Watching Reality TV

If you’d like to see my impressions on last week’s episode, please check out this post.

So last week, JR left the game and entered the jury and there weren’t too many wet eyes over his ouster, either.  He just had little finesse in this game, despite what he may have thought.  So a new dawn greets the merged tribe.  James is feeling more cautious and will take his idol(s) to the Tribal Councils from here on out.   James wakes the rest of the tribe with an off-tune song and everyone wakes up pretty happy because JR isn’t there.  Denise is still feeling annoyed at being left out.  She voted for PG, which is what she thought was going to happen and everyone else voted JR.  James cautions her to relax and she thinks sticking with him might not be a bad idea since he has the idols.

PG seems to be taking JR’s place as the bossy sort and then Courtney is flirting with Frosti, making old Fei Long members nervous.  Treemail!   Time for a reward challenge!  Two teams of four will have to keep a ball in the air, bouncing it off a drum as they navigate through a maze.  Three balls in a bin (three times through the maze) wins.  Reward is a cruise on the river and it sounds fabulous.  PG captains the red team, Erik captains the yellow.  They select their teams and get to work.  Yellow scores one before red can even get past the first gate.  Then they score another before red can get one ball in.    Geeze.  Yellow wins easily, leaving red embarrassed.  The yellow team will return in the morning, and it includes Erik, Frosti, Courtney and Amanda.

The losing tribe members are annoyed, especially at James.  Because it was him that dropped the ball the most.  Actually, it’s PG who does the accusing and James pretty much just tells her to shut up.  She’s upset because she’s never won a reward challenge.  She’s also having a hard time keeping her mouth shut.  James and Denise gripe about it and worry about Zhan Hu infiltrating the Fei Long tribe.  Meanwhile, the winning tribe members are living it up on their river cruise.  They talk about PG (popular topic!) and Erik is still stick up for her but just barely.  Frosti and Courtney continue their flirting.  Meanwhile, Amanda sorta has eyes for Erik, disturbing goat impressions aside.  They’re served fairly American-style food for dinner (fried chicken and mashed potatoes) and everyone just seems so danged happy.  You know this cannot last.

The rested and well-fed tribe members return back to camp and they pretty much just lied to them about what it was like.  Mostly about the food, since they felt there would be massive mutiny if they knew they’d had fried chicken and mashed potatoes.  Todd relays PG’s freak out to everyone.  Erik is a little nervous because if PG wins immunity, he may be a target.  At the challenge, their memories will be tested and it involves the Chinese zodiac.  Complicated, but simple enough.  (Confused yet?)  Jeff gives them the option to step out of the challenge and have some food instead.  Cheeseburgers, french fries, cold drinks and all the fixin’s.  Courtney, Todd, Denise and James sit out and chose to eat.  Probably a smart move, I doubt any of them are vulnerable.  Plus, you know, FOOD.  Interesting that Courtney chose to eat, seeing as how she just got back from eating on the cruise.  Erik is the first eliminated from the competition.   Amanda is out in the next round.  Last round, Frosti is out and so PG wins immunity.  Damn, she’s lucky.  At least she’s finally won something.

Frosti is sad that he missed out on the eating.  But he’s also mad at those who sat out and chose to eat.  Which is it?  He starts campaigning pretty hard to vote out Erik but Frosti also is on the block.  Erik is worried that Frosti is higher up the ladder with the Fei Long people than he is.  Todd confronts Courtney about being willing to vote out Frosti and she doesn’t want to give him a straight answer on it.  Hmm, being in the game longer or keeping around a guy you like to flirt with?  Tough choice there.

At Tribal Council, however, everything is more cut and dry.  Frosti votes for Erik and Erik votes for Frosti.  With five votes, Frosti is sent packing.  Sad to see him go, I sort of liked him.  But PG was safe so he was a pretty logical choice.  Before Jeff excuses everyone else, he tells them they have something else to do before going back to camp.  But what is it?  We won’t find out for TWO WEEKS because next week is Thanksgiving and that pretty much sucks.