[QUOTE=rockle]
Anyway … I attempted to catch the episode this morning, and it looks like I had TiVo issues or something. (I don’t know – I can’t get the hang of our new HD DVR – none of the buttons are in the right place and it isn’t very intuitive.) I saw the Immunity Challenge and the very end of Tribal Council but nothing else (so, I know who had immunity, and who got voted out, but not how or why). Could someone please recap? Pretty please? With cherries?
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I’ll do a recap. I make no pretense at objectivity, though.
Working from memory:
Episode begins at night after TC. James continues to be amused by Jaime’s attempt to play the Pretend Idol, and of course who can blame him, as I am still laughing a week later. For Jean-Robert, however, the whole thing was a bit of an epiphany, because he has done the complicated maths in his head and figured out that if Jaime’s Pretend Idol had been an actual Immunity Idol, he’d be out on his ear by now. It’s pretty funny, because he appears to realize for the first time that if just about basically everyone thinks you are a colossal tool, they may at some point do something to make you go away. Jean-Robert is hilarious in this episode, by the way. So there’s more awkwardness surrounding the fact that Jean-Robert takes up a lot of the sleeping area, and Erik is too neurotic to ask him to roll over. James needles Erik about it a bit, but the point, in case you didn’t get it before, is that everyone thinks Jean-Robert is such an enormous suckhole that they don’t really even bother talking to him anymore; they just talk around and about him.
Reward challenge. The tribe will split into two teams. The challenge is pretty stupid. One player from each team sits in a little wooden boat that’s placed in the middle of a series of docks that form a square. The other players from the other team will run around and try to pour water into their opponent’s boat, while the person in the boat tries to bail it out. First boat to sink loses; first team to win twice gets the reward. They start by schoolyard picking teams, with Jean-Robert and the insufferable P-G as captains. J-R picks James, P-G picks Erik. James picks I’m going to say Todd, and Erik picks Frosti. So at this point, it’s going right along tribal lines. Todd picks hot Amanda. Frosti picks Courtney, probably on the grounds that if her boat sinks with her in it, it will be because her ass poked a hole in the bottom.
This leaves Denise without a team, and thus without a chance to win reward, so once again the power alliance takes an opportunity to let the folks lower down in their pecking order know exactly where they stand.
The game proceeds as you might expect. James, J-R, and Todd sink Courtney’s boat long before P-G, Frosti, and Erik can sink hot Amanda’s. The next turn it’s Todd and Frosti in the boats, and P-G is tired and Courtney can barely even pick up a bucket, so it’s pretty one sided and Frosti gets wiped out.
The reward is, Todd, James, J-R, and hot Amanda go to a thousand year old Chinese village for a traditional meal. They march straight on into this beautiful example of a culture older than most people can even imagine, full of buildings that have stood since Leif Erikson was sailing around the world, and in a show of deference to the historical treasure into which they have come, Amanda walks around the entire time with her butt hanging out so far they have to pixillate it. I write hate mail to the CBS censors.
OK, best part of the episode. Todd, James, J-R, and hot Amanda are given the fifth and final clue to the location of the hidden immunity idols, which of course James already has. Well, the scales fall off old Jean-Robert’s eyes, and he suddenly realizes how important those immunity idols could be. Now remember, he’s sitting at a table with three people, all of whom know that one of them has both idols already. And he proceeds to get awesomely drunk and babble on for what seems like hours about how “this changes everything, everybody, oh, my God, imagine what we could do with a hidden immunity idol.” It’s pretty clear that he’s very impressed with himself - I think he thinks that no one but him could have ever imagined the strategic value of the hidden idols. Todd, who should never, ever play poker, is basically wetting his pants the entire time. Hot Amanda looks nervous, because I think she’s pretty smart. James just eggs J-R on, basically for entertainment value. J-R calls the item in question the “American Immunity Idol.” James drinks another beer.
And… scene. They go back to camp, but J-R, high on his sudden realization that the hidden immunity idol might be relevant to his chances, can’t sleep. He pokes around the camp, eventually finding one of the non-idol plaques that Jaime had. Now, remember, he was there at TC when Jaime presented an identical plaque and had it thrown into the fire. But he is nonetheless absolutely certain that he has found it, and the game is his.
The next morning, more hilarity ensues. Coupla things happen here, all of them weird:
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Todd, pissed all of a sudden that James hasn’t given him one of the HIIs, starts hatching a “vote-out-James” plan. It’s actually not a bad plan, because blindsiding James might be the only way to keep him out of the Final Two at this point.
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J-R goes swimming with Erik, and in hilarious scene #8, gets all smarmy with the “what if I told you that I have the immunity idol?” Erik, who earned all kinds of funny points this episode, basically responds, “What if I told you that you totally don’t?” Erik rats out James, and J-R is furious. So…
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J-R goes to James and attempts a Godfather style confrontation. He comes on very strong with the accusations, but James is unwilling to admit that he has the Idols, and J-R is a weenie, so again, it’s pretty funny. J-R, who has no power at all, basically threatens James with expulsion - he actually says something like, “you will do very badly if you go against me.” Which, considering that James has two immunity idols and everyone hates Jean-Robert, is just amazingly funny.
The immunity challenge involves this big dragon made of segments, where some segments are big metal drums filled with water. The contestants sit on the drums, which are then slowly drained of water, making them more and more unsteady. Last player standing (well, sitting) wins. The players all sort of needle each other, but it’s kind of friendly, and I realize that, with the exception of everyone hating J-R, these people all basically don’t mind one another. Even the ones who are playing against one another in game terms are treating it as a game, with relatively little in the way of hard feelings and no blathering about honor. I think that’s pretty cool.
Courtney wins. She is delighted, and she makes a crapload of self-deprecating comments to cover up how happy she is, because she’s one of those people who feels vulnerable when she’s happy.
Back at camp, Courtney doesn’t give a shit who they vote out, as long as it isn’t her. Todd, who is turning into a weird mutation combining Rob Cesternino, The Brain from Pinky and the Brain, and Mr. Short Term Memory from Saturday Night Live, has decided that never mind that voting out James, let’s vote out Jean-Robert. There is a very funny moment where Frosti walks into the conversation just as Todd says “Let’s vote out Jean-Robert,” and Frosti kind of yelps, “Jean-Robert?”, because of course, if it’s J-R, it’s not P-G or Frosti himself, so it’s very good news for Frosti’s alliance.
Hot Amanda, very sensibly, hates this plan. She thinks they should vote out P-G. She’s right, of course. J-R is a complete outcast. No one will ever work with him. They can dispose of him at their leisure once they’ve solidified their position. But Todd is insane, and he’s so in love with his own cleverness, and I think as I watch that Amanda and Todd will both go far in the game, but Amanda might win whereas Todd will not, beacause Todd doesn’t get that the whole point is not to scheme for its own sake, as he is doing here, but to scheme with a purpose.
Anyway, they decide on J-R, but they don’t tell Denise. I don’t know why; it’s a pretty jerky way to reinforce the lesson they taught her at the Reward Challenge - that she is at the bottom of their alliance.
Tribal Council is pretty boring this time. Jaime shows up looking like a prostitute, Erik looks like he wants to quit the game and go back to Loser’s Lounge to discuss the subject of his virginity further, Jean-Robert gets voted out, and gives one last stupid speech about how he was voted out because he was obviously the best player there. And that’s about it.
