I had to admit. I was a little miffed at CBS. All week long, they'd been showing promos that showed Terry buckling into the water. Clearly he wasn't going to win. It seemed like quite the poor form. Nevertheless, we then sat and watched these poor souls strain their arms and burn their palms as they held on for dear life. It should be noted that this was not the best challenge for Danielle's underarms. Her pit hair was proudly on display, and man, was it out of control. Probably could have used a nice pixelation for this scene.

Sorry, I had to post a photo.

Anyway, Shane was the first to let go, thus setting off a Rube Goldberg chain of events culminating with his unceremonious ejection into the water. Fifteen minutes later, Probst added more weight to everyone, and I'll tell you this: those survivors weren't the only ones getting a workout. Jeff was rocking a large swatch of tummy sweat on his shirt. Even the best need to perspire.

Well, Cirie was next out, and she had quite the ungraceful tumble into the water. I would have let out a big guffaw, but before I knew it, we were back on Danielle's pit hair, and a general sense of nausea had overcome my body. Thankfully, Danielle dropped next, followed by Aras, leaving just Terry and Courtney. Well, thanks to that dumb commercial, we knew what was going to happen: Terry was going to let go first... although, to be honest, I couldn't see that happening. Courtney had such a tenuous grip on her ropes, I couldn't imagine that she'd actually be able to outlast the former Navy stud. Sure enough, Courtney let go, and Terry won immunity AGAIN! Yes, the commercial was misdirection! Color me fooled!

Afterwards, it was time for some good old fashioned pre-Tribal Council scheming. Aras was totally screwed. Courtney was planning for her, Cirie, Terry, and Danielle to vote out the yoga instructor, and as far as we could tell, all systems were go. Shane, on the other hand, had the mistaken notion that everyone would be voting out Danielle. Oh man. He was totally gonna get screwed over. I'm sure we can look forward to plenty of angry rants next week.

"I'm going to be dealing with the wrath of Shane for sure tonight," Courtney told us. To be fair, if she were to merely kick a pebble, she'd be dealing with the wrath of Shane. Hey, maybe she'll get lucky. Maybe he'll be too preoccupied searching for Internet porn on his Blackberry.

Well, Shane then took inventory of his alliance and made sure that Aras, Cirie, and Courtney were all on board to vote off Danielle. Cirie lied and said that yes, Danielle was most definitely out. Things were looking quite bad for Aras, but something didn't feel right. We didn't spend all episode talking about Aras and how important it was for him to be kicked out. I just didn't feel like the voting spotlight was really going to fall on him. My Survivordar just wasn't going off.

And then Cirie decided to take the game into her own hands. With everyone focusing on Aras and Danielle, no one was worried about Courtney. No one, but Cirie. She knew that both Terry and Shane wanted to take the fire dancer to the finals. She also knew that Shane and Terry were calling all the shots. It was time to shake things up.

At this point, J-Unit and I pretty much paused the Tivo every two seconds to talk about all the great opportunities before Cirie. We decided that the best bet would be for her to convince Aras and Danielle to vote against Courtney. Their three votes would trump Shane's one vote against Danielle and Courtney and Terry's two votes against Aras. Plus, it would totally turn the tables on everyone. It seemed like a foolproof plan, but J-Unit and I always tend to pause the Tivo around this time and discuss all sorts of great strategies, only to see them never come to fruition. We weren't about to get our hopes up again, even if Cirie showed great scheming promise earlier.

Well, God bless Cirie. She had the exact same plan that we had. But would she be able to execute it? The excitement in the TVgasm offices was through the roof. Cirie pulled Aras over and explained everything. He seemed to be on board. Yes! But what about Danielle? She seemed a bit reticent to commit, but she was certainly interested. And let's face it, she's wanted to turn the tables on someone for a few weeks now. Oh, this was great. All the pieces were coming together. Everyone just had to stay calm and stick with the plan. And yes, it looked like Danielle was gonna vote against Courtney! Yes! Yes! Yes! It's not that I dislike Courtney or anything. I rather enjoy her kooky contributions to camp life. But I was so excited about this scheme that I had no choice but to cheer her potential ouster.

By the time Tribal Council came around, my heart was beating. This was Survivor at its best. Think about it: the levels of deception at this Tribal Council were amazing. Cirie and Danielle were pretending they were in Terry's alliance pretending to be in Shane's alliance. Plus, there were two power players -- Shane and Terry -- who were about to get taken down several pegs, but they didn't know. They each thought they were about to turn the tables on each other, not realizing an entire third party was ready to pull the rug out from under them. Am I mixing metaphors yet? I will be soon. That's the way the cookie grows greener on the other side. Blast!

Posted by B-side on April 28, 2006 1:52 AM