Looks like Sanele’s life-giving flame was not so much responsible for Danielle’s reprieve as it was for her temporary stay-of-execution. It just goes to show that tampering with the forces of nature is never successful: Danielle’s torch was meant to be snuffed at the last TC and by Jove it was going to be snuffed for good the next TC.
Nicotine on the other hand is one lucky bastard. I guess the role of Barnacle who just can’t be gotten rid of will be passed on to him now that Danielle’s gone.
This episode started off a little differently than usual. Instead of showing the usual sad reactions teams tend to exhibit after they have to vote someone out, Rama were in high spirits at the twist.
Sure there was a bit of sadness over Danielle being gone (“When we come back from Tribal Council, it always feels like there’s someone missing,” was Lezel’s astute observation on the whole thing) but there was general agreement that Danielle going to the other tribe was in fact A Good Thing.
“Hooray! Instead of being one down, we’re one up!” they rejoiced, “When we get to the merge, we’ll have be up in numbers! Danielle will be our spy on the other side!” Jacinda in particular was pleased that Danielle had been the one to go because she knew that Danielle was the one most likely to get in with the leader yet still show loyalty to Rama.
Trust the Brain Trust of Rama to think that a woman who expressed disappointment at being chosen for Rama rather than Aguilera at the start of the game and has just been voted out in a blindside will remain loyal to the same people who wrote her name down.
Nevertheless, Rama believed they would have the edge come merge time. More like they’ll be on the edge come merge time. Similarly, much of Aguilera was pleased at the appearance of Danielle in their tribe.
Brigitte was happy because she and Danielle had instantly clicked pre-game so she had a ready-made ally (whose name she doesn’t even know: it’s Danielle not Daniella, Brigitte). Nicotine was happy because a newcomer might somehow distract from his giant gaping maw of spouting *bleep!* he calls a mouth.
When Danielle expressed anger over Rama voting her out and confirmed her loyalty to her new tribe (Jacinda’s not just a great leader, she’s an amazing reader of people too!), the Aguilerans felt utterly secure in their belief that come merge time, they would have – yes, you guessed it – the edge.
With all this confidence in the air, who will end up having the edge and who will be left with the blunt bit that nobody wants?
It was very lucky for Nicotine that a new voting possibility besides him had suddenly opened up because he was in top bitch mode this episode. His supervising of the shelter renovations pissed off all around him especially archnemesis Brigitte.
“It would be a bless to get rid of him,” she said. What’s a bless? Bles Bridges? No matter, I will overlook her appalling grammar because she hates Nico and that whole “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” thing.
Nicotine took a break from taking swipes at Brigitte’s allegedly fat ass (that’s metaphorical swipes, you gutter-minded people, you) to rag on Mzi (pronounced ‘Imzi’).
“He thinks he can become the Zulu but there’s only one Zulu in the game and he’s gone. There’s no space for another Zulu.” But wouldn’t the one Zulu being gone mean that there’s an opening available? If he must make utterly stupid statements like that against my Mzi, can’t they at least make the tiniest bit of sense?
Nicotine wasn’t totally a useless whinger this episode. His moment to shine came in the Reward Challenge which was a slight variation on the
“Teams run around a circle until the one team makes enough ground the catch the other one” challenge seen in Palau. Instead of running around in water carrying heavy bags, teams had to run around the same obstacle course again and again.
It was called the Circle of Evil. The reason for this soon became evident when Zayn’s butt crack made its first appearance. Aiiiiiieeeeee!!! Where is the blur, WHERE IS THE BLUR???!!!
Alas, the producers blew their entire budget on overly enthusiastic sound editors and speedboats trips to the mainland every time someone had a boo-boo, so there was no money left for the merciful pixels that would have spared us the sight of a full-on Zayn ass shot.
Zayn’s exposed buttocks proved to be a visible target for the Aguilerans as they chased Rama. This and Nicotine’s fanatical need for the coffee beans reward is what pulled them forward enough to catch Rama.
Considering how frenzied Nicotine looked over those coffee beans, I’m pretty sure he would have won anyway even if he’d had to drag the lifeless bodies of his teammates around the course.
Poor Zayn looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders after the loss and I felt myself feeling for him even though I’d been psychologically scarred by his ass crack only moments before. He just looked so damn defeated.
Aguilera returned to camp triumphant and enjoyed their reward of coffee beans, salt, pepper and lentils. Not that any of the other rewards existed for Nicotine besides the coffee beans. As he said, he wasn’t Barbra Streisand so why should he care about lentils and pepper and the like.
Does Barbra Streisand have some sort of lentil fetish I don’t know about? Good God, Nico, stop trying to be witty! Your putdowns and sarcastic remarks make NO SENSE! There’s an art to these kinds of things!
For a while it looked as though Danielle’s joining the tribe might not have been the positive for Nicotine that he’d first thought, when she, Vanessa and Brigitte discussed voting him off over some group pot cleaning (with what looked to be steel wool! What, did that also wash up on shore like all their other amenities?).
The ever observant Mzi did not fail to notice the women scuttling off together and expressed worry that they might band together to form a chick alliance. Could the collective pot-cleaning be a sign of impending mutiny?
With ninety percent of the Aguilera airtime and almost none of Rama’s devoted to this kind of strategy talk, the ‘shock’ results of the IC were not really shocking. Perhaps if Aguilera had chosen to sit out its weakest member (ie Danielle) for IC rather than RC, they wouldn’t have lost so badly. Otherwise it was fairly uneventful. Rama dominated throughout and there was swimming and more near nudity from Zayn.
For the love of God, I beg whoever’s responsible for the Cerebros salt and bottled water these pampered pups are enjoying to give Zayn a belt. But even though he was inches away from flashing the country on national television, Zayn was in high spirits. Rama winning the Immunity Driftwood meant he was safe from his highly likely elimination. Hooray! I rather like Zayn even if he does constantly try to blind me and
is failing dismally to live up to his promise as the show’s villain. Oh yes, and let’s not forget his jokes about his curry-smelling armpits.
Driven by Zayn’s bragging about his armpits that smell of food, the other Ramans decided to do a bit of fishing. Gareth gave Mzigyver a run for his money when he decided to use the hammock as a net. It worked too: they managed to catch a good-sized catfish.
Is Rama’s luck finally beginning to change?
Over at Aguilera, Mzi had no time to one up Gareth in the fishing stakes by creating a hammock out of palm fronds and then using it as a net. He was too busy trying to convince Brigittte and Vanessa to vote against Danielle rather than Nicotine.
He even suggested to Brigitte to toss off a throwaway vote against him if she just couldn’t stomach the thought of voting for Danielle instead of Nicotine. With Brigitte’s immense dislike of the long-haired wanker as well as the vote he had already, it looked like Mzi was facing an uphill battle.
But hey, it’s Mzi, right? If anyone could do it, he could. The results of TC showed just how persuasive he could be. Brigitte’s curiously tactical comments about Nicotine seemed to suggest she’d resolved not to vote for him and was going to have to live with him.
You could almost see her literally grinding her teeth when Nicotine answered Mark’s questions with his usual crap. “I’m basing my votes on morals and values,” he said. What have morals and values got to do with voting out Danielle because she’s “not a part of the tribe”? Why does he think his vote is part of some grand moral scheme all of a sudden?
Besides his pointless proselytizing on his reasons for voting out Danielle, he also boasted about how clueless he was about tribe affairs when he claimed that there was no strategising at Aguilera. Oh, you silly man. Just because your sole method of strategising consists of pissing everyone off and then waiting for Mzi to hopefully save your hide doesn’t mean there’s no strategy happening. Mark put paid to these ridiculous delusions of his.
As the votes were being tallied, a random vote for Mzi gave away that Brigitte had indeed decided to turn her back on Danielle. This time there was no zombie survivor to give her his flame and she was voted out.
I’m pleased that Nicotine wasn’t voted out because he’s such good villain material but my one hope is that Brigitte somehow manages to outlast him.
Picture courtesy of the M-Net website's official Survivor gallery