| Episode |
Recap |
Episode
10:
Fun, Fun, Fun 'Til Daddy Gets Taken by T-Bird.
Sorry, we just don't like disco of any kind, and couldn't bring ourselves
to type the actual title,
"We Are Family"
Days 28-30 = August
7-9, 2001
Aired: December 20, 2001
And the First Annual
Keith Famie Memorial Stumblef*ck Award goes to...
(Okay, we're getting
into the spirit here by recycling jokes).
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Mark Burnett, who also produces the Eco-Challenge, likes to think
of himself (we could stop the sentence there, but there's more) as an
environmentally friendly guy. We suspect he's a big fan of recycling.
Which is actually a fairly safe guess, because pretty much this entire
episode was recycled from Survivor: The Australian Outback.
This is because CBS is starting to worry about the show's sagging ratings,
and is trying to re-kindle our connections with older, better shows.
So, we'll just go with the flow, man, and direct you to our review of
that episode. (Amber gets voted out, by the way).
Oh crap. We didn't start doing these reviews 'til this
season. Dammit, it seems like so much longer. All right, we'll
see what we can throw together.
The action opens, as has been done before, right after
the previous tribal council. Amber (oops, KimP) gets to talk again, so
we know she's dead meat this time. It appears KimP was unhappy about
Brandon's non-betrayal. This, of course, was told to us by Jeff
Probst mere minutes ago, setting a new speed record for MB recycling.
Way to go, Mark! Next, we see Lex scurrying around, making sure
everyone's cool with him not voting with the tribe. MamaKim swears
they're still "solid". This part was from Frank and Carl talking
to Silas in Episode 2.
Eventually (still in the last episode), we move on
to more scary, scary footage of Ethan being startled on his sentry duty
by athsmatic lions. As before, nobody seems to know why they're
wheezing. KimP swears that it means they've found food, and they're
calling every animal in Africa to come and join the feast. Drawing
on her encyclopedic knowledge of the African survival manual they were
given, KimP then attempts to scare the lion away by biting silently on
her sleeve. Judging from her chirpy rendition of the events in the
flash-forward to her next day's confessional, this strategy appears to
have worked. Ethan manages to escape the incident largely without
talking.
Finally, it's the first morning of this episode, and
we get to see our bright-eyed Survivor friends. (Oops, we forgot
about that memo from CBS not to use the word "Friends"... sorry, Les!).
Except that everyone is skinny and exhausted. People are lying on
the ground, their stomachs yawning chasms. Yep, that's Keith lying
there with the gaping hole below his rib cage. Nick and Elisabeth
talk about how they can barely move any more. Whoops! Wrong
show! This is the Africa version, so the names are slightly different.
But you get the general idea.
Luckily, the solution for this problem (what happened
to those chickens, by the way? Did Kimmi set them free?) is exactly
the same as it was in Australia. Dispense with the action, and just
give everyone food at an "auction". Hooray! The production
assistants get the day off from set-building! They even get to recycle
the blood-drinking bar as the "auction block"! This 15-minute visual
platter of microwaved, year-old leftovers is sprinkled with some spices
to dress it up for its second serving: We're not watching the Survivors
get food for free, we're watching complex strategizing and alliance-building.
Like the rock-solid bond between Frank and Teresa. Or so MB would
have us believe.
Shockingly, everybody gets to eat something, although
Frank never bothers to actually bid on anything, and sponges off of Teresa's
hoagie. And lest you think this batch of contestants is being pampered,
being given tons of food at every reward challenge (yet still complaining
about the horrific hunger), well, you're right. Where was the cruel
trick of bidding on the mystery glass of undrinkable river water?
Instead, we get yet another exhibition from the Tom Buchanan School of
Interpretive Dance. Oh well, at least we have all the rip-roaring
digestive trauma stories to look forward to when they get back to camp:
Rodger's holy leaf, the tent that smells of Nick's ass. Ah, those
were the days.
So they head back to camp (here it comes!). Tom
gives us a classic quote: "That beer was good." We get to hear everyone
talk about how Tom is not as dumb as he lets on, because he can beat them
in checkers. (For this week's episode, the character of Tom is played
by lovable former Survivor contestant Rodger Bingham! Welcome
back, Kentucky Joe!). Lex, of course, is very smart, or so he tells us,
and noticed Tom's brilliance right away. Well, we're not ones to
point fingers or anything, but the skeptic might raise the alternative
hypothesis that Tom is, in fact, roughly as dim as he appears, and everyone
else loses in chekcers because they're even stupider. After all,
studies show that the more competent people think they are, the less capable
they actually are. Now, we're not naming any names, here... Lex.
Anyway, they've been at this Tom-is-a-genius thing for a while, so the
explosive diarrhea is just around the corner, right? Sadly, no.
Just the ubiquitous twister embodying the pissed-off spirit of Mother
Africa, preparing to suck away another Samburu.
To demonstrate Tom's impending acceptance into Mensa,
we're shown that he has mastered the skill of filling jugs with water,
then pouring them out. On the plus side, this is accompanied by
KimP pulling out her top to reveal her, uh, Little Bits. Judging
from Lex's comments, Tom also gets to peek at Teresa and MamaKim, as well
as the guys. We're not so sure this qualifies as evidence of brilliance,
but if Lex says it, then it must be so. Apparently, this brief interlude
of mild softcore T&A is this season's substitute for Rodger's leaf.
Apparently, this is partly because CBS is eager to keep this a family
show, hence the episode title. Yep, Moto Maji is a family, all right.
A borderline incestuous, gun-totin', boil-poppin', vaguely anti-Semitic
family. Home for the holidays. Welcome home! Relax and enjoy
this slow pan up from KimP's ass! Oh yeah, this part was recycled
from unseen footage from episode 9.
Without further ado, let's move on to the immunity
challenge, shall we? Once again, we've seen this before, although
last time it was at night and in Australia. It's the Listen to Jeff
Probst Without Falling Asleep Challenge! Luckily, his story is only
a minute long. Unfortunately, you had to pay attention, and recall
this simple information for up to two or three minutes, the answer questions
with two whole multiple choices. First person to get five
50-50 guesses right wins. Obviously, a tall order for our gaggle
of Einsteins. And they're off! Almost immediately, we see Clever
Tom saying "Aw, hail!" as he guesses wrong, mere seconds after the words
dripped from Probst's tongue. And there he is, guessing wrong again.
Oddly, Frank and Lex both eventually get four answers right. Lex then
gets his fifth, and in a scene directly out of Survivor 2, drops
the immunity-winning token on his way to collect his prize.
Seeing this, Probst glares resignedly at the tattooed one, and yells,
"Again? What is wrong with you people? Why the hell did I give up
hosting Rock and Roll Jeopardy for this? Go back and find
it!"
And in the first new footage of the episode, Lex actually
manages to retrieve his lost ribbon just in time to beat a slowly-moving
Frank, winning immunity for the second week in a row. Oh wait, the
challenge-whore that everyone wants to boot won immunity again.
Guess this part was recycled after all.
It's dawn of tribal council day, and Frank is up, looking
at a brilliant bloody sunrise. Red sky in the morning, shepherd's
warning. Could Frank be the one to go? Nah, this is episode
10, which is where Amber/KimP goes. Knowing this, Frank selflessly
attempts to draw votes away from her, by reciting verbatim old Charlton
Heston speeches from NRA conventions. On and on he goes, for hours
at a time. Everyone is pleased with this, except that it distracts them
briefly from their enjoyment of their tasty feast of slightly-chunky,
chalk-like gruel. Suddenly, their mood turns sour, as, almost half
a day after the immunity challenge ended, it dawns on each of them that
they can't vote Lex off tonight. Someone will pay for this, and
Frank has his mouth open. Seconds later, they've forgotten again.
But wait, all hope is not lost. Teresa is desperately
trying to rally support with MamaKim, to turn on Ethan, since Mama is
number four on Boran. MamaKim tells her, "Sorry T-Bird, it's too
early for that. We've got to wait 'til next episode to pull the
rug out from under the guys. Right now, we need them to vote off
Frank. To prove you're down with us, why don'tcha vote for him,
too." Mark Burnett, of course, pressed for time due to the extra
shots of KimP's ass, shortens this to the first sentence.
At tribal council, Jeff plays a tape of himself from
Survivor 2, asking everyone about whether tribal lines have been
erased, and how do you vote people out, now that they'll be on the jury?
After reviewing old episodes, each person dutifully replies with Rich
and Tina's answers, mumbling something about respect and playing the game
well. Probst sends them off to vote, starts reading the ballots,
then sputters, "Okay, how many times do I have to tell you? You can't
vote for Lex! He has immunity! Now get back in there and do it again!"
Quite a while later, a legal set of ballots emerges.
Teresa appears to be sniffling for unknown reasons, but as Amber/KimP
grabs her torch, Jeff starts reading the ballots... "Frank? Frank?
Are you sure? Um, that wasn't in the script, you know. All
right, whatever, screw it, it's late and I need to get back to base camp.
Frank you're gone." Frank gives a stirring final speech about family,
to his family, as if his "reality TV" family never actually existed.
It's a family show, after all. Even if we'd already seen all but
the last ten minutes before.
Back
to the top.
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Episode
9:
If It's Anything Mental, We're Screwed
Nope, wait a minute, we got momentarily distracted by Tom's boil. This
one was: "Dinner, Movie and a Betrayal."
Days 25-27 = August
4-6, 2001
Aired: December 13, 2001
Dang ol' women,
they just cain't keep their hands offa it.
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For once, this was an episode that wasn't completely obvious. Or
at least it shouldn't have been, had it been edited that way. The
tribes entered split four-four along the original tribal lines.
Only three people had votes against them in the event of a deadlocked
Tribal Council vote. Clearly, this was an episode where a lot of
thinking was going on, a cerebral treat. A deep-delving, probing
look into the sociological factors that drive people to trust or suspect,
follow or lead, calculate or divine. All stretched across a gripping
chess match of allegiance-making and -breaking.
Okay, that's what it could have been. But, this
being Survivor, what we got instead was 55 minutes of the "Rile
Up the Good Ol' Boys and Make Fun of the Cream Puff Variety Hour."
True, there may have been some thinking going on, somewhere. There
were certainly a lot of shots of people sitting around silently, staring
at each other with eyebrows a-cocked. But, this being "reality" TV, you
kinda have to go with the footage cards your actors, oops, "contestants,"
deal you. And when your episode's star players are Tom and KimP...
well, in the Big boy's own words: "If it's anything mental, we're screwed."
We start off, interestingly enough, actually in this
episode! Groundbreaking stuff! It's the morning after Brandon's
phony turncoat stunt got Kelly booted, thanks to Boran's eternal faith
in the sanctity of Lex's gut. As Brandon said while voting, his
plan was to go back to Samburu and vote off Lex next time. Of course,
this part was only shown on the rinky-dink Insider clips, and was skillfully
excised from his on-air statement, so as far as we're supposed to know,
Brandon is now in, solid, with Boran. Brandon also mentioned getting
to the final four, tsk tsk. Hint to future contestants: Never predict
on camera that you'll finish in the final two, or final four, or whatever.
It worked for Richard Hatch, but it's been certain death since then.
Most likely, the cameramen take this footage around to show your tribesmates
while you're off taking a dump, and everyone has a good giggle over it.
(Alternatively, just don't take a dump).
So where were we? Oh yeah, Brandon is bleeding-yellow
Boran now. Except Lex and Ethan immediately start talking about
voting him off. Lex is sure as sure can be that Brandon would never,
not in a second, betray their trust. They bring MamaKim in on the
discussion. Lex points to his magical gut a few times, then drives
his point visually by waving his arms around like a windmill. MamaKim
suspects Lex may be using sign language, and quickly comes to the conclusion
that Lindsey has votes against her. Or maybe Lex. Yeah, definitely
Lex. Next, Ethan is off with Tom, and nearly says something, but
Tom leaps in at the last second, and saves the day by talking about how
they should get rid of that Brandon. Frank is no more fond of Brandon,
either. Brandon, for his part, earns their distrust by curling himself
up into a ball, and rolling his eyes occasionally for exercise.
But enough of the we-hate-Brandon bandwagon.
There's fun to be had! In this episode, to test the possibilities
of Product Placement, Stage II (beta version 1.0.3), the character of
Tom has been digitally spliced in from the beloved children's series Fat
Albert. Seems Bill Cosby is trotting out the old gang for a
Christmas special this year, and he wanted to slip some plugs into popular
shows. Unfortunately, Bill's last network was CBS, so instead of
popular shows, he ended up with Survivor. Sorry, Bill! Anyway,
this week, Tom is played by... you thought we were going to say Fat Albert
himself, right? Duh! Tommy can only be played by Mush-Mouth.
Anyway, Tom says, "Heyba manba, whyba are the womenba
so slowba?" (Or something like that. Mush-Mouth is kind of hard
to understand). Frank joins in with a sensitive critique of how
slow women are to get ready. Tom agrees (we think). Then,
all of a sudden there's water, naked female skin, and all is forgiven.
Tommy is dancing around like the elephants in Fantasia. Speaking
of members of the animal kingdom (note the smooth segue), the camp is
now infested with flies. We're not sure why this merited 50% of
the time in the previews, since it's largely here to provide padding in
between the extensive footage of people hating Brandon, but there sure
do seem to be a lot of flies. Ayup.
Back to horny Tom. Hey, he's actually growing
one, what do you know? It's on the side of his neck, so it looks
more like a Frankenstein bolt, but Tommy says it's a horn, and by gum,
he must know something. This is the thinking man's show, after all.
All the women come up to fondle it. Hilarity ensues, accompanied
by selections from the Hee Haw boxed set.
Finally, it's time for the Reward Challenge.
Or thinking about it, at least. Which means, of course, it's back to Brandon-bashing.
Since the challenge footage was recycled from episode 9 of Survivor
2, the fun this time around is seeing who gets to play Colby and Jerri.
Everyone agrees that Frank and Brandon make the cutest couple. Shockingly,
when they dramatically draw slips of paper, each containing the names
of a two-person team, both Frank and Brandon have slips matching them
up. Since the RC isn't until after the next commercial break, the
remaining five minutes are devoted to Tom's gales of laughter at the side-splitting
concept that a gay man and a straight man could work together. More
hilarity ensues. Just before leaving, Tom takes Frank aside, nods
gravely, and warns him, "I don't want to scare you thar, but I think that
feller you're paired up with might be a little... funny."
At the challenge, which is of course, the "Paired Off"
obstacle course, several earth-shattering moments of classic television
entertainment occur. MamaKim manages to be on a team that beats
another in a physical challenge. Then, as millions of senior citizens
consider switching over from Touched By An Angel reruns to watch
the spring chicken compete, she loses again. To the team with two men
on it. Ruined, oddsmakers in Vegas close up shop. And, just as it
looks like a certain disaster is imminent, Teresa rushes in to prevent
Brandon from contacting Frank during his victory hug.
Back at camp, the "losing" contestants all agree this
is the most fun they've had since throwing the immunity challenge that
got Silas booted. Tom just can't stop giggling: "A gay man, and
a straight man! Well, don't that beat all!" KimP actually
gets to say a few sentences on-camera, doubling her screentime for the
series, clearly marking her for departure in the next episode.
Meanwhile, Brandon and Frank are dreaming longingly
of the exotic, helicopter-borne, lavishly-catered beach honeymoon vacation
at the Great Barrier Reef that Jerri and Colby enjoyed. Then, reaching
the end of their hike through the crappy brush they've been stuck in for
the last three weeks, they see their fabulous prize: some hot dogs, a
family size bag of candy, more product placement for Mountain Dew, some
folding wooden chairs, and a movie that's almost as old as Brandon.
Sweet! The pair relax, fondle some hot dogs, stare at each other,
remove some footwear... and then we cut to Frank saying "It's old news,
let's move on," the next day.
With everyone back at camp, it's time for another round
of swinging the stick at the Brandon pinata. Lex and Ethan discuss
voting off Brandon. Frank and Tom form a binding pact to ditch him
at the next tribal council. Brandon tells KimP, "ah screw it, just
vote for me." Knowing that Mark Burnett is the master of misdirection,
the audience takes this in stride, nodding knowingly, "But Samburu has
an easy vote coming up, since they're tied 4-4, and both Tom and Lex have
the most prior votes. They can't both win immunity. Samburu
couldn't be that retarded, could they?" As we said, this is the
thinking person's episode.
At the immunity challenge, Jeff Probst reminds the contestants
that, even though their primary focus this season has been water, fire
is actually the theme of the show, as it was in the Australian Outback
series (except that was mostly water, too), from which this challenge
came. That's right, this challenge is a regurgitation of the build-a-fire-to-burn-through-string
challenge, which Colby cheated at by loading the bucket on his teeter-totter
up with rocks and mud from the river. Luckily, this time around,
the production assistants were too lazy to build the elaborate wooden
seesaw thingies, the contestants can't use the water, and their budget
wouldn't allow for fireworks, so they have to just burn through string.
It's a gripping, white-knuckle challenge, as we watch
tinder slowly, gradually smolder, eventually ignite, in turn become roaring
bonfires, and, several hours later, finally singe Lex's string, making
him the winner. KimP, devastated that her strategy of screaming
"Burn! Burn!" failed, collapses sobbing at the realization that 50% of
the words she got to say in the entire series were the same one, repeated
over and over during this challenge.
Now it's time for all the Machiavellian strategizing
to commence. Surely Samburu realizes they should target Tom, right?
Instead, Tom and Frank give each other matching tattoos saying "Brandon
must go." MamaKim paints herself up a t-shirt saying "I'm voting
for Brandon tonight," then babbles endlessly about the power of sticking
with an alliance, shocking the remaining senior citizens who haven't dozed
off with the admission that she didn't make it this far due solely to
her Olympian performances in the challenges. Tom talks extensively
about something or other, although CBS again fails to provide subtitles.
It was probably pretty funny, though, because he smiled a lot.
At the tribal council, Jeff Probst starts off
the interrogation by asking Brandon, "So, everyone's voting you off tonight,
did you have fun with your little coup?" Brandon assures him that
he did, and hey, no hard feelings everyone. Cagey Survivor-watching
veterans scoff at this ploy, confident that Samburu will still stand united,
and Pagong away the dim-witted Borans, who foolishly followed Lex's gut
away from a 6-4 advantage. After several hours of Probsting questions
about why various people are voting for Brandon, how much they hate Brandon,
and what they think of Lex for believing Brandon, Jeffy finally allows
the voting to proceed.
Skipping the usual counting of the votes, Probst trots
back with the ballot box, and says, "Who are we kidding here? Brandon,
bring me your torch." Lex looks up, eyes bulging, aghast at the
thought that Frank might not actually be going, and may have overheard
one or two of the nasty comments Lex yelled at the top of his lungs while
voting. Brandon, despite being from Texas, demands a recount.
Relenting, Probst goes through the box and finds two votes for Frank mixed
in with the Brandon landslide. "Here, you can keep these as souvenirs,
if you want," he says, snuffing Brandon's torch. As Brandon slinks
away, Frank rocks back and forth happily, confident that his 3-4 minority
will soon turn the tables on Lex's gut again. Tom yells something
unintelligible, which we're pretty sure was a quick strategic note to
Lex concerning their course of action in the coming days. Most likely,
it was his old stand-by: "If it's anything mental, we're screwed."
Back
to the top.
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Episode
8:
Smoked!
Sorry, we just put that up in memory of dearly departed Silas. Actually,
this one was called: "Smoking Out the Snake."
Days 22-24 = August
1-3, 2001
Aired: December 6, 2001
Join Boran? Whatchoo
talkin' bout, Willis?
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Just when you thought it was safe to settle back into your long winter's
nap, secure in the conclusion that all of Mark Burnett's machinations
with tribe switching had done little more than produce yet another tired,
predictable Pagonging, the Evil Pecker himself springs to life, revealing
he still has a few tricks up his sleeve. No, we're not talking about
Brandon yet, we're still referring to Burnett, who is now and always shall
be not only an Evil Pecker, but the Evil Pecker.
But he did at least give us, the jaded masses, a surprise
or two this week, as his fancy-schmancy editing slowly lifted up the rock
over Moto Maji, and the harsh light of the six-pointed sun revealed more
than one snake slithering off into the manyatta. Of course, the
cynic would say, "that's because he's been hiding the actual conflict
on the cutting room floor, and in those crappy Insider clips." Which
is, largely, true. But there were a few clues in the past, like
Brandon's declaration of independence after the merge, and the sudden
explosion of Lex-Kelly antipathy on that same episode. Which was,
well, last week. Of course, that's about five minutes versus seven
hours fifty-five minutes of obfuscation, but they at least were there.
Sorta.
So giddy was Burnett in his glee that not a single
person in America knew this week's surprise ending, that he even dared
to open with a tried and true tradition from Survivors past: Showing
the bootee talking in the first scene. Now, again, the cynic might
say, "Yes, but he also interspersed it with clips of the two people he'd
been fingering in his previews as the victims, Lex and Teresa."
And again, that's, well... true. But that's just because he's an
Evil Pecker.
Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, Lex, whose new
motto is "The Villain Since Way Back in Episode 7," decides that, since
someone cast an irrelevant vote against him, he'll get really paranoid
and pissed off. Okay, maybe it's the hangover from all that wine
talking, but anyway, he then talks to... Kelly(!) to find out who voted
against him. Kelly takes this opportunity to break off into a confessional
(!) about how much she hates Uncle Daddy Lex who treats me like I'm five
years old, the big jerk. (Hint to future contestants: no matter
how secure you are in an alliance, don't let Mark Burnett film you in
a confessional on the first day after a tribal council. Say you
have laryngitis, from breathing all that txic torch smoke, or something.
Broadly hint that "I have friends in OSHA, if you get my drift."
If they can't film you, you're safe! At least until they edit your
next day's confessional to look like the day before. But still, go with
our first advice).
Sadly, Lex is not convinced by this display that Kelly
is trustworthy, and launches into a tirade featuring lots of mixed metaphors
about snakes and cancers and heads. Maybe he was describing his
tattoos, the sound was kind of murky, since they were (ahem) whispering
again. But anyway, everybody else thinks this is all very entertaining.
Brandon has a good laugh, and Teresa actually gets to talk on camera!
She's giggling with delight about her little secret, although she demurely
adds that maybe she was just a bit naughty about fibbing. Oopsie!
Well, surely nothing bad can come from telling a little white lie, eh?
Next, mastermind Lex, who a whole day ago had commented
that Clarence and Teresa were cutting a deal right before Clarence got
Rocked, takes the opportunity to politely tell Teresa that he totally
trusts her, and well, if she happens to stumble across who voted against
him, please let him know, so he can slit their throats. This goes
on for about forty-five minutes, as Lex makes the rounds of the tribe.
You'd almost get the sense that maybe, just maybe, Lex isn't going to
let this drop.
Speaking of drop, it's time for the Reward Challenge,
which involves dropping nine random things into a bucket, by way of a
seesaw-type catapult. The reward, which the tree mail promises "you've
never seen [one] quite as cool as this," turns out to be... more goats.
Which you have to then convince local townspeople to trade for some magic
beans. Which is, naturally, not really a reward (unless, of course, you're
Tom, who hasn't had such a twinkle in his eye and a spring in his step
since he was busy ogling MamaKim a few seconds ago). But that's
okay, since it's not much of a challenge. At least not if you're
a professional athlete who spends his time jumping around and kicking
things. True, soccer balls and hacky sacks are not exactly catapults,
but you get our drift. Mostly, it's an opportunity for nine grown
adults to act like rabid, performing chimps on national TV. And
this is before they have to get insulted on Letterman, or venture dangerously
close to Bryant Gumble. Eep eep!
Ethan bounces off to an early, commanding lead.
Shockingly, he later wins. Phew, that was fun! Well, okay,
there were a few highlights along the way. Kelly complains about
being broke. Then bored. And could I get a new catapult thingy,
this one isn't putting the stuff in the basket when I step lightly on
it, unlike Kangaroo Ethan, who's seven things ahead of me (Mark Burnett
swears Kelly's IQ is the highest they've ever tested... we're inclined
to believe that). Brandon reveals his personal strategy is to yell
at the objects as they fly up, and scare them into the basket. Surprisingly,
this seems to work pretty well. And Tom, well, he just kinda stands
back, watches all the purty ladies jumping up and down, looks over at
the goats, switches back to the ladies, back to the goats again, and smiles.
But Ethan does eventually have to win, and he accepts
everyone's praise, and acts dutifully shocked when, as always occurs in
"fun" rewards, Jeff Probst tries to sow the seeds of mistrust by forcing
him to pick someone to accompany him on the reward. And Ethan feigns
complete spontaneity when he does exactly as Jerri did in the exact same
situation in Survivor 2, and chooses the runner-up. Who would
be Lex. And off they go.
It's an exciting reward, because they get to go to
a local village, where they are surrounded by poverty-stricken people
eager to pawn their wares for hard American tourist cash. Which,
of course, they could have been doing anyway if they'd been voted off
two days ago. Marketing tycoon Lex quickly steps in to lead the
negotiations: "It's okay, you can trust us. If you take our crappy hats
and smelly shirts, and give us some cool trinkets to bribe our friends
with, we could win a million dollars! And for your end of the bargain,
think of the hours of fun you'll have looking at our crappy hats we didn't
want. That'll fill you up when you're subsisting on that disgusting
maize we complain about every day! And did I mention all the money
we'll get? So who's first?"
Rich from their transactions, Lex and Ethan stop in
at the local McDonalds for some french fries, slathered in rich, creamery
butter, topped with bacon, and a small mound of thick, unprocessed lard.
Mmmmmm, lard. Lex demonstrates his powerful gut by swallowing it
whole. Ethan, however, races off to the nearest outhouse.
The locals flock around, contemplating the humor value in knocking it
over while Ethan's in it, but while they're busy pondering how bad the
stench inside must be, considering how bad his shirt smells, Ethan is
done with his lightning dump, and races back to finish his deep-fried
butter sticks. Before they leave, Ethan finds a group of small children,
checks to see that no adults or police are nearby, then pulls out his
sack.
Back at camp Moto Maji, everything is peachy.
Kelly, getting to be on camera again, seizes the opportunity to make fun
of other people. In this case, it's KimP and the sad Samburus, who
really think they can pull this thing out, even though they're down 5-4
(Teresa giggles again, ominously). Kelly scoffs at their offer,
"Have fun with your little coup," then goes off on a twelve-hour filibuster
about how she hates every inch of Lex's skin, especially the parts not
covered in tattoos. "But I'll still vote with him, because he's
been the villain since way back in episode 7. Unless, of course,
I don't."
Now it's immunity time, and Ethan starts dreaming about
the next reward challenge, when he and Jeff Probst get to ride off on
horses, and eat Australian cowboy food. Or the one with the locks,
where he'll win because Keith is a fumblefingers. Shaking himself
out of his reverie, he stares at a bunch of random things (random things
seems to be the theme of this episode), and remembers them. As a
memento for his double challenge win, Probst lets Ethan wear the toilet
seat from the outhouse around his neck to the next tribal council.
Back at camp, it's decision time for Lex - who is he
going to arbitrarily assign blame for voting against him? Brandon saunters
over and whispers "It's Kelly." In thanks for Kelly having won food
for them, and for uncovering Lindsey's prior votes, giving Boran a 6-4
majority at the merge, Lex throws caution to the wind, and says, "Yeah,
what the hell. Sounds good to me! I have prior votes too, so let's
make the next tribal council a 4-4 tie! I've been a complete angel
the last three days, and nobody would even think about voting for me.
Brandon, here's the secret handshake. Make sure Kelly turns in her
key to the Boran executive washroom, or else she won't get her deposit
back. Welcome aboard!" So Brandon is in a quandary: does he
vote with his new Boran power-broker friends, and be booted at the final
five, or vote with Samburu, and be in the final four?
The suspense is palpable, as we wait through interminable
Jeff Probst questions, anxious to get past how KimP feels about something
boring and on to which way Brandon votes. It's Kelly! He's
a Boran now! Except he says that he's only doing it to get to the
final four, so he's still actually a Samburu, just screwing the dunces
and sheep over. Kelly, in her voting booth time, sneaks in a few
last hour-long spiels about how Lex is the anti-Christ. Then, brightening,
she says, "Oh wait! I'm on the jury now! I can keep doing this on Insider,
I'll bet!" The votes are read, and shockingly, Probst manages to
pull out four Lex and four Kelly votes. What are the odds?
Since we've already seen Brandon's vote, the only suspense left is whether
Kelly will impale Lex with her torch on her way over to see Jeff Probst.
Through clenched teeth, and much scowling, she fights her better instincts
and is quietly snuffed. Just barely, Lex escapes the stake.
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Episode
7.5:
Are You People Still Here?
Once again,we seem to have misplaced the actual title. Hold on, it's around
here somewhere. Oh yeah, CBS threatened to force us to "Look
Closer" at Tom's feather-laden butt crack.
Days 1-21 = July
11-31, 2001
Aired: November 29, 2001
Meeeemorieeeeesssss...
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There is a special breed of television filler that is the bane of various
series' fans everywhere. That would be the "special episodes" cobbled
together using previously-aired footage. The Simpsons, for example,
at least has the self-awareness to make fun of themselves for airing "Clip
Shows," although recycled later-season Simpsons footage still has
not composted long enough to emit "funny" fumes.
Not so Survivor, though. CBS promises
their well-polished turds will shine like Silas' teeth, and fill
the living room with the sweet aroma of freshy-picked jasmine. "50%
new footage!" their previews beseech us. Yes, well, half of it being
stuff we already winced through once may be all well and good for gushing,
hearts-on-the-Trapper-Keeper "fans" of the show, but where does it leave
those of whose interest is waning, and didn't like most of the people
the first time we saw them? That's right, tuned to CBS at eight
o'clock on a Thursday, same as always. Oh well. Our pledge
to you: Almost none of the jokes you read here have been recycled.
That's because they all sucked the first time, and we thought better of
it this time around (hint, hint). So bear with us, as we wade through
the first 21 days of Survivor: Africa. Again.
CBS promised, and even gave this episode the title
"Look Closer" to further drive the point home, that this exercise will
not be pointless. We will be allowed a deeper, more thorough understanding
of these dear contestants, a peek into their inner machinations, nay,
their very souls. So we open, of course, the Day 1's hike to camp.
And learn, to our surprise, that the Samburu young'ns found Frank to be
a tad bossy. Really? Well, at least that's what our notes
say. Ah, that must have been some of the non-fresh footage.
Let's skip ahead to the new stuff, shall we?
Still Day 1, and Boran is collecting water, looks familiar...
no wait! This is in fact rare, priceless footage of Diane in a bikini!
Oh, how we've missed Diane, and her paranoid, lion-hearing auditory hallucinations!
And it keeps going. Diane is still afraid. Interest: waning,
waning, waning... ah, now we're back at Boran, and they're trying to build
fire again. Back to the old footage, but it's at least an opportunity
to discretely film down Jessie's shirt as she bends over. Advantage:
push.
Next, we have some more new footage, in which everyone
in Boran gets the chance to join America in one of our favorite pastimes:
making fun of Clarence and his warpaint. Lex thinks it's silly.
MamaKim and Ethan do, too. Kelly has a good laugh, then starts jabbering
away about sororities and padding her bra. But they do have a point.
Clarence, in his defense, swears it was chosen by the producers from five
things he'd brought, and he never thought they'd pick the warpaint.
Yeah, but that's like listing every embarassing album you've ever owned,
like Yanni, and letting them put that up on their web site. Oh wait,
you did that, too.
More ancient footage of Elders vs. AllRats and sick,
sick Jessie follow. But then there's a revealing session with Frank
and his luxury item: deer antlers. Not surprisingly, this is an
opportunity for everyone in Samburu to laugh at Frank. Probably
because he is a damn weirdo. So to sum up: Boran doesn't like Clarence,
and Frank is a bossy fruitcake. Our insight is deepening as we speak.
Near Hoover Dam depth.
Phew! Up to Day 6 already, and we're working
up a sweat. This is a good time to go the old water hole.
Hey look, there's a troop of humorously cavorting monkeys! Nope,
on closer inspection, that's just Samburu. And the high-pitched
screeching was just Teresa giving them a "pep talk." This, of course,
is more screen time than T-Bird has gotten in the previous seven episodes
combined, so it must be new. But this beneficent gesture is, of
course, balanced out by a verbatim rehash of the entire scary, scary sequence
where Boran "interacts" with (well, hears somewhere in the distance) the
wheezing lions at night. "It's real," a hushed Kelly tells us.
Ethan swears it could happen every night. Yeah, well, if it did,
why didn't the cameramen bother filming it on any of those other 41 nights,
eh? Not only has this part aired in its entirety before, but all
the shocking footage was used in that week's preview, as well.
It's "real," all right.
Having just seen old footage, it's time for some more.
A lot more. Silas gets a necklace. Both tribes make distress
signals. A special encore presentation of the thong and butt-crack-with-feather
scenes (we're pretty sure this was preceded by a "Hallmark Hall of Fame"
logo). Lindsey gets dehydrated. Carl blows at inaccurate trivia.
Lindsey freaks out, swiftly followed by Linda. On the plus side,
CBS sticks it to the suckers who paid them $19.95 for "Insider" access,
by broadcasting the exclusive "Insider" scene of Linda apologizing to
Lindsey. Now, in the Survivor 2 re-crap show, Jerri was shown
apologizing to Keith, warming our opinion of her, thereby softening the
crushing blow of her departure in the following episode. We're going
out on a limb here to predict that Linda and Lindsey won't make it all
the way.
Next, we get some exciting new footage of Samburu receiving,
opening, cooking, eating, and reminiscing about an ostrich egg.
Teresa is even allowed to make a comment on-screen. Frank sums it
all up by rubbing his belly, and concluding in a satisfied air that their
hearty breakfast that morning will give them enough strength and energy
to all but guarantee a Samburu victory in that day's immunity challenge.
Except that Boran wins it (the physical house-carrying challenge, where
Lindsey got her bruise). Then there's more old footage: the elders
know they're toast. Lindsey screams, "Vote for me! I promise
I won't call you all bastards and threaten you with 'don't fuck with me'
this time! At least not until my confessional tomorrow morning!"
Linda gets booted. The twist happens. Tom,
Kelly and Lex hate living at Samburu. Frank and Teresa have to clean
their new buffs, they got so excited about being in Boran. We start
to wonder what happened to that "50%" promise. And then it happens.
A sensitive, heartwarming scene, in which naive, curious Tom sensitively,
delicately asks Brandon: "Are you gay?" Tom then recounts his experimental
college days in gay bars. Brandon compliments Tom's warm smile. Staring
into the campfire, their talk turns to farm animals, orgasmic country
foods, and then... the camera politely fades to black. Later, Tom
swears he was thinking about women the whole time.
We smoothly segue into bondage and boot camp scenes.
Seems Frank is good at barking orders, drill sergeant-style. Who
knew? This part was sadly omitted the first time around because,
well, it had nothing to do with the goat-herding challenge. Which
Boran still wins against hapless Samburu. But now we know why Tom
had that big grin on his face the whole time his team was losing.
And we get deeper insight into bossy, kooky Frank, who appears to have
military leanings. We'll have to make a note of that one.
Fifteen minutes left in the show, meaning of course
that there's time to cram one new piece of revealing footage in before
CSI. That's right, it's the white-kickle thrill ride of Boran
going to do their laundry at the water hole, in an attempt to kill time
while waiting for the merge. Sadly, we are deprived of further MamaKim
thongage, but we do get to see her washing her only two pieces of underwear.
There is a God. Also, Teresa makes yet another guest appearance,
this time in a swimsuit. We're not sure where all this washing is
taking place, because MB has taken pains to visually catalog every piece
of feces floating in the area beforehand. Several appear fresh.
But on closer inspection, they've probably been there
a while. Much like the remaining twelve minutes of the show.
Hold on, is that a new preview, at least? A fresh plug for Survivor
Insider? Or a new Buff (TM) commercial? (Okay, there is a
single new shot of a Moto Maji one). A new Survivor: The Interactive
Game ad? No, no, mostly no, and no. We think back on all
the exotic, scintillating facts we've learned tonight, and see... floating
turds.
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