Survivor 13.8 "He's slim shady right now, straight up."

The 49ers have won two games in a row, a nice distraction from my "Barry Zito Leaving Oakland" watch. The Red Sox look to be ponying up zillions of dollars for a Japanese phenom, so there's one team I hate that probably won't pursue him...anyway, go Niners! And now, on to the episode...

LIP SERVICE

In the pre-credit teasers scene, we see Jonathan giving some kind of hard-sell peptalk to his alliance of Sundra, Yul, Becky and Candice. He keeps saying all this stuff like, "It's us five, it's us, we're strong, we're the five strong, final five right here," while everyone else nods and avoids making eye-contact with him, I guess in fear of "connecting" with him. Yul chimes in that they need to remain strong or they're toast. Candice tells us that she's not crazy about this arrangement and she wants to hook back up with Parvati and Adam asap, "Because they're like, my friends, not because I miss being around other hot, young white people or whatever." Roll credits...

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

A gorgeous rainbow embraces iTunes island, but the "serious business" music draws our attention to Candice and Jonathan, as they discuss how great it would be if they could get Raro back together after the merge. Jonathan frets, "We have to screw them over before they screw US over. And it's not racist because I'm Jewish, right? I'm ethnic! I just want to be back with my original tribe who I feel much, much more comfortable with!" He actually says something to the effect of having "the four Caucasians in the Final Four," which makes white America UNCOMFORTABLE and then he blusters, "I am determined not to be the guy that made the move too late." Seriously, what is he babbling about? He's in a good alliance, what is his malfunction? Well one is, he trusts Candice. After he gushes about how close the two of them are (remember, he also thought he could get Jeflicka to do what ever he wanted), she tells us that she doesn't trust him, doesn't like him, and wants him gone...

At Raro, everyone's discussing the Merge, which they seem to feel is imminent even though there's 12 people left in the game and the Merge has never happened earlier than 10 but, whatever, expect the unexpected. They're all feeling tight and bonded when Brad casually and stupidly says, "And then, after the Merge, it's every man for himself, I can't WAIT! Well, I'm gonna go fish so you all can talk about me, BYE!" ANd everyone at Raro is like, "The hell? Does Brad want to ditch us?" Nate explains, "He's slim shady right now, straight up." Translation: "I am telling you the truth, Brad is an untrustworthy individual." Nate then tells us how disappointed he is that he can't trust Brad, whom he likes, and then he distracts himself by demonstrating how fake he's gonna be to Brad while he's setting him up for the slaughter. Parvati, Jenny and Rebecca all agree that Brad will be discarded as soon as they don't need his vote to eliminate iTunes.

WHITE FLIGHT

At the Reward Challenge, no one at Raro seems upset to see that Jeflicka is gone. Adam grins, "Thank goodness she's gone, she was like, not hot enough to be here." Rebecca seems relieved to see that Sundra escaped the axe. Then Jeff rather unceremoniously--which is weird in Survivor--lays this twist on them: He'll give ANYONE the chance to switch tribes right now. Yul, who likes his ducks in a row, seems perplexed at the very idea of mutiny. Jeff counts down 10 seconds and Candice steps off the iTunes mat and declares herself a member of Raro. Jonathan impulsively follows her lead, and suddenly, iTunes is down 8 members to four and looking...basically screwed. Ozzy is disgusted, unaware as he is that he was next on the chopping block and he's suddenly gained three bestest buddies, and Yul is stunned, "I thought we had a pretty good game plan and I'm very surprised," he says in an evenly disappointed Ward Cleaver voice. I too was floored by this, just because Candice and Jonathan were in such a good alliance. They weren't on the outs--well, Candice wasn't, anyway, and if they were gonna screw over their alliance,e why not wait until the Merge and do it on the down-low? Instead, they've just hung a big light on the fact that they suck and can't be trusted. Ozzy is unfazed, "Doesn't surprise me," he sneers, "If they don't have the backbone to stay, they'll get theirs." Candice looks nervous. Or bored...or...oh, hell, I can't pretend that I can read Candice, though her irritation at Jonathan's like, TOTALLY copying her is pretty hard to miss.

REWARD CHALLENGE

The reward is for a coffeehouse day with pastries, coffee and letters from home. Everyone is motivated. Two players get rolled in a barrel over an obstacle course, then floated out to see while flags are gathered, and a rope is cut and a flag is raised, you know, standard obstacle course. And after Jonathan and Candice became the Quisling twins, it's pretty freakin' hard not to be rooting for iTunes all the way, and sure enough, Instant Karma strikes, thanks to Super Ozzy and strong and steady Yul. Candice can only watch mournfully from her caught-in-a-current barrel as her old team kicks her traitorous booty. Ozzy taunts Jonathan, "Mutineers are the first people to die, man," and Jonathan, wearing that kooky 1950's "dad" hat he likes to wear is all bemused and oblivious while new tribemate Rebecca stands behind him with a look of approval--for Ozzy. Have fun, Jonny boy. The newly reduced iTunes gang gleefully sends Candice into Exile...

I'LL HAVE A NO-FAT MOCHA HALF-CAF BOX OF MEMORIES, PLEASE

At the Survivor Coffee House, Yul gives his tiny tribe the kind of sincere, and appreciated pep-talk that Jonathan was incapable of at the beginning of the show. Then they all get to put on clean, dry robes, drink coffee, eat donuts and read letters from home, as well as see pictures of one another. It is a great bonding experience. Sundra gets weepy over a letter from her young son, and the day ends in a group hug. "We're family out here," Yul affirms, perhaps silently cursing the recent prodigals who've probably doomed his chances of not using the Hidden Immunity Idol early on. I'm certain he also totally "gets" why everyone told him he couldn't trust Jonathan. Hopefully he can still blindside them with it at some point. I'd have to think that Candice and Jonathan at least (not so much Dumb Adam) would be smart enough to realize that it suits them to let the others (including one another) think they have the Idol themselves and that voting for them is risky. Meanwhile, on Exile Island, Candice has no remorse about selling out her old tribe, "I just wanted to be with my friends. Who just so happen to be white. I'm not prejudiced, okay? Like, I hate Jonathan and he's white. He's always going around saying were "tight" and all, but like, I never trusted that dude in the first place and plus, he's hella old, he's like 35 or something and he has kids--lame!" Then she impressively lights a fire all by herself and bitches about how Jonathan has a head start on bonding with Raro while she's out of the game. Karma's a bizzle, Candygirl. Cue the mocking trumpets of wah-wah.

JONATHAN FINDS NEW PEOPLE WHO WON'T MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH HIM

At Raro, Jonathan is trying his very best to fit in with the cool kids of Raro. Emphasis on TRYING. He's like Jack Lemmon in "Glenngarry Glenn Ross" meets Michael Scott from "The Office." It's kinda hard for me to totally hate Jonathan because I can totally sense the nerdish outsidery childhood that spawned his grandiose desperation, but still, he sold out Yul, who's had his back for weeks while everyone else told him Jonathan was sketchy (including sketchy Candice). Jonathan keeps saying stuff like, "I took a big step into the unknown" and "Now I get to meet all you folks," and then he waits for some applause. Instead, the camp is overrun with chirping crickets and baying wolves. If Ozzy was there, he would have made a dramatic dinner out of those metaphoric critters. Jonathan goes on, "Are you SHOCKED that we came here!? Wasn't it DARING!?" Rebecca avoids eye-contact then shoots him a "Whatever, a-hole," look when he's not watching. Every time he stops talking, the silence overwhelms him and he has to go on, "It was totally crazy to do this, but we were the last ones of our kind left so jumping back here made sense." Because, that's the way to endear one's self to people of color--tell them you were scared to be a minority amongst YOUR diverse tribe so you came over here to realign with the only white people left in the game. In private, Jonathan seems to have determined that he's the guy that made the move too late, "Candice jumped so I jumped, and now I gotta figure out how not to be the first guy they get rid of if we lose." Cut back to: Jonathan raising eyebrows and hackles as he gallingly describes himself to the others as "a loyal person." He tells us he plans to earn everyone's trust by being "non-threatening" and working his tail off, but we all now Jonathan and know that he's gonna run around trying to make eye-contact with everyone and freak them out--they already all look like they wish they could give him back. Nate tells us, in his usual, colorful way, "He must really be smoking some good stuff if he thinks he's gonna roll in here and start stirring things up. You really think we'll have your back after we just saw you sell out your other tribe? Are you dumb?" Nate also says that this raises Brad in his estimation, because Brad COULD have flipped himself to get back with Yul and Becky, and yet he chose to remain with Raro. Then Nate tells us that Jonathan will DEFINITELY be the next person they vote of the tribe, so we savvy Jonathan haters sigh in frustration because we know that means it's somebody else. Later, everyone chills as Jonathan works overtime to ingratiate himself to them by tending the hell out of the fire. Adam gives him a bland, dumb Adam compliment: "You're good at camp." Jonathan sees an opening and starts sucking up to Adam and talks up the idea of an all-White Final Four, "It's all about trust, and apparently, I only trust white people," Jonathan tells him. Adam doesn't seem all THAT fired up about "getting the Klan back together", as it were, but he is smart enough--I know, I can't believe I said that either, but he does wisely see the value in keeping Jonathan around since Jonathan's very interested in keeping Adam around...

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

Candice returns from Exile, and is greeted fairly warmly by Raro, and not just the white people. She gets a big hug from Jenny, who may be just thinking, "Yay, someone to stand on in the totem pole besides Brad!" Jeff explains the cool challenge: Both teams will row glass-bottomed boats out to sea, and then look for underwater targets. Then they'll drop cannonballs on these basket-targets, which will release buoys, which will be used to spell a magic Immunity-granting word. Because Raro can't sit anyone out in back-to-back challenges, they have no choice but to play the four people who did NOT take part in Reward Challenge: Rebecca, Jonathan, Brad and Parvati. Nate and Adam are unthrilled that Candice and Jonathan's arrival forced them to sit four members in the first challenge, and now they can't play their A-team. Raro has steering trouble immediately, but iTunes squanders their lead when they can't seem to aim to save their figurative lives. Raro only needs to get three sets of buoys and they have their first two before iTunes scores even one direct hit. Then Raro starts drifting out to sea a little, while Yul gets the swing of things and brings his team back into the game. When Raro accidentally releases a cannonball for no reason, Jeff mentions it in his annoying commentary and Jonathan rolls his eyes, "Oh, PLEASE, Jeff." Jeff is taken aback, "Jonathan, getting frustrated by ME," he huffs. When iTunes gets their third and final set of buoys, Parvati has to scold Jonathan into trying to win instead of bitterly watching iTunes row into shore. Raro doesn't really have a prayer though, since the six lettered buoys are part of the easiest so-called word puzzle in Survivor history. The clue says the letters form the name of the ship from the most famous mutiny in history and it takes all of 20 nanoseconds for iTunes to come up with Bounty. Raro is still floating helplessly off shore as Parvati moans, "Are you kidding me? Son of a..." it is unclear whether she self-edited or was CBS'd.

YUL WOULDN'T BE TRASH-TALKING YOU BEHIND YOUR BACK, JONATHAN

Jonathan and Candice reconnect, sort of, and he's thrilled that she's back because he feels it takes some of the heat off of him since he's not the only newbie. Plus, he and Candice trust each other, he insists. That is of course stupid, because Candice can't wait to run him down to her young pals. Parvati is all, "Dude, what's up with you and Jonathan, he's all telling everyone that you guys are like, hella tight and stuff, like, how tight are you?" Candice sighs, "Uh, NOT! He's like totally lame! I couldn't believe it when he followed by off the mat--I thought he and Yul were all BFF anyway!" Adam and Nate confer in the shelter, and Adam lobbies to keep Jonathan around and dump Brad, because Brad can hook back up with Becky and Yul whereas Jonathan is persona non grata and doesn't stand a chance of realigning with his old tribe. No, Adam did not actually SAY persona non grata. It's a good argument--not really a TRUE argument, because in Survivor, you can't say no to votes. If Jonathan wanted to flip back to vote with Yul and the others, of COURSE they'd take him up on it, they'd have to if it meant their survival. Still, it has the smell of truth--Adam probably does BELIEVE it's true, and since Jonathan and Candice jumped at the first chance to reunite the original white tribe, I suppose there IS some validity to it, and Nate seems to buy it, though he does feel a smidge of loyalty to Brad since Brad didn't choose to flip at the Reward. Adam says that Brad and Jonathan need to be the next two to go, and he doesn't really care what the order is.

So it's all set: Brad's a goner, Jonathan's a goner but his exit is on hold, and everyone hearts Candice for no discernible reason. Seriously, it's not like she sucks, really, I just don't get it. She seems really aloof and "so what," yet everyone seems pretty stoked to have her around, except maybe Rebecca, who is wisely concerned about the white people getting together and going to the Final Four. Hopefully everyone's just looking it as Candice flipping pre-merge instead of post, but they still intend to boot her early on. Candice is dangerous, you can't trust her. Anyway, Nate tells us he plans to "put a Denzel on and play Brad like it's all good." Translation: He is going to put on an Oscar-worthy performance in order to dupe Brad into thinking he is in good-standing with the tribe. Then he goes to Brad and blathers about "keeping the family together and chopping the others up like poop. Ehhhh, yeah. I don't know what that means and I don't wanna know. What I DO know is I can't imagine Denzel Washington saying it. They basically just rag on Jonathan and Candice, "What is this, a refugee camp?" Nate jokes and Brad is left feeling that everything's status quo. Meanwhile Candice is stirring things up with Adam. First, she spins this sob story about how badly she missed him and Parvati and how terrible it was to be on iTunes, even though she seemed perfectly fine over at iTunes. Maybe she was a little bored...or maybe she was depressed enough to hang herself from a palm tree, what do I know? The girl is inscrutable to me. Anyway, she tells him that she felt just so awful every time he was sent to Exile, and that it was always Jonathan's idea to sent Adam--he thought Adam was scared to go and that going over there would "break" him. Which sounds over-the-top enough for Jonathan to have really said it. Adam takes this as an affront to his manhood and starts raving about wanting to "beat his ass," which is something young men say when they want to sound tough though it always sounds kinda gay to me. Candice coos, "He's threatened, that's all," and again, I can't tell if she was trying to calm him down or egg him on. Watching them is like watching Britney Spears and Chris Klein in an MTV production of "Body Heat." It's odd, too, because Candice doesn't seem to be a dumb person, but she does seem socially dumb to me. She really does appear to have switched tribes and shredded an alliance that was working for her because she wanted to, like, hang out with her friends and she's also being very blase about Jonathan's blind devotion to her, which could be very useful to her--even Dumb Adam gets that. So then Adam goes to Nate and Nate calls Jonathan a punk and they both talk about beating Jonathan's ass TOGETHER, which sounds even more queer than before. Then they decide it may be too late to switch the vote away from Brad, even though it seems as simple as whispering Jonathan to everyone before the vote but, whatever. Nate tells us, "We want to take a brick and beat Jonathan in the head with it." That's a real nice sentiment for the Family Hour, CBS. While you're obscuring the butt cracks, maybe you could edit the death threats. Kids are watching--Jonathan's kids are watching, sheesh!

TRIBAL COUNCIL

Ah, Jeff's wearing the dark blue, always his best bet. He asks Brad what he thought about the mutiny and he raves about Candice, "I thought Wow, that's one gutsy gal--now she has four people lined up against her, I wonder what that feels like, to have people all geared up and anxious to vote you out of the game?" Nervous coughing ensues. Jonathan pouts because Brad didn't mention that he was a gutsy guy. Jeff asks Jenny if she's thrilled to just have two new people to kick to the bottom of the Totem pole and she skirts the issue by saying how great it's gonna be to merge with iTunes and "pick 'em of like zits," a colorful phrase she blames on hanging around Mr. Soundbite himself, Nate. Jeff asks Candice if she's concerned at all that Raro doesn't seem the least bit concerned that they're at Tribal Council, meaning that she might be toast and she says no, that Raro is always having a good time and that's part of what caused her to mutiny and he jumps all over that, mocking her for ditching her old tribe and alliance just because Raro has more fun and she huffs that fun is not the ONLY reason she switched. She claims that Raro "wins when it counts," despite the fact that Raro has lost it's last tow challenges since she came aboard. Then Jeff asks Jonathan if HE's concerned about his status and flop-sweat Jonathan is all, "Of COURSE I'm concerned, I was the second guy off the mat--maybe it was only a second later but still, the perception may be that I'm expendable." Candice shoots him a withering look at his pathetic attempt to imply that he didn't jump off the mat ONLY because she did first. Then Nate joins the Candice is the Awesomest Fan Club, praising her competitive spirit and pointing out that she's the only girl who's been Exiled and that she's returned from their "with her head held high." Which is true--she has proved herself to be tough and capable, I just don't approve of her mercenary character. Jonathan is once again told by someone, this time Nate, that he should chill out with all the "leadership" in other words, stop telling everyone what to do, and he once again insists that he's not bossy nor aggressive nor patronizing and he doesn't understand why, all throughout his life, people having been calling him these things. But, then Brad seals his fate, if it wasn't sealed already, by blithely admitting that he doesn't trust everyone in the tribe, thus offending everyone in the tribe. He gets voted out, and clueless Jonathan exchanges a "Isn't this great!?" look with Candice, who quickly stashes the knife she's been sharpening up to stab in the back with. Then Jeff stuns everyone, myself included, by naming Brad the first member of the jury. The jury has always been made up of the 9th-thru 3rd place finishers in the game, so not only is this way early in the game to have a jury...it's also gonna be an even-numbered jury, unless someone gets kicked off the jury or maybe...the fans will be the tie-break...or maybe I suck at math? Time will tell....

Brad is evicted in 12th place. In season One, Bible-thumping Dirk was sent packing by Hatch's crew. In the Outback, Kimmi, the judgy vegetarian who stopped bathing went home while in Africa, as a result of the game's very first tribe shake-up, dumb, arrogant Silas was cut down. In the Marquesas, Gabe was voted out when all his hippy-dippy nonsense about building a better society started sounding to his tribe like "I don't care whether we win or not." In Thailand, Stephanie the hella boring lady firefighter left, and no one remembers while in the Amazon, another tribe switch-up happened at tough-tawkin New Yawkuh Jeanne was voted out. In the Pearl Islands, the forgettable Michelle left--she was friends with bullies Burton and Shawn? Oh, who cares. In Vanuatu, poor Lisa paid the price when Evil Lesbian Ami misunderstood something Lisa said and in Palau, James who should've been Jim Bob was voted out of the Incredibly Shrinking Tribe. In Guatemala, Smart Brian left us far too early and last year, Bobby, the King of the "overshare," Mr. "I just dropped a deuce," was bid adieu.

EVICTED SURVIVOR FUN FACTS

Brad is a marketing director for the men's division of Lucky Brand jeans. He is a surfer and was a football and track star in high school, so yeah, I still really don't know why he didn't swim in that challenge a few weeks back. He lists "American Idol" as one of his favorite shows--me too, and I'll bet he's fun to watch it with.

Next up: WHO KNOWS!? I love it! I've gotten this off later then planned, and I don't like to make predictions when the show has aired, even when I haven't seen the episode, but I'm gonna do it anyway: Next out will be Jonathan or Sundra--Becky and Yul need Ozzy to make the merge because he might be targeted before Yul.

Peace Out! Christine :D