SURVIVOR – BRAINS VS BRAWN VS BEAUTY – 3/5

At the combined Reward/Immunity Challenge, it’s a clever mixture of passing water from contestant to contestant (very little use of boobs, boo!) to fill a bucket, and then a spinning maze that’s new to the show (good job there, Survivor!). The Beauty tribe takes the early lead, with Brawn a close second. The Lobots are trailing, flailing, and having to endure Probst’s scorn as well (I love it when he makes tribes think they suck at challenges!). The Beauts and Brawns move to the maze first, in that order, and eventually, the Brain tribe joins them. Quickly, Woo and Cliff solve the maze and win Immunity and the full reward for the Brawns. Now, it’s up to the Brains to try to prove that their IQ tests were not actually taken by the Air Force Academy cadets…

And, in what constitutes a “shocking” finish, the Brain tribe beats the Beauty tribe. Really? Is that something to be proud of? You just scored higher than the cheerleader, beauty queen and model on an intelligence test and you’re celebrating?! Shouldn’t you have expected this? For god sakes, you were practicing with your boobs!

The Brawns return to camp with their spoils and immediately begin to set up their tarp. Tony is always thinking, so he manages to rifle through all the items and finds a clue to the hidden immunity idol, which is meaningless to him, but he just likes to control all the information in camp. I guess I’ll call him “NSA” for today’s column. Sarah then asks to take a seat in the hammock, and surprise, surprise; those dumb jocks can’t even set up a hammock right and Sarah falls on her ass. Lindsey gets a kick out of it, which could make Sarah wonder if NSA’s lies have some truth to them…

At Beauty, methinks there’s nothing but drama coming down the catwalk! With only six members, and a variety of two-, three- and four-people alliances already formed, it seems that someone’s going to get blindsided tonight, leaving the tribe in a bad way after tribal. LJ takes Jeremiah aside and says, “Brice,” not knowing about Brice’s alliance with Jeremiah and Morgan. Then, Brice takes Jeremiah aside and says “Alexis,” but Jeremiah tells him that LJ said Brice. I haven’t seen this much drama since Season 2 of RuPaul’s Drag Race…

Jeremiah seems to be caught in the middle of a couple alliances he’s in, which could come back to bite him in the ass after Tribal is over. Because no matter what, people are going to be shocked at how he voted. That is, unless he gets exposed and they all turn on him. Just goes to show that you need alliances, but you shouldn’t have too many…

Somehow, a plan is devised (we’ll call it Plan Why?) to split the vote. I’m thinking this is a terrible idea because all you need is one person to turn and someone from your alliance is going home. My brain hurts just thinking about it, but maybe it’s the vodka and not the show…

As I see it, it seems like a no-brainer that Jeremiah should stick with his 4-person alliance (him, LJ, Jefra, Alexis) rather than his 3-person alliance (him, Morgan, Brice) because if he sticks with it, he’s still in an alliance of 4 (a rather strong position, I would say) than to stick with Morgan and Brice and risk pissing off 3 people. Better to upset one person (after the vote) than three, in my opinion. But this is the Beauty tribe, they’re not there to use their brains, we want to see dramatic meltdowns, poor decision-making, and maybe some bad math while we’re at it… “Gosh, how many votes will it take to get voted out…?”

I was then expecting the tribe to get lost on the way to Tribal, but they do make it and Jeff tells us that “fire represents your life” and “once it’s gone, so are you.” I love that they can repeat these things week in and week out for 14 years and it doesn’t get old!

Jeff begins the interrogation, I feel like I’ve never heard more inane responses to his questions. They’re talking about “good lookin’ faces,” “one big party,” and Brice reveals his evolution from caterpillar to butterfly…

Huh?

It was almost as if you went to an NBA game and they gave you D-League players. Something was just…off. Maybe it’s their nerves at being at Tribal for the first time, but I thought I was listening to Miss South Carolina tell me about “U.S. Americans…not having maps…and the Iraq…” Let’s just say that Jeff summed it up best when he said “there’s a lot of uncertainty in this tribe.” Holy smokes, is someone feeding him these lines off camera?!

They head off to vote, and somehow Plan Why? results in a 2-2-2 tie, as planned. Props to them for pulling it off. Brice throws his best shade at Jeremiah, who’s evidently impervious to the ways of the butterfly…

I still don’t see why it had to come to this, but that’s just me. So LJ, Jefra and Jeremiah revote and stick to Part II of Plan Why? and vote out Brice unanimously. He’s miffed, but what do you expect from a butterfly? He flitters away…

Jeff commends the Beautiful people for learning the game, but wonders how quickly they’ll recover from this one. He sends them off to try to find their way back to camp…

Looks like we’re in for a (ball) smashing good time next week. And are the Brawns turning on Tony? Wonder what his Immunity Idol has to say about that? Tune in next week, same Bat time, same Bat channel…

Until next Thursday, “This is Survivor, baby!”
Fish

Once again, I want to tease my big announcement, hoping it’ll be ready to divulge in two weeks. All I can say is that if you’re a super-fan of the show, this will interest you…

Email: bryan.fish.fischer@gmail.com
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