In The Usual Suspects Kevin Spacey says "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist". Mark Burnett would be pulling off a trick of equal magnitude if he was able to find any footage of something worth watching among the Lopevi tribe. I had previously decided that the strategy of voting off the most dangerous (read: youngest) members might seem like it sucks, but it was a legitimate strategy. If it was the only thing keeping all of the old and fat guys on the island, why would anybody expect them to do anything different? For the game, it is a great strategy, for the viewer it absolutely sucks. Basically five of the guys haven't had an incentive to do much at all for most of the time on Vanuatu. What's worse, they have no reason to scheme against each other. Even when personalities clashed, like Lea and Rory, nothing really came about. Instead, we get a lot of some of the most stupid conversations on the planet. The latest intriguing bit of controversy centered around the campfire. Chad said Travis always got the best sleeping spot around the campfire - I shit you not. Travis told him to "Build a bridge and get over it". Ah, the predictable colloquialisms from Travis. What would we do without them? They went back and forth for awhile until another native of Vanuatu showed up on the beach. With some minimal gesturing, Lopevi figured out they needed to pick a chief, and they picked Lea.

At the Yasur tribe, the same person paddled in, and the women picked Scout as the chief. If I had been gambling on Survivor, I would have lost so much money, because I have been waiting for the women to get rid of Scout for some time now. For some reason, she has this mafia don sort of hold over her tribe, and they always look to her before they do anything, unless it is a gospel song, then they wait for Lisa to take the lead. The women have been marginally more enjoyable, but still not that much scheming. If it wasn't for that visit from Da, I would have no insight whatsoever on most of their personalities. Before they were able to talk about it too much, the ground shook and everybody was able to experience a live earthquake, which scared some people and was a delight to others. For good effect, CBS made sure to include plenty of file footage of volcano explosions. I thought the scariest thing was the huge bats that were flying around after the trees started shaking.