All Together Now - 
by B-side
Confession time: I watched the latest episode of Survivor on Friday morning, but before I could write much of the recap, I was sidelined by a wedding (drunkenness) and Yom Kippur (hunger/Jewish guilt). As a result, many of the Survivor details have become somewhat foggy. What I do remember is that Thursday's episode was a good one, mostly because I was surprised by the final outcome. Maybe it was the intoxicating New York air or maybe it was the lingering affects of the TVgasm cocktail hour in Manhattan (btw, thanks to everyone who showed up), but Mark Burnett pulled a fast one on me. Always nice to know that after twelve seasons, this show can still catch me off guard.
The latest episode began at Aitu where the Latinos were still reeling over Billy's Tribal Council declaration of love for Candice. Not even JP with the extra brainpower harnessed in his giant pectorals could grasp the bizarre turn of events. "If it's true, it's true... It's not true," he said, his head exploding in the process. Cannot... comprehend... love... at... first... sight...
Over at the Asian tribe of Puka, we found Brad fishing in the waters. Suddenly, the camera got all shaky, and I feared that our intrepid castaway might become victim to some unseen foe, perhaps even the dreaded sting ray, slayer of the deep! But all the chaos was for naught. Brad managed to emerge from the waters with a normal fish on his spear as the scene became instantly anticlimactic. Over on the beach, Cao Boi was busy telling an endless story that was clearly boring everyone, which in turn made it awesome for us at home. Nothing like watching unhappy castaways stuck with a crazy old coot. In between laughing at his own jokes, Cao Boi then told everyone about how the draft was gonna come back and how his friend's teenage sons will probably be sent to Iraq. This sparked a mild political discussion as pretty much everyone scoffed at Cao Boi's conspiracy theories. Sadly, we still did not learn what you call a Vietnamese guy with three dogs.
Meanwhile, at Raro, a morsel of tree mail had arrived, and from the sounds of things, it seemed like there was a challenge coming up. Of course, since I occasionally read the two sentence episode description on the Tivo, I knew that this was merely the preamble to an old fashioned Survivor switcheroo and merge. Nevertheless, the tribe members had no idea what was going on, and so everyone prepped for an afternoon of adventure. That pretty much meant that we saw Jonathan on hands and knees, rotating his head all around in what was probably a yoga move but instead looked like some sort of kinky, religious rapture.
"We're ready to rock and roll. We're doing great!" Jonathan said, clearly foreshadowing total failure and destruction within the next forty-five minutes.
Anyway, the tribes all filed into Jeff Probst's tropical nook where he informed them that Billy was the latest person voted out. We then cut to Candice to see her reaction, but lo! NO RESPONSE WHATSOEVER! Perhaps she was so shocked by her lover's departure that she couldn't even register it. State of denial!
Well, once Jeff ushered Yul back into the game from Exile Island, he got to work with the business at hand: "Drop your buffs!" he ordered. And just like that, all the racial controversy came to an end. Are we shocked? Not really. Let's not forget that the old and young tribes only lasted about two days last season. And how about that crazy "two tribes sharing one beach" concept from a few seasons ago? Yeah, the one-episode arc on that was riveting! Point is, as much as Mark Burnett likes to talk about shaking up the game, it always reverts to normal by the third week.
Nevertheless, Jeff's command to drop buffs still managed to shock Cao Boi, who asked, "Drop our what??" He then added, "YOU'RE NOT SENDING ME TO IRAQ, WHITE MAN! I WILL PULL THE WIND OUT OF YOU!" Okay, he didn't say that last part. Cao Boi obediently dropped his buff, as did everyone else including Cecilia who seductively peeled her buff down her legs, thus allowing the camera to linger on her pelvic region a bit longer than most CBS shows are allowed (except for Navy NCIS. That show is all about the vag).
Once all the buffs were removed, Jeff split everyone by gender. Ah, so it'll be battle of the sexes now? Nope. He then had each person pull tiles from a bag, and since Cecilia, Parvati, Brad, and Jonathan all had the special tiles, they became captains in charge of picking. The rules this time around: women had to choose women, men had to choose men. And to determine who'd be picking first, an old fashioned game of rock, paper, scissors. And if you think this is getting slightly convoluted, just hold onto your horses (assuming you have horses to hold onto, in which case, you really shouldn't be on the internet right now).
Well, Cecilia won the rock, paper, scissors showdown which meant she could pick first. One quick thing though: she could only pick a woman who was not from her tribe. As a result, she picked white girl Jessica, who happily informed her, "You can call me Flicka." I really feel like she's trying to push this "Flicka" thing onto everyone, and I'm not sure it's gonna ever truly catch on.
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