Did anyone else hear that prolonged wail at around 8:29 on Tuesday evening? That was not, as one might believe, Terry playing monopoly with his wife and moaning of unfairness because she beat him.
That sound was the sound of a couple of million Survivor viewers letting out a collective primeval cry at the “to be continued” caption at the end of this episode.
What cruelty! What sadism! Leaving us poor Survivor fans to wait an entire week just to know who wins the tiebreaker! The wait could only be more torturous if it involved an awesome and beloved contestant whom I’d dearly love to see win…
GAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!! CIRIIIIIEEEEE!! HOW CAN THE PRODUCERS BE SO EVIL!
The episode started off with no indication of the nasty surprise waiting for us at the end. The final four were returning from TC and Cirie happened to drop her torch somewhere in the darkness.
Innocuous enough, you’d think? But no, this was a big point of contention for Terry who treats reckless torch-dropping as seriously as others do murder. “Who dropped that torch?” he demanded in his best Disappointed Dad voice.
When Cirie owned up to offloading the offensive object, Terry went all Monica Gellar on her and launched into a lecture on the dangers of putting the torch anywhere other its designated spot. Apparently it is very bad form to drop one’s torch onto someone else’s path. Jeez, Terry, she dropped an unlit torch, not a ravenous bear. I think you’ll live.
Cirie is not one to take condescending moralising from bigheaded blowhards so she rightfully pointed out he was talking to her like a child and that he should talk to people the way he wants to be talked to. Terry did not take these long overdue words to heart unfortunately and defended his right to talk to people like they’re his kids.
Aras, trying his best to slimeball his way into my heart like a very determined snail but succeeding only mildly, also confronted Terry about his patronising attitude towards everyone. And Aras should know from patronising.
Terry’s response was along the lines of “Warra warra, I’m 46 and you’re just 24, I hate you all, I’ll be in the shelter eating worms” with an extra dollop of “I’m clearly the smartest person on this tribe” subtext.
Hilarious. The man who has squandered every single chance at strategising he’s had, worked hard to alienate most of the jury, and gotten where he is only by virtue of his physical strength and the lucky discovery of the hidden immunity idol is the one with the biggest know-it-all attitude out there.
But enough about my newfound hatred for Terry (Sweet hatred! Where have you been all my life?) since there’s more than enough to keep me going later on. Onto the Reward Challenge. It seems that the peanut butter sandwiches and wet beds were penny-pinching rewards so the show could splash out on these later ones. This particular one was especially kickass and saw the winner and a mate go on a luxury yacht cruise along the Panama Canal.
Even better, this challenge saw only the second sighting of something resembling a mental challenge. Hooray! The contestants were attached to ropes and had to move along them to count various objects and memorise the numbers and use those numbers as combination locks. Or something. Hey, you try and explain these challenges better.
Off they went and it was really exciting and intense. The contestants took delight in blocking each other from passing and generally got pretty aggressive, especially lovebirds Aras and Terry. There was even a bit of headbutting reminiscent of our favourite cavemen
Bobby Jon and Jamie but not nearly as maniacal and funny.
The competition was a close one but when the contestants pretty much all had to go back to recount their newts/fish/whatever, Terry noticed Aras doing what he thought was breaking the rules. 46 year-old fighter pilot Terry snitched in his best loathsome tattletale voice “[Daddy], Aras is taking multiple looks!”
Jeff pointed out to Tattletale Terry that this wasn’t against the rules and Terry began whining about how he’s misheard the rules and “blah blah blah I’m losing so it must be unfair” *bleep!*. Aras let out the one and only line I have ever enjoyed from his mouth as he snarked “Somebody call the whaaaaambulance! Terry’s crying!”
HA! And to top off this beautiful burn, Aras ended up winning the challenge. Terry, gracious loser that he is, immediately started griping to Jeff about how he’d misunderstood the rules at the beginning. And? What do you want, Whambulance Boy? A rematch because your head was shoved too far up your own ass to hear the rules properly?
Terry loses! Can I get a woot-woot?Aras called Terry out on his whininess and made some stupid non-sequitor comment about Terry making derogatory remarks about women. Guh? What? Dammit, Aras, if you’re going to insult him, at least do it within context. Don’t mock Terry for being a sexist when he’s being a bad loser.
Confessional time saw Aras spout some patented crap about how he normally practiced love and compassion but hadn’t done so with Terry. Mr Rice-Grubber is a real loving and compassionate guy for sure.
Not to be outdone by Aras’ interview idiocy, Whiny McTattle said that Aras had been acting really emotional lately. Pot, once you’ve gotten acquainted with Mr Kettle here, could the two of you please make your way to the smelting plant to me melted into scrap metal?
Throughout the episode, Terry kept dropping these gratuitous age references similar to last week’s “Danielle’s just 24” condescending shitballery. He may or may not be sexist but he is incredibly ageist. He acts like he’s the smartest person ever and the others are clueless twerps because he’s 46 and they’re all younger.
Whatever, World’s Least Mature Middle-aged Man. I think this is one of those cases which totally disproves the age = wisdom stereotype because Terry and Aras are just as patronising, smarmy and lacking in self-awareness as each other, despite the 22 year age gap. Except this *bleep!* is even worse in Terry’s case because young assholes at least have a chance of realising what dumbasses they are and maturing. Terry’s already in his forties though so he’s pretty much an asshole for life.
But what do I know? I’m only a bratty child who’s even younger than Danielle and Aras and therefore knows nothing about anything. I’d better stop complaining before Daddy Terry gives one of his “Can you believe this silly little girl” self-satisfied smirks.
Back to the show itself. Aras chose Cirie to share his reward with him leaving Terry and Danielle to sweat it out on EI. Terry showed her the hidden immunity idol and asked if she would vote with him in the next vote. Danielle agreed because she’s a hamster and hamsters like dangly things like shrunken head on strings.
Finally, Terry manages to convince a Casayan to vote with him after! One out of seven aint bad, right?
Danielle was pleased at the prospect of getting a dangly thing of her very own. She expressed excitement at the idea of Terry possibly giving her the hidden immunity idol. Ask Nick, Austin and Sally about how well that worked out for them, dude.
Aras and Cirie were thrilled to be traveling along the Panama Canal and even more thrilled at the prospect of being in the final two together. Despite the awesomeness of the yacht trip, Cirie was pretty happy to be getting back to Craphole Island. The weight of his hair became too much for Aras and he was forced to lie down so Cirie took it upon herself to start the fire despite never having done so before.
Cirie has already mastered land, sea and air (the hot air that she speaks to the other contestants, I mean) so fire was the only thing she needed to conquer to become a true Elemental Goddess. And wouldn’t you know it, she did.
Who would’ve thought on Day 1 that the chubby couch potato who was scared of leaves would be here 36 days later catching fish and starting fires? I’ll be darned if this isn’t just my favourite underdog story this show has ever had.
With Cirie’s fire-building arc nicely foreshadowed, it was time for the Immunity Challenge. The contestants had to get coordinates for digging in the sand by solving puzzles. Duh-nielle proved that she’d taken one too many soccer balls to the head when she dug like a metre into the ground looking for one of her bags of puzzle pieces because she didn’t know how to coordinate properly.
Aras once again beat Terry which warmed my cold, black heart nicely. Terry looked verrrry pissed but managed to at least resist the urge to complain that his sand was thicker or his puzzle pieces were too blurry. I just knew that mental challenges were going to be Macho Terry’s ultimate undoing. If only we could’ve gotten some earlier.
Afterwards, Terry was still hung up on about how Aras had sledged him during the RC. You’d think the man whose only social strategy seems to be slagging other people’s skills compared to his own awesomeness would be able to take a bit of sledging himself. Aras, wussy little Mama’s Boy he is, decided to apologise for daring to insinuate Terry was sexist. He’s really not! Ask his Boy’s Own club of Dan, Nick and Austin!
I thought it was Courtney and Shane who are supposed to be the epic love/hate romance in SurvivorVoting loomed close and the lines were drawn. It was going to be Aras and Cirie vs Danielle and Terry. A tie was coming and that meant a probably fire-making tiebreaker. Terry and Aras both took aside their respective allies and tried to tutor them in the finer points of fire-making.
Editing seemed on Cirie’s side. After all, she was the one who’d gotten the scenes depicting showing her triumph over fire earlier on. Unfortunately, Aras was also on her side, and he seems to think fire can be made by
homoerotic hand-hovering. So it all balances out.
TC time. Shane was still bare-chested underneath his open shirt which is disturbing to say the least. Since it was plain to see that either Cirie or Danielle was going to be gone, Jeff asked each of them what they had learned by being on the island.
Cirie gave us a lovely speech in which she talked about how she’d been underestimating herself for the past 35 years but all of this had taught her that she was stronger than she ever thought and could do a lot more than she believed. Aw, even I am powerless against the Cirie brand of inspirational schmaltz.
Danielle’s on the other hand was completely unmemorable except for the pukey faces Shane and Courtney were making from the peanut gallery when she mentioned she’d learned to live with people better. Oh yeah, they adore her. I can already feel the love they’ll give her if she makes the final two.
Taking pleasure in other's pain is like totally not good karma, man.The votes were cast and read out. Courtney looked like she was being given a back massage by the great Turtle Goddess herself every time a vote for Danielle was read. Sadly for her, it was the expected tie. When no immunity idol was revealed, Jeff ordered the two of them to face off in a fire-making tiebreaker. With the tension building, they took their positions in front of their kindling and…
We’ll just have to wait until the next episode to find out. Is it next Tuesday yet?