Grid Effect

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.