Survivor: Week 8

The Episode

Without much preamble, the woefully understaffed tribes of Kota and Fang were ushered into the reward challenge.

Before the challenge started, we got to see Corinne and Charlie leave their jaws on the ground when they realized that Marcus, their alliance leader, had been voted out the previous night. Jeff made sure to rub it in by asking Charlie why he looked so upset. When Charlie wistfully said that Marcus didn't deserve to go home, Ken showed a surprising amount of sack by speaking up for a change. "Who did deserve to go, then?" he asked. "Which one of us deserved to go?"

And Ken has a point.

In an interview, he revealed that he now has a grudge against Charlie, based on the fact that Charlie had spoiled his shot at getting the idol from last episode's feast. This is a stupid grudge on many levels, not the least of which is that Ken allowed Charlie to pull the clue from his hand.

The Reward challenge involved a game of golf, but instead of golf clubs, team members worked together to operate a giant slingshot that catapulted their balls towards the hole.

Fang won two out of three, despite a near-meltdown in which Randy became very insistent that Matty take the final shot, inches from the hole, in a certain way. Matty refused to listen, and even though he made the shot, Randy couldn't contain his fury afterward.

Fang won the first travel reward, in which they got to visit a local tribe of Gabonians and take part in a feast/dance. Randy was feeling the jungle fever as he drunkenly interviewed that he was happy to dance with one of the dancers, since she was obviously attracted to him.

Up until last episode, Randy was doing a great job of partitioning the unpleasant part of his personality off and revealing it only during the solitary camera interviews. But now that seems to have completely broken down, and ugly parts of Randy are hanging out all over the place.

Meanwhile, Bob was sent off to Exile Island, where he dutifully followed the clues to the end, when he couldn't find the idol thanks to the fact that it was sitting in Sugar's pack.

Bob wisely used these sour lemons to make some lemonade, as he quickly set about making a really good approximation of the immunity idol from the natural materials in the wild. The idea was invented by Yau Man, first implemented by Ozzy, and now has been perfected by Bob. Even if Sugar were to denounce the idea that Bob's idol was real, who's to say that the producers didn't put two different-looking idols out there as a new twist?

I can't wait to see how this plays out.

Just before the immunity challenge, Jeff announced the long-awaited merge, to the enormous relief of Bob and Matty, each of whom was in trouble.

The immunity challenge was a straight-up fire building challenge, which quickly turned into a shocking two-way battle between Susie and Sugar, the two members who were probably regarded as the least handy of the remaining contestants.

Susie's fire burned through a string first, and so she became the first Survivor to win individual immunity.

Back at camp, the merged tribe (which Ken successfully lobbied to name Nobag) set about scheming their little hearts out. Surprisingly, there was no question that both Matty and Susie were going to stick with Kenny and Susie, which meant that two separate four person factions were trying to convince Sugar to vote with them.

Ken took a disproportionate amount of pleasure from the fact that he wasn't questioned by his allies when he asserted that Charlie was the brains of the opposing faction. This reminded me a little of Erik from a season or two ago (Dabu means good! Hee hee!), except Ken is less endearing.

Randy vowed that either Crystal or himself were going to have to go home, because the camp wasn't big enough for the both of them. Because of this, his faction tried to convince Sugar to target Crystal. Corinne sucked up to Crystal's face, but viciously attacked her to the camera, calling her a moron who would be an idiot to side with her.

On the other side, Ken and Crystal were trying to convince Sugar to vote for Charlie, as the supposed brains of the organization.

What Sugar wanted had nothing to do with factions or strategy. She just wanted Randy to go next, because he was so unpleasant to be around.

When the chips fell, Sugar deflected at least one charge of moronity by going against Corinne and voting out Charlie. Thus, the great onion alliance has been officially gutted, and Charlie can look forward to a three-day solitary vacation with Marcus, which is probably worth more to him than the million dollars. So it's kind of win-win.



Next week: Bob, Corinne, and Randy are in the minority. Can they convince Matty to join them? Doubtful...


The Pool

We had two more first for the season in this week's pool. For the first time, no one got any bonus points for immunity (Susie for individual immunity? Whodathunkit?).

And, for the first time, no one moved up or down in the rankings. This is due to the fact that people were amazingly uniform in how they viewed Charlie-- people lost between 9 and 21 points (when it was theoretically possible to gain 10 points or lose 33 points).

Mom did the best for the second week running, padding her slim lead a bit. And Jen had the worst week of anyone, although it wasn't bad enough to drop her lower than sixth place.

Here are the scores. They are presented as follows:
Current 1st picks score (- elimination) + Current 2nd picks score (- elimination) = Current Total Score

1st: Mom 94 (-1) + 159 (-8) = 253
2nd: Mike 83 (-3) + 160 (-10) = 243
3rd: Matt 65 (-4) + 167 (-10) = 232
4th: Carl 56 (-3) + 169 (-14) = 225
5th: Paul 81 (-5) + 142 (-10) = 223
6th: Jen 61 (-5) + 153 (-16) = 214
7th: Kim 48 (-5) + 153 (-14) = 201
8th: Dawn 41 (-6) + 151 (-14) = 192

This week, I need your third and final set of picks. This last set will be weighted three times as heavily as the first set. Just arrange the 8 remaining players in the order you think they will finish.

Good luck, everyone!