On Survivor, the Ete Poem Tribe (It's an anagram of Ometepe, which bores me), is the home of Phillip, aka Big Mouth, aka, Agent Dry Mouth, aka Agent 00-Zero, aka Special Agent Dumb Ass, and he is the motherlode of nutball behavior. Agent Dumb Ass could lose an argument with his hair, and he's bald. Oh, and he's a "Former Federal Agent," as he'd be the first to tell you, and the second, and the third, and the 17th, and the 64th, and the 101st, and the billionth. No one could call him a Secret Agent, or even a Keep-a-Secret Agent.
Agent Dumb Ass: "I'm kinda like the odd man out 'round here..." He's an odd man wherever he is. "...Even though I think I bring a lot to this tribe..." He does. He brings the crazy, not to mention one seriously un-secured cannon. "...And soon a couple people are going to have to wake up and realize that." They know, Dumb Ass, they know.
The Untold Story of Agent Dumb Ass is why is he a "former" federal agent, rather than a current one? It's not that I think he should be one; it's that I'm dying to know in what spectacular manner did he foul up and flame out. Given how notoriously homophobic the FBI has always been (Not surprising in an organization founded and run for decades by a repressed closet case like J. Edgar Hoover, a truly evil man.), we may have had a strong indication of what got Dumb Ass booted out when he slithered in to "spoon" with Rob in the night.
Agent Dumb Ass: "You and I are going to be real good 'buddies' tonight." (Or did he say "real good butties"?)
Boston Rob: "Yes. You got your underwear on?" (Like those saggy fuchsia panties will afford Rob any protection.)
Agent Dumb Ass: "I have my underwear on, but that doesn't stop me, brotha," and then 00-Zero slapped Rob's butt a couple times. The horror. The horror. Were I there, I'd be "spooning" with Grant, and hoping he'd "fork." ("My, my, Grant, what a large tine you have!" "The better to fork you with, my dear.")
Next morning Rob and Grant were gossiping over the washline, like Lucy and Ethyl 55 years ago. The subject? How they were used in the night by men, of course.
Rob: "Phillip last night, stuck his friggin' leg in my back - like his knee? - into my back, just to be an ass last night." Well Rob should have told him that that wasn't his ass. I guess he just feared the reply would be: "And that's not my knee!"
But Rob's night of passion had left him with a fairly accurate diagnosis of The Orally-Arid One: "[Agent Dumb Ass is] completely off his rocka, walking around in his pink panties..." This over shots of Dumb Ass's barely-concealed namesake, bent over and stuck pretty much directly into the faces of Natalie and Ashley-or-Andrea, who were trying to hide their eyes, which burned!
Rob came to this wonderful conclusion: "As long as Phillip is aggravating everybody so much, it takes all the heat off of me. So in a way, maybe he needs to stay." I like Rob's thinking, as I can mock this idiot all spring.
(I had to play the clip of Rob saying that last part over some 37 times to get the quote right. That it happened to be on a shot following Grant as he walked away from the camera, giving me a magnificent view of the way his tight gray shorts hug his perfectly-sculpted behind, a thing of transcendent beauty, I'm sure had nothing to do with my difficulty paying attention to whatever Rob was babbling about. It took 14 replays before I even noticed there was sound.)
Life is good at Viva Zapata, where they are bringing in fish, and doing everything except singing "Ding Dong, the Russell's Gone!" like giddy Munchkins. Steve, the over-50 ex-football player, is even thinking happy thoughts about "bringing in" Stephanie and Klumpp, Russell's now-orphaned concubines. Steve needs to reread Helter Skelter, or watch one of the TV movies made from it.
Stephanie and Klumpp's mental state at this point will be familiar to anyone who knows the history of Susan Atkins or Squeaky Fromme, excruciatingly stupid young girls in desperate need of daddy figures, who fell under the malign-but-total mind influence of a man of pure evil, now adrift following his arrest, I mean expulsion, and seeking ever to avenge Charlie, I mean Russell. That they haven't yet carved swastikas into their foreheads is mostly due to the local lack of shivs, and Klumpp's unwillingness to do anything that might make a wrinkle or a line on her smooth, expressionless zombie face. It will come.
Another lame, Oh we can't be bothered with this. You choose who goes to Zombie Island treemail came. The Manson Girls were chosen to go witness the zombies duel. Julie, the 50 year old fireman, felt that with Russell gone, the girls were harmless. She needs to reread Helter Skelter also. The Manson Girls are insane True Believers in The Cult of Russell, and want only revenge for him, their own desire to win the million now subsumed into their need to have blood for Russell. They are dangerous. I'm locking my doors.
Stephanie is the crazier of the two, so she shall henceforth be known as Squeaky. Her eyes gleam with the fervor of the mad. Her intention at the duel is to let Ete Poem know they are two girls ready to flip. Then, with a grin of joy, she launched into a speech that was chillingly familiar: "We're ready to cause some havoc and chaos and, oh craziness at the merge." Where have we heard this before? It's the Book of Russell, Chapter One, verse 3: "Yea verily, shoudst thou then causeth havoc and chaos in my name, though it profiteth you not, for havoc is beloved unto Russell for its own sake. Go thy way and do as I have preached unto you. Helter Skelter."
Perhaps when they get to Zombie Island (which, - Fraud Alert! - is not an island at all), Dr. Jesus can recite to them from his favorite book's early testament, specifically Proverbs, Chapter 11, verse 29: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart."
Zombie Island Duel For Redemption: Grant and Rob came from Ete Poem on a day date to witness the duel. My suspicion that Agent Dumb Ass is not equipped with the dimensions popular legend (and my own extensive personal experience) generally ascribes to virile black males (his fuchsia panties reveal the shocking lack of significant bulge) were confirmed when Rob was able to sit on the stone bleachers without so much as a slight wince mere hours after his spooning horror in The Lean-To of Pain!
The Zombies dueling were Dr. Jesus and Kristina. Yes, it's Jesus vs Krist! How schizoid is that? Madness seems to be the theme of this season of Survivor. We have crazy Agent Dumb Ass, mad Manson Girls in mental thrall to an overthrown Lord, and now a bipolar Savior shalt dueleth with His/Her own self.
Oh these zombie duels are bloodthirsty events, gorier than the gladiator fights on Spartacus: Blood and Sand. (A show on which everyone looks like Grant, even the women, and which has the worst dialogue I've ever heard in anything.) The first duel hinged on tying sticks together. The second was a game of falling dominoes. This time out, it's assembling giant Rubik's Cubes. Next week: Jenga with large logs.
Okay, Dr. Jesus had the white puzzle pieces, while Kristina had the black ones, so I guess whoever assigned them decided who was the Good Jesus and who was the Evil Christ.
Jeff Probst: "Matt looking good from this angle." Jeff, just do play-by-play; don't flirt with the players.
I don't think I've ever before seen a competition televised with a live audience, in this case Rob, Grant, and The Manson Girls, in which the spectators were more clearly bored, not even during baseball or golf. It was obvious no rooting for anyone was going on. Only the two players themselves cared at all about which of these two losers won the duel. Last week it was edge-of-the-seat viewing, as all of Creation rooted against Russell. (No one was really for Dr. Jesus, but everyone was wildly against Russell.) This week they all looked like they were sitting through an opening act, waiting for the headliner to come on. No headliners here this week.
Jeff: "One moment, Kristina's on the verge of passing out; the next moment she's knocking pieces off the puzzle like a true gladiator." I guess Jeff hasn't been watching Spartacus. "True Galdiators" don't "knock pieces off puzzles." They lop limbs off of people. It's very different.
Since Dr. Jesus apparently doesn't need to engage his mind to solve a puzzle, unlike everyone else on earth (not unlike not engaging his mind when reading his silly Bible), he felt that while he was working on his Rubik's Cube, he could also chat with Rob, expressing his un-Christian resentment of being voted out. (Claw a Christian; scratch a hypocrite. And is during a duel for your survival really a wise time to multi-task?) He asked why Rob voted him out, and Jeff repeated the question. Rob knows that there's a small but real chance that Dr. Jesus could return to the game, and isn't stupid enough to give an honest answer to that question. "Doesn't take one person to vote someone out, Jeff, you know that." A nice, if ill-phrased dodge. (He meant "It takes more than one person to vote someone out," but that's not what he said.)
Well, Matt won, helped by how hopeless Kristina was at it. Jeff, for lack of anything better to do, decided to turn it into a mini-Tribal Council, and did a bit of grilling. Dr. Jesus, no wiser about why he was kicked out (Because he started a showmance with Andrea-or-Ashley. Rob knows from his personal experience that showmances make for dangerous alliances. His showmance won, and they ended up married with kids. Talk about Danger!), whined to Rob and Grant: "I told both of those guys that I wanted to go with them to the Top Three." Did it occur to brain boy that they didn't want to take him to the Top Three?
Then the Doc added: "I want to do two guys, dudes." Hello? I'm all for it, in fact, I'd like to video tape it, but then why did he take up with Andrea-or-Ashley? In any event, both Rob and Grant are married, so there's at least a 50-50 likelihood that they're straight, at least when on TV, though if Grant will go on the downlow, Little Dougie will start believing in God.
Squeaky had had enough of talking about people that weren't her or Charlie, damn, I meant Russell. She decided to hijack the discussion into one about her, and did so by a complete non-sequitur: "I kinda like that he says that he would stick to his tribe. I would say about the same that he would." Huh? She's leading into revealing she'd like to flip loyalties to the other tribe. She's saying the exact opposite of what he's saying.
Anyway, she got out that she and Klumpp were unhappy about being at the bottom of their tribe, while wisely not saying it was entirely due to their undying allegiance to Russell, which would have painted more targets on them. Russell was no more popular at Ete Poem than he was at Viva Zapata, or on Planet Earth for that matter, and Rob would never knowingly trust a Russell True Believer.
Rob is not one to buy a pig in a poke, let alone two pigs and no poking. "Doesn't hurt if they're telling the truth," said cautious Rob
"I'm telling the truth," assured Squeaky, who sees "I say it's true" as irrefutable proof positive of veracity, or would if she had the faintest idea what the word "veracity" means.
Rob however, has been to this party before. He knows "I'm telling the truth" is only proof of the desire of the speaker to convince you. It's what the preachers say at church as they lie to you every week.
But Squeaky, savoring Russell's Kool-Aid, and ready to go all Helter Skelter for Russell, believes everyone is as gullible as she is, even though her desire to flip is, in fact the truth. And she's showing signs of a nearly-Russell-sized ego, with even less justification, yet revealing herself by her use of the "seed planting" imagery from The Book of Russell: "I didn't even plant a seed in Rob's head. It's more like I took a Sequoia tree and just, like, put it in his brain."
I've visited the Sequoias of Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. I've walked, well, staggered through the Mariposa Grove and the Giant Forest. I've touched The General Sherman, that magnificent old Sequoia that is the largest living thing on earth, and quite possibly the oldest living thing on earth as well, although we won't know for certain until we are able to cut Betty White in half and count her rings. What Squeaky "planted" in Rob's head was no Sequoia, and what it is may well benefit him more than her, even if she survives to the merge. He is, after all, smart, while she could lose a game of Trivial Pursuit to a Sequoia.
Left back with the ladies, Agent Dumb Ass was complaining to us. Unlike most men, he finds being left alone in the jungle with three pretty young women annoying. I know Agent Dumb Ass has a son, but in between the spooning incident and now his annoyance at being left alone with hot babes in bikinis, I'm beginning to suspect Dry Mouth Junior is adopted.
Agent Dumb Ass: "I can't make an impression on these young ladies, so it's frustrating." Dumbo dear, you have made a huge impression on these ladies. They all think you're a moron who is exceptionally annoying to be around.
As he hunted deadly tiny crabs (those pincers can give you an owie that will hurt for five minutes!), Agent Dumb Ass gave us his professional assessment of the ladies, and remember, he's a former federal agent, so he's been specially trained to notice the subtleties. If only he could notice the obvious, like how obvious it is that they all think he's a boob, because he's a boob.
Agent Dumb Ass: "These girls, ah, remind me of crabs." Do you mean they remind you of crabs, or remind you how you last caught crabs? "Particularly Natalie and Ashley, have a very difficult time trying to approach them. They are quick to move away. They see me coming, and they don't want to have a conversation with me about it." How wise of them. Has he ever had an experience with a young woman that was any different? I wouldn't think so. This is the first thing I've heard to indicate that maybe Natalie and Ashley-or-Andrea might have rudimentary brains. Avoiding Agent Dumb Ass shows cognitive survival instincts easily on a par with the crabs. (Whom, I must say, are very pretty little brightly-colored crustaceans.)
Poor Ashley-or-Andrea has had to fall back on her one high-level skill: faking it: "We have to fake it to make Phillip feel part of the group. We have to fake it so Andrea feels comfortable. There's a lot of faking going on, but that's the name of the game." Actually, the name of the game is Survivor. But I know there's a lot of faking going on, Ashley-or-Andrea; I've seen your hair. The outer layers are blond.
Meanwhile, Andrea-or-Ashley is not crazy about Natalie and Ashley-or-Andrea because: "They don't do that much." They certainly don't do anything for me. There was a lot of babbling on by her and the other girls, none of it even slightly interesting, funny, or relevant, but it was something to run on the soundtrack while the camera lingered on them showering together (Ashley-or-Andrea showering in bedazzled sandals), which I'm sure richly entertained some viewers, and certainly made the camera crew happy. So why haven't I seen Grant or Mike shower? I'm sure they could babble meaninglessly about sports or something while they lathered up.
Now Andrea-or-Ashley, though enamored of Dr. Jesus, and therefore taste-free, wants to get rid of Natalie and Ashley-or-Andrea, who sunbathe while she gathers firewood, ahead of Agent Dumb Ass. But she fears to bring it up to Rob, as she thinks it would make her a target. She has no idea that Rob is all for keeping Agent Dumb Ass a while longer. Rob has an eye on her, because, should Dr. Jesus return from the dead as the myths say his namesake did, she would be Mary Magdalen-ing all over him, washing his feet with her hair (he could end up with "blond" toes), and conspiring with him against Rob.
So actually, suggesting to Rob going for the other women might well swing in her favor, but since she doesn't know this, she is instead, listening to Agent Dumb Ass. She asked him if he'd ever tried to throw her under a bus. (You'd think she'd notice a thing like that. When people have thrown me under busses, I've always noticed eventually, and so did the bus drivers, fortunately.)
He told her "Never."
Andrea-or-Ashley: "Never?" (Had she thought she'd misheard him? Did he say "never" or "always"?)
Agent Dumb Ass: "Never."
Andrea-or-Ashley: "Never?" (She's still not convinced. Maybe he really meant "seldom.")
Agent Dumb Ass: "Never." Okay, now she believes him. He said it three times, so it must be true. A liar would stop at twice, an honest man goes for thrice.
(My favorite line in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Phillia: "That's the brute who raped my country, Thrace."
Pseudolus: "He raped Thrace?"
Phillia: "And then he came and did it again, and then again."
Pseudolus: "He raped Thrace thrice?"
I have it on good authority that the divine Larry Gelbart wrote that joke.)
Agent Dumb Ass lied to her: "I sleep by myself. Nobody cuddles up with me." Fickle beast! Have you already forgotten your night of passionate underwear straining with Rob, scant hours ago? Poor Rob; his heart will be broken, and he'll have to crawl back to his Amber. Amber honey, could you wear the saggy fuchsia panties for me tonight again, please? And then talk crazy?
No! The last time I did that, you kept whispering "I love your dumb ass" in my ear all night.
No sweetie pie; I was whispering "I love you, Dumb Ass."
And that's better how?
But Agent Dumb Ass had a vision for the future: "If Matt comes back..." Already a huge "if". "...I can see you, me, and Matt being in an alliance." I can't see it myself, but I'm sure he can. This is exactly the sort of reasoning that got Rob to oust Dr. Jesus in the first place.
Agent Dumb Ass: "I made some real synergy with Andrea today..." This is a misuse of the word synergy. "...and I think that maybe, in the future, that will hold something both for she as well as for I." Grammar lessons perhaps?
In any event, Andrea-or-Ashley can expect her side of this conversation to get blabbed to the world next time they're at Tribal Council. Why would anyone tell him a secret strategy ever again? Kristina did, and where's she?
Gone, said Rob and Grant returning. But Agent Dumb Ass continues to plot in his head, in woefully constructed sentences: "So to fully understand my relationship with Rob is the king is a dictator, and I'm a lord, and I'm waiting for my opportunity to replace the king." Delusions on this scale are impressive. He's a "Lord"? Lords have vassals. He has no vassals. He knows one dim-bulb blond who is willing to talk to him. Delusions do not constitute a power base. If it did, we'd have Vice President Palin now.
Squeaky whined on her way back to camp: "I don' wanna go back!"
"I don't either," Klumpp whined back. Then don't go back. Quit. Walk off right now. Take your Manson Girls craziness all the way. Helter Skelter yourselves right off my TV. Or at least shut up and stop whining.
It's now clear that, bereft of a daddy in Russell, Squeaky and Klumpp are trying to adopt Rob as their new daddy and protector. The problems with this strategy are:
1. Rob is on the other team. There's nothing he can do to protect these chumps from the wrath of their tribe before the merge, which is still a good ways away.
2. Rob isn't Russell. He trusts what they've told him about as far as he can spoon.
3. Rob isn't out to protect them, even if he could. Rob is protecting himself. I didn't see him pull a JT, and toss them his idol to protect them on the other tribe.
4. When Rob learns they were Russell's concubines, he'll just want rid of them. The friends of my enemy are my enemies.
Squeaky: "Our team got rid of Russell so quickly, for no reason..." NO REASON??? What planet is Squeaky from?
Squeaky is a true motor mouth. She talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. I find every second her voice violates my ears as irritating as chalk scraped on a blackboard, so eventually, I stopped listening. I'm sorry. I know you depend on me to mock her every utterance, but I can only take so much of her.
Klumpp makes a good foil for Squeaky, as she seldom says anything more than "Yeah." or "Uh-huh," or "Ah....", which coupled with her never-moving, non-expressive face, and her flat-lined brain, makes me wonder why the producers didn't just go all the way, and cast a clothing store dummy instead of her. Then I realized, the dummy would be too smart, at least compared with Klumpp.
But I did get that Squeaky's strategy now is never lose another Immunity Challenge until the merge. Well, they've only lost one so far, and that one they threw, so there's a chance there, which means Viva Zapata needs to lose again and get rid of this hyper-annoying Manson Zombie before there's another atrocity.
Klumpp spoke an entire sentence! I think that's a sign of the Apocalypse. "Since Russell has left, there has been zero talk of strategy." Klumpp, just because no one is talking strategy with you, doesn't mean they haven't been discussing strategies, like how to get rid of Klumpp. Although I say go after Squeaky first. After all, Klumpp is barely there as it is. Anyway, she hates that the tribe never sits around asking "The Question." You know, The Question: "What does Russell want us to do?" It's like, not only have they kicked him out, but they're not even allowing him to control them from beyond the grave, or from the hotel, or the plane back to Texas, what ever place the little troll is cursing with his presence.
Mike, a veteran of Iraq, thinks the Manson Girls' lingering devotion to Russell won't factor "into the game too much." He thinks they are no threat. Now he returned from his first deployment in Iraq with all his Marines alive and intact, so he must have been good at threat assessment then. What's happened? Those girls will be harmless only when you've sent them to Zombie Island. Come on. They actually are zombies already anyway, except zombies are usually more expressive than Klumpp is. After all, they're merely dead.
But I understand. Mike thinks that, with Russell utterly gone, they'll have let him go and realize they need to bond with the people who are there. This is, after all, what any sane person in their situation would do. What he has failed to notice is that Klumpp is stupid, and Squeaky is dangerously insane.
Immunity & Reward Challenge: I love challenges like this so much, I don't even mind that it ends with a puzzle, the second puzzle this episode. It's one of those ones where the players are blindfolded, and a caller shouts useless instructions at them while they blunder through a maze, bashing into stuff and each other. While in the mazes, the players gather bags of puzzle parts for their caller to later assemble. Works for me.
The reward was all the fixings to make pie, plus some sweet pastries that were already made. Yummy. The only better rewards would be chocolate or vodka, or chocolate vodka.
"I could eat the basket," said Mansweater. I'm beginning to suspect that he actually was raised by wolves, or, more likely, by goats. Who could look at a basket of doughnuts, lemon tarts, and bear claws, and then announce that they wanted to eat the basket? I could look at Grant or Mike (who was generously playing the challenge shirtless) and say that, but not at doughnuts.
Viva Zapata chose Squeaky to be caller and puzzle-solver. Sarita and I both liked this decision, though for different reasons. Sarita's reasons were: "She is a linguist. You can tell." You know, Sarita, just speaking English non-stop, day and night, doesn't make you a "linguist." And they need someone good with words. They need a cunning linguist. "...I knew she was going to be great at calling things out. She's bossy as all get out, so that was definitely the job for her."
She is bossy as all get out, but I like her calling out and puzzle-solving because:
1. She's an idiot, so she's vastly more likely to screw up the puzzle end of the challenge, thus increasing the likelihood of her tribe losing, and
2. If they do lose, she'll be the one most responsible, as well as being the noisy, bossy, Manson Girl still pining for Russell, more Russell filth to be flushed out of the tribe, and thus most-likely to get voted out.
Rob, of course, called for the other team. He bosses them around all day anyway, plus, his reputation is that he's good with puzzles, though it's failed him repeatedly so far this season. I want them to win, so there's no chance of losing Agent Dumb Ass this week, and every chance of losing Squeaky.
Little Dougie didn't care for Rob's first shouted instructions: "You got it, Grant. Straight ahead. Keep going straight, straight, straight, straight!" That's the last thing Dougie wants Grant to continue being. It's bad enough Grant claims to be "happily married." Happily Married. Ha! I've been married what? Ten times? Fifteen? A lot, anyway. No such thing. And do they have a pet unicorn?
Squeaky certainly does have bossy down: "Ralph, stop talking! Other people, turn, turn, turn." Other People? That's good and specific. She also gestured a lot to help communicate to the blindfolded people who could not see her gestures.
Mansweater, while blindly groping: "Stephanie, where do I need to go?"
Squeaky: "Ralph stop and wait until I address you." Well excuuuuuuse meeeee!
Grant was doing all the puzzle bag gathering for his tribe, while his fellow players, like Agent Dumb Ass, who is a former federal agent accustomed to stumbling about blindly accomplishing nothing, sort of just got out of the way.
Squeaky: "'Kay Ralph, your turn. Are you listening? Okay, now move to your left. No! Your other left!" Well, she had said to go to his left, and he had then instantly gone to his right. But he can't tell right from left blindfolded. How can he see which is his left and which is his right with a blindfold on? What's next, blindfolded math, when he can't see his fingers to be able to count?
Needless to say, Rob's warriors, that is Grant, got all the bags retrieved before Squeaky's idiots did, so Rob was off and puzzle-solving while Squeaky was still shouting insults at Mansweater. It had turned out that Mansweater also couldn't tell forward from backward when blindfolded either. Good thing he didn't need up and down. He actually asked: "Forward?" while pointing in front of himself to indicate the direction he thought was most-likely to be forward, but he waited for an answer before actually going forward, just in case that was really backward. Everything is so disorienting in the blind universe.
The other players now tried to help Mansweater find the puzzle table by shouting: "Right here! Right here!" Since he couldn't see them, he had no way of knowing where "here" was. Was here there or over here?
Rob had a lead, but he made a goof. The letter tiles, like the ones you always use when playing Giant Scrabble, were packed in bags full of beans that spilled out as you took out the tiles. Rob, in brushing the beans aside, knocked a letter tile on the ground without noticing it. Uh-oh!
And then Squeaky went at the puzzle at top speed, while Rob seemed to think he had all day, and he had blown his lead completely before he even had all four bags open. And that one tile lay still on the ground, unnoticed.
Finally Rob found the missing piece. Steve whispered to Julie he wished David had been caller, as he's roughly a billion times more intelligent than Squeaky. Where was this advice before the challenge? Her IQ didn't drop during the contest. Mine did, but not hers.
The other players shouted encouraging stuff at the puzzle-solvers, like "Hustle. Come on. You got it. Come on. Here we go. Good job. Come on." This in no way helps one solve a puzzle, and can have the opposite effect of interfering with one's concentration. Squeaky mumbled "Shut up" under her breath, when she should have shouted it out.
"That's why we needed David," Mansweater whispered to Sarita, rubbing in her goofy endorsement, scant seconds before Rob solved the puzzle and brought Ete Poem their very first true victory. No danger of losing Agent Dumb Ass this week.
Everyone on Viva Zapata except the Manson Girls were now telling David he should have been working the puzzle. Well of course he should have. He's a trial lawyer; she's a waitress and cult member, but where was that advice before the challenge?
We returned from commercial with an eating montage. We saw a bird snatch a bug from the water with its needle-like beak, a monkey eating caviar (well, I couldn't tell what it was eating, so I simply ascribed to it excellent taste), a crab eating - was that sand?, a vulture picking at Agent Dumb Ass's brain, which he'd left lying on the beach literally absentmindedly, a locust eating the peasants' crops, Rob stuffing a chocolate-frosted doughnut into his mouth, Ashley-or-Andrea eating a tart, Andrea-or-Ashley having a pastry, Grant blissing out on baked goods, his eyes rolling back in the exact same facial expression I will put on his face if I'm ever able to lure him to Morehead Heights. It was Reward Heaven.
Grant found the idol clue in the coffee jar, where I would never find it (can not abide the stench nor the vile taste of that wretched swill coffee. The last time I mentioned my coffee aversion here, it produced a storm in the comments column between those wise people who share my revulsion, and those tongue-torturers who are addicted to that slop), but Rob saw it. No matter, Grant. It's valueless, unless it said:
"If you want an idol,
Here's the gag.
Look for it only,
In Rob's personal bag."
But Grant, if you want immunity, come visit me. Most of my immune system is still functioning a bit, primarily on weekends.
Grant ran interference so Rob could retrieve unseen the clue he didn't need, and then Rob went to fill canteens, to cover why he'd left the feast.
Rob is so cagey. He decided to switch this more-specific clue with the vaguer first clue no one knew he had. And all this to keep them from finding the idol he already had tucked away in his bag.
Grant: "Did you find it? The idol?"
Rob, lying: "No!" Well, no, he didn't find it then. It's a half-lie.
Rob: "I mean this is really all for nothing, because I already have the immunity idol, you know? But it's fun for me. I have to entertain myself out here somehow." And entertain me while you're at it.
Over at Viva Zapata, people were cutting Squeaky slack for blowing the puzzle. Why? Vote the crazy little harpy out now. "She did great," several people said. No, Rob did great. Squeaky lost. Rob is eating doughnuts now while you are tasting bitter defeat.
Sarita was not doing herself any favors by defending pushing Squeaky into the puzzle-solver role. Sarita darling, say "I was wrong." and let it go. Stop defending it, or you'll distract the tribe from voting her out into voting you out. Mind you, David's "I'm the only one who's doing all puzzles from here on out. Period. Point blank. No question," was a bit off-putting, to put it mildly.
I liked Mike's reasoning. He was all for tossing out the Manson Girls starting with Squeaky. I also liked that he told us this while wearing almost nothing. That man sure wears skin well.
Julie thought Squeaky could be salvaged, and wanted to vote out Klumpp. Admittedly, losing Klumpp hardly constitutes a loss of any kind, but she is slightly less crazy than Squeaky, and less of a threat, and far less annoying to be around. Julie, there is a big difference between Linda Kasabian and Susan Atkins.
Sarita is losing her mind. She wants to send David home, and just because he's a lawyer, and therefore "only out for himself." Are you playing for someone other than you to win Survivor, Sarita? Everyone there is out for themselves. It starts out as a team game, but there is always only one winner.
But sure, send home the one player you have who can solve puzzles, but keep the Manson Girls who worship Russell as a god, hate you, and are already trying to team up with the other tribe to betray all of you. Sarita, get a clue.
Meanwhile, over in Dark Fantasyland, right by the Captain Hook ride (in Dark Fantasyland, the villains all have the rides, and always win, but Captain Hook, Snow White's Queen, Cinderella's stepmother, Pinocchio's Stromboli, and Jaffar the Sorcerer are all but vassals to King Russell, Lord of Dark Fantasyland.), the Manson Girls were grasping at straws. Squeaky referred to her tribe as "Dumb-Ass" people. He's on the other tribe, genius, and these dumb-ass people are all of them, maybe even Mansweater, smarter than you.
Squeaky didn't see why they didn't vote out Steve, since he's old. "Steve's not a good athlete," she said of this former Dallas Cowboy, and I mean the sporting team, not a cowboy in Dallas. Lots of really good athletes can never do that well.
Steve is a professional athlete, and at 51, is in better shape than most men at 30. Plus, he's never offered the other tribe allegiance, never became a tool of Russell's, and doesn't actively hate his whole tribe. In fact, he's even wanted to bring you two back to the light.
But 51 is just over the combined ages of Squeaky and Klumpp, both of whom are 25. To them, he's old, dead, rotting. He has wrinkles and lines on his face from having facial expressions all his life, unlike Klumpp, who carefully never moves her face, nor Squeaky, who never moves her brain. Klumpp's position was more of Que sera sera. After all, if she had an emotion about the fact that one of them is probably off to Zombie Island shortly, she'd run the risk of having a facial expression, and her unused facial muscles are still aching from when she smiled back when they won a feast at a challenge or two back.
Klumpp feels that the tribe isn't thinking about who they want to be sitting down next to at the end. Sure they are, and they didn't want to be sitting with Russell, and they don't want to be sitting with Klumpp.
Tribal Council: Klumpp emphasized right out that the tribal divide was still there. She called the others "The Brady Bunch Has Gone Camping." Okay, but you two are The Manson Family on Gilligan's Island. But please, keep goading your tribe into voting you out and letting Dr. Jesus finish you off next week. (Unless it's a Useless Whining Duel, in which case, goodbye Doc Savior. These girls are champs.)
Klumpp added that the Brady Bunch had "invited the two neglected stepchildren to come along." Two points:
1. Though I have never seen even a single episode of The Brady Bunch (Life is too short to spend any of it watching that dreck, and I speak as the second-oldest woman in show business, after Betty White.), still even I know that the Brady Bunch was the union of two divorced parents, so all the kids in the Brady Bunch were "stepchildren."
2. They never invited either of you along, and are about to dis-invite one of you.
Klumpp insisted that no one was "playing the game." Actually, all of them were playing the game, but none of them were playing Russell's game, which is what she means but wouldn't say. Mike was quick to point out that those two sitting apart, bitter and angry that daddy was voted out, and making no effort whatever to bond with their tribemates, were the ones not playing the game.
Klumpp made a long, senseless speech expressing her views of the tribe's sub-alliances, which she has never been close enough to accurately divine, but which had a vivid ending: "If I was in that six, I would be jumping on one of us." What is she offering? I'd be encouraging Mike to jump on me, but that has nothing to do with the game.
Squeaky's defense against being voted out for tanking the challenge was: "I just have to rely on my record with them." Oh, bad idea. Your record with them was huddling and cuddling with The Enemy, Russell, staying away from the rest of the tribe, and bitterly clinging to the dead Cult of Russell. Your record screams "Evict me!"
Time to vote. I don't think Mansweater needs to play his idol today. Neither did he, since he didn't.
The votes were all over the place. Two votes for Steve (Who were those cast by, I wonder?), one vote for Krista, one vote for Krasta, one vote for Crysta, then a second vote for Krista. (Can't any of them spell Klumpp? It is actually her name, honest.)
So now it was tied: 2 votes for Steve, two votes for Krista, not to mention the write-in candidates Krasta and Crysta. But in the end, Klumpp was off to Zombie Island, to fail in a duel with Dr. Jesus next week, though Squeaky clings to the Faith that Klumpp will win duel after duel, and finally return, and they shalt carry the Banner of Russell and, yea verily, shalt be The Final Two. All this, right after the monkeys fly out of their butts.
I would have voted out Squeaky. She's vastly more annoying. I must find out where she waitresses, and go eat there and then stiff her on the tip. "Here's your tip: stay away from Russell."
In fact, since Russell is back in America, that's good advice for us all. Until next week, cheers darlings.
To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to The Morehead, the Merrier, or buy her book, My Lush Life. Also, you can read Little Dougie's contributions to the newly published book Creatures of the Night That We Loved So Well: The TV Horror Hosts of Southern California by James Fetters.