OK, who predicted back in the second episode that La Mina would smoke Casaya easily in a redux of Koror vs Ulong? I certainly thought that the hippies of Casaya would be no match for the strong, capable La Mina.
How wrong I was. Hippies are far more dangerous than they appear.
The episode began with the return of the full length credits. Oh credits, how I’ve missed you! Never leave me again! After the much missed credits, it was off to La Mina where Sally was feeling real nervous after watching Misty get voted out.
She had good reason to be. The Boy Scout alliance was looking forward to the merge and Sally did not figure into their plans. They had decided that Ruth Marie would be a perfect fifth member of their alliance because she would not flip.
This is because she’s rapidly decaying before our eyes and will be a fully fledged member of the undead by the time the merge comes around, and we all know how loyal the undead are to their living masters.
OK, voting off Misty was one thing and can be rationalised in terms of gameplay but voting off Sally is just dumb. Without her alliance partner, Sally’s not a threat to Terry and co’s immediate future. It’s far too early to be voting out people based on their possible behaviour in the merge. La Mina need to keep strong so they can keep winning challenges or else they likely won’t even have five people by the time they get to the merge. Like duh.
Casaya were having a very different problem. Aras, Shane and Bruce were not happy with the way Danielle, Courtney and Bobby were slacking off instead of tending to the fire.
Who says Courtney wasn’t tending to the fire? Doing celebratory fire dances around it is a taxing task.
Aras then took the time to detail to us exactly how much he hates Courtney. Can you imagine just how spacey and intolerable Courtney must be to elicit a reaction from a fellow new age dip like Aras? Cirie merely laughed conspiratorially in confessionals and told us how much she loved the drama. You’re not the only one, Cirie babe.
The RC was a giant watery puzzle challenge and was sponsored by Charmin. Cue long scenes of survivors orgasming at the thought of getting their hands on some Charmin toilet paper.
Oh please, Charmin – you expect me to be impressed about your brand because of that little scene? Those people have nothing but leaves and sticks to wipe their bums with – they could be given a reward of tinfoil to use as toilet paper and they’d be thrilled.
Much to my horror, Casaya won and sent La Mina’s obvious leader Terry into exile. Besides the toilet paper, they also won a shower and toilet cubicle combo. Hooray! Now Shane has somewhere to flush the drugs should there be a police raid.
Aras suggested they use the toilet stall as a place to store their wood. Screw that, I don’t care if fire is life. Real toilet beats squatting in the forest no matter what the cost. Anyway, what’s to say they can’t use the stall for the purpose for which it was intended (besides Charmin product placement I mean) as well as store wood?
Why doesn’t Aras just use his giant hat to store wood? He could store a whole jungle under there.
"If only I had a brain."Scatologically-minded Bobby decided to inaugurate the toilet when he misunderstood “storing wood” as “dropping a log”. Oh ew, I can’t believe I just wrote that. Clearly Bobby’s gotten to me in a bad way with his million references to his excretory system.
A shot of Bobby’s pants dropping down as he sat inside the toilet stall disturbed me more than anything other thing on this show, and that includes naked Heidi and naked Judd. You don’t need to paint us a watercolour of what Bobby’s doing in there, Burnett.
Meanwhile on La Mina, they were adjusting to life without Terry. If you’re wondering whether the tribe could possibly continue to be functional without their noble leader, don’t be. La Mina did just fine, as long as you don’t count starvation, indecisiveness and an inability to make fire.
Austin immediately suggested they take a nap as soon as they got back to camp. Glad to see they got their priorities straight. I’m sure that’s exactly what Terry would have said they did.
On Exile Island, Terry was poring over the clues to the immunity idol like some gap-toothed, half-dressed version of Sherlock Holmes. Like a fighter jet zeroing in on a target, Terry zeroed in on the location of the hidden immunity idol and dug it up.
The immunity idol is actually an immunity talisman made up of one of those cool shrunken heads on a stick. That would make a wicked cool keyring. Now besides being invaluable to his tribe, the centre of an alliance and really strong at challenges, he’s got an out in case he does get voted out. Yeah, I think Terry’s going to be sticking around for a while.
Back at Casaya, it was Shane and Danielle’s turn to up the tension over slacking. Shane accused Danielle of not pulling her weight. That’s not true. Danielle pulls a lot of weight. Those fifteen kilograms of silicone on her chest aint light, ya know.
Instead of calling Shane a delusional crackhead and giving him the finger like I would have done, Danielle tried to shift the blame onto a sleeping Bobby by claiming he doesn’t work either. Ah, passing the buck – the sign of a guilty mind if there ever was one.
Danielle then bullshitted something about how Shane should stop criticising her because she was once a sports captain. As they say in Boston, I believe they call that a non-sequitah. Sadly, Danielle did not demonstrate her amazing soccer skills by kicking Shane’s balls.
Cirie let herself be drawn into the battle and was forced to admit that Danielle did not do as much work as some of the other people. She then laughed about the fight gleefully and called the alliance one big psychotic joke. I think Cirie might be the Panamanian version of a Greek chorus.
Somehow this motley collection of psychoses, neuroses and 36EEs managed to pull together during the IC and win again. Dammit, not again! It is not fair – Shane is clearly giving his teammates Speed before the challenges.
Despite her great performance at the IC, La Mina once again reiterated their decision to vote off Sally Socks. That is, until someone pointed out that it would be monumentally stupid to vote off stronger people over weaker people at this point in the game. Looks like Terry isn’t the only one who got a clue this episode. The Boy Scouts In general finally wised up.
Dan did not like this turn of events because he’d already promised Ruth Marie a spot in the alliance. “We wouldn’t want to change horses midstream,” he warned his allies. Well no, I wouldn’t want to take a horse midstream at all because
it would drown.
I’m pretty sure considering her increasing mummification, Ruth Marie wouldn’t be a god horse to back. Indeed, keeping her on any longer would be flogging the dead horse.
Ruth Marie interviewed how she was sure she was safe from the vote, which pretty much ensured she was screwed. This was confirmed at TC where everyone but Dan voted off her desiccated ass. Wow, that was a really stupid vote, Dan. Way to distance yourself from your alliance, dude.
In her final speech, Ruth Marie was gracious about the whole experience and wished her former teammates luck. Awww, now I feel bad about all the death jokes I made about her.
Why does all of La Mina have to be so damn nice? And why do they have to keep losing to the damn Casayans?