This show would be much more interesting if CBS dropped it and it were picked up by Showtime.
CATFIGHT! MEOW! What a great Immunity Challenge! Sex AND violence! You throw in a politician shooting an old man in the face with birdshot, and you have a very satisfying week! Even the Reward Challenge was fun to watch. Most weeks I just care about who wins, but this week I actually enjoyed the competitions themselves.
Back at camp, things are looking interesting. Despite losing, (that challenge was made for Casaya) La Mina is looking really strong. Casaya, on the other hand, got a lucky break. They are as bad as Stephenie’s Palau tribe. Maybe even worse, because the tribe in Palau at least got along.
And now, the less anticipated, highly derivative RICH RANKINGS! (Tribe and previous ranking in parenthesis)
FORGOT TO FILE A 1040- I guess you couldn’t outwit everyone!
Tina,Melinda- Tina was kind of bitter when she left. I imagine her talk with Melinda was not pleasant.
Misty- (Tom/La Mina)- What a waste. I HATE it when a good player gets ousted too soon. But normally it is just before the merge that a solid player goes out (like Brian from Guatemala). To see Misty, who has schemed and planned, voted out in week 3 makes me sad. Maybe she should have played up the fact that she might have the idol. I guess she didn’t think she needed to do that. What with her massaging and flirting she felt safe…making intellectual women every where proud. Farewell to Misty. The cockteasing, Rocket Scientist.
EATING BEEF JERKY- You’re still playing, but you’re praying for a tribe scramble!
Shane- (Jerky/Casya)- And I thought Jamie from Guatemala was a nut! Editing can’t make someone look this crazy. I hope there is a good stump at Loser Lodge he can sit on because this guy needs to go.
Cirie- (Jerky/Casaya)- I almost moved her up this week based on her solid performance in the challenges, but she is still the next out if Shane can hold it together.
Courtney- (Merge/Casaya)- I like Courtney a lot better than I had anticipated after the first episode’s odd behavior. So this downgrade is not her fault. It is simply because she is the target of Shane’s psychosis. When there is a feud, it normally drags down both parties. That or Shane may snap and kill her. Either way, that warrants a downgrade.
Sally- (Merge/La Mina)- Her only visible ally was knocked off AND she is still the spear loser. That bastard Probst didn’t help at TC. I’d like to have seen her respond “You know what we’re doing with the spear you silly hat wearing bastard!” I hope she rebounds, because I like Sally.
WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT A MERGE?- Middle of the pack players, the lotta ya!
Aras- (Jerky/Casaya)- Like Courtney, Aras has impressed me. He got his weirdness out of the way and has settled into the role of leader of a dysfunctional tribe. I like that he is kicking himself for being in an alliance with three nuts.
Ruth- (Merge/La Mina)- Do we know ANYTHING about Ruth?
Danielle- (Merge/Casaya)- She gets a lot of screen time, but only if she is in a bikini.
Bruce- (Merge/Casaya)- Everyone has a friend like Bruce. Mr. Expert. Mr. Know-It-All. Mr. Inflated Sense of Self-Esteem. I got the impression the tribe wasn’t as devastated by Bruce’s loss as La Mina thinks.
HEY! LOOK AT HIS MOHAWK-You might make the merge, but you’re grimacing from the jury row!
Bobby- (Merge/Casaya)- Despite my suspicions of anti-Bruce sentiment, I love that the tribe built him up at reward. Bobby especially. He made a friend with his strong praise. But where Bobby really earns his upgrade is at the reward challenge. When Ruth was running to the finish line, I thought Bobby was just giving up. I was screaming “TACKLE HER!” But at the last moment, Bobby just picks her up and sits her on his mat. AWESOME!
LOOKING FOR A BIG TOM TO ENGLISH DICTIONARY- Big Tom has spent more combined days on the show than anyone. But he didn’t quite grab the brass ring.
Austin- (Mohawk/LaMina)- Austin is a good player in a strong alliance. But I suspect he may think with his pecker a little too much. Good thing he’s not on Danielle’s tribe. Those things would be like the tracker beam on the Death Star to poor Austin.
Nick- (Rat/La Mina)- Nick is a bit below the radar, but strong in the challenges. I can see him hanging in there a long time.
ARE YOU A RAT OR A SNAKE?- Reserved for a MAXIMUM of two players. You have to be in the driver’s seat for this spot.
Dan- (Tom/LaMina)- When Austin told the girls he would NOT vote for Dan, that tells you everything you need to know about Dan’s place in the tribe.
Terry- (Rat/La Mina)- Terry is their “sole provider” and is a very smart player. He wasn’t getting rid of Misty because she was weak (which she was), but to break up a coup before it ever started. Nice.
when it happened, you could clearly hear one of the young guys say, “whoa…”
And it wasn’t “snake dinner.” It was snail dinner.
That immunity challenge was awesome. Glad to see that Cirie is able to something besides fall out of her top.
Watching Cirie fight in that challenge was even better than the idea of her just sitting down and refusing to play. That challenge was made for Cirie to take out her aggression. I loved it. I love any challenge that encourages the players to wrestle. Bobby just picking up Ruth Marie was beautiful. It was somewhat unfair, yes, but it cracked me up.
Shane and the stump … there’s really not much I can say about that beyond what the sweet marshmallow zombie Jeebus is wrong with him??
I’m starting to like Austin more. I didn’t think I would, but he seems laid back and not nearly as dumb as I thought he’d be. Good for Austin. Nick … well, he’s pretty, at least. 
I was in Eastern Europe a few years back and I saw the Russian version of Survivor, and they don’t pixalate anything.
He actually has a map of how to get off the island tattoed on him.
Ruth Marie does look beat already. When she was running with that bag-thingie she didn’t look anything like she did when she was running on that first challenge 8 days ago. They all better figure out how to fish, none of them will last by sharing one little fish every day. Poor Bruce. that must have been miserable sleeping in the pouring rain all alone on that island…but I guess it’s beats sleeping next to psycho Shane. I see some fireworks coming between FireDancer chick and Bruce.
I can’t keep these people straight, did Misty’s team turn on her, or did they just not have enough numbers?
I think you all are forgetting to give Terry props for when he completely locked Bobby up with his wrestling move. I mean, Bobby has to outweigh the dude by like 50 lbs and Terry looked like he almost wasn’t even trying.
Misty’s “alliance” was vaporware from the beginning. There was a chance that the young men would go with the young women instead of the older guys, but it was only a chance. Misty and Sally didn’t have any solid promises on anything from the guys. If you remember the conversation between the women and Nick, about who to vote out, when the women were offering Ruth Marie for sacrifice, Nick said “I could vote for Ruth Marie”. Not “I will vote for Ruth Marie”. “I could”. That’s about as non-committal a phrase as you can get on this show.
Like I posted above, the guys really didn’t have any smart choices other than what they decided to go with. If they’d voted out Ruth Marie with the other women, they’d be telegraphing their loyalties to Terry and Dan, who would BOTH STILL BE IN THE GAME at that point. By voting off Misty, they telegraph their loyalties to the young women, yes. But notice that there’s now only one young woman in the tribe now…
My prediction is that Sally’s going to have to glom onto Ruth Marie just to have a fighting chance now, and that’s going to be sort of tough when Ruth Marie will know in short order just who the two votes against her were from. I think Sally’s in deep doodoo…
It seemed to me that Dan and Terry were ready to vote off Ruth-Marie and Austin talked them into changing their vote to Misty. He’s the one that mentioned that she should go based on her poor performance in the challenge, but initially, Dan and Terry were for voting off Ruth-Marie.
I think Austin just wanted to make sure they didn’t think he was tied to Misty.
Especially since she lost the spear… any chances to two guys in the middle would have gone with the cute chicks sank to the bottom of the sea when that happened.
Shane and the stump: That was hilarious! He started out kind of joking about it, and they all went with it, like, hey, let us have a turn, and he had a little psychotic break off-camera, and the look on everybody’s faces was all “… and we voted Melinda off why, again?” He only gets to snap like that so many times before he becomes too freakin’ irritating to play with.
On the other hand, he was the only guy jumping off the bar for the balls. All the cute women on the bar were like, “ooh, water, no thanks…”
Even as someone who mostly lurks, I’ve got to give props to Middleman today… the Rich Rankings are always superb, but this week’s are really exceptional. Well done! (I reacted to them with great joy. I thought they were a gift from Heaven. I was just ecstatic that they were there.)
A possible sign that she’ll go far.
That was a fantastic, brutal immunity challenge. I loved it. Best part may have been Cirie just tossing Misty into the ground. Either that or Bobby’s last second snatching of victory (and Ruth Marie’s tank top) from the jaws of defeat.
I’m glad Cirie didn’t sit out the the challenges as some here “advised.” Her best bet is keeping her tribe together long enough for the alliance of wackos to implode. And it sure looks like it’s headed that way. Hooboy, I hope someone sits on Shane’s stump. That’ll clinch it.
Poor Misty, too bad she didn’t have the idol. And we know Bruce doesn’t have it either since he said he had no time to look for it the second time around, which he wouldn’t need to do if he’d found it the first time. I’m torn on Bruce. I wanna root for him, but… filtering with T-shirts? er… no thanks. I think bacteria are smaller than the holes in knit cotton.
The smart thing for her to do at that point, would’ve been to throw the bag blindly behind her. Kinda like a Cal-Stanford lateral.
Great episode. We need more girl wrestling.
But there were THREE T-Shirts! 
I think a smarter player than Cirie could make a move. She could point out to Bruce and Bobby that there is a 4-3 numbers problem for them. Then, she could try to get Courtney to swing (not hard to do right now).
Did Bruce get another idol clue? If so, we didn’t see it. Personally, I think he’s already found it. And that brings up an interesting question - once it’s found, do the producers keep giving clues to the exiled players? I guess they would have to, otherwise they would be able to figure out who had it.
Martial artists everywhere are cringing at Bruce’s lack of ability in the challenge. First he tries to knock down the opponents, and fails miserably. Then, while ground fighting with someone, he basically get thrown away and the much bigger guy outruns him. Maybe time on Exile Island is really taking its toll.
I thought that challenge was made for someone who had an understanding of body mechanics. I was waiting for him to lock someone up and still be able to look for the bag.
BTW: a bag?!
middleman, I hope you don’t get tired of me chiming in with kudos for you every few weeks of the season. Even with all your fantastic work in the past, I agree with borborygmi, this may be your finest hour.
I still have tears in my eyes from:
and
oh and to say something about the actual show…
In the RC, Terry made a hell of a catch off of the beam. I’m pretty sure he did almost a full front flip and held on to the ball.
Nooooooo! Missle Misty is gone? I won’t be able to watch religiously until the middle of March (stupid classes), but what’s the point now?