This is my weekly recap of “Survivor: Vanuatu, Islands of Fire.” It tells you all sorts of secrets, including who goes home and who gets punched right in the mouth. To protect you from scary spoilers, the article is hidden out of sight on the other side of the jump.
Tattoo takes their bags and shows them to their bungalo. Mr. Roarke declares, “Welcome to Fantasy Island.” The ABC network files a crippling lawsuit and bribes a judge into giving them a temporary restraining order, shutting down production for weeks. Ami, Perfect Eliza and Chris languish at the resort, getting fat on shrimp cocktails and mimosas. Jules, Scout and Twila, forgotten, die of starvation in the middle of the jungle 13, 15 and 17 days later respectively. It’s all very sad. The montage of Twila’s forlorn, pitiful trips to the “tree-mail” box, looking for a badly written poem that will never come, just breaks your heart.
We’re thirty seconds into the 12th installment of “Survivor,” and already I want to punch Ami right in the mouth.
We pick up the action moments after the conclusion of last week’s tribal council. Chris, Scout, Twila and Perfect Eliza joined together to vote out evil bitch-goddess Ami’s closest lackey, Leann, Ami herself having won immunity by a nose in the “solve a puzzle with a friend” competition. Ami never saw it coming. The shock of it all shook Ami to the core, and left her meek and humble.
Yeah, right.
“That was a really nice move,” Ami says to nobody in particular, her voice dripping with condescension. Twila doesn’t make eye contact with her, but responds: “We were all gonna get screwed over, so I felt like I’d take up for the little guy.” I guess she means Chris. He appears to take no offense at the remark; he’s staring into the fire giggling quietly.
Ami: “‘Take up for the little guy?’ That’s cute.”
This is the point where I want to punch her in the mouth. Woman or not, this one needs an attitude adjustment, preferably one vigorously applied upside the head.
At this point, Ami and Twila start talking over each other. I could go back and sort it out and transcribe it, but there’s not much point. It’s mean and it’s nasty and it goes on for like three solid minutes.
This is not a happy camp.
Okay, that’s kind of an exaggeration. While these two girls are tearing into each other like hyenas fighting over a half-eaten gazelle, Chris is popping open a beer and rooting around the camp to see if there are any Pringles® left over. There aren’t. He shrugs and leans back in his Island Barcalounger — a log half-buried in the sand — and watches the show.
“I’m livin’ with five wildcats right now,” he says, a shit-eatin’ grin plastered across his face. “It’s gonna be good.”
And you know what? He’s right.
Ami and Twila are fighting over Perfect Eliza. Twila says that Ami’s been using Eliza since the first day of the game. Ami accuses Twila of hypocrisy, pointing out that she’s using Eliza right now.
Jules sits by the fire with her head in her hands and wonders why mom and dad won’t stop fighting.
Perfect Eliza, to Ami: “Who saved my ass tonight?” Twila, behind her: “Me! Me!” She leans forward and give Eliza a big hug.
This tribe puts the “fun” in “disfunctional.”
After some more fighting, Scout takes a parting shot at Ami: “You’re cocky,” she says, as if it’s the most vile insult she can think of. “Yeah, I’m cocky,” Ami says, not deigning to make eye contact with Scout. She seems to think for a second. “I’m also one of the most giving, loving, caring people.” Modest, too.
Right in the mouth, man. Right in the mouth.
Whoosh. Flash-forward to sunrise on day 31. The sun rises, some clouds race off toward the horizon, a tiny and delicious-looking crab scuttles along the shoreline at low tide. And Twila fetches the tribe’s “tree-mail.”
“Tree-mail,” for those who might be new to the whole “Survivor” schtick, always consists of a poem, and often some kind of prop. Once it was a live pig. Today it’s a jar, a big one, about the size of one of those restaurant-sized mayonnaise jars that you find on the bottom shelf of the condiments aisle at the Piggly Wiggly. For all I know it’s been hermetically sealed and sitting on Funk and Wagnall’s doorstep. At the moment it’s filled with formaldehyde, and there’s some horrible crime against nature floating in it.
Oh, wait. No. Upon closer inspection it appears to be filled with water, and the thing in it looks kind of like a miniature shoe tree. Which I guess would still be a crime against nature, just slightly less of one.
Twila hauls the jar and poem back to the camp. She recites the poem, and it’s one of the less irritating ones in “Survivor” history. They rhyme “diving” with “surviving” and “power” with “shower,” and it only makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up a little bit. The gist of it: They’re going to be swimming or something, and the winner is going to get to bathe. Woo-freakin’-hoo, baby.
At this point, Twila says something remarkably out of character. She’s been bitching about Perfect Eliza since the very first night on the island, but she says, “I’m just prayin’ Eliza wins because Eliza looks like a little stick girl.”
Cut to a shot of Perfect Eliza doing … um … something. Something with her shoulder blades. Something horrible. Think Schindler’s List. I have no idea how this girl managed to do it, whether she had to dislocate some major joints or what, but contorting her body this way she really looks malnourished. Literally skin and bones.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that Perfect Eliza now has a lucrative contract with the Ford Modeling Agency. So, you know, there’s a silver lining. Of sorts.
Cut to the beach where the challenge arena has been erected, and it’s not an obstacle course. It’s dangerously close to being an obstacle course, but it’s technically not. See, the object of this game is to run into the surf, dive into the water, swim out to a sort of ad hoc floating platform lashed together out of different bits, climb over it, and then swim down to collect a flag. It’s not an obstacle course; it’s just a race that happens to involve a climb-over-something stage. Think of it as an aquatic steeplechase.
Oh, who am I kidding? It’s a fucking obstacle course.
Anyway, before we can run the race there’s a little matter of informing the contestants about the nature of the reward. As the players march out onto the beach, we cut to a shot of Probst driving a sporty little sedan through the jungle primeval.
Please hold all questions about how the hell they got this vehicle onto this remote, uninhabited island until the end. It probably had something to do with a container ship, or maybe a cargo plane. Assume it’s tee vee magic, and you’ll be okay.
Probst pulls up in a little clearing just a few yards away from the contestants. They gape. He gets out. They gape some more. They were all given six weeks of gaping lessons at the production’s expense before filming starts; that’s the only way to explain the looks of surprise that they have painted on their faces. Anybody who’s watched “Survivor” before knows that this is the point in the game where one of the players wins a car or a truck or something, some vehicle provided by a sponsor in return for extensive and shameless product placement. It happens every game, and this is the point when it happens, but they all still manage to look surprised. Good show, fellows.
Probst declares, “For the winner of today’s challenge, an all new Mumblemumble Mumble Mumblemumble.” (My check from the carmaker did not arrive, so they will be getting no product placement from me. I’m easy, folks, but I ain’t cheap.) “Survivor” becomes a car commercial for a few minutes. “It’s got a power mumblemumble, all-weather mumbles, and a retractable mumblemumble for those socially awkward mumbles with the mumblemumbles.” And so on. Blah blah, it’s a car, and whoever wins the challenge will own it.
But wait, there’s more! The top three finishers — out of a field of six, remember — will take the car and drive it to a nearby resort. [I thought they were on a deserted island? —Ed. Hush.] There they will dine and dance and live and love! until sunrise. There will be a clean bed and a hot shower and food, food, food.
This sounds pretty good to the six people who’ve been sleeping on rocks for a month. Hell, I’ve got a nice, warm bed of my own upstairs, and it sounds pretty good to me.
The contestants appropriately teased, Probst lines ’em up and gives ’em the ready-steady-go.
Five of the six contestants sprint to the water’s edge. Scout kinda ambles. Chris flings himself out of the water onto the raft-thingy, first by the slimmest of margins. Probst crushes my soul by announcing for all the world to hear, “Ami, Chris, Twila, Eliza, first up on the obstacle course.” The obstacle course. He couldn’t just call it a raft? Or a speed bump? A roadblock? No, he had to actually say the words. That son of a bitch.
Scout, meanwhile, is still making her way down the sand to the waterline.
Ami makes it across the obstacle first, followed closely by Perfect Eliza and distantly by Chris. They dive into the water and swim a few yards out to a row of buoys, then dive down and retrieve flags suspended under the water. Then it’s back to the raft — oh, all right, the obstacle — and back to the beach.
Repeat three times.
Ami maintains her lead throughout the first leg of the race. Scout gets lapped early, but bless her heart, she just does not give up. Ami, Perfect Eliza and Chris finish the first leg, one-two-three.
Ami holds on to her lead through the second leg, followed closely by Perfect Eliza. Jules and Chris fight it out for third place, making the turn essentially tied.
On her way back for the third and last flag, Ami slips off the raft — okay, okay, the obstacle — and falls into the water. She has to hoist herself out and back onto the raft before she can continue, and Perfect Eliza uses the opportunity to cut into Ami’s lead. She doesn’t get much of it back, though, because Ami uses her arms and her legs and her prehensile fake boobs to scramble up and get back into it.
Ami dives, recovers her flag, and makes — I’m not making this up — an orgasmic noise as she bobs to the surface. She turns and swims toward the raft with Perfect Eliza right on her heels. Jules and Chris are fighting it out for third place, but they’re both getting tired. They slip on the raft and end up in the water. So does Ami, giving Perfect Eliza another chance to gain on her.
Then comes a beautiful moment. Blink and you’ll miss it, but it’s a beautiful moment. In assembling the raft, the crew has lashed three Vanuatu-style outrigger canoes together. Climbing over these canoes is tricky because they’re very narrow, only being wide enough for a single person to sit in them. Ami is scrambling with fingers and toes to climb out of the water onto one of the canoes. Chris, now in a pretty distant fourth place, is making his way delicately across the canoe in the opposite direction.
For just a moment, Chris stops right in his tracks. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Perfect Eliza on another of the canoes, virtually neck-and-neck with Ami. And in that moment, just standing there, Chris gives Perfect Eliza the window she needs to take the lead.
After three or maybe four seconds, Chris sidesteps to his right, allowing Ami to get her footing and continue the race. But the damage is done. Perfect Eliza’s in first place, with a comfortable lead. Ami, her concentration broken, loses her balance and falls, barking her shin on a part of the raft on her way down. That’s the end of it. It’s all over. Perfect Eliza wins.
Ami manages to get it together quickly enough to drag herself up the beach and finish second, guaranteeing herself a spot at the banquet table. Our attention turns to the fight for third.
Jules — who still looks amazing in a bikini, by the way — has somehow squandered her quarter-lap lead over Chris. He catches up to her at the buoys, where they both pause to catch their breath before diving. “Do you want this bad?” he asks her, gasping for breath. “I really do,” she replies, sucking wind herself. Chris pauses, seeming to think it over for a second.
“Me too,” he says, and he dives.
Jules follows him, matching him stroke for stroke in the swim back to the raft and step for halting step as they make their way over the obstacle. They’re tied exactly for an instant, then Chris hesitates and Julie takes a two-step lead. But she’s in too much of a hurry. She loses her footing and falls. Chris takes the lead, but then he slips and falls. Julie makes up the gap and they’re dead even again. They cross the obstacle and dive into the water perfectly tied, but Chris out-sprints her at the very end.
Chris finishes in third place and gets a hot meal, a warm bed and a show. Jules finishes fourth and gets nothing at all.
And through it all, Scout never gave up.
First commercial break. Is anyone in the house surprised that it’s a spot for the 2005 Mumblemumble from Mumblemumble? See, guys? You could have had a sweet product-placement deal on this site, too, where your brand could have been exposed to literally tens of readers. But you cheaped out. Your loss.
We’re back from commercial, and Perfect Eliza is driving Ami, Chris and the cameraman down a seaside highway. [Vanuatu has highways? —Ed. I told you to hush.] They turn into a quaint little bed-and-breakfast that looks like it was airlifted, intact, from the Big Island and plopped down in the middle of Vanuatu. Tattoo takes their bags and shows them to their bungalo. Mr. Roarke declares, “Welcome to Fantasy Island.” The ABC network files a crippling lawsuit and bribes a judge into giving them a temporary restraining order, shutting down production for weeks. Ami, Perfect Eliza and Chris languish at the resort, getting fat on shrimp cocktails and mimosas. Jules, Scout and Twila, forgotten, die of starvation in the middle of the jungle 13, 15 and 17 days later respectively. It’s all very sad. The montage of Twila’s forlorn, pitiful trips to the “tree-mail” box, looking for a badly written poem that will never come, just breaks your heart.
See, the problem with these so-called “reality” shows is that they don’t have a decent script. I’m available, y’all! Send job offers to jharrell@mac.com immediately!
Chris, Ami and Perfect Eliza explore the bungalow. From inside we hear a full-throated cry: “Toilet paper!” Kinda says everything, doesn’t it?
The girls take their showers first. Ami declares that she washed her hair twice, and then she lifts up her arm and sniffs her armpit. “I smell good!” she exclaims.
“How did they shave their underarms?” my roommate wonders. “Only you would ask a thing like that,” I tell her dismissively, secretly enraged that she asked the question before I could.
Chris gets his turn in the shower last. The girls, predictably, have used up all the hot water. This is perhaps the most horrible thing I can imagine: to live in the jungle for a month, to be taken back to civilization for just one night, and to find that there’s no hot water left. That’s rifle-in-the-clock-tower stuff, man.
While Chris is taking his cold shower, Perfect Eliza and Ami take a walk on the beach. “I’m really sorry I voted for you,” Ami says to Eliza. Translation: “I’m really sorry that I didn’t have enough votes in my pocket to kick your skinny ass off this island once and for all.” She goes on: “I really should have trusted in you a lot more than I did.” Translation: “I never should have trusted you for a second, you traitorous little skank.”
Ami, it should be clear by this point, is the queen of all lies, and the empress of all tricks. If this were a creation myth, Ami would be a coyote or a raven or a snake or a three-headed, six-horned goat. She’s evil, man, through and through.
Chris emerges from his shower clean and wearing a thick, fluffy robe. Have you ever noticed that guys can’t pull off robes? Wrap a girl in a terrycloth robe and she looks adorable — unless she’s the Trickster, of course, here to cheat you into selling your soul for something that turns out to be really ironic in a sudden but inevitable way — but give a similar garment to a guy and he just looks like he’s wearing a dress. At the very best, the very best-case scenario, he looks like Hef on his way back from the Grotto. And that’s a look that just doesn’t work on most folks.
Anyway, Chris emerges from the bungalow looking like Hef on his way back from the Grotto. He joins the girls on the beach and a Vanuatuan … Vanuatui … a little brown waitress brings them little brown drinks with umbrellas in them. The local Polyphonic Spree cover band comes out and plays a set. They pass around a tip jar, but all three of the contestants pat their robes in the international sign for, “Your performance was quite enjoyable, but I regret that I have left all my money in my other pants, which are presently 13,000 miles away on a continent halfway around the globe. Catch you next time, okay?”
Back at Alinta beach — yeah, remember those guys? — Scout and Twila are grouchy. Twila swallowed a lot of seawater during the challenge, and Scout is pissed off because she’s old. Twila’s just a big ol’ whiner, but I don’t blame Scout one bit. Come on, man. She’s three hundred and seventy years old. She’s a sweet old lady, but do you really expect her to run wind sprints over a lashed-together raft in the middle of the ocean? Let’s make things a little more fair. Give her a challenge that involves telling kids to get off her lawn, or bingo, or shuffleboard or something. Pete’s sake, y’all.
As they’re lighting the fire, Twila and Scout strategize. “Ami’s going to try to do everything she can” to try to flip Perfect Eliza back to her side, Twila says. “It ain’t gonna happen,” Scout says. “Eliza’s solid.”
They hold this little parlay in earshot of Julie, who listens intently but keeps her own secrets.
The three reward-winners spend the afternoon drinking on the beach. Once the sun’s gone down, they retire to the dining room — which is really more of an open veranda than a room — for their feast. They eat, and then they eat, and then they eat some more. Then, just for a change of pace, they decide to eat something else. How much they ate exactly is a question none of us can answer with any certainty, but let me put it this way: When the meal began, the table was decorated with a festive flower arrangement. By the time they pushed back their chairs, that arrangement was reduced to a handful of twigs sticking out of potting soil. I’m just sayin’, these kids can really put it away.
As Ami picks over the obliterated remains of her dessert, she decides to turn the conversation back to the game. “I know you guys want to get rid of me because I’m the physical power player,” she says. Uh, no, Ami. They want to get rid of you because you’re a fucking harpy. They want to get rid of you because your attitude is toxic. They want to get rid of you because you’re unbearable. Spend another week on this island with these people, and they’ll hold you down and cut your throat with a sharpened rock and dump your body on that big anthill just on the other side of the banyan tree fifty yards into the jungle. And all their lawyers would have to do is play the videotapes at trial; there’s not a jury in the land that would convict.
But hey, if you’d rather think that everybody’s scared of your mad “Survivor” skillz, who am I to stop you?
Meanwhile, the queen of all lies is planting the seeds of dissent. “Something that I think would be really smart for you guys is to break up Scout and Twila,” she says. Anybody here read Dante’s Inferno? It’s been years, but don’t I recall something about a whole bolgia set aside just for the fraudulent counselors? “That’s something you two should talk about,” she says, “but I think it’d make a better position for the two of you in the long run.” And with that, she excuses herself from the table.
Perfect Eliza tries to extract a scrap of food from between her teeth for a second, then says, “You know, it’s not a bad idea.” In the distance we hear a shrill, evil cackle. “We would be in the final four,” she goes on, “even if you, me—”
Chris doesn’t even let her finish the thought. “Not Ami,” he says with the tone of voice that says that further discussion on the matter is neither necessary nor invited. “We’re pure final four,” he says, “and if we change anything, nothing’s guaranteed. Final four!” he whispers. “And look at our competition! A 60-year-old woman and Twila.” Perfect Eliza laughs her girlish laugh; Chris is charming the pants right off of her, if you’ll pardon the expression. He hits her with the punchline: “I mean, why don’t we just get the check out right now?”
Over Perfect Eliza’s shoulder Chris sees Ami turn the corner. She’s not in earshot yet, but she will be in seconds. “So,” he says in a normal speaking voice, “are you gonna go cruising in your new car as soon as you get it?” Perfect Eliza stares at him for a second, then she sees movement out of the corner of her eye. “Yeah!” she replies, cool as a cucumber.
The reward-winners retire to their bungalow for the night. The girls take the bed and Chris takes the couch. I say that “the girls” take the bed, but we all know damn well that it was Ami’s doing. She can’t go five minutes without doing something to exert control over the people around her. Chris, wisely, chooses his battles. A couch is not a bed, but it’s still a million times better than sleeping in the sand.
“G’night, Chris.”
“G’night, Ami.”
“G’night, Ami.”
“G’night, Eliza.”
“G’night, Chris.”
“G’night, Eliza.”
“G’night, John-boy.”
“G’night, Eliza.”
“Who the hell are you? What are you doing in our room? Get out! Get out before I call the police, or whatever the hell they have in this godforsaken country!”
Ami and Perfect Eliza, sharing the bed, talk in whispers well into the night. I’m not sure how they manage this; I think it’s a skill that girls learn at slumber parties. Anyway, Perfect Eliza observes that, contrary to Ami’s insidious propaganda and character assassination, neither Scout nor Twila have ever voted for her — Eliza — at a tribal council. Ami has no good answer for this; she just says that hearing Eliza say it makes her want to puke. Real charmer, that one.
“If it hadn’t been for them,” Perfect Eliza says. Ami counters: “If it hadn’t been for me! I had your back every single time!” Except for last time, of course, when she, Leann and Julie voted for Eliza. Kinda sucks the wind out of her “I had your back” story, doesn’t it? And don’t think Perfect Eliza’s not noticing. She may look vapid, sure, but she’s got her head screwed on straight.
Eventually, after a long time, sleep comes.
Second commercial break. “Critics hail Alexander,” we’re told. What critics, exactly? Please tell me so I can never take them seriously again. The Spongebob Squarepants movie clobbered Alexander at the box office last weekend, for cryin’ out loud. How much do you have to suck to get your ass handed to you by a cartoon sponge? On the other hand, Tyra Banks is on Letterman tonight. If I ever find myself in the company of a significant schweetie again, I’m going to make sure right up front that Tyra’s on my List, if you know what I mean. Wow.
Back on the island, it’s day 32. The three reward-winners, Chris, Ami and Perfect Eliza, come strolling into camp. I guess it would have been a little confrontational for Eliza to drive them up in her Brand New Car. Jules greets Ami: “Hi, pretty. Mmm. You smell nice.” I flash back momentarily to a prison movie I saw on the special channel last weekend before snapping back to reality.
“It was great to have a new smell in camp,” Jules says in voice-over. “Especially for Chris, ’cause Chris stinks.” She says it matter-of-factly, but I think she’s just pulling his pigtails. Even now, Jules is using every tool in her toolbox to stay on the last man’s good side. I don’t blame her a bit.
Amidst all the hugging and sniffing and generally mammalian behavior, in walks Twila. Not a smile, not a wave, not a kind word. Cold shoulder all around.
A little while later, Ami takes an opportunity to demonstrate, as if there were any doubt, why everybody thinks she sucks. Scout: “I think I’ll go get firewood.” Ami, referring to herself, Jules and Perfect Eliza: “We’re waiting for that pot to cool. And then it’ll take all three of us to pour it.”
Right in the mouth.
While Scout’s off chopping firewood — seven-hundred-year-old Scout, remember — Ami munches on shreds of coconut and opines, “She is the most jealous person I’ve ever met.” Yes, that’s it, Ami. Everybody hates you because we’re jealous of you. That’s exactly it.
Her comment that follows, though, is just funny. “Scout is irritated with me for some reason, whether it’s because she’s older and I’m younger and I still have my body and she — I don’t know what it is.” This from a girl who’s got conspicuously fake breasts that cost her $4,500 each and a distended pot belly. Yeah. She’s still got her body all right. At least the parts that are bought and paid for. Ugh.
Right in the mouth.
Then comes a catfight over boiled manioc root. The details don’t matter … okay, that’s a lie. In truth, the details are so mind-bogglingly boring that I can’t bring myself to transcribe them. Suffice it to say that Scout and Ami fight, and it’s annoying all around, but Ami manages to go so completely over the top in her queen-bitch-of-the-universe routine that I find myself just wanting to give Scout a hug. It’s that bad.
But the worst is yet to come. Scout goes to take a blanket off the pile. Ami yells — yells — at her from across the camp: “Get your own damn blanket! That’s ours!”
Right in the fucking mouth.
Sun goes down, sun comes up, it’s day 33. “Tree-mail” arrives, this time in the form of something that looks like a lacquered hockey puck. There’s a poem, as always, that gives the players a hint as to the nature of the immunity challenge; the poem, as always, contributes nothing.
The tribe spends a fruitless few minutes speculating about what the challenge might be, then we smash cut to a crane shot of what looks like an oversized air hockey table with a map painted on it. The players assemble and Probst explains the rules.
Remember up yonder when I said that they should give Scout a break and concoct a challenge that’s based on bingo or shuffleboard? Well, here you go. This is a game of shuffleboard. The map on the table is of a number of islands. Each player will get a fixed number of pucks, and will have to slide his or her pucks along the table and have them stop on one of the islands. At any point, another player can knock one of your pucks out of position with his or her puck. Unless, that is, you manage to get your puck into one of a few depressions on the board, points that represent volcanoes. (Have I mentioned that Vanuatu is a volcanic island chain? Not just islands. Volcanic islands.)
It looks like fun. Let’s play.
Chris goes first, and manages to get his puck nowhere near any of the islands. Twila’s up next; she also fails to connect. Then comes Perfect Eliza, who in addition to having fabulous breasts is also pretty good at shuffleboard; she plants her puck on the edge of one of the islands and scores a point.
And so on, in that fashion. Ami scores a point. Jules executes an amazing bank shot that drops her puck right into one of the depressions — the “volcanoes” — but whether it was skill or just beginner’s luck remains to be seen.
Scout takes a turn but fails to score a point. Twila comes up for her second turn and gets a puck into one of the “volcanoes.” Eliza fails to connect, as does Ami. Jules scores a point. Scout doesn’t. Chris overshoots and fails to score.
At the end of round two, Jules has two points; Ami, Eliza and Twila have one; and Scout and Chris are shut out.
Perfect Eliza takes a turn, but doesn’t score. Ami attempts a bank shot and is not successful. Jules fails to connect; so does Scout. Chris gets on the board. Twila fails.
Ami takes a turn; she scores her second point. Jules doesn’t score a point and stays tied with Ami. Scout scores her first point. Chris knocks one of Julie’s pucks out of position and leaves his own puck in place, taking a point away from her and earning a point for himself. (See how this works?) He’s now tied with Ami for the lead.
This is about the point in the game where I start chanting “Anybody but Ami, Anybody but Ami” under my breath.
Twila takes a turn and scores her second point, tying Ami and Chris for the lead. Perfect Eliza fires off an ill-considered shot and knocks one of her own pucks out of position, reducing her own score to zero and putting her in last place.
Jules shoots; she fails. Scout shoots; she scores. It’s a four-way tie for the lead. Chris moves out ahead with his shot. Twila fails to convert. Perfect Eliza spazzes out completely — either that or she was trying to brain Julie with her puck and make it look like an accident — and finishes the game dead last with zero points. Ami takes her last turn, aims for one of Chris’s pucks, but misses and hits one of her own instead. She deducts a point from her own score, but it doesn’t matter; Chris, with three points, wins immunity.
Third commercial break. They’re hyping the hell out of this ice skating event, aren’t they? They’ve branded it “Ice Wars 2004,” but they kinda torpedoed their own manly-man, testosterone-fueled image by signing a makeup company as the over-the-marquee sponsor. So now it’s “Oil of Olay Presents Ice Wars 2004.” Lame. I mean, even more lame than if it were just figure skating, which by itself is pretty damn lame. This is even lamer.
On the way back to camp, Ami congratulates Chris: “Good job, Chris,” she says. Translation: “I long to feast on your steaming entrails. Turn your back on me for one second and you’ll find yourself disemboweled. Your last sight will be me with your hot blood running down my chin.”
Chris says something in voice-over about how funny it is that he had to beat the girls at a board game instead of a foot-race or a feat of endurance, but I get distracted halfway through when Jules walks by camera. She’s letting her cargo pants ride extra low today, and the sight of her hipbones undulating rhythmically as she walks is enough to jar me right out of my train of thought.
“Can you believe I knocked myself off?” Ami asks, once again exerting every ounce of strength she has to put a spin on the story. Chris didn’t beat her, see; she knocked her own puck off, thereby defeating herself. Because no man could possibly beat her. She’s just a victim here, really.
Right in the mouth.
Elsewhere, Perfect Eliza and Twila are sitting on the beach. “You do know she’s got to go,” Twila says, referring obviously to Ami. Perfect Eliza ripostes, “But then you’re not going to turn around and vote for me, are you?” Twila: “No, hon.”
Perfect Eliza reveals her trust issue. See, Twila swore to Ami on her son’s life that she was a member of Ami’s black coven and that she would be loyal. Then, mere hours later, she turned around and engineered a coup d’etat. So Perfect Eliza is understandably reluctant to take Twila’s word for much these days.
Twila does all she really can do: She promises. Again.
Time passes. Perfect Eliza and Ami find themselves alone in camp. Ami: “I want you to know that I feel like I’ve stood up for you five million times. If you threw me aside at the very end of the game, that would hurt my feelings.”
Perfect Eliza heroically refrains from bashing Ami’s head in with a rock while screaming “You threw me under the bus at the last tribal council, you bitch, and now you’re telling me that you stood up for me? Die! Die! Die!” I’m amazed by her willpower.
Meanwhile, Chris and Twila are moving furniture, or something. They’re carrying a log from here to there. I don’t know if it’s firewood, shelter or food. Or just a pretense to pow-wow. Either way, they’re talking. Twila asks Chris if there’s any way Ami and Julie could convince Eliza to vote with them. Chris says no, that doing that would only guarantee a tie, and that would throw everything up in the air.
Ties are a tricky subject. In the past, ties have been broken in a variety of ways, seemingly at random. I don’t know if anybody — outside the producers, of course — know how a tie would be broken tonight. Chris has a theory, seemingly pieced together from previous seasons. “If there is a tie, it’s my understanding that everyone would have the opportunity to vote again. And if voting again did not break the tie, the two people being voted for would get immunity, and the rest of us would pull rocks. And whoever drew a colored rock goes home.”
If Chris is right, ties are death in this game. A tie vote guarantees that the two people who are tied won’t be going home, and that somebody else in the game selected at random will be. That sounds like something I’d like to see sometime … but I can’t imagine it ever happening. It’s too drastic. It’s suicide.
But that assumes, of course, that everybody involved stops to think things through. I’m not at all sure that’s what happening here. Perfect Eliza and Jules take some time out to dish, and along the way Eliza wonders out loud about the possibility of changing her vote and throwing it to a tie. Her eyes grow as big as saucers. You can almost see the rush of power surge through her. She’s tempted by the idea. She’s tempted by the idea of doing it just to fuck with people.
Jules seemingly goads her on: “It would be the best thing that could happen in this game,” she says. Which means either she’s just not thinking or she’s trying to trick Perfect Eliza into making a really, really bad move.
At this point, Eliza’s a wild card. It could go either way.
And with that, we join the action at tribal council. The players file in and plant their torches in the little holes that were drilled in the set specifically for torch-planting. They take their seats around the fire. Probst brings in the jury — Sarge, Cyborg Chad and Leann — who are there not to speak but to sit and watch and judge without mercy. Then comes the talk-show part of the evening. Probst asks Ami if she was shocked at the last tribal council. “Yeah, I was shocked,” she says. “I was gonna go home and sleep with Leann” — I’m just gonna assume that’s not at all how she meant it, but who the hell knows? — “but she wasn’t coming home.”
Probst asks Scout what Chris is still doing on the island. Scout says that she wanted to see if the girls could stay together, but it turned out that they couldn’t. She saw her shot, she says, and there was no danger, so she took it.
Probst follows up, asking if it’s fair to say that her interest in keeping the women’s team together lasted only as long as doing so would be good for her personally. Scout says a bunch of words that add up to “Duh.”
Probst asks Ami if she’s a part of the tribe. She says she’s not. Then she lays into Twila without mercy, accusing her of “disgustingly lying” to her. “That person, to me, is just written out of my life,” she says.
Twila very politely asks for the floor so she can “clear that up.” She starts out slow, but after about half a dozen words she’s practically shouting: “I am not the only frigging person who’s lied in this game! Get over it!” Good advice. She goes on: “Get on with it! You been had! Screw you!”
Ami cackles. I imagine what her horse-teeth would feel like against my knuckles. I imagine they’d hurt, probably a lot. I spend a moment wondering whether it’d be worth it. I decide to table the decision until after tonight’s vote. If she manages, somehow, to stay in the game, hell yeah it’d be worth it. Lemee at her.
Ami says something silly about how lying isn’t worth a million dollars to her, how it’s not worth a gazillion dollars to her. Who does she think she’s fooling? She’s the most insincere human being on the planet right now. She makes Saddam Hussein look like a straight shooter. She lies with every word out of her mouth, and that includes words like “and” and “the.” All she wants to do right now is claim the moral high ground. I say let her have it, because she’s not fooling anybody.
Probst, to Eliza: Is this just sour grapes? Eliza: Twila betrayed Ami and that hurts. All together now: Awwww.
Probst follows up, asking her how she feels about her vote at the last tribal council. Perfect Eliza gives the stock answer about how she’s formed real friendships and how it hurts so much to vote for people, and then she goes on to offer to sign Leann’s yearbook, and in pink highlighter she writes, “2 Good + 2 Be = 4 Gotten” all over the inside back cover.
Probst: “Would you miss Ami if she was gone?” Eliza, without hesitation: “Yep. A lot.” But she’s got a sort of gleam in her eye, you know? There’s a sort of glint there, a sort of something that seems to whisper, “But if she stays, I’ll have no chance of winning the game. And I’d miss the million dollars more.”
Maybe it’s just my imagination. But I don’t think so.
Perfect Eliza waxes lyrical about Ami’s virtues, calling her “the big sister I never had.” Ami cries. Perfect Eliza cries. I cry … out in disgust. Please. Eliza, you bonded with Ami because she kissed your ass. She manipulated you, and she used you, and when it was no longer convenient — you know, last tribal council — she cast you aside like a used Kleenex. “The sister I never had” my ass. She’s more like the Mommie Dearest you never had. She’s Joan Crawford and you’re Louie B. Mayer. Or something. I never actually watched the movie. I was just going for the analogy to make myself seem like a big man, and to fill time while Eliza and Ami finish hamming it up.
After a little business regarding the immunity necklace, Probst sends the kids off to vote. Twila writes down Ami’s name, calling her a “drama queen to the end.” Ami writes down Scout’s name, and I think she hits her with some kind of lesbian smack-down. “You’re pretty good at hiding your nasty side, but when your true colors come out, they’re not part of any rainbow I’ve ever seen.” I think she’s saying that Scout betrayed the Sapphic Sisterhood or something. Whatever. She’s come down with a grade-A case of jungle madness, if you ask me.
Scout writes down Ami’s name, and says something completely cryptic: “Queens get dethroned, and lightning will strike a lone tree on top of a mountain faster than anything.” I think CBS was wildly irresponsible to let that go out over the air. It’s clearly a coded action message to terrorist sleeper cells. Or something.
Probst reads off the names: One vote for Ami. One vote for Scout. One vote for Ami. One vote for Scout. One vote for Ami. One vote for Ami. Game’s over, baby. You’re goin’ home.
On her way up to have her torch snuffed — if you know what I mean – Ami mumbles something. My roommate immediately asks, “Did she just say ‘Fuck all y’all?’” As I’m reaching for the remote she adds, “’Cause I could respect somebody who says ‘Fuck all y’all.’” I wind it back, then again, then again, and finally I think I can make it out: She says “Good luck all you young ’uns.” Which, in the language of the queen of all lies and the empress of all tricks, means, “Fuck all y’all.”
Last week I cackled maniacally. This week I just sit back, let out a deep sigh, and think, “About damn time.”
Next week on “Survivor”: Twila is the new Ami, and Perfect Eliza reaches around to scratch her back and finds a spine there.
(Special bonus: I normally don’t report on the “It was fun to play the game, it stinks that I lost” claptrap that the newly ousted contestants say over the closing credits because I have an inborn aversion to things that are vapid and dumb. But tonight Ami says, “If I could just hold Twila under water for two minutes, I think it would make me feel better.” Holy shit! You know this girl is going to go back to the hotel or wherever the producers stash the losers until the game’s over and drown a kitten in the bathtub or something. She’s a serious, full-on sociopath. Borderline personality disorder. Prescribe medication now before someone gets hurt!)
Back issues
- Pants of fire: Survivor Week 1
- Swing vote, my ass: Survivor Week 2
- French-braid this: Survivor Week 3
- Victory through tapioca: Survivor Week 4
- Stupid is as stupid does: Survivor Week 5
- The secret word is ‘ass’: Survivor Week 6
- It’s nap time: Survivor Week 7
- Baby did a bad, bad thing: Survivor Week 8
- Sarge of darkness: Survivor Week 9
- Act of desperation: Survivor Week 10
- It’s kind of like a game show: Survivor Week 11
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