Grid Effect

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.