Oh no! Just when I was looking forward to Nicotine making it to the jury and regaling us with more home-spun ‘wisdoms’ at the final TC, he gets his ass ejected from the game. How could the show be so cruel? Everyone knows that self-satisfied idiots like Nicotine always spout the most entertaining *bleep!* when they become jury members.
I suppose I should have seen it coming. The entire episode focused around the dueling duo of Nicotine and Brigitte. The show couldn’t have highlighted their hatred for each other any better is they’d started selling Team Nico and Team Brigitte T-shirts on the M-Net website.
With Danielle out of the way, Nicotine could once again turn his full hatred towards Brigitte. Indeed, Brigitte and Nictotine looked to have something in common (well, something else in common besides a complete inability to make much sense) in their dissing of Danielle.
Nicotine bragged about how Danielle’s exit had proved how united Aguilera was while Brigitte pointed out that it must suck to be voted out of two tribes once in succession. Way to rub it in, Brigitte. I’m sure Danielle will send you a fruit basket thanking you for pointing out her loserdom on national TV.
But Nicotine and Brigitte’s thoughts swung inevitably towards each other once more. Nicotine focused on Brigitte’s two-facedness, and how devious it was that she was so chummy-chummy with Vanessa when previously she had never given her the light of day.
I think you mean “time of day”, Nico, because I can’t see how it would be possible for Brigitte to give anyone the light of day unless she is a freakin’ god. Anyway, Vanessa’s been laying so low under the radar that I’m not even sure Brigitte noticed she was there.
Brigitte’s once again gave us her opinion that Nicotine talks so much crap that it’s hard to tell which end is his head and which end is his ass. That was the gist of what she said at any rate though I may have embellished it a little.
She then reminded me why, no matter how much I feel her in hating Nicotine, I can never bring myself to actually like her by giving us her own *bleep!* talk about hating Nicotine because he doesn’t do what a real man is supposed to do. Ah yes, I had almost forgotten that in Brigitte’s little world, women are weaklings and men are strong, stoic beefeaters or something.
These two seem to articulate the stupidest reasons for hating one another. More and more I’m beginning to think the reason they can’t stand each other is because they’re so similar.
Anyway, after people from both teams had misused the word ‘merger’ approximately five billion times (It’s merge, people! MERGE!), they headed towards the RC. The reward was an absolutely delicious-looking braai which made my mouth water even more than the Nando’s a couple of weeks back. I have got to start eating dinner before I watch Survivor SA.
This RC saw the return of the jumpy stick thingy seen in the first episode of Survivor Africa except this time it was on land and thus less lopsided. The jumpy stick thingy game is what pirates used to play on their off-days to hone their reflexes. Pirating aint all pillaging and rum-drinking after all – you have to have something to do on those long sea voyages besides buggering and contracting scurvy.
Rama lost again, the losers. No wait, that’s not what happened! That’s just what my fingers automatically typed out reflexively. The Ramans actually turned out to be stick-catching prodigies and won their first reward in seven episodes. Man, it was strange typing that sentence.
So Rama got to enjoy a delectable braai while Aguilera left with nothing. In hungry desperation, the Aguilerans decided to exterminate the poor wildlife and slaughter an innocent pelican. Somewhere, Osten the whiny quitter is all “Yeah, kill the evil bastard!”
Nicotine claims the pelican was already injured when they got it but I have no doubt what injured it was an arrow Mzi shot from his homemade bow. Or maybe it was a homemade bazooka. Whatever it was, I’m pretty sure Mzi was responsible.
Not just satisfied with killing one pelican, Mzi decided he would use the first bird’s dead carcass to kill a second one. Just think of it as a mercy killing since the first one was probably the second one’s mate.
Before Mzi could eradicate the entire pelican population of the island, the other pelicans realised he would kill them all if they stayed and they all migrated to the beaches of Costa Rica. They’ll be safe there until Mzi invents and builds his heat-seeking pelican killing arrow no doubt.
With food in their bellies you’d expect Rama to lay off the whining for a while but even when their needs are satisfied, talk at Rama inevitable seems to turn towards how dreadful their lives on the island are.
Zayn had a monologue about how much tougher life on the island was than he’d expected. After all, they had to catch their own food and dig their own toilet. Hmm, have the editors been reading fan criticisms about the show being too easy? Because that little scene couldn’t have been more blatant if the words “Despite what you may think, life on the island was really, really tough. Really! No, seriously!” scrolled across the bottom of the screen at that moment.
One major issue haunted both tribes: the upcoming “merger”. The IC was a key one which would decide exactly which tribe was going to go into the merge with a higher number of members, though not necessarily a higher number of braincells.
The teams had to hold up their own weight by holding onto some sort of pole thingy. Don’t look at me like that. These challenges are really hard to describe, OK?
It was a really cool challenge. Rama looked really shaky for most of it and like they had no chance whatsoever so it was quite a surprise to see Aguilera lose in an instant about half an hour after starting.
The challenge provided a nice insight as to who might do well at the final endurance challenge they always have at the final three; the guys will uniformly suck while the chicks look like they might fare better. Jacinda in particular had that scary zoned-out look that the winners of those final three endurance challenges tend to get, at least until she betrayed a rare moment of emotion and snapped at Zayn for his pained portrayal of The Passion Of The Zayn.
Oh cram it, chairperson. The man weighs way more than your bony ass and looked like he was going to have a stroke holding himself up. He had a lot more to hold up than you and he still did it. His indomitable resolve during the challenge was the best thing about it.
Rama was thrilled while Aguilera turned to blame and recriminations. “They are so weak,” Nicotine said of Rama, conveniently missing the fact that he had just had his ass handed to him by these weaklings.
Guess who Brigitte blamed for the loss. Come on, guess. According to Brigitte, it was Nico who had lost them the challenge because he would rest one of his arms most of the time so she would have to hold up his weight for him.
But according to Jacinda, it was Brigitte who had made some dumb “Ready for a swim” comment that pissed off the Aguilerans and strengthened their resolve to win. Why do I have a feeling that Jacinda will gladly take up the presidency of the Brigitte-haters club now that Nicotine is gone?
Any impending Jacinda /Brigitte unpleasantness will likely pale in comparison to the delightful dysfunction of the Nicotine/Brigitte relationship. The rest of the episode was basically dedicated to how much they truly hated each other.
Nicotine talked about how Brigitte must go home because she was only in it for the ramp and the fame. As opposed to humble and unassuming Nicotine who absolutely does not care about the publicity his restaurant is getting.
He also made this puzzling statement: “She keeps saying she’s too tall for the shelter but she’s not too tall for the tribe.” I have no idea what he’s talking about. I mean, I generally have some small idea of what he’s trying to say even if he does mangle it almost beyond comprehension but this statement broke me. I need a Nico-to-English Babelfish.
Brigitte’s feelings were a little less ambiguous. “I want to cut off his balls and hang them around my neck,” she complained. There’s some nice imagery for you. But hey, at least Nicotine can’t complain about being stabbed in the back because I’m pretty sure you’d have to face someone to perform a castration.
Mzi merely nodded and took the knife for himself just to be safe. No doubt having been reminded of that whole “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” thing, he decided that it would be prudent to hide his super action skills and pretend to be a mere, non-threatening mortal for the time being.
TC featured even more joyous Brigitte/Nicotine bitchery. Nicotine called out Brigitte as two-faced because of how she asks Vanessa and “Imzi” how they slept but not him. Oh, what a master manipulator Brigitte is! She asks people how they sleep! What next will this Jezebel do? Ask them if they enjoyed their meal?
He accused her of playing Mzi and Vanessa like “all 52 cards in a deck”. Has Nicotine ever considered that perhaps Mzi and Vanessa are not bleeding idiots and know exactly what Brigitte is doing? That perhaps they consider him the worse person to take into the merge because of his big, secret-spewing mouth and how he’s stated he hates them for voting against him more than once?
Brigitte got in some of her own zingers when she accused of Nicotine of not doing anything at camp. Nicotine defensively told her he prepares the fish (no doubt that doesn’t count as a manly enough task for Miss Brigitte). So that’s why the fish always smell like an ashtray.
And then they started making out. OK, not really but they should have. They hate each other so much that they have got to get together, so say the rules of TV. He’s even got a nickname for her: Bruschetta.
So who’s with me? Who’s going to join me in shipping Brigitte and Nico as a couple? We can even give them a cutesy TV couple name like Brico or Nikita or something. They’re meant to be, I tell ya!
My hopes for a love-hate romance between the two were dashed when Nicotine was vote off three to one. Aw. Even worse was how this means Nicotine probably won’t be in the jury. Awwwww!
There is a glimmer of hope. The preview for the next episode certainly seemed to hint that we hadn’t seen the last of Nicotine if his elimination means he has “food for thought”. Perhaps he will be a pompous jury member after all? One can only hope…