"It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness knows how old - three, was it, or four? - never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days... It was rather exciting. The little dry ditches in which Piglet had nosed about so often had become streams, the little streams across which he had splashed were rivers, and the river, between whose steep banks they had played so happily, had sprawled out of its own bed and was taking up so much room everywhere, that Piglet was beginning to wonder if it would be coming into his bed soon.
'It's a little Anxious,' he said to himself, 'to be a Very Small Animal Entirely Surrounded by Water.' "
- AA Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, Chapter IX "In Which Piglet is Entirely Surrounded by Water."
Piglet was a little boy pig, Hamlette, if you will. Whereas NaOnka is a grown-up sow, but both got very anxious when it rained all night and all day and all night.
In the previously-on narration, Jeff Probst told us that Jimmy T's error that got him voted out last week was that: "Jimmy's politicking challenged Marty's ego." Marty certainly has an ego, and is intent on calling the shots from behind the scenes, but what got Jimmy T kicked off was that he annoyed the bejeezus out of everyone. Jimmy T can annoy people as yet uncreated. There was really only one good thing you could say about Jimmy T: he wasn't as horrible as NaOnka, who is The Most-Horrible Woman in America not running for office or named "Palin," or both.
Marty has not yet learned never to tempt fate on Survivor. Even after noting that overconfidence is a death sentence on this show, he nonetheless began spouting the sort of overconfident crap that the Gods of Survivor, that is, Palin's Pimp, aka Mark Burnett, always slaps down hard: "We're good for a minimum two to three more Tribals. ... If you can see two Tribals ahead in this game, that's pretty good, and if you can see it with the level of certainty that I have, even better." Oh Marty, Marty, Marty.
So Marty and Twice-Shoeless Dan stood around and made out their elimination order: first Crazy Holly the shoe thief, who owes Twice-Shoeless Dan $1600, and then Jane, the feisty old lady who is 7 years younger than Shoeless Dan, and in much-better shape. I know this isn't Big Brother, but these people seriously need to start expecting the unexpected.
"I am so proud to be on my young tribe," boasted the revolting NaOnka, which is ironic, since every tribe member with a shred of decency (that could be as many as three) is deeply ashamed to have her on their tribe, as her pupils are now ashamed to have her for their PE teacher, as her bosses are now ashamed to have her on staff, and as her family is now ashamed to be related to her.
The disgusting NaOnka did offer us a ray of hope as her ego ran unchecked (as I suspect it always does.). She said: "If I look good, I feel good, I'm a-do good." How fortunate that she's repulsive as well as revolting. "Looking Good" is outside her range, not unlike sanity.
Survivor 21: Infants vs Senior Citizens: Episode 5: "Turf Wars," 7 minutes in: Marty: "It would take something extra-ordinary, off-the-charts, completely wacked-out to disturb my plans now."
Survivor 21: Infants vs Senior Citizens: Episode 5: "Turf Wars," 8 minutes and 30 seconds in: Jeff Probst: "Drop your buffs. We are switching tribes." That wacked-out, extraordinary Jeff Probst; he's completely off-the-charts. Marty better be careful not to hit his nose walking into Tribal Council blind.
Jeff had them draw for new team captains. Brenda and Holly drew the captain rocks, Holly, who is crazy, and Brenda, a beauty queen used to getting her way in life by manipulating men who are besotted by her. Bad luck of the draw.
The new captains wrote down names from the other tribe to be drafted into their tribe. The new Antique Tribe was now Holly, Alina, Benry, Chase, NaOnka, Tyrone, Twice-Shoeless Dan, and Yve. What a terrible tribe: useless Dan, horrible NaOnka, Crazy Holly, blabberlips Chase, professional sleazeball Benry, and bossy Tyrone, all on one tribe.
The new Infants Tribe: Fabio, Brenda, Sash, both Kellys, Jane, Jill, and Marty. Well, this is certainly a more-likable tribe.
Jeff: "Old vs Young is done. Medallion of Power [fanfare], done." Marty's alliance with Twice-Shoeless Dan, done. Marty's two-to-three-Tribals ahead plan, done. NaOnka's alliances with Brenda and Sash, done. My vodka tonic, done.
So one can not help but wonder: did they always plan to ruthlessly publicize this "Old vs Young" theme only to discard it after a mere four episodes? Or did the Antiques' losing streak, coupled with a somewhat racist alliance on the Infant Tribe, force them to scuttle it early before it got any more lopsided? Was the whole point of the theme merely to allow them to justify casting the very-elderly Superbowl Guy, and it thus became useless when Superbowl Guy got kicked off?
And does Marty and/or NaOnka have their Hidden Immunity Idol with them, or are they lost to them at the other's camps?
"I'm gonna miss you guys" called out NaOnka. Brenda looked over and smiled, possibly missing her alliance-mate. Kelly One-Leg managed not to yell back: "Good riddance to bad rubbish," which would have been a mean thing to say about rubbish anyway.
Reward Challenge: This was basically Giant Pachinko. You had to catch the balls launched into the Giant Pachinko boards by the other team. They were playing for two live hens, and one live cock, always worth playing for, as are chickens. "Wring that neck on that chicken!" yelled the surprisingly bloodthirsty Old Jane. Keep her away from your pets.
Frankly, this looked like a pretty easy challenge. Maybe if they'd been launching multiple balls at once, it would be difficult, but as it was just one ball at a time, it seemed pretty easy.
On being drafted into the new tribe (Drat! Now I'll have to start using their tribe names) of "The Floor," Marty had said how good it was to be on a winning team now, and then his butterfingers handed the challenge win to Esparda (which I assume means "The Ceiling"). Poor Jane will have to wait to wring a neck.
The planet where Tyrone, the hot older fireman on The Ceiling, lives is a mysterious place. He said of the old Antiques Tribe: "I would have loved to have stayed with the old tribe, because I think we had a good little machine going." What kind of machine? A losing machine? Last week he convinced himself that a rout was an almost-win. This week he convinced himself that his lamentable failure of a tribe was a "good little machine." I imagine him standing in the middle of a flaming building, surrounded by twenty-foot walls of flame, and saying: "We got this one licked. Let's go home."
Tyrone also comes from a planet where the young ones like to be ordered around by older people. Sadly for Tyrone, he's on earth now. He sat the new kids down and started telling them "The Rules". When teachers do that in school, the kids don't have the power to vote the teacher out at the next Tribal Council.
Also, Tyrone made the odd comment: "Another dynamic is that you have little pretty girls running around, you know, and there may be some flirtation going on." Okay, my "Creep-O-Meter" just went into the red zone, and it wasn't because that on "pretty girls" they cut to a shot of NaOnka making one of her grotesque faces. Well, not just because of that, anyway. Tyrone, these young women are not flirting with you. Put your eyes back where they belong, Tyrone, in your head. Speaking of the chickens, Tyrone suggested keeping them alive for the eggs, adding: "I don't know the rate they produce eggs," trying ever-so-subtly to turn the conversation to ovulation cycles, since he thinks he's being flirted with by the first non-menopausal women he's been near in quite a while.
NaOnka, an educator of the young who ought to appreciate rules and order, was all for the anarchic chaos of the old Fetus Tribe. (What is an "old-fetus" anyway?) "Don't think that you are a G, which is a gangsta, which you are not," she babbled, though of course, only to us, she being too big a coward to say it to Tyrone's face. NaOnka is much better at personally bullying the disabled. The irony is, I doubt Tyrone would be insulted to learn he's not a gangster (though Twice-Shoeless Dan might be miffed by it). Come to think of it, a "gangsta" is an odd and disturbing thing for a high school teacher to admire anyway. She teaches kids, and she admires gangsters. Think about that, parents of her pupils, and remove your kids from her P.E. classes.
Crazy Holly was telling the younger players which of her children they reminded her of, while the younger players sat there with that same expression I used to have on my face whenever my weird old Aunt Hazel, who always smelt of gin and cigarettes, would begin a sentence with: "Well, back in my day, we didn't hold with this electricity junk." Then Crazy Holly told us: "I feel like I relate to the kids well. I mean coming back, you know, the kids were very receptive to me." Maybe it's because kids have no impulse control either. Children will steal a man's shoes because they think he's mocking them, just like Holly did. But Holly, when a young person rolls their eyes while you talk at them, they're not scanning the sky for rescue planes. Being humored is not being accepted.
But Holly is ready to have slumber parties and talk about boys with Alina and NaOnka. "If the kids come to me with an idea, 100% I'm on board." What if the idea is "Let's ambush that one-legged girl, and beat her senseless with her own fake leg, and then burn the leg"? Because that is number one on NaOnka's to-do list.
So which is more pathetic: the 44 year old man who thinks the 20-nothing girls are flirting with him, despite the presence of Chase and Benry, who are young, hot, and neither look nor talk like their dads, or the 44 year old woman who thinks the players 20 years her junior all think of her as one of them? Too close to call.
Fabio, who, in case we've forgotten, is not a Rhodes Scholar (He's sweet. I don't hate him, but if he were any dumber, he'd be a network programmer.), is happy to have had the tribal "switcheroo." Well of course he is. He got rid of NaOnka without having to vote her out. "I'm pretty stoked about how it worked out actually," he said, answering my never-asked question as to whether surfers still used the word "stoked," "The way it worked out was pretty right on. We picked up Marty, Jill, and Jane, who are all super-cool."
Fabio, you don't know these people yet. Marty is a would-be puppet-master who wants to seek out your pressure points in order to manipulate you to his will. (Marty should find Fabio ridiculously easy pickings.) Jill is a doctor and a right-wing Christian, which is a pretty darn weird mix (I want a second opinion, and I'm not even sick yet.), whose idea of strategizing is "Whatever." (Fabio may be a bit dim, but he's got more of an opinion on strategic matters than just "whatever".) And while I think Jane is a bit cool, Fabio is "chicken" to her, and her plan for the chickens was "Wring that neck!" (The chickens were very relieved that The Ceiling won them. They literally bet their lives on that challenge.)
Marty asked what The Floor's rules were, mentioning the work-distribution at The Ceiling. The kids all looked horrified. When Marty said "No slackers at all," Fabio looked like he thought they meant he would be killed. Brenda put it most eloquently: "The La Flor Tribe, we're really chill," adding "laid-back" for those dinosaurs who might have thought "really chill" meant it was cold on their side of Nicaragua. She wanted it clearly understood that it meant "We're all lazy bastards. I have a beauty-pageant tan to maintain."
Jane, who never struck me as a lazy-bones before, what with her super-power of being able to start fire with just her eyes, instantly took to The Floor's work ethic, which was apparently, "I got nothing against work. I could watch it all day." She was immediately poisoning the young one's minds against Jill and Marty. "They sit about and chatterbox," Jane said, adding, just to increase the horror of it all: "and have -- tea!" Gasp! The fiends! Is Jane implying that Marty and Jill are -- are -- British?
I was impressed than Brenda and Kelly didn't burst out with braying laughter in Jane's face.
But Jane had more to say about Marty and Jill (Come to think of it, a politically conservative Christian? Maybe Jill is a teabagger.), and Jane was starting to sound crazy enough to be a teabagger Senatorial candidate from Delaware: "I would-a voted Marty and Jill out long time ago if I could-a gotten an alliance," Maybe if you weren't a fruitcake, someone would have allied with you. Surely there were other despisers of tea-drinking on the old Antique Tribe? "... 'cause Marty and Jill have been tight as ticks..." How tight are ticks anyway? I thought they only drank blood. Of course, any tick drinking my blood would get very tight. Just ask my late third husband, Count Vlad Tepes of Transylvania, who got so tight on my blood, he forgot to return to his coffin before dawn, and I was widowed again. "...one, like, humping the other one on the back, I'm tellin' ya." How vivid. I wonder if Jane's house is made of Gingerbread.
Marty took to sniffing about to see if anyone would own up to a Hidden Immunity Idol, since Jill's moronic plan to tell her whole tribe that Marty had one, so they could use it against the Fetuses later on, was now a total bust.
Marty, hardly a laid-back chill dude himself, was horrified by the tale of NaOnka's assault on Kelly One-Leg. Kelly looked relieved to find someone besides herself thought this was a terrible way to behave, even in Nicaragua.
But his approach showed he still hadn't grasped how to handle an idol yet himself, since he confessed right off to all that he has an Immunity Idol. Well, there went that advantage. At least he beat Jane and Jill to telling them. Brenda was probably wondering how much cuddling he'd need to tell her his bank account numbers and passwords. By now, she probably had enough intel to steal Chase's entire identity.
But then, Marty also said he hadn't done anything "backstabby," this from the man who organized Jimmy T's blindside.
Anyway, Marty did impress his new tribe - with his stupidity. Then he hung the idol out in the open, where someone less - ah - open about things could just take it. If his plan to manipulate the kids is to have them think he's stupid, and underestimate his intelligence, it's working.
The next day at The Ceiling Camp, it was pouring rain, and a cold wind was blowing, so they were all "chill." Benry noted that the camp was built right on the shore, where it had no windbreak. Well, the construction was directed by a man who coached football, not by someone with sense about where to put shelter. The good side of this was that NaOnka was freezing and miserable. The bad side was that Tyrone was making idiot remarks like: "This rain is going to stop. It has to stop eventually." You mean, like Life?
"That's what Noah said," chimed in Twice-Shoeless Dan, in the most inept version of a "that's what she said" joke of all-time.
"When I'm cold, and I'm not really doing too well, I lose it," said NaOnka, leaving me deeply puzzled as to just what it is she loses. Good sense? No, she lacks that naturally. Common decency? No, she hasn't got that to lose. Her mind? Not really a substantial loss. Her maturity? Now you're just trying to be funny. "This weather is killing me," she added, though it was just a cruel tease. It was only making her miserable. It wasn't causing her death at all. What a let-down. Oh well, watching her moan in misery was at least pleasant viewing.
Alina tried talking NaOnka down. Why? She counseled her against quitting. Again why? "You're gonna wish you didn't quit," Alina told NaOnka. Alina, shut up.
Bu then Alina summed up NaOnka interestingly: "NaOnka seems like a high school girl..." Perhaps because she teaches high school, and isn't around actual adults much, you know, the sorts of people who don't physically assault the disabled. "...She's irrational and crazy, and she just seems like she's on her period all the time." Which period? First period? Home Room? Lunch period? Study Hall? Oh! She meant... Hey, Alina said it, not me. (But she's kind of right. And you can't say that about Jane.) Anyway, that's what she said.
Doh! Now that is the most inept version of a "that's what she said" joke of all-time.
(Maybe it's just me, but it sure looked, in Alina's close-ups, that under her jowls the woman - well - she needs a shave!)
And then Chase shows up, also to try to counsel NaOnka not to just up and quit. Chase, butt out! Go blab secrets to Brenda. Chase was shirtless, I guess to show that his massive, magnificent chest is immune to freezing cold wind and rain. It certainly makes his nipples perky.
Then he cuddled with NaOnka. I'd rather cuddle a cobra. I guess when your cuddling options are NaOnka or the bearded lady, NaOnka wins by default. We didn't see Chase cuddle Brenda One-Leg after NaOnka assaulted her.
NaOnka informed us that Nicaragua is colder than Iowa. Well, Meredeth Wilson did write of his fellow Iowans: "We can be cold as our falling thermometers in December, if you ask about our weather in July." Maybe NaOnka shouldn't have asked about the weather.
"They say you can always see the rainbow at the end of the storm," Alina babbled meaninglessly. First off, it depends on from which direction the storm clears in relation to the sun, and secondly, who are "they"?
But Chase had to top it with a truly stupid, sentimental story which, because of the event it was part of, no one but me will ever point out to him is idiotic. He told of driving through the rain on the day his dad died, and of seeing what looked like a rainbow in his rear view mirror, but when he turned around, it was gone. "Right there was when I knew that my dad was good."
What?
1. Rainbows are sunlight refracted, usually through rain, but it can also be through a prism, or through a truck window, or on a mirror's reflection. They are in no way miraculous.
2. Turning around may have changed the angle, removing the illusion, or maybe it was the angle in the mirror, or maybe it was just a momentary convergence of sun and water and refraction. That he didn't see it when he turned around is also in no way miraculous.
3. What is the relationship between his seeing that rainbow and his dad's alleged "goodness"? There is none.
4. If he didn't know his dad was "good" before Dad died, he wasn't.
5. What had this to do with NaOnka being scared of a storm and uncomfortable? Nothing.
6. I saw no rainbows on the day my dad died. Is Chase saying my dad was bad? Well screw you, Chase!
This is the sort of sentimental, superstitious drivel, meaningless random events presented as having meaning, that makes me bilious.
Immunity Challenge: Jane bragged in front of NaOnka, that she'd loved being dry over at the Camp with the tarp during Piglet's monsoon. As I saw NaOnka silently simmering, I almost started to like Jane again for that.
NaOnka is like Ben Linus on Lost. Ben got beaten up, sometimes quite savagely, again and again and again. On The Jimmy Kimmel Show after Lost's final episode, Jimmy asked Michael Emerson, who played Ben, how many times he got beaten up on the show. "How many episodes was I in?" Michael answered. Ben was such a horrible, evil, genocidal mind-gamer that, no matter how many times someone beat the snot out of him, the audience always loved it. "Hit him again!" That's NaOnka, she's so massively hateful that you can show her being miserable, in pain, in fear, in hunger, or just enduring humiliations, and the audience can't get enough. "Abuse that bitch again!"
I loved this challenge. Three players from each team were strapped onto spokes of a huge wheel. Players would turn the wheel, which dunked the head of the strapees one at a time, under water, where they had to get mouthfuls of water to then spit into a bowl until there was enough water to overbalance the bowl, releasing a ball the rest of the team would use to break tile targets. It combined torture and spitting, inhuman and uncouth at the same time. You had to love it.
Unbelievable! They were waterboarding players! There was only one way on earth this challenge could have been more awesome, and that of course would be if NaOnka were one of the strapped-on ones. (I bet it wouldn't be her first "strap-on.") Oh, and then, if the wheel jammed while NaOnka's head was underwater, and they couldn't get her untied fast enough to save her, and ... and...
Oh. Where am I? Oh yes. I'm doing my Survivor recap. I'm sorry. I never expected to have such an erotic response to imaging someone drowning. How about this? We strap on NaOnka, Ben Linus, and Carl Paladino? And then the wheel breaks, and falls underwater, and all three drown? No wait. Ben repented and became a semi-good guy towards the end. Okay, the wheel jams, and just NaOnka and Paladino's head are trapped underwater.
What? The challenge? Oh right. Back to the game. [Sigh.]
But of course, NaOnka didn't go on the wheel. Drat! The wheel-riders were all women, Brenda and the Kellys for The Floor, Yve, Alina and Crazy Holly for The Ceiling. NaOnka let two women in their 40s take her punishment. Those hens that were prizes in the earlier challenge weren't the only chickens about.
The Ceiling may have new members, but it's just as lame as ever. Actually, with the addition of NaOnka, it's even lamer! They were spinning their wheel so fast that the folks on the wheel weren't able to spit all their water in the bowl as they sped past it, defeating the whole purpose of the spin. The Floor took an early lead, releasing their ball long before the Ceiling did. The Floor was wiping up the floor with The Ceiling.
[Addendum: Oops. As a commenter "GreenKnight 043" below remarked, I had this backwards: it was The Floor that was spinning its people too slowly. I'd take that paragraph out, but then the commenter's message would be from Mars, and I'd lose "The Floor was wiping up the floor with The Ceiling," and I was far too proud of that sentence to cut it merely because it is ass-backwards.]
Although, once The Ceiling had sense enough to pull Tyrone off the throwing job and turn it over to Benry, they did catch up, and it came down to a tied last throw, Benry vs Fabio, and Fabio won it for The Floor.
This means NaOnka could go home!
And even better, she wants to leave! The subhuman creature who was tackling one-legged women for immunity idols a few days before wanted to quit. "I think I'm done. I really do think I'm done," she whined. Anyone who talks her out of quitting, which would not only remove her, but send her home on the Quitter's Walk of Shame, will have to answer to me!
How did NaOnka get back to camp before the rest of her tribe? Oh wait. That wasn't her. It was a shot of a vulture. It's a natural mistake, and I apologize to vultures everywhere.
NaOnka has a scientific theory as to why The Ceiling sucks: "I believe that Esparda is cursed..." She's an educator, remember. "...because how you gonna get the pick of the litter, and you're still losing?" She thinks she's "The Pick of the Litter". Well, If I were picking which one from the litter to tie in a bag and throw in a river, she'd be first choice. She's not "The Pick of the Litter"; she's just litter, filthy trash befouling the roadside. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that she's regularly picked up by convicts.
Okay, they have to figure out who to lose, and while it's obvious that Twice-Shoeless Dan is unable to compete, and NaOnka is a revolting monster, that doesn't make them a slam-dunk. NaOnka has been telling us she wants to go home: "I really want to go home. I'm over it." (She worked and competed to get this opportunity that thousands desire, but few receive, and she's "over it" in less than two weeks. What a ninny.), but she hasn't told her tribemates to vote her out, and the oldsters don't know yet how horrible she is.
Meanwhile, when everyone else on the whole tribe wants to eat some chicken (to build strength before going to Tribal Council. Wouldn't it have made more sense to eat up before the challenge?), Tyrone the eggman wants to keep them alive. Right before Tribal Council is not the right time to stymie the desires of the entire tribe.
Crazy Holly is now all for dumping Tyrone, Since she is no longer the only member of her tribe that is insane, and the new tribemates don't know of her shoe-thieving ways, she's feeling more confident. She found Tyrone keeping out of the way while the chicken was cooked suspicious. Holly doesn't get the concept of "too many cooks." But then, other popular concepts elude her also: "These are mine; those are yours" doesn't seem to have sunk in, for one.
Then Tyrone made another tactical error. He ate more of the chicken he objected to them eating than the others did. Oh Tyrone, you should be setting a target (Like Dan or Holly or NaOnka), and culling votes from the kids, not giving kids orders they haven't asked you for, arguing against tribal wishes, and then eating more than the others. Tyrone is a little disconnected from how he comes across to others, and is apt shortly to be fully severed.
Benry wants to get rid of Tyrone, but he's also scoping out how gone NaOnka is. "I don't know if she's all there mentally right now." Benry dear, NaOnka is never there mentally. Haven't you noticed that she's the female equivalent of Caligula, only not as nice?
Since I called Sash and his cohorts a couple weeks back for the inherent racism of their (blessedly short-lived) alliance's goals, I must in fairness point out that the latter portion of this episode was a bunch of white people sitting about, trying to decide whether to vote out the black man or the black woman. No one even brought Twice-Shoeless Dan's name up. Well, at least that ageist thing is over.
Tribal Council: Jeff: "Tyrone, what comes with being the leader of this tribe?" Tyrone answered by droning on about "responsibility," rather than just saying "a big target on my back."
Asked what was the most-difficult experience in her life prior to being hit with a 36-hour monsoon in Nicaragua, NaOnka replied her divorce. I would think being married to this monster would be far more difficult than divorcing her. In divorcing NaOnka, I'm sure her poor ex-husband learned the truth of Oscar Wilde's wisdom: "Divorces are made in Heaven."
Jeff, who has never been married to NaOnka, found this amazing: "That's got to blow your mind a bit. These are strangers, competing against you for a million dollars, and you received more love from them than you did in your most-personal relationship?" Actually Jeff, it makes perfect sense. Only people who don't know NaOnka, total strangers, could ever love her. People that actually know her, or even worse, know her intimately, would naturally know how revolting she is, and hate her guts, and the rest of her. She will always depend on the kindness of strangers, because no one that knows her can like her.
To know, know, know her,
Is to hate, hate, hate her,
And I do. And I do. And I do. And I do. And I do."
The subject of why keep Twice-Shoeless Dan around if you want a strong tribe when he can barely walk was never raised on the televised portion of the council.
Only Yve and Tyrone vote for NaOnka. Even Twice-Shoeless Dan turned on his former tribemate and ally, and voted to oust him.
As the votes against Tyrone mounted, he found himself puzzled. "Why were they voting for me? They need me," could be seen flashing across his face. Next time, eat less chicken, Tyrone.
In the previews of next week, we saw Twice-Shoeless Dan looking to quit. It's the season of the near-quitters. And we saw Marty claim to be a chess Grand Master. Why on earth would you tell that to your opponents on Survivor? It's asking to be voted out.
And speaking of out, I'm out of here. Cheers darlings.
To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to The Morehead, the Merrier, or buy her book, My Lush Life.
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