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Remember how John Woo thought getting rid of Ashley would magically make Dave bearable and get rid of all the tension in the tribe? That didn´t work out so well. Turns out there was another overly-endowed thorn in Dave´s side in the form of Sherea.

All Dave was trying to do was lead the tribe in his characteristic gentle and respectful way but Sherea was having none of that. First she separated the moldy rice from the clean rice in a way that was unsatisfactory to Herr Dave. She also tried to throw out some very important shells Dave wanted to take home to his mother (who I wouldn’t be surprised to find out was a skeleton in a rocking chair) so he went off on her for not respecting the sanctity of his shells or some such silliness. Sherea did her part to keep the sassy black woman stereotype alive and they exchanged words, many of which were bleeped out.

The death-match of the episode was made clear. One of the two was surely going down…but first there was 45 minutes of Jean-Robert being an ass, Courtney’s eyerolling, John Woo sucking, and gratuitous Amanda butt shots to get through.

A man transformed

Jean-Robert´s grand strategy of setting extremely low expectations and then superseding them was starting to pay off. Others were impressed by his gradually improving work ethic. Who knew his Mighty Duck strategy would actually work? It´s not the meek who are going to inherit the earth, it´s the underachievers.

Courtney was not impressed by JR´s sudden transformation. She still found him abrasive and didn´t like him raising his voice at her. I would be worried too if I were her – she looks as if she might keel over from one strong shout to the ear.

JR, for his part, believed that Courtney would be lucky to survive one more TC – I´m not sure if he meant not being voted off or not dying of malnourishment. Cocky bastard. He might do well to remember that Survivor players may be short-sighted, short-tempered and quite often passengers on the short bus, but they have is long memories for other people´s mistakes. Just because he’s altering his behaviour by sucking less doesn´t mean everyone will forget the initial gaping hole of suck that was his first few days.

The TC involved flaming balls entering chutes to create fireworks. There´s something vaguely suggestive about all of that but I´ll be damned if I can figure out what it is. Failing won and picked Dave as the kidnap victim. Happy faces all round, from Dave himself who would be eating well at Failing to the John Woo members who would be rid of the crazy fool.

Crazy little thing called Dave

Failing soon found out that among the many pieces of information that Leslie had neglected to mention from her time at John Woo was the fact that Dave was completely insane. Dave had enough sense not to drive the other tribe work like oxen but the rest of his time at Failing was pretty much selected scenes from One Flew Over the Cuckoo´s Nest.

Todd found his behaviour bizarre but pretended he didn´t think Dave was one rice grain short of a paddy so he earn his trust. It worked. Dave for some reason thought Todd was an upstanding, honest guy – this when just about everyone else that´s interacted with him has caught on he´s a player – and gave him the third clue to the hidden immunity idol.

Failing then got to enjoy their reward – a visit from some locals to teach them some essential skills. It was a whole family too; the parents got to teach the tribe how to fish and catch food, while the kids taught the tribe how to make thousands of cheap shoes on only a handful of rice a day.

JR revealed that he had once lived in Taiwan and could speak Mandarin. He´s full of surprises, that one. Full of something else too but I´ve already remarked on that enough. Despite his impressive language skills, he´s still JR and therefore still managed to piss James off while translating a request from a little girl in a way James perceived as bossy. JR, I know you want to be seen as a hard worker now but it might be a good idea to model your behaviour after freakin´ Dave.

The IC was really, really cool. Pretty much all the challenges have been really, really cool as a matter of fact, and I´m usually one who wants the challenges to end so I can get back to the scheming. There was armour and sling-throwing and random slo-mo like deleted scenes from a Zack Snyder movie. Failing won, as they often do, despite Frosti´s promise that he would see the immunity idol soon. From afar only, dude.

Crazy versus lazy part 2

John Woo got down to business and tried to figure out which of Dave or Sherea they could afford to lose. Sherea, after all, had been lazing it up Jean Robert style, despite strong challenge performances. According to her, she was not going to work until she really, really needed to. Great, it´s the Jean Robert strategy only without the actual lessening of the sucking as time wears on.

Still, Dave was a crazy workhouse who might kill them all in their sleep if they didn´t listen to him. It was a tough choice for them. Or maybe not so tough. When TC came, it was a unanimous vote for Dave, despite Erik´s assertions that Dave was a great leader. Yeah, compared to Kim Jong-Il.

In his closing words, Dave said he was proud of himself for playing with integrity. Dave, just because you managed not to kill any of your tribe-members does not mean you played with integrity.

Today´s quote from Sun Tzu:

Crazy eyes and crazy smile
Aren´t good ways to win affection
Working your tribe like sweating mules
Can lead to violent insurrection

If you must make your people slaves
Make sure your reign is autocratic
Cos they will vote your pale ass out
If the vote is democratic

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