Jeff Pitman's Survivor: One World recaps
Share:
Survivor: One World recaps - Episode 12
"It's Gonna Be Chaos"
By: Jeff Pitman | Published: May 4, 2012

The Russell Hantz Memorial Troll of the Week award (the "Trolly"): Tears
Honorable mention: More tears

trolly If there's one thing men look forward to watching on TV, it's endless scenes of women crying. So, uh... hey guys who are still watching Survivor even though the tribe you were supposed to be rooting for has pretty much been voted out (except for the cartoon character in women's clothes): wanna know what you're staying for? Due to the high bikini content of the ads, we'll bet CBS thinks you're watching for a certain set of bulbous glands often associated with the ladies, right? Well: get your tissues ready, because they are coming out in force this week! Yes, you guessed it: we're talking about lacrimal glands. Let the flood times roll!

 

Maybe Tarzan could accidentally burn the box?

 

Now, look: we're not complete robots. There are some - isolated, very isolated - situations in which a little light sobbing here and there might be enjoyable to watch. For example: we'd love to see someone bawling inconsolably over their Sprint smartphone, raining salty globules of liquid emotion down on the screen, then watching in horror as the phone empathetically responds by shorting out and kicking the bucket. Nothing says "survivor" quite like catastrophic failure at water resistance. We're joking, of course. It would be more funny if the pig had just eaten the phone.

 

Still, whenever quantum entanglement gets mentioned? Especially when we're talking perfect anti-correlation? Well, as you can guess, that's when we reach for our subatomic handkerchiefs. With opposite spins, of course.

 

The Purple Kelly Memorial Invisibility Cloakee Unmasked! award ("ICU!"): Kat's filter
Honorable mention: Christina, Tarzan

icu Our objections above notwithstanding, one positive benefit of the Loved Ones visit is that everyone gets at least some screen time. We probably wouldn't have heard at all from Christina or Tarzan in this episode, had this not been Semi-Annual Weepytime (also known by the acronym "sweeps") week. Despite that, however, this episode contained a few previously unexplored things that we might have warranted less attention, or at least a little more self-restraint. And those things were essentially every thought that popped into Kat's head... the majority of which, naturally, came spilling directly out of her mouth.

 

Kat did say she wanted to hang out with Kim

 

We had previously been puzzled by Kat's lack of confessionals. Admittedly, that was before such gems as the dream about getting shot by Alicia, or extended paranoia about the appendix awareness. But this week, we learned the importance of drinking with young people (Forever 28 Or Under), that blindsides are only sometimes fun (no matter how often Jeff Probst tries to strong-arm you into one), and "Hey guys, I haven't won a challenge yet. Why can't it be my turn this time? Sharing is caring, people!" (Quickly followed at the immunity challenge by "Hey guys, I haven't won a challenge since the last time. Why couldn't it be my turn this time? No high fives for you, old lady.")

 

We're gonna go out on a limb, here, Kat: We don't think this is the "it" Troyzan had in mind for you to do.

 

The Courtney Yates Memorial Challenge Sit-out award (The "Sitty"): Sabrina
Honorable mention: Tarzan

beasty Now, sure, Kim has gone and called her shot of winning all the remaining immunity challenges (there are three left after this week... it's possible). That seems like it would be an impressive feat. But not nearly as impressive as Sabrina's (perhaps more calculated) dual last-place finishes this week. She even dropped off her IC perch faster than Tarzan, and his shirt alone has got to be at least 28 years old. How embarrassing is that?

 

Elapsed time: 10 minutes. Well done.

 

Or at least it would be, if we (and Alicia, apparently) didn't think she was faking it. Which, in our books*, is the right thing to do, at least in reward challenges. Immunity, especially when someone is gunning for you (even Alicia), is perhaps a tiny bit more valuable. Fine, okay, yeah... we should have gone with Kim as the Beasty. Next week (probably).

 

* We would share these books with you, but sadly they've reached their maximum number of allowable devices. Curse you, DMCA! We could probably tell you what they are, so you could check them out of the library, but that seems an awful lot like stealing, and you hurt our feelings for suggesting it. Wipe away those sad faces.

 

The Colton Cumbie Memorial Grimacing Frontstabber award ("Reverse Slitty"): Alicia
Honorable mention: None

slashy While we were a bit sad (not tearful, we swear) at Kat's departure, it could have been a much worse episode: Alicia could have been gone. As the episode opened, we were treated to a monologue about Alicia's brilliant control of the game up until this point, which she had (up until this point, anyway) been keeping secret from her tribemates, the producers, and the viewers at home. And boy, did the rest of the episode ever pay off in demonstrating that.

 

Psst... I think she's talking about you.

 

Not only did Alicia mention her strategic mastery, she continued to wield it: How else to explain her second straight reward invitation? Settle down, grumpy non-invitees: While Kat did announce she was doing this because she thought Alicia would be fun to have a drink with, this criterion just happens to be the exact same one most voters use in selecting U.S. Presidents. That's called the wisdom of the masses, so it can't possibly be wrong. Also, you guys probably got evites, they just got hung up by your spam filter, or something.

 

But perhaps more impressive was Alicia's ruthless takedown of Sabrina. As the episode started, Alicia informed us that Sabrina was clearly the most dangerous player still competing, and Alicia made it her mission to eliminate Sabrina, post-haste. Then when Alicia returned from the reward? Plan still intact. It's gonna be chaos. Alicia took the extra step of pointing out Sabrina's clever attempts at appearing unthreatening in challenges. Then, in her coup de grace, Alicia (echoing this award's namesake) turned her tail and bravely voted for someone else. Alicia's such a brilliant tactician, even we, the viewers at home, can't tell who'll she be voting for. Not until everyone else on the show decides, anyway. (True, she was shown talking Kim into the Kat boot after the IC, but let's not allow facts to get in the way of a good rant. In retrospect, we probably should have done a traditional straight-up Slitty for Kim. But we don't want to jinx a perfect game by talking about it while it's in progress, right?) If only she'd also told Sabrina to jump in a fire, it would have been a perfectly earned Reverse Slitty.

 

Recaps and commentary

 

Exit interviews - Kat Edorsson

  • Rob Cesternino at RobHasAPodcast: "Kat E. Remarks: An Interview with Survivor Kat Edorsson"
  • Gordon Holmes at XfinityTV.com: "Survivor: One World Castaway Interview – Kat Edorsson"

 

Podcasts

ADVERTISEMENT