About Last Night: Survivor and Fringe

Survivor: Schoonie

Things aren’t quite as bad as the previews suggested after Danielle was voted out last week, mostly because Parvati and Sandra know they could roundly beat Russell’s ass in a final vote. The reward challenge involves drenching family members with water to win time with them, and Jerri and her sister pull off the win. Jerri chooses to bring Parvati and Sandra with her on the reward, leaving Russell upset and paranoid, because everything that happens in every second of every day leaves Russell angry and paranoid. Russell forms a backup alliance with Rupert and Colby, but even they are not dumb enough to actually think that’s going to stick. The immunity challenge is yet another endurance challenge, which Parvati wins handily. Back at camp, Sandra knows that she’s not going home because of her immunity idol, so she takes the opportunity to poke Russell with every stick in the camp and turn him into a whiny bitch. Have I mentioned that I love Sandra? At Tribal Council, Rupert makes a transparent and futile effort to save himself, but Sandra plays her idol and he is finally sent home. All in all, it’s kind of a low key episode, which is fine because…finale is on Sunday! SANDRA FTW! Or Parvati FTW. That would be pretty cool too.

Fringe: Fairchild

It was part one of the season finale of Fringe last night, which naturally meant the following: 1) They visited the parallel universe again, 2) Leonard Nimoy made another guest appearance, and 3) all hell broke loose. Since Walternate absconded with Peter to the other universe at the end of last episode, Walter and Olivia decided to head over there and get him back. They recruited a bunch of Olivia’s fellow super-powered Cortexiphan subjects, which means we got to see a bunch of barely-remembered guest stars from earlier episodes. By the way, the parallel universe was about eight billion times cooler than our own: The alternate version of Olivia was a smashing redhead, poor dead Agent Charlie was still alive, and Broyles ran around in a tight t-shirt that showed off his impressive guns. (Broyles has guns! Who knew?) And yes, there were zeppelins.

On the down side, the alternate universe was on the brink of destruction, thanks to all of the holes we poked in it from our side (we have Walter to thank for that, naturally). Worst of all, there was a widespread and catastrophic shortage of coffee! Calamity! Anyway, there was a big climactic showdown in Alternate Central Park, in which all the cannon-fodder Cortexiphan subjects got killed off, Walter got shot, and Olivia got lost. A badly-injured Walter collapsed at a hospital, while Olivia crouched in the bushes and spied on the red-haired alternate version of herself having energetic sex with some hot shirtless guy. I did mention that the parallel universe has it all over our universe, right? William Bell met up with her and told her Walter was in trouble. Yes, but when is Walter not in trouble?

And where was Peter in all this, you ask? Eating bacon with his not-dead real mother, mostly. It turns out, though, that he’s destined to bring about the destruction of both universes, or some such nonsense. It wasn’t at all clear how that will happen, but I’m sure that will be addressed when part two airs next week.