Everyone Who’s Annoying, Step to the Left, Please.

Previously, on Survivor: Lisi fell on her face. Look how awesome it was!

Oh man, that was so sweet. Seeing that screenshot again makes me forget every terrible thing that has ever happened. I mean, imagine if President Bush had landed on that aircraft carrier, and instead of the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner, this photo was hanging in the background? When the reporters started questioning him, he could have been all, “Yeah, I totally screwed up, but look! She fell!” and then Brian Williams and Katie Couric and Helen Thomas would totally crack up and then they could all share a tiramisu with Karl Rove. I think it could work!

Anyway, Rita also got voted off too, I think. I don’t remember. I’ve been too busy during the hiatus imagining all of the people that I’ve ever disliked faceplanting in one continuous, awesome, looping montage. In my head, Lisi falls first, and then Charla and Mirna from The Amazing Race collide with a camel and suffer mild concussions, after which Bill O’Reilly runs smack dab into a telephone pole, and then that dumb family you always hear while you’re eating at Applebee’s? The ones that are shouting “Git ‘Er Done!” at the top of their lungs and still cracking themselves up, lo all these eons later, and you’re just trying to enjoy your giant, cheap beer without strangling them? Yeah, they all run into each other and pass out for hours, which is closely followed by a David Spade/Rob Schneider game of chicken, performed in go-karts, which explode upon impact. And then I go back to Lisi, and so on. It’s been a pretty awesome two weeks, I’m not going to lie.
So anyway, it’s Day 15 at Ravu, who are so inert at this point that flies are settling on them. This means that there are currently things in the back of my fridge which are more active than Ravu is. Mookie swats at a fly with his buff and hits Rocky by accident, who of course flips his lid, all “Hit me again, you’ll see what happens.” Let’s see, judging by past precedent, I’m thinking you’re going to throw a tantrum and cry, and then vote a girl off? Also, it depends what sort of nuisance Mookie is swatting at, if you get my drift. He’ll need a bigger swatter, though. I’d be whipping Rocky with low hanging tree branches by now. Yau-man tells us that he is surprised to have gotten to this point without having been considered expendable, and that he’s happy to still be in the game. Anthony and Michelle go to fetch the treemail (before the credits, which means something random is about to happen), and it tells the tribe that they will have to use their brains to win a feast. It’s a clever ruse because it’s designed to sound like a reward challenge, so props to the challenge clue writers, by the way. The Ravu tribe celebrates the fact that they’re not going to have to exert themselves, which is exactly what I would be doing if I had been living in squalor and malnourished for 15 days, too. I mean, would they get excited if the clue had told them that they had to use brawn? They wouldn’t be able to even handle it at this point. It would have been like, “Yay, probable multiple organ failure! Let’s dance!”

And now Jeff is calling the tribes into a clearing. He asks one person from each tribe to step forward; Edgar from Moto and Earl from Ravu answer Jeff’s siren call. Then Jeff lowers the boom on these bitches. “Everybody, drop your buffs. We’re pickin’ new tribes.” Aaaaand credits! Whew…I’m glad I didn’t fast forward. I wonder if a lot of people do that still, now that the scary pre-credits Apprentice style editing has worked it’s way onto this show?

So, here’s how it’s going to work. Because Ravu’s special brand of chivalry has limited the number of women remaining in the game, the two people who volunteered to step forward will begin by choosing a member of the opposite original tribe to join them. So if you’re a member of Ravu, you have to pick a Moto, and reverse, without respect to gender as is usually the case with these things. Then that person will do the same, picking someone from the opposite original tribe. Because there are 13 people, one person will be left out.

Jeff says that Edgar gets to start the picking, because Moto has a one person advantage. Edgar chooses Mookie and Earl chooses Boo to start things off, choosing the largest members from the opposite tribes.

Man, I can’t pick! The ice cream truck just came to Moto and I’ve got a wicked headache from all the free dreamsicles.

Now it’s Mookie’s turn, and he has his choice of the Moto men. He chooses Alex, which puts a look of concern on Boo’s face, because now both of his alliance mates are on the opposite tribe. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Boo has a choice now between Yau, Rocky, Anthony, and Michelle. He could continue the pattern of picking “buff” men by choosing Rocky, or settle by choosing Anthony, even, but instead he goes for Michelle, because he doesn’t want the baggage and spazitude that comes along with having to be around Rocky. A wise choice? I think so. See also: every challenge thus far.

So, then Alex chooses Rocky and Michelle chooses Cassandra (when she had the option of taking Dreamz to even out the muscle), meaning that she’s either doing the same thing as Boo and avoiding the crazy for the sake of a cohesive team, or that she’s concerned about the ratio of women to men because of historical precedent. Either way, Michelle gets a point from me for using her head. Of course, stupid douchey Rocky chooses Dreamz. And that team could not officially get more annoying unless the next twist involves adding Carrot Top to one of the tribes.

This leaves Cassandra with Yau-man or Anthony, and she chooses Yau-man, likely because he is more resourceful. This leaves Anthony last picked for kickball, so he goes over to join the buff guys. Yau-man now has a Sophie’s Choice between Stacy or Lisi, and he goes with Stacy, probably because the graph he drew in his head, where x = the level of bitchery and y= being crazy, where the origin = a normal person? That resulted in a wash after he plotted the points, and so he just flipped a mental coin. And thus, Stacy becomes the final member of that tribe.

Average crazy quotient on this team: 0. Average crazy quotient on the other team: All work and no beer make Homer (something something).

Jeff starts in with Lisi, all “Never good to be the last person left!” and she looks both nervous that she might be going home and ecstatic to have the spotlight on her, like she’s deciding which of the two she wants to allow to take over. Jeff tells her she’s not going home, and asks her if she’s worried. I think she’s so messed up in her head, like in general, and add to that all this stimuli, that she doesn’t know how to react. So she says, “I was just thinking, now would be a good time to exit.” To her credit (and you should know that this is very hard for me to do), I think what she meant with that statement was that everyone’s so uncomfortable with the ‘new tribes’ thing and to add to that, she’s the last one left and might be going home. It’s not that she wants to go home, it’s that she might be going home. All of this makes her so uncomfortable and not at ease that she just wants to get the hook so she can slip out the side door unnoticed and return once all of this tension has subsided. She meant “exit” as in “get me out of here, with all these uncomfortable goings-on” instead of “get me out of here, I quit”.

Of course, she wants to convey this while making Rodney Dangerfield faces and pulling on her sweaty collar and doing the Charleston with her Charlie Chaplin moustache, because now that the spotlight is on her and she wants to take that opportunity. Since she possesses poor communication skills and cannot voice this opinion properly and is too busy trying to come off cool about being picked last with her hands on her hips all posturing and attention seeking, Jeff hears the latter instead of the former. Which is sort of awesome, because Lisi deserves to be heckled by Jeff, even if it is sort of not….unwarranted? No, that’s not right, because…it is. Unnecessary? No, that’s not it either, because it’s totally necessary. Inaccurate? Aha!

So Jeff starts in on Lisi with this total cognitive dissonance in place, and it is awesome, because they are both wearing that dumb hat I keep bringing up and you can just imagine all the synapses misfiring under there, with both of them, and all the very sad, very dark empty space contained therein. And then, you can almost see the bolts of electricity shooting back and forth between their heads and there’s this crazy exchange of personalities and information and suppressed childhood memories taking place between the two of them with their stupid straw hats and inability to comprehend each other. It’s amazing, it forms some sort of rip in the space-time continuum and they switch places momentarily. Like, all of a sudden Jeff’s all, “I know what it was like to grow up as a young Hispanic girl!” and images of Julie Berry mid-coitus keep popping into Lisi’s head, and they are both very, very confused. It’s like a combination of the Harry Potter Sorting Hat (except it’s that stupid straw hat), with some Freaky Friday shit also going on, and then throw in that awesome Denzel Washington movie Fallen where the demon can travel from person to person by touch, except that demon is Jeff Probst. This is all happening at the same time, and you can almost see it, and every single second is magnificent.

So Jeff just lays into Lisi for wanting to quit, but Lisi is confused because she didn’t say anything about quitting, and also why the hell does she want to murder Phil Keoghan all of a sudden? Jeff tells her that she’s not out of the game, but she will be headed to Exile Island, and Lisi’s defense mechanisms go up, so she’s like, “That’s just GREAT, Jeff,” all affected and theatrical, and I forgot why I defended her immediately as the hate seeps back into my body. He tells her maybe the time alone will “straighten out her head”, and that she’s out of tribal council for tonight and will join the losing tribe as their newest member. Oh, and she’ll get more clues for the idol but if she wants to leave the game, she can “just give it to someone else”. Everytime Jeff drops one of these insults, which would be almost comically not funny if they were not happening to Lisi, we get a shot of the other castaways laughing at Jeff, like those were not cut in from that time where Lisi fell, or that other time when Sylvia was swimming in place on her belly for 52 minutes.

After Lisi leaves, Jeff tells the new tribes that there is one more thing to attend to: who’s living on which beach? Jeff’s just going to put buffs of both colors into a bag, and Edgardo (who won the game of RPS between him and Earl to choose) will draw a buff out. If he gets the orange, his tribe goes to Ravu. If he gets the green, his tribe goes to Moto. He reaches his arm into the bag and pulls out the orange, and thus all of the people I like are going to the good camp! The look of anguish on Rocky’s face is epic. Oh, and Jeff clarifies for the people who went to Exile Island that “the clues are still in play, just like they always were.” Good on him for not mentioning the whole ‘the idol is at camp’ thing, but if he’s clarifying this after Lisi has left, this maybe should have given something away to the other contestants who were paying attention.

Seriously, what’s going on here? I suspect a secret romance.

Exile Island! Lisi climbs the tower to get the next clue for the idol. The phrase “Lisi climbs the tower” is usually followed by the modifier “with her sniper rifle”, isn’t it? Lisi doesn’t even give a shit at the revelation that the idol is back at camp, probably because she’s assuming that whomever ends up as Ravu is going to lose the next challenge, which means she’s going to have to join them, and probably thinks that since it’s day 15 and the clues are so straightforward that someone has already found it there. Wrong! As she plays one of the prop skulls like a bongo drum (way to disrespect the faux-dead, Lisi. I hope some ghost props haunt your ass!), she tells us how nervous she was during the picking, and how she thought she was going home and wishes that she had stopped and thought for a minute before launching into her one woman show, the Pay Attention To Me Vaudeville Revue. She also says “You either take me, or put me on Exile Island!” and smiles, and acts all punk rock like she’s clever. You know why I hate her? Because she is Frankie from The Real World: San Diego, but ten years older, like if Frankie were never to learn anything about herself, ever. Someone should go grab Frankie and show her this season of Survivor! It would be like Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Future. The camera leaves Lisi on Exile up in the tower, and I would advise her to get down for her own safety, I think. She tends to fall. On her face.

Cut to the new Moto (composed of Earl, Yau-man, Michelle, Stacy, Boo, and Cassandra) returning to camp, and Earl is super excited to be somewhere where he can receive his daily allotment of Vitamin C.

We are all so happy to have potassium!

He runs up to the bed and jumps in it as Stacy yells “Don’t get in the bed dirty!” he largely ignores her. I hope that turns into a pattern. He rules! Earl lays on the bed, claps his hands in the air, and calls for the waiter to bring him his breakfast. You heard they had servants too, huh? I told you, Lisi had them fired. Earl continues to geek out about all the stuff as the team discovers they got a feast of apples and cheese to celebrate the new tribe configurations. They also got some fishhooks, but those get thrown on the pile in the corner with the rest of the surplus fishing equipment. Earl tells us how this puts him in a much better position, because he’s still with his ally Yau-man, and all the same clues apply for the Idol hunt, and since no one else knows about it, he feels pretty golden.

Over at New Ravu (composed of Edgardo, Alex, Rocky, Anthony, Dreamz, and Mookie), the guys are returning to their camp. Turns out that they get fruit and cheese and fishhooks as well, and they dig in and enjoy their spoils. As they eat, Alex tells us how comfortable he is at the new camp and presumably with a new alliance, because the girls were bossy and Boo was kind of dim, and you never knew where he was at. Alex then airs these same complaints about the girls to the rest of the guys at camp, which leads to a girl bashing session. I am willing to give Alex a pass for that particular misstep, because while he was just talking about Stacy and Lisi and how unbearable they were specifically (which is true), Rocky and Mookie take that ball and run with it, turning the discussion into a moratorium condemning all women. As if there were any doubt about Mookie and Rocky’s misogynist ways, Mookie’s like, “That’s why everyone we’ve voted off has been a woman. Duh!” with this huge smile on his face. So: dead to me. Right there.

This is dumb. It’s acting like you’re macho for the purpose of bonding and to create outsiders, which is how Mookie and Rocky bond with others (see also: Sylvia, Rita, Anthony). And you can tell the rest of the guys think this is kind of assy, because they are like, “Ummm…” from the uncomfortable silence after this statement. Rocky drives home the point that he is an asshole during confessional, telling us that even though he loves women and likes to touch them and squeeze them and is completely heterosexual and not the least bit gay, he appreciates “not having any girly distractions” anymore during the game.

But, they move on in the name of avoiding conflict, and Alex decides that he is going to be delivering a quote from The Count of Monte Christo to motivate everyone. As he drops this giant section of dialogue from the movie about how to be a man, how to be macho, and how to triumph in the face of adversity using only your penis as a weapon to fend off oncoming barbarians, the rest of the tribe listens, and I don’t know how they do not laugh in his face. My friends, and any good friends really, would have been like, “Dude, you sound like a tool. Shut your blowhole.” and then everyone would have cracked up. The editors think this is hilarious, though, and so they start in with the majestic music behind him, and during the quote, they pan down to his hands, which are busy wrapping the leftover feast food in palm fronds and tying them up in a pretty bow, like he’s fuckin’ Martha Stewart. Such a bastion of manliness, that task. Next week: Alex teaches us about hand-to-hand combat while mending some curtains. Shout out to the editors! I would like your autographs.

The Ravu men begin to divide up the tasks at camp. Rocky makes the suggestion that Anthony stay back at camp and tend the fire while every one else goes out and fishes and forages for food. Remember how I said that I thought that Anthony had completed adolescence? Well, it turns out that I was wrong; in his brain, he is still in high school. How Rupert of him! He talks about how hard it was to take his shirt off at that first gym class, and how this new tribe puts him right back there, and blah blah blah. It was right here, during this interview that I was done with him, too. Because, here’s the thing: almost everyone got picked on in high school. That’s what growing up is for; you realize that you’re not the person that everyone thought you were, you become comfortable with who you are, and you don’t dwell on it for the next twenty years, because it will ruin you. And if you’re still in that place, and you let some douche like Rocky put you into that box and don’t make any effort to climb out, I have a lot of sympathy for you as a person, but I don’t feel bad for you, if you know what I’m saying. Anthony needs to speak up about not wanting to stay back and go and help someone fish and attempt to become one of the guys, because this is his lot now, and his challenge. Assimilation into the tribe is part of the game. If you agree to be the den mother, you’re not allowed to complain about it. Because then someone else is drawing that box for you, and you’re stepping into it because it’s easier for you and your comfort zone. By not disagreeing with it, you become a party to it.

Every winner of this show has had one trait in common: they’ve adapted to the society formed within the game by doing things outside of their comfort zone. Whether it’s been shutting up when it’s sometimes difficult for you to do so (Rich, Sandra), doing something that is perhaps against your moral code (Tina, Danni), or making the bold move that a leader would when you’re a traditional follower (Vecepia, Jenna M), everyone’s done something out of their norm and had to escape their personal shit in order to do it. So, while I sympathize with Anthony’s plight because Rocky is an asshole and no one deserves what’s going to happen later, I don’t feel bad about it at all, because of this, right here. Not to be harsh, but: Rocky might be an asshole later, but Anthony is complacent about his lot. They’re both responsible.

Back at Moto, Earl and Yau-man are messing with the new fish hooks, and Boo is staring at them like, “Oh, so that’s how the fish sticks end up in front of me.” Then he tells us how he thought he had the game locked up, which: no. You did not, not at all. As Michelle walks around camp with her new buff as a top and her hair pulled up and looks really hot, Earl tells us that the new tribe has 3 Old Ravu and 3 Old Moto, so a swing vote will be necessary to form a majority together. Immediately, Cassandra shows up, all “Did somebody say swing vote?” and bringing Earl and Yau coffee while they fish. Cassandra tells us how in old Moto she was in the minority, so she’s planning on doing her damndest to cement her place here and is a free agent right now. Stay away from the Raiders, Cassandra! Look what happened to Randy Moss. Oh, and timid, polite Cassandra, doing work and being forward to stay in the game. See how it works, Anthony?

Earl goes to work on her, asking her about how Boo feels about the new tribe and telling her that she could be a swing vote, planting the seeds of a possible alliance with her, while she stands there listening, pretending like this is not her plan at all. She smiles the Southern Lady Tina Wesson Smile at the mention of Boo, the smile that says, “I am friendly and charming and not threatening, and I cannot wait to eviscerate my foes and leave their mangled remains in the town square to serve as a warning to others who cross me.” I have a feeling she’s going to turn out to be awesome, AND aligned with Earl? Get me some candles, it must be my birthday.

Enjoy your coffee, for you will soon be my minions.

Now it’s Day 16 at Moto, and 24 hours later, guess what? Anthony still isn’t happy with his fire-tending duties. And, guess what else? He’s done absolutely nothing to change that, except bitch at the camera. I want to like you, Anthony, especially with respect to what Rocky is about to do to you in a couple of minutes, but you are making it very hard. Edgar, Alex, and Rocky are hunting crabs, which means apparently stomping the shit out of them and rendering them inedible. Alex asks Rocky how Anthony’s doing, given that he’s been looking frustrated at the challenges. Way to ask the source of the problem! That won’t alter the answer at all. That’s like asking Snoop Dogg to be your Narcotics Anonymous sponsor. Rocky of course responds with the fact that he thinks that Anthony is “effeminate, not that there’s anything wrong with that” (Seinfeld shout out?) and that he has problems carrying his own weight sometimes. And, zero percent of that statement is true.

I’m just going to touch on this briefly right now, in the interest of making the rest of this recap funny, because there are a lot of psychological issues at play and the whole thing gets extremely uncomfortable from this point on. Feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph if you want to continue the funny. So, Anthony isn’t the most forward person ever, which is fine in real life, but not in the context of this game, as I’ve already stated. Rocky considers himself “masculine”, and since he chooses to convey that by being as loud as possible, running around making idle threats and drawing as much attention to himself as he can, anyone who does not act like him must be feminine. Anthony is a perfectly nice guy, and doesn’t deserve to have judgment passed on his masculinity by Rocky, of all people, but his passiveness is hurting him within the game. And thus, we have arrived at why Rocky thinks Anthony is a girl, and uncovered why Rocky considers women to be below him in two easy steps. It creates this kind of terrible, unending circle between the two of them where Anthony’s passiveness is an affront to Rocky’s masculinity, and Rocky’s outlandish response to everything offends Anthony’s tastes (as it should), which makes him even more passive, which makes Rocky even more douchey. Both could correct these issues my making some minor adjustments (as I mentioned earlier with Anthony) that would allow them to get much farther in the game. Rocky needs to chill the fuck out, and Anthony needs to be a bit more forward. Not to spoil anyone, but neither of these things are going to happen. Everything that happens after this point in the show is a response that stems directly from this conflict. Now that this is out, know that I fuckin’ can’t stand what Rocky does for the rest of the episode and am in no way relieving him of responsibility for what an asshole he is, but I’m also frustrated at Anthony for not making more of an effort and exposing Rocky, because that’s what you’re supposed to do to assholes, especially assholes who think you are below them. And so I can’t fully blame either of them, and I hold them both accountable.

Okay, I’m done. So Alex attempts to bring Mookie into his inner circle along with the other two Motos, and Mookie is quick to agree to it. He tells them how he was aligned with Rocky, but he just did that because he knew Rocky would be loyal. Throw him under the bus! Anthony can drive it. Then he talks about how girly Anthony is, some more, and I’m so, so tired of hearing about that. Mookie catches some big fish, and right there is your New Ravu majority, people. As my friend Mandy said on the phone last night, it takes a drastic combination of factors to make Dreamz the most likable person on a tribe, but it has somehow been done, and I am confused.

Mookie talks about what a relief it was to be able to catch fish, and how the new members of the tribe fit in so well and increase his passion for the game. It might have been the free fishhooks they got so that they could catch food, but, you know, Alex’s hair is pretty mesmerizing and probably life giving. Get me a lock of it, I need something to cure my leprosy! The guys share a fish and celebrate the fact that they can’t lose, as Rocky tells us that on paper, they’re unbeatable. Can someone show me that term paper, please? I mean, I know the paper is probably thicker than the other tribe’s, but I would be willing to wager that the grammar is touchy and there are numerous topic sentence blunders.

Immunity challenge! This challenge is officially my favorite in several seasons, because it’s insanely well constructed and illustrates perfectly why Moto did so much better in the tribal draft by going for all-around awesomeness instead of just strength. Props to the challenge producers this week, too. Jeff calls the tribes in, obviously still confused from switching thoughts (and possibly brains) with Lisi earlier, so he’s clearly doing his best to remain upright throughout this entire segment, and he’s going to be spending more time than usual heckling the teams this week while sitting out of the challenge. In this weeks challenge, the tribe members will be tied to the opposite ends of some poles, and those poles will be latched together in the middle with a sliding mechanism, so the tribe will be kind of this six-pointed cohesive being that can slide in different directions and make certain arms longer while others become shorter. Make sense? Sort of like this:

They’ll have to navigate a complicated course, going through six different gates and around some bamboo poles, and the paths that they have to follow cross, giving the tribes the opportunity to collide with each other at some point. First tribe to get all of their people across the line win immunity. The challenge begins, and it looks like Alex giving the orders for Ravu and…Boo leading the charge over at Moto? Weird. I think he wants to make himself useful. Moto gets to the first intersection right before Ravu does, and Michelle blocks the progress of Ravu by blocking their route. Ravu somehow gets around this and takes a slight lead through the third gate, putting them ahead at the halfway point. At the next intersection the two tribes collide for a second time, and Michelle ends up in the middle again. This time, Cassandra tells Michelle just to climb over the top of Ravu’s spinning hub, and Michelle does, creating this amazing mix-up of people that just will not be untangled, with each side refusing to budge even a bit.

Two minutes later, this devolves into one of those Tasmanian Devil whirlwind clouds.

Moto ends up forcing Ravu to go underneath every single one of them, putting them slightly out in the lead near the end. This gives them the advantage when they arrive at the last intersection, and they effectively trap Dreamz and use him as a stopper to get ahead of the other team, with Boo shoving him out of the way to slip past him. This keeps Moto in the lead, and in an incredibly tense finish, they cross the line slightly before Ravu, giving them the victory and meaning that teamwork and cohesiveness has triumphed over brute force. Don’t you love it when these things work out? Also, this means that Lisi is going to be joining the team of annoying people, which pops a vein in my forehead. Somewhere on Exile Island, Lisi remembers that she has a poker game with Colby and Ethan Zohn next weekend. Also, she really, really wants to make out with Ozzy and can’t figure out why.

Moto celebrates their victory as Jeff points out that the Moto tribe is still undefeated in Immunity Challenges. Moto heads off, and the former Ravu members are clearly happy not to have to go to Tribal Council for once, particularly Yau-man. And, as the Immunity Challege Victory Commercial Music starts up, just when you are about to hit the fast-forward button because who gives a shit about commercials for Jericho, the music stops abruptly and Yau-man shouts in this totally awesome robot voice, “I’ve got strength now to carry the flag!” and the editors get a shout out, too, because that was awesome. Everyone, good job this week!

So, it’s Day 16 at Ravu, and guess what? Anthony’s bitching! About being left behind! While everyone else does manly things! At this point, he’s even vocalizing to himself and sharpening a machete, Amazon Matt style. Just go say something, Jesus! There is an awesome shot of Anthony talking about how “the boys are off hunting and fishing” intercut with a shot of Rocky sprawled against the rocks, completely passed out. It’s like they’re setting you up for the fact that it’s going to be Opposite Day at Tribal Council later. Anthony walks up on a conversation that Rocky and Edgar are having in the water, and Rocky is bitching about Anthony too! I know! I should have just cut and paste any other random paragraph from previous recaps. He even goes into the whole Jessica and Erica deserved to be here more, were it not for the fact that they had vaginas issue again, and that’s already been covered. The whole time, Anthony’s just sitting there, listening to all of this while Rocky babbles like a dumbass about how girly Anthony is.

Anthony has a conversation about the vote with Dreamz, who tells him that he’ll try to make sure that it’s Rocky this evening. Anthony has the right idea in talking to Dreamz, but again he’s not coming out and saying what needs to be said, which is “Rocky is insane, and he is the real reason why we lose challenges, not me. You saw earlier, I’m sure. He might be stronger than me, but he can’t focus his strength. If you don’t get rid of him, he’s going to spaz out next week, too, and you guys can enjoy voting yet more people off.” This, of course, does not get said.

Anthony then has the same conversation with Alex, full of the same, “I’ll see what I can do” overtones that mean that he is screwed. To Anthony’s credit, he does make the “Rocky is insane” portion of the argument, but he doesn’t relate it back to why you should keep Anthony himself. But, at least he’s trying, which is good. Then Rocky loses his shit around the campfire some more, and Anthony looks at Alex and Ed and says “as long as James is fed and watered, you’re okay.” Rocky the pet snapping turtle, how awesome. When his blood sugar gets low, watch out! He bites. Rocky appears to then scream randomly at the top of his lungs, and at this point even Dreamz is looking at him like, “Okay, that’s enough.” See? More screaming to prove you’re a guy. Anthony talks to Edgar, and props to him for making an effort with everyone, even though it’s too little, too late, because he only makes half of the correct argument again. Edgar interviews that Anthony is basically Rocky’s bitch, and we get a montage of Rocky ordering Anthony around at camp, asking him where the water is and why there isn’t a fire. Once it gets to that point with someone and you let them do that to you, there is no coming back with the way that you are perceived in the eyes of others, especially other men. That’s..too bad. Break the cycle!

Rocky bitches about how Anthony is going to “go around whining” trying to keep his place in the game. Rocky is angry that Anthony won’t just shut up and leave the game, which is hypocritical in roughly 1,279,326 different ways, all of them extremely maddening, not the least of which is the fact that Rocky is angry that Anthony is making an effort to step up and play the game when that’s all Rocky’s been criticizing him for not doing since day 1. God, shut up! I cannot wait to see his knockout punch delivered, and hopefully it will come at the hands of women. Lisi is more bearable than him at this point, and she’s like 40% Jeff Probst right now, even.

Tribal council. Sigh. Probst’s hat is gone, which means that he and Lisi have returned to their original bodies. Jeff asks Mookie about how everyone’s adjusting to staying at the shitty camp, which brings out the “Well, everyone but Anthony went fishing while Anthony stayed back and did the laundry and took care of the kids, so we’re cool.” Jeff asks Anthony if he was concerned at all about being left at camp, and Anthony is like “Um, duh?” This causes Rocky to unleash the first of many unnecessary diatribes tonight, in which he decides that he’s going to be offering Anthony sage advice on everything from how to be a man by speaking up, to how to handle conflict by saying that you have a problem, to how to ask for help without sounding like a whiny little bitch. And aren’t all of these things Rocky’s area of expertise, really? He has not done the exact opposite of any of them at all, certainly not in almost every scene in which he has been portrayed! Instead of telling you what Rocky tells Anthony, because it’s not worth putting on paper, I’m going to tell you how he’s taken his own advice. Cool? Let’s get started. The first one go a sumpin like this. Hit it! “When you have a problem, you need to say something so that everyone can give you a hand, because even though I will call you a girl when you speak up, you need to do it anyway, so I can put you between a rock and a hard place. So maybe you can take some of those words, and use them in your life when douchebags like me push you around to feel better about our own masculinities.” Wow, how deep! Does anyone know how to cross stitch? I could use that on a throw pillow or something.

Does anyone have a notepad? I’d like for everyone to write this down.

Anthony looks at Probst like, “Seriously, that doesn’t even make sense. You don’t expect us to continue this discussion, do you?” but Probst, he is a harsh taskmistress. Probst is like, “No response from Anthony? What a little bitch!” So Rocky goes off again, all “When you get knocked down, you get up again and take another hit, like a man. Of course, though, if you are knocked down twice, you bitch and complain and blame it on everybody else in the tribe and never, ever shut up about it. Then you can blame it on a girl and get them voted out. See how it works, Anthony?” Man, he should really get an advice column. At this point Anthony is disturbed by all of this, and even though I’ve previously stated that he needed to step up a little bit, this right here is uncalled for, because it’s not like Rocky is exactly a shining example of masculinity. Rocky tells him about how he’s “Giving him a life lesson,” and let’s all sit Indian style about two inches from the TV and take this all in, because we could all learn a little bit from Rocky, right? Anthony tells Rocky that the only person he feels like he hasn’t gotten any respect from is, well, Rocky, and it’s time for Lesson No. 3, “If you don’t respect yourself, that gives me the right to treat you like shit instead of acting like a human and helping you with your issues that are still hanging around from high school. Instead I will act like the crazy cartoon version of every bully you’ve ever met, but with crazy canaries flying around my head at all times, and I’ll fill up every square inch of space on the comic book page with the crazy words that are flying out of my skull unnecessarily. Of course, there is no way that being a man means sometimes shutting your mouth for like two damn seconds and letting someone else take the lead, or not kicking someone when they’re down. It means you must be as loud as possible at all times, and because you do not do that, you have ovaries. Jesus, have some respect for yourself, Anthony!” Does anyone else smell Rocky’s own helpful daily talk show? Watch your ass, Dr. Phil!

Rocky then criticizes Anthony’s “poor social skills” and…wow! This is so awesome. I don’t even have to point that one out, right? I haven’t seen someone make such a fool of themselves on TV like this in forever. It’s pretty amazing, all this hypocrisy. Like, Friendshiplevels of amazing, is what’s going on here.

So, Anthony’s had enough and decides that now is the time to stand up for himself. This means that it’s Rocky’s cue not to let him get a word in edgewise, ask him “not to yell” (that one actually made me laugh out loud), and tell him to “grow a spine” instead of bitching behind peoples backs. Oh man, I might have a heart attack; this is like watching Lisi fall, but metaphorically, and over and over again. Rocky needs to go on a book tour or something. Get this man a global platform by which to get his message out, for it will save humanity!

Jeff asks Alex why he’s had his hands buried in his head during this entire exchange. Because Rocky is embarrassing and he’s accidentally stepped into a parallel universe, obviously? The beautiful part is that Rocky is nodding his head like he just totally faced Anthony, when everybody else in the room (with the exception of Mookie) is like, “Wow, I have no idea what just happened. Was he speaking in tongues, there?” Alex gives a diplomatic answer which basically amounts to, “Dude, you’re making me feel bad for the guy. If you’d like to stay, you should probably shut up until after we’ve voted.” Anthony chooses now to make the Rocky comparison about blowing his lid, and how if you keep him in it will work better for the team, but it’s too late. He cannot salvage himself, and that makes me sad. Whatever, it’s time to vote.

We see Anthony vote for Rocky, and Rocky vote for Anthony, who is condescending as shit about hoping he “learns from his experience here” and I am glad this show is here to make me laugh while The Office is on hiatus. I’m sure Rocky will be taking various and sundry lessons with him when he is inevitably voted out and will not be bitter, at all. At this point, he’s probably on the jury since there are 12 people left after this and there was a final 3 and jury of 9 last season. Won’t that be entertaining for everyone during the final episode? I cannot wait.

Time to read the votes. The first one is Anthony’s for Rocky, who laughs audibly. God, what an asshole. The next four are for Anthony, and he is sadly done. Rocky stares at the ground as Jeff snuff’s Anthony’s torch, because men certainly don’t look each other in the eyes after confrontation.

So, I can hit him now, right?

In his final words, Anthony talks about how the team made the wrong choice, and how they’re going to keep losing until Rocky’s gone, and yes! They are! What he said! And what I said like, two weeks ago!

Next week: people running around blindfolded with machetes. No, I am not kidding.