Todd) make these episodes so remarkably tedious and unpleasant to recap, that we might just stop doing the play by play recap until that snooty priss is voted off. In this episode, he wanted to blindside James because James is in sole possession of the two idols that Todd gave him. So, OK, good plan, right? A chance at redemption. Until JR, through a series of coincidences, first thinks he has the idol only to learn that James has both of them, and he approaches Todd with the same plan that Todd himself had thought up earlier. So, one would think this would appeal to Todd’s sensibilities. But no, Todd is offended that someone thought of the same game plan as he did. So Todd sets his sights on voting out JR.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are a multitude of reasons to vote out JR, both personal and strategical. But this ranks very, very low on the list. Right ahead of he’s taller than me and directly behind he speaks Mandarin.

-At TC, nothing really transpires or is revealed except for some ad hominem and blatant foreshadowing. James doesn’t even bother to bring his Immunity Idols and would have been voted off if Courtney didn’t hate JR so much. He gets three votes from JR, PG and Erik, Denise is the only person to vote for PG (and she has to feel sour about that as well) and the remaining five votes go to JR, who’s sent home and is like the 105th person in a row to give a deluded, self-congratulatory “I’m the greatest player out here, see, they voted me out because I’m such a threat” parting words this season.

Tonight: People might start coming to their senses and everyone begins to hate everybody. With this cast of characters all I can say is its about fucking time.