Survivor: People Quitting and Getting Hit In The Face

This week, on Survivor: GC continues to find new and interesting ways to quit. That’s tough to do, you know. After the Jacquie booting, Ace tells us that he thinks he’s “high and dry”. Has every episode this season started with someone worrying that they’re next? I sort of feel like it has. Kelly, on the other hand, is pretty excited to still be hanging around. When she announces this loudly, Ace rewards us with one of his many indignant looks. I have a feeling he’s not very good at poker.

In the dark of night, the grim visage of night vision Sugar descends upon the camp, surprised that Kelly refuses to go quietly. When Fang asks her about the idol, she tells them that she chose to chill in the hut, which she is now calling “The Sugar Shack”. GET IT? She’s so clever. Of course, Crystal is all “She has the idol!” because paranoia and Crystal go together like Andy Dick and illicit substances. I mean, she’s right, but I hate that she’s right, because her rightness is based on nothing other than her ridiculous fear of everything, ever.

Over at Kota, Bob goes to get the fishing net which was a prize in one of the reward challenges, discovering that it is filled with fish. There’s apparently one fish that gives you a little shock when you touch it, and they all take turns poking at it like idiots. You know how you have that one friend that’s always like “Man, this smells terrible! Here, smell it,” and then they shove whatever it is in your face? How I loathe those people. Why the fuck would I smell or taste something that you’ve already told me is terrible? This whole “let’s all poke the electric fish” thing is in this same vein.

Back at Fang, Matty is out in the woods collecting supplies when he spies an elephant over on the other side of the lagoon right near their camp. Matty quickly runs to fetch the rest of the tribe and bring them over to check it out.

When I say that this whole thing is one of the coolest things this show has ever done, I do not exaggerate. It’s beautifully shot, capturing just the right angles to show you that this whole encounter actually, authentically occurred. There’s a really great shot where you can see only very tops of the Survivors heads peek up from the bottom of the screen like gophers while the elephant looms large in the distance, finally (and kind of scarily) ripping an entire tree out of the ground with its trunk.

Ace and Matty end up getting into the kayak to get a little closer, and they seem to maybe regret that decision when the elephant begins to menace them before retreating. Man, that joke I made about someone ending up on the underside of an elephant’s foot almost came true. Creepy! It’s a good thing Gillian’s not around, or they’d have to spend half a day canvassing the ground for poop.

Reward Challenge! When the Fang tribe enters sans Jacquie, the rest of the Swimfan Alliance has a minor freakout. Marcus tries to get them to focus, mostly to keep them from showing their cards, I think. The challenge today involves tossing fruit through gates from person to person and get them into a basket, kind of like something you may have done at summer camp. People from the other team have poles that they can whack the fruit out of the air with, and the team with the heaviest basket at the end of the challenge wins. Since there are all types of fruit from watermelons to tiny oranges, there is a certain amount of strategy involved. The reward for the winning team is an herb garden, which is very old school of this show. Remember when they gave away, like, a piece of pizza that everyone could split for winning a reward challenge?

So, there is fruit tossing and fruit basing. How the hell does one even recap something like this? Matty and Ken end up being really good at the whole tossing thing, so there’s another point against Probst’s whole Ken is Worthless deal. Kota doesn’t have a whole lot of luck at the beginning because Ace is pretty good at whacking the fruit out of the air in Gallagher-like fashion. Marcus eventually smartens up and tells Dan to throw two pieces of fruit through the hole at a time, since Ace can’t smash them both. Ace tries, though, and at one point he takes a pineapple right to the face. Oh, pineapple-related schadenfreude. You never disappoint.

Of course, Kota ends up winning the whole thing by two pounds, because that’s how they roll. They elect to send Sugar to Exile Island again, and Dan gets a point from me for announcing that they are doing it purely for comedic purposes. He does say that they’re actually doing it because they think she’ll have to use the idol before the merge, which is probably an accurate guess. It’s a wise concept, but I think most people know the deal with the whole comfort thing by now and must know that she’s benefiting from going over and over again. I guess the plus side of sending her over and over is that everyone pretty much knows who has the idol (since only Sugar and Dan have gone) and that’s probably worth letting her have a few extra pieces of fruit.

After the commercial we get the now-traditional celebratory post-challenge Kota victory montage. Dan tries to psyche everyone up and introduce the concept of some sort of super-alliance of seven once the merge hits. Sadly, you can tell by how earnest he is that he really thinks that this is a possibility. He’s not trying to trick them into keeping him until the merge so he can get back with Matty or anything; he really, honestly wants to do this. Yay, seven people can win! Marcus tells us that Dan seems so eager to express his loyalty that no one is really buying it.

Over at Exile Lagoon, Sugar chills in the hut and dines on what is now a resplendent array of fruit, including what appears to be an orange the size of my head.

Back at Fang, Crystal tries to kid around with GC, but GC is in no mood to be an enjoyable person to be around, since he’s never in the mood to be an enjoyable person to be around. Bitching is much easier. He ends up trying to bite Crystal’s head off, and they start squabbling, and who do you root for in this argument? I silently wish for the return of the elephant. GC tells us that it’s getting much harder to deal with all the people here, and that this place is turning him into something that he’s not. Yeah, because you were awesome there at the beginning.

Ace lays in the hut and watches the proceedings, happy to have what may be a new lease on life. During his confessional, his accent does funny things, and makes me realize that I can’t believe that I haven’t called him Eurotrash yet. How have I neglected to do that?

Fang gets the treemail for the immunity challenge, and Matty’s outlook for the future is appearing to be a little grim. “I just don’t see us winning today,” he says outright, citing the fact that everyone has been bickering constantly for the past three days. GC becomes so weary of dealing with everyone that he takes the kayak out for some alone time right before the immunity challenge. Since he’s nowhere to be found when it’s time to leave, Kelly and Ken (who seem to have become close, making his decision to choose her all the more wise) begin to hunt all over the place for him, worried that they’ll have to leave without him. When Matty gets in on the action and they start yelling at the top of their lungs for him, Crystal gets indignant back at camp. “They’re wasting energy by yelling,” she says incredulously to Ace. “I’m not going around yelling at the top of my lungs for a grown-ass man, that is ridiculous,” she continues. I’m not a big Crystal fan or anything, but word to you for not putting up with GC’s bullshit. I mean, he has contributed nothing of value to the tribe whatsoever.

Eventually GC rows lazily back toward camp, they tell him to move his ass because they almost left without him. “That would’ve been cool with me,” he says like the chump he is. You know you’re in trouble when you make Chet from last season look like a team player.

Immunity Challenge! This challenge is basically like a giant game of Plinko. People are at the top of a hill with balls that they have to throw down a hill into different gates with varying point values. One person from each tribe will be at the bottom of the hill to act as a goalie, but they’ll be blindfolded and will have to rely on the directions of another tribe member. Ace ends up taking the goalie position for Fang and Dan for Kota, with Sugar and Randy directing them. After a couple of rounds, Fang is actually beating Kota by three points. In the third round, Dan accidentally blocks his own team’s ball and allows Fang to grab some more points. He also hits Ace in the face with his shield in the process, so Ace has gotten hit in the face twice in this episode. I wonder if he changes accents every time he sustains a blow to the head. That would be awesome.

In the last round, Fang is still up by a point. When the balls roll down the hill, Randy saves the day not only by directing Dan appropriately and blocking the Kota ball, but yelling at Ace to freeze and psyching him out. With that, Kota enjoys yet another immunity challenge win, sending Fang to their fourth tribal council. He does not hesitate to notify them of this, and his disdain is clear. I would bitch, but all the cool people are Kota members, so I could give a pants.

Back at Fang, Matty laughs at his misfortune, muttering that the camp is cursed. Yeah, that’s it: your camp is cursed. It can’t be that your tribe’s unique combination of being both utterly incompetent and extremely unlikable people who are unwilling to work together is the real reason. It’s the mojo!

GC tells Matty that he feels as if he hasn’t been himself lately and he doesn’t like the way he’s been acting. Well, he’s the last one to that particular party. As a result, he’d like everyone to vote him out this evening. I will never understand the people that quit; I mean, I get that it’s hard and everything, but: one million dollars, people. I mean, I know this isn’t exactly everyone’s idea of fun, and I know you have to be hungry for awhile, but I know I would have a blast eliminating people and playing in the challenges and whatnot. When Matty tells Crystal that GC wants to go home, Crystal’s ire reaches new heights. She hilariously nails it when she says, “GC quits at everything, and I’m too fucking hungry for the mind games.”

Ace and Sugar celebrate on the dock, happy to last another three days without having to worry about playing the idol. “I may need you to give me the idol at some point,” he tells her, asking her if it’s hidden. She’s nonchalantly like “Um, no, it’s right in my bag.” Jump cut to Crystal, snooping through Sugar’s bag to find the idol, meaning that her paranoia has worked out randomly for the millionth time this season. HATE. Crystal and Ken discuss the possibility of blindsiding Sugar this evening and forgoing the GC boot in order to take advantage of the situation. That’s pretty much all we hear about this situation before tribal council, which is how you can tell that it wasn’t really discussed seriously even though it should have been.

Tribal Council! Probst’s leading line of questions allow GC to cop to the face that he wants to go home because of his hard childhood or some bullshit. Sugar then starts crying inexplicably, and I can’t really understand why it is happening. Was there a screening of Thelma and Louise before this Tribal Council or something? Jeff takes this opportunity to ask Sugar about the immunity idol. She states that no one has really even asked her if she has it or not, and then she basically cops to the fact that she found it by stating that she’s not really surprised, since going through people’s bags has become par for the course. I am somewhat put-off by the fact that she’s just letting everyone know that she has it, but there are certain benefits to just telling everyone. You ideally want to do it later than this, but whatever. The idol has not exactly been a harbinger of success in recent seasons. Thanks to Yul and Yau-Man’s superior play, people have sort of figured out how to suss them out.

Time to vote! We see Sugar vote for GC and GC vote for Kelly. When Jeff reads the votes, GC gets every vote except for his own, and he is out. Dude has seriously done nothing but quit, every week that he’s been on my tv. It’s sort of gross, and I’m glad he’s gone.

Oh, and one quick thing: next week is probably going to be a bit later than normal, due to the fact that I’ll be traveling six hours to a college buddy’s wedding next weekend. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up, since you are awesome enough to keep showing up every week.