Unofficial Summary – Episode 10 “X marks the NOT”

This summary has not been authorized, approved, or in any way solicited by CBS®. However, it is the official summary of Wyoming (The “Yee-Haw” State), the People’s Republic of China, American Samoa ®, and Janet from “Three’s Company.”

This summary has been blessed by both God and my boyfriend, and they never agree on anything.

This summary has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

So, first I’m thinking, maybe I won’t even watch tonight. After all, the board has figured out what’s going to happen, and these summaries are getting harder to write because the remaining people have been around longer than anything NBC has aired on Thursday’s at 8:30 since “A Different World.” I mean, how long can you make fun of Kelly (forever, or until she cries.)

Besides, I thought, I’m a lobbyist. I should be watching live convention coverage on CNN ®.

However, one look at Poppa Bush, virtually withering inside his suit, reminded me how much of a wuss he is and why I didn’t vote for him eight years ago. And does anybody else think Barbara Bush ® is starting to look like a worn-out retired drag queen?

Back to CBS.

And just in time. Starting, as always, with the tacky voice over from JP, the Prince of Priss, informing us about, “Sixteen Americans, shipwrecked in the middle of the South China Sea….yada yada yada.” Who doesn’t know this by now? This show has been covered by every news outlet from Letterman to the New York Times to Highlights magazine for Children (“Can you find the hidden toaster in this picture?”). I think even my high school paper (“The Weekly Gerbil”) did an article on it, sandwiched in between a story about dissecting earthworms and an analysis of the cafeteria’s carrot and raisin salad (“Don’t Be Fooled…Those Aren’t Raisins”.) The only people who don’t know what’s happening on Survivor are mouth-breathing, paste-eating halfwits who live in constant fear of drowning in their own drool or people who actually ARE stranded on a desert island in the middle of the South China Sea.

The requisite recap: “Last week on Survivor: Kelly began to have doubts about her role in the alliance. (Pawn.) And tension mounted when Rudy burned the food. So Dicque showed him what a real pain in the ass feels like. Colleen won the reward challenge, which unfortunately was not a tube of Neosporin ® for her decomposing legs. Instead, she won a barbecue where a plan was hatched to eat until she puked (like Ramona ®, pat. pending.) She also colluded with Jenna (unfolding soon in a teenager’s bedroom near you) to vote Rich off the island. (This did not work.) But it wasn’t a picnic back at Rattana ® where Rich let it all hang out. (Gross.) At Tribal Council, Kelly found Sean’s missing balls and used them to cast an independent vote, so Rich made her prick her finger at a spinning wheel and sleep until awoken by a kiss. Or the members of Kiss. Whatever. With the unwitting help of Sean’s alphabetical voting (poor Sean, who didn’t buy you Alpha-Bits cereal as a kid?), the Tagi Three booted Jenna’s whiny ass. Seven people are left, and quite frankly, I can’t stand any of them.”

Cue opening credits. I’m starting to think those flies hovering around Colleen are not just the result of fancy editing.

Commercials. This week Survivor is brought to us by The Army, “Be all that you can BB.”)

Day 28 has dawned on Rattana ® and two people have slept holding hands. We don’t know who they are, but I’m guessing Rich and Sue. If you combined them, you could separate out one complete man and one woman, not to mention you’d have great evidence to prove our evolution from apes. Kelly tells us that it’s weird the day after someone leaves. “It’s, like this void, like, oh wait, someone’s not here. Kind of like when you open your wallet and one of your credit cards is gone.” Sue is happy because it’s going to be a nice sunny day and it’s quieter. Sue, wearing her usual bathing suit that was clearly bought at a fire sale from a Frankie and Annette beach movie says that Jenna talked a lot.

Yeah, and when I think of Sue the first thing that comes to mind is reserved and reticent.

While fishing out on the raft, Sue, Colleen and Gervase discuss the travails of living with the same people 24 hours, 7 days a week. Colleen makes the astounding observation that,
“there really is no break.” Gervase tells us it’s all up in the air and you never know who’s going. He thought he was going. Don’t worry, Sperminator, you’ll get your chance.

In a camera confessional, Gervase tells us he’s shocked he’s still here. You and the rest of America, man. According to Gervase, the fact that only Pagong people have been booted may mean that, “something fishy’s going on. They can deny it all they want, but there’s gotta be an alliance.” This guy’s neurons are as slow as his feet. Congratulate that conclusion, dude, it’s been travelling for ten days and it’s almost reached your brain.

Sean, however, “is not a hundred percent sure of an alliance.” Aargh!!! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, drop dead. I think it is illegal to be this stupid (except in North Dakota). I am exasperated and running out of creative ways to be sarcastic about him.

This time, I’ll take a pass and defer to Colleen, who has become a Greek Chorus of sorts:

“Sean, come on, open your eyes.”

Poetry.

Colleen is starting to think she’ll vote Sean next because he led the way to Jenna’s ouster.

After Sean explains how he’s begun to recognize his own feeble-mindedness, Colleen says it’s like Sean walked into this and someone forgot to tell him it was a game. She thinks it’s sweet that he’s concerned about people’s feelings, but that’s only fine if you’re taking care of a pet (echoes of the “kitten” metaphor).

All of a sudden, I decide I want her to win. Mostly because the odds are stacked against her and I have a soft spot for underdogs such as Colleen, Rocky Balboa, John McCain, and anyone from West Virginia (the “Ya-Hoo State.”)

Rich is amused that other people are now first trying to plot or strategize. In a self-congratulatory tone, he tells us it’s simply naïve. Say what you will about Rich, he’s found a way to make it this far. You have to admit Rudy was right about Rich: he’s fat but he’s good.

After Gervase talks about how good it felt that Rich came so close to being booted, he tells us that Rich was affected by the three votes against him. Rich however, says there are no hard feelings, he’ll just catch less fish.

Again with the damn fish. He’s like my annoying uncle who only knows one joke and has told it at every family function, wedding and Thanksgiving dinner since the Carter administration. I’ve already warned my boyfriend so he can laugh on cue when the joke is told on Rosh Hashana. I’d repeat the joke here, but it’s not funny. The punchline is, “Soup.”

Rich has now evidently worked fish into his strategy, telling us he’ll fish strategically so people appreciate him more. This is what people do when only have one thing going for them. Like, have you ever seen a girl who’s butt ass ugly, but has really full lips, so she wears lipstick, like, six inches thick, and her lips enter a room almost half an hour before she does, but she thinks if she accentuates them she’ll look hot.

This is why most gay guys I meet buy their jeans three sizes too small.

He tells Sue that when they’re down to four or five people, they’ll eat like kings. If kings wore tacky Wal-Mart swimwear and ate nothing but fish and rice.

Rich also sees analogies between the way he fishes and his voting strategy. There is actually some truth to this, but it would be so much cooler if instead of writing his vote down on paper he simply skewered someone with his spear.

(I didn’t see the sexual innuendo in that until I wrote it.)

Sue is pissed (big shock) because Colleen and Gervase are sitting around feasting on Rich’s catch of the day (Feasting? Come on, there are seven people and one little fish.) after they voted for him. She thinks they are hypocrites. Well, the moral majority’s been heard from.

Sue also tells us that her strategy all along has been to play the dumb redneck. She’s one hell of an actress. I was convinced. Sue says that, hopefully in the end, the redneck will burn the city slicker. Sounds like a Sally Field movie. Actually, it sounds like EVERY Sally Field movie.

Right now, Sue doesn’t trust anyone but Kelly. Kelly also likes Sue a lot. They’re moving to Vermont and forming a civil union.

Then something truly shocked me to the core, forcing me to choke on my linguini alla cecca (isn’t my boyfriend a treasure? Every Wednesday night he cooks for me so I can watch the show. In return, I cook for him Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays as well as do laundry, clean the bathroom, and give the cat a flea dip.)
Sue tells us she’s so glad she found Kelly because she lost her best friend 20 years ago and this is the first time since then that she’s found someone she can really hang with. I found this extremely sweet and touching, and was truly moved by her tears, but I do wonder how big of a fucking loser she is that it took her 20 years to make a friend.

Dumb redneck.

Kelly says Sue’s the only one she trusts, and sometimes she doesn’t even trust Sue. According to Kelly, it’s getting to the point where you don’t know who you can trust. That Kelly’s so quick.

Rich says that if the alliance broke down and kicked him off, he’d congratulate the people who fooled him.

Not likely.

Today, the whole group took a trip to tree-mail, where the presence of a cigar clearly indicates that Gervase is Cuban. I mean a father. Again. For the fourth time to be precise. (Sean thought it was his seventh child because the kid’s name is Gunner and Sean thought they were being named alphabetically.) Four kids, two mothers, zero marriages. Rudy’s going to have a field day with this.

Rattana sits around reacting to the news. Rich says, “Four kids! Holy Moses! How do you figure out which one to beat the crap out of first? Do you like flip a coin or what?” This comment is intercut with a shot of Kelly (who is beginning to remind me of an awkward gangly girl in my neighborhood that nobody wanted to play with while we were growing up. I mean it. All the neighborhood kids would ride bikes and stuff and try to avoid her. We’d play hide and seek and no one would look for her. Once she spent 72 hours behind a shrub.) Anyway, Kelly is practically nursing on the cigar causing me to wonder why her boyfriend is willing to wait 7 weeks for her. If I ever came in contact with that kind of mouth action, I’d seriously consider abstinence. (This is fundamentally untrue.)

Finally, the moment I’ve been waiting for: Rudy’s opinion. “When I was growing up, if a girl was pregnant, and wasn’t married, you’d never even know it. They’d take her out of town and burn her as a witch and sacrifice her to President Washington. Today, she could have had an abortion. I don't agree with abortion, but I don’t agree with having kids out of wedlock. I’m voting for Pat Robertson. But only because I can’t vote for Pat Nixon.”

Having summarily disposed of island politics and practical politics, we can now move on to the reward challenge. The oh-so-subtle clue is, in part, a pizza box. But since Gervase and Sean go to retrieve the clue, they can’t figure out what the reward is. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m getting nostalgic for simple hand written notes. Between the words burnt into a log and the archery target, I’m thinking that somewhere there’s a nursing home with an activities director having a field day.

The clue is in the pizza box:

An oven fresh pizza,
Doesn’t that sound nice?
An order’s been placed,
Steady feet win a slice.

You all know you want some,
To stuff in your yap.
After 4 weeks of rice,
You’d kill for this Domino’s crap.

Sue deduces the challenge is “some balancing crap.”

Dumb redneck.

Always trying to display his intellectual superiority, Rich wonders, “Could it be hot coals?” Dude, the name of the show is “Survivor,” not “Torture.” That’s next season. (“Sixteen Americans, locked in the dungeon of a medieval castle. Every week, they will vote for someone to be injected with Bubonic Plague. With your host, Urkel.”)

And it’s off to the challenge. Standing upon some byzantine grid of slippery bamboo stalks out in the sea, JP (the host formerly known as the Prince of Priss, or $, tells us that, “After almost a month of nothing, rewards are everything. Except immunity, which is really everything. If you don’t count the big cash prize, which is totally everything. Not including Visa ®, our sponsor, which is everywhere you want to be.”

The winner gets a phone call home and a slice of pizza. Kind of like detention in high school.

Gervase beats Rich by a hair.

When the pizza arrives, he decides to share it with everyone. Everyone takes a bite except for Rudy because he won’t touch pizza that belongs to that damn baby factory, especially after Dr. Suess has taken a bite and Rich has inhaled, like, half the slice in one mouthful. I guess Gervase was trying to ingratiate himself with everyone by being expansive.

Fool.

Jeff asks Gervase who he’s going to call, like the answer is going to be some big damn surprise. Who’s he gonna call? The telephone weather lady? Phone sex girl? Of course not, the phone sex girl is the mother of his FIRST two children. He’s going to call the most recent mother of his children.

The weather lady.

JP ($) tells him it’s 3 a.m. in Jersey, so they’re going to call in the morning.

Commercial. After all this talk about babies and families, I start thinking about the possible offspring of the survivors. I think if Joel and Gretchen had a child, it would suck its thumb until it was 30. If Greg and Colleen had a child, it would grow up to play with matches. If Rich and Ramona mated, their offspring could be Nell, from “Gimme A Break.” I don’t want to think about Sonja having sex with anyone.

Come morning, its rice for breakfast, which strikes me as awful, until I realize I had Rice Krispies ® for breakfast and that’s kind of the same thing. Except for the fact that I ate it out of a real bowl without 30 million people watching me. Rudy says there’s only ten more days and he’ll never have to see these people again, and that’s the way he wants it.

He must be fun to hang out with.

Come morning, Gervase gets his phone call. Hey, there’s a camera in his girlfriend’s house! Maybe that’s why they delayed the call. Every nursing mother wants to be on tv for five minutes talking to the father of her second illegitimate child. The actual conversation is too syrupy and sweet to recount, and involves far too much blushing and kissy-noises. Instead, let’s imagine what the phone calls from the other castoffs would have been like:

Kelly: “Dude.”

Kelly’s Boyfriend: “Dude. Swipe any good stuff?”

Rudy (to his wife): “Hello? Hello? Turn up your damn hearing aid you deaf bitch, this is a toll call!”

Colleen: “Is this the Kota Kinabalu Hilton? Can I have Greg Buis’s room please?”

Sean: “Hello? Hello?”

Operator: “The number you have dialed is not in service. Please hang up and try your call again.”

Rich (to his son): “You better not be eating my Fritos ®!”

Sue (to her husband): “You better not be eating my Fritos ®!”

Gervase’s phone call is intercut with the rest of the castoffs talking about him. Rich says he isn’t going to judge Gervase.

He’s just going to vote him off.

Rudy doesn’t agree with babies out of wedlock. Wait while I put on my shocked expression. He derides people who blame the schools. Rudy thinks the problem starts long before school, and kids need a family because, “they need someone beating them in the head.”

The mystery of the Rudy-Rich friendship is solved.

After this heartwarming moment from Walton’s Mountain (anyone want to bet that the phone call clip ends up on some tearjerking long distance commercial?) we’re back to talking about alliances. Rich and Sue say they’re glad they weren’t on Pagong, because they’re too flaky. Sue tells Rich that even Kelly is a little flaky. Didn’t she swear through tears that she wasn’t going to burn Kelly.

Dumb redneck.

Rich just hopes Kelly’s solid.

Hope springs eternal.

Kelly tells us this isn’t what she thought it was going to be like. According to her, it’s not about surviving the elements, it’s about surviving yourself. If that were true she would have beaten old Souna off the island. Kelly says its not worth it feel like ##### for the rest of your life for a little bit of money and your fifteen minutes. Now I get it. The whole credit card thing is different because you don’t get fifteen minutes of fame. You get fifteen to twenty in the big house making crappy beaded necklaces for a whole bunch of prison women who all look like Sue.

Now she says that making a deal with Rich is like making a deal with the devil. True. Now she’s just leading Rich on and making him think that she’s still part of the alliance. You know, by hanging out with him and voting for the same people. She’s wondering whether she should try to beat him at his own game.
She couldn’t beat him at checkers.

The immunity clue. Carved on a torch no less. Original.

Rich reads it like he’s singing rap. You go, Rich. Notorious P.I.G.

Sue tries to figure out what the clue means. Her conclusion: something at night. Or night something.

Dumb redneck.

JP is back (again the Prince of Priss, now formerly known as $). JP tells us that the challenge is designed to see how much they’ve learned on the island. Not much. The castoffs have three minutes to gather driftwood. Then, the second leg is to go out in the sea, light their torch from the flame, get back to the beach, and start a fire. The first castoff to burn through their rope wins.

Rich wins. When he does, either he gets burned by the falling rope, or he imitates the fat kid from the Goonies ® doing the Truffle Shuffle.

We return prior to Tribal Council. Normally, I merely gloss over this part, but this week was a hoot. Rich all preening with the immunity idol. Gervase talks about Rich’s preening, and says Rich is probably the leader of the alliance. Although Gervase then admits he doesn't know for a fact that there’s an alliance. How did this guy leave home for 39 days and forget to pack his brain.

Kelly says she was talking to Colleen sucks because Colleen and Gervase know they’re next. Deeply feeling for them, Kelly decides to vote Gervase off anyway.

In a truly funny segment, Gervase and Colleen make costuming for TC. Gervase pastes a bullseye on the back of his shirt with the word “Target,”, which I wasn’t sure was intended to be taken literally, or as a promotion for their sponsor. Gervase says his code name is “Bull’s Eye.” Colleen calls herself “Sitting Duck.” Gervase says Sean approached him about an alliance, but he’d only do it with Kelly, so they’d have four votes. With this coordinated strategy and new found friendship, Sean’s gonna vote for Gervase, too.

Kelly wishes something shocking would happen, something nobody would expect. I suppose her being a spineless bitch doesn’t count, cause everybody expects that.

As a storm rolls in, Rattana heads off for TC. The jury heads in, and Jenna looks pissed off. She’s staring straight at Sean with a look that could stop time.

JP starts off discussing the alphabet voting system with Sean. Sean says he’s abandoned the strategy. Sue finally fesses up about alliances. She says America is run on alliances. She talks about the relationship between the President and lobbyists (ouch) and how people use places like churches to make connections. She’s not eloquent, but she’s right.

Not-so-dumb redneck.

The vote. The funniest thing was Sue wondering how to spell Gervase’s name. Ironically, she came closer here than any other previous vote. I mean, someone spelled it with a “J”.

Blowing the Gervase X theory to smithereens, and other theories based thereon, Gervase gets booted 5-2.

Next week on Survivor: Colleen tries to save her ass and Sue threatens to stick a knife in her own ample butt.

Dumb redneck.