So Survivor: Panama - Exile Island had another episode this week, which not very many people watched. But before we tell you about it… in our continuing efforts to passively ingratiate ourselves to our desired masters at CBS (now really, who wouldn’t want to see Crappy’s shining fixtures replacing “Ralph” on the CBS Survivor blog?), we’ll attempt to “explain” why CBS thought that was a “tribal council like never before.”

- There had “never before” been an all-male tribal council with only four tribe members. That’s a pretty rare and exciting thing, especially for Probst. Sadly, none of them were Colby Donaldson.
- There was the minor problem where for about half an hour or so, Nick or Austin quit the game, because he had some sand lodged in his eye, and the medical crew refused to let him have some saline. Apparently, he felt that it was worth quitting, because he didn’t feel like wearing an eyepatch, and having to yell things like “Yar!” all the time, just for the privilege of having been on Survivor. Silly, ungrateful model/actors! Okay, yeah. People (frequently model/actors) have quit the game before. But how many times has one of them quit the game, returned to it, then voted out an astronaut? Oh… right. They edited most of that out. Whoops.
- After all these dead ends, we thought maybe CBS had been thinking of some lame ’80s Disney movie named Never Before, which this tribal council in some way resembled. But after checking IMDb, it appears there was never actually such an atrocity committed against filmmaking. Plenty of others, of course, just not one with that title. According to Google, however, there is some Deep Purple song named “Never Before.” We’d ponder the significance of this, perhaps even link you to the lyrics, but the less time people spend thinking about Deep Purple, the better.

So since we’re back where we started, and no closer to an answer to the many mysteries of claims made in CBS hype, we might as well get on with it. Clearly, the “never before” must have actually been the first 20 minutes or so of the show, which featured a review of the previous episode (which did indeed include a tribal council, which had “never before” been rehashed on the air, except on last Firday’s The Early Show… close enough?), people starving and/or eating beans at La Mina (they’ve never been shown both starving AND eating beans at the same time), and of course, Shane fighting with Danielle at Casaya (never before shown in exciting Nightvision, complete with subtitles!). See CBS, we know you’d never lie! And we’re not afraid to convince the viewing public of it! (As long as you pay us, handsomely, cough… cough).

crappy
Someday, CBS may come to their senses. And if they do, this is what you’ll see. *sniff* We’re also available to replace Stephenie, if you’d prefer.

Wait, maybe there was something marginally novel in the first 20 minutes: We were introduced to a strapping young fellow named Barry or Jerry, or something. (After checking the CBS site, it appears his name is actually “Dan”). Anyway, everybody on La Mina really, really likes this Dan guy, especially after he let them in on his big “secret,” which is that he’s an astronaut. Of course, he also had to explain to them what an astronaut is, since most Americans have never heard of any of them, except maybe Neil Armstrong, and of course, Tom Hanks, Luke Skywalker, and that guy Dave in 2001: A Space Odyssey. And for good reason: Who can keep track of trivial details like “Who first walked on the moon?” or “Who was the first man in space?”, or “What was the X Prize for? (hint: not porn)” when there are 24 semifinalists on American Idol to learn the names of each season?

Anyway, Dan told this “astronaut” story to some other tall, skinny guy we don’t recognize (Rick? Yorick? Asterisk? Aw hell, we don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, he wasn’t shown again for the rest of the show), and the story spread like wildfire through the La Mina camp. Which, as with most wildfires, is not a good thing. As Austin, in a confessional, began to openly question whether additional deities to the Great Terry might exist, the daily thunderstorm rolled in, and as a lightning bolt struck La Mina’s shelter, Terry bellowed “Thou shalt worship no false idols but me!”

Terry thought about amending that, but Austin and Nick were still busy trying to figure out what the big words (”thou” and “shalt”) meant, and at that point, the treemail came, inviting the tribe to a combined reward/immunity challenge. So instead, Terry put on his “Joe Torre hat,” and gave a rousing speech to the tribe, ending with: “Let’s go out and show Casaya what we’re made of, like the Yankees in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS!” Like never before, indeed!

Speaking of “like never before,” the challenge was… a puzzle. Although it did also involve… knots. And running. Bet you never thought you’d see that on Survivor! Surprisingly, the contestants were required neither to untie the puzzle pieces underwater, nor dig them out of sand. As usual, the Great Terry singlehandedly led La Mina to an insurmountable lead, until he was forced to allow Astronaut Dan and Sally the Covert Casaya Sympathizer to take over the puzzle-handling duties. As these two sprung into action (in the sense that Dan resembles a spring, which is, largely, not at all), Casaya slowly got around to collecting their pieces, performed a stirring interpretive dance/ karate routine, were led by Aras in a thrilling yoga power-focusing exercise, used this power to set fire to their puzzle pieces, collected four rocks and chiseled them back into puzzle piece shape, decorated them with the ashes of the original pieces, and then finally placed them correctly in the puzzle. It was a close and stirring finish though, as La Mina managed to place exactly zero pieces in the interim.

What followed could be told in a series of searing still images (which we do below, anyway, but for the sake of padding we will describe here): Casaya erupted into ecstatic leaps at the prospect of living with Shane for three more days; Dan collapsed in grief, knowing he would not be allowed to play with the hula hoop reward; and Sally was all wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say-no-more smiles at being selected to escape from her La Mini Sausage tribemates, at least until she was handed a map to the hidden immunity idol in which the entire Exile Island had been crossed out, with the legend, “It’s not here. Feel free to look in the ocean, but it’s not there, either.”

dan sally
“All is lost! Now I shall never be able to test the ability of humans to hula hoop in zero gravity!” “Hooray! I’m for the other team!”

Casaya got to take some gaudy toys and trinkets to a local Panamanian fishing village, in exchange for which they all received enough food to feed the entire population of India three times over, Shane got just enough nicotine (which works out to be approximately twelve cartons of Marlboros) to apologize to Danielle, and Danielle consumed just enough alcohol (two cases of beer) to accept Shane’s apology. The natural result of all this was, of course, cockfights. Surprisingly, those did not appear to involve Shane, although it’s possible he was just out of camera range. They were sent home shortly after Silent Bruce started boring the children with his karate moves.

So all that was left was the minor matter of La Mina being forced to vote out one of their men. Which, as always, required a Proclamation from the Great Terry. And as with all deity-based decisions, it was thoroughly logical. Since the Great Terry had a solid, unbreakable Final Two pact with Dan, and since the previous day, Austin and Nick had spent the night creating fragrant fountains of vomit and diarrhea, Dan had to go. But at least they did it with class, telling him “the Great Terry has decided, so your ‘arguments’ and ‘reasoning’ are futile.” And they did stand up when he was voted out. Nobody saved him a hula hoop, though. That would have made it all better.

But anyway, tune in next week, for another episode “like never before,” in which CBS revisits the first 15 days of the starvation and the puking. But they claim they will deign to air footage they snipped the first time through in favor of more commercials for The Unit and TAR9, such as the “snake dinner” they promised in the title of Ep3, but thoroughly failed to deliver. Maybe they’ll even show how La Mina actually won the floating puzzle reward challenge the first time they ran it, in the episode where Terry found the hidden immunity idol. Nah, probably not.