The merge has arrived and so far, the psychotic alliance continues to hold together. Hard to believe, isn’t it, what with Shane and his son’s name withdrawing from the alliance and Bruce being so far on the outskirts.
When we last left our intrepid survivors a couple of weeks ago, Casaya had won immunity and made a sort of peace with each other, Sally had been sent to search for a missing idol on Exile Island, and La Mana were forced to vote out one of the members of the boy scouts.
The episode began, not with a group rendition of kumbaya as you’d expect after having seen the Casayans bond with each other and the Panamanian villagers, but with Courtney trying to hog as much blanket as she could.
She complained about being cold. That’s one of the mad points of being a professional fire dancer – any temperature below 1000˚ C is cold to her. Notably, Shane did not mock her or call her something but instead berated her fairly gently (for Shane) as others were trying to use the blanket. What? Boring. How long until the nicotine high wears off and Shane is insane again?
Over at La Mana, the boys got some treemail instructing them to make like Enid Blyton characters and go treasure hunting. As if their boys’ own fantasies aren’t being fed into enough. They soon found a boat with a box and a note in – they were to go to Casaya’s camp and enter the lair of the psychotic alliance. The fine print on the note said “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”.
The three of them took their belongings and rowed to Casaya Beach, Sally conspicuously missing. But how was Sally going to get there? Had the producers forgotten about her all the way on Exile Island, still searching for an immunity idol that wasn’t there?
Luckily for her, her cries of “Uh guys, I’m still stuck on the goddamn island. Somebody get me off this thing! Anybody? Pleeeaaassse?” alerted the producers to her presence and she was motorboated to Casaya Beach as the other La Manans had to row their asses off.
As the Casayans saw the La Manans approaching, they immediately tried to shove all their rice into their throats before they could land and have any. Thanks for the warm welcome, guys. It’s not like every other merge ever has come with a free feast to celebrate or anything. Assholes.
But their consumption of seventeen kilograms of rice in a three minute period came back to bite them in the ass when they opened the box and found yummy treats waiting for them. There was fruit, crackers and wine. If only Bobby was still around to steal it and mock Courtney for not getting any.
The new tribe was named after the Spanish word for former Big Brother contestants – Gaetanos. Bruce was chosen to decorate their flag, and painted a lovely Manga cartoon depicting Casaya and La Mana battling each other in giant robots.
Either the Casayans tried to pretend they weren’t insane, or the La Manans were simply too polite to say anything, because the two tribes immediately started hanging out and bonding. I suspect it was a combination of booze and the need to suck up that made La Mana so eager to get along with their new tribemates.
"And that is how you do an African handshake, Nick my homey."They decided to get Bruce and Shane on their side as they had been part of the Older Guys tribe way back when. Realising the potential Bruce had for turning, Aras decided he would stop treating him like the crazy old uncle who lived in the bathroom and pretend he actually gave two craps about him and valued his opinion.
In his first scene since getting sick from beans, Nick immediately made a faux pas when he accidentally smacked Bruce (Why couldn’t it have been Shane? Or Aras?) in the face with a machete. Yes, that’s the way to convince him to join your alliance. Wound him with a weapon. What next, Nick? Are you going to throw the fishing spear at Cirie’s head?
Everyone freaked out about the amount of blood that trickled from Bruce’s tiny wound but to be honest, it was barely noticeable. Call me when you’ve fallen into a fire, Bruce. He had chipped a tooth but I’m sure that with people like Aras and Courtney around him, they’ve already rustled up some very special herbs to smoke for pain management.
Casaya obviously viewed Terry as the biggest threat and wondered if he’d found the immunity idol. Shane’s innate reading of Terry led him to the conclusion that he hadn’t yet found it. Brilliant! There’s that Svengali-like ability to read people he bragged about in his
bio.While the Casayans are right to regard Terry as a threat immunity-wise, I suspect they needn’t pay that much attention to his strategic game. Terry approached Shane and Cirie with the following offer: “If you join us, we’ll take the burden of Tribal Council off your shoulders for the next two weeks.”
My, what a persuasive argument. Never mind that Shane and Cirie are already assured of safety at TC for the next two weeks due to being, ya know, part of the dominant alliance. As Cirie put it, he was like a dictionary salesman trying to sell one to someone who already had a whole set of encyclopedias. If you ignore the fact that Casaya is one book short of a full set of encyclopedias, it’s a pretty apt comparison.
It looks to me like the problem with Terry’s game is that he doesn’t have an Ian-type to do all the scheming and plotting for him. He may be Tom 2.0 but he’s not going to be as successful as Tom did if his strategy to get players to vote with his alliance is offering them something they already have. Where’s Dolphin Boy when you need him?
The first individual Immunity Challenge involved pretending to be a sloth and hanging upside down on a pole for as long as possible.
"Ooooowwww! This challenge sucks! Our arms and legs feel like they're about to fall off!"
"Yeah, now you see it aint easy being a sloth, right bitches? Think about that the next time you call us lazy."
Terry proved to be amazingly adept at holding on and looked like a monkey hanging comfortably. So it came as no surprise when he held on until the end, with only Nick to beat. Nick’s story-arc did not turn out to be surprising challenge winner and he finally fell off after about 45 minutes. At least I think he fell. Jeff might have just forgotten he was there, like the rest of us, and handed Terry the victory.
The shrunken heads were retired and an ugly necklace was unveiled as the new immunity idol. It looks like a pre-school art project. Did Jeff get his toddler nephew to makie it? Worse, did he get Julie to do it?
Immunity idol courtesy of Wendy Pepper designsAfter the challenge, Austin revealed that he had decided to pretend to be weaker than he was in the challenge so the Casayans wouldn’t target him. Hey, Austin? That might’ve worked better had you not held on tight until the top three.
Still, his efforts to appear weaker than Nick paid off. A Casaya meeting, led by Shane who had suddenly turned into a nursery school teacher (Aras is clearly rubbing off on him), determined that Nick was a bigger threat than Austin and should be voted off instead.
Unfortunately, at TC, Austin decided to confess what he’d done. At this point, I slapped my forehead hard as I always seem to do whenever I see the La Manans try to “strategise”? Um, Austin, you do know that acting like you’re a weak little lamb is rendered completely pointless when you reveal that you are acting?
Sigh. The La Manans are doomed, aren’t they? Terry’s a bad dictionary salesman, Austin actually tells other people what his strategy is, Nick bonds with people by hitting them in the face with bladed weapons, and Sally’s a giiiiirrrrrrllll.
At the TC, the Casayans were cocky they wouldn’t be betrayed and Terry expressed a wish that the merge had come a bit later so La Mana had had a chance to even up the odds a bit and go in with only one less member. Yes, because we all know how well they were doing at winning those immunities. They were like Ulong 2: Slightly Less Ulonger.
Time for voting. La Mana prayed they had gotten at least Bruce on their side to get a tie. No dice. The votes were read and it was Nick who was voted out by a margin of six votes to Shane’s four.
So close to losing Shane and yet so far, thanks to Bruce sticking with the alliance who’ll probably vote him out first as soon as they eliminated the remaining La Manans. But I’m sure a bit of ego-stroking by Aras is way more important to him than a paltry one million bucks, right?
Cheers, Nick. We hardly knew ye.
If you were hoping Nick’s final words would give us some insight into this cipher, you would be disappointed. He rattled off some inspirational words of self-help claptrap that urged all young people that they could change the world if they followed their dreams.
Gee, thanks, Nick, I really appreciate the insight into your own hopes, dreams and personality. Let us know when you release that self-help book ghost-written by Austin called “How Not Showing Any Hint Of A Personality Can Change the Universe”, ‘kay?