LAST EDITED ON 04-08-03 AT 08:15 PM (EST)

Unnnnnhunh Manioc Bizkits, Unnnnn Hunh

I can't recap this show every week anymore. I don't know what it is.

Previously, the tribes merged. The new official name sucks. For answers to a question on my previous “Hawkeye 10” kudos to Steffigirl for coming up with “Los Backstabbereros,” Bebo for “Amazombies” and Team Joisey for “Jaquinoff." But I have to do my own work.

Previously Deena reckoned the game is hers. I reckon the game is still hers. But the million? Not so much. The first individual immunity challenge was Deena’s and thank MB, we weren’t subjected to a repeat of the Blurry Circles and what they hid.

Roger was pretty smug and sure of himself, making his ouster that much sweeter for his detractors. His pomposity made it hard for me to feel sorry for him. No, make that “impossible” to feel sorry for him. And this episode I feel sorry for Matt, just to give you some idea of the kind of player I’m able to feel sorry for. Roger probably STILL thinks he didn’t get outwitted or outplayed, even after watching the ep.

Whose booting will be obvious, tonight?

Listening to the intro music, I'm trying to figure out what is missing. It really has lost something. It doesn't "sparkle." Marquesas’ version was pretty edgy, especially in the ending where it went “Dun DUnh DunhDunh DUNH!” Damn. That doesn’t translate well into print, does it?

The Amazon theme meanders with a limp finish: “woo eee oooo wooweewooo wooo wimp.” I’m starting to think Mark Burnett alters the music to suit the personalities of the 16.

A toucan with a very yellow beak is onscreen. There’s a blue alligator/crocodile at some point. Very colourful fauna in the Amazon. In a non-sequitur, it’s Day 22.

The last memory of Roger is a pair of gross undies, and Deena ups the ‘eww” quotient by handling them with her hands to put them up in a tree. Why? Who can know?

Deena feels “pretty in control.” But does she feel pretty? Oh so pretty? Stay tuned for the answer. But first...

Dave notes that it was an “interesting” turn of events. “Prime example that nobody really knows what’s really going on in this game. All my stability is turned upside down. Gotta play the game according to how things are right now.”

Well, Dave, you can’t vote for yourself, or at least, you shouldn’t, so I don’t know how you’re going to follow your advice here.

Dave and Butch build a dock, so that shoes don’t get wet disembarking from the canoe, making for all-day discomfort. Yeah, because wet feet is the only thing standing between them and nirvana.

Actually, this is really a great idea and the fact that people are dissing Dave makes me hate everybody in the game. It's part of what makes me hate the game - the fact that people like Dave get booted because people like Rob are so much smarter at the game. I think the Robs of this game are just jealous because they’re so dumb at life.

Most of the tribe sit and stand around watching Dave climb up a big tree to hack off a “special” branch. Except one man.

Jaunty banjo backwoods music is playing. (Thanks to American Idol I'm now able to recombine musical genre names in previously unthought of ways. Is this Hick-hillbilly Rap? Country Shmaltz? Folk Blue-Jazz?)

A cute monkey in a tree appears to be watching Matthew sharpen his machete. Over and over he sharpens it. It is hypnotising and Cameraman Jim obviously had a hard time turning away.

The JackDAWs sit around mesmerized. All this entertainment! First Dave hacking trees, now Matt sharpening a machete! “Sweeek sweeek (pause) sweeek, sweeeek.” Up and down. Over and over. “Sweeek, sweeeeeek.” What could Matt be thinking?

“Unnnn huh. I like me some bizkits, unnnnnnhunh. Manioc bizkits unnnn hunh."

Sweek. Sweek.

Jenna asks if he’s gonna butcher anyone. Matt:, “I promise I won’t, ah, harm anyone." (Sweeeek, pause, sweeeek.) "I don’t like the sight of blood, my own blood, yechh." (Sweeek, pause, sweeek.) (But other people's blood, that's another thing alto-sweeeeek-gether.)

Christy in a confessional speaks for most everyone, “He’s creepy.”

Rob says, “He sits and sharpens the machete for an hour at a time. (Sweeeek, sweeek.) I’m afraid that when he does get voted off, he will take out the machete and kill us after the vote.” (Sweeek sweeek.)

Alex says that Matt is a physical threat and he’s kinda losing it. "No one is all that comfortable around him.” (Sweeek sweeeeeeek sweek sweek.)

Sweek sweeek sweeek.

Finally it’s time for a change of mood. Happier music plays as we’re off to the Reward Challenge, where Jif welcomes the JackDAWs. He explains the reward challenge: Puddle of Mudd, 5 Coloured Flags, Teams of 3, Bungee Cords, Flag Slots. 10 minutes. Snoozefest.

“Wanna know whatcha playing for?” Jif takes grunts and confused glazed looks to mean “yes” and launches into a smarmy recitation of what lays ahead for the lucky winner: An Afternoon of Refreshment, meaning a cool bath in cold water and nutritious banana splits with chocolate syrup, brownie sundae, strawberries & cream.

If we're extra good, somebody might have sex.

The Green Flag team is Christie, Rob and Butch (the Misfits); the Orange Flag team is Jenna, Matt and Heidi (Sticks, Skull & Twigs); the Purple Flag team is Dave, Alex and Deena (the Strongest Players in the Whole Tribe.)

During the challenge, Jif keeps up his usual constant voice-over updating. I tune him out, mostly.

Teams struggle in the mud, straining the bungee cords in order to reach further and still further. Some girl nearly loses her bathing suit bottom. Little Blurry Circle to the Rescue! Rising up out of the mud to put a flag into a flag slot it's Creature from the Black Lagoon. No, wait, it's Matt!

Purple Team wins and then Dave, Alex and Deena compete against each other. Dave wins easily. Way to convince the Jackos that you’re not a threat to be a challenge hog, there, Dave. Deena struggles for a distant third place.

Who was surprised when Jif told Dave he could select someone to come with him to enjoy the Reward? Dave asks his Purple teammates Alex & Deena to say how many fingers he has behind his back and Deena correctly guesses “two.”

“I could kiss you,” says Deena, which makes no sense to me. It was hardly Dave’s doing. Maybe she should kiss Alex for getting it wrong or Jif for allowing Dave to bring someone with him.

Jaunty Club Med music, with Jif at his smarmiest at the Reward Challenge locale. “Think you’re gonna like what’s been prepared for you.”

The camera travels lovingly over the arrayed refreshments: 19th century bath tubs, towels, bath balm, pitcher of iced tea, ice cream, brownie sundae, strawberries with cream, 2 bananas (already peeled?? eww. Good idea there, idiot producers. Let the bugs get their share of the food. It’s not like you need a machete to peel a banana.)

Deena & Dave hug, then hit the food. Lots of shots of them stuffing their faces, the entire tableload of goodies gone in 60 seconds. Back and forth between Dave and Deena: the camerawork is a bit sickening here. I think its purpose was to make us feel as sick as they do when they’re done.

Deena wants somebody to slap her. The line forms here - take a number. Afterwards, Dave is all, “I think I’m gonna be ill.”

Next they strip down, artfully conveyed by the shots of clothes dropping at ankles. As Dave sits cramped up in his tub, the camera looks right at where his crotch is, but I can’t see what’s there. It can’t be true?!?! Dave isn't missing an appendage, is he? Must be the filthy bath water is hiding the viewers’ reward. Oh well, thanks for trying, camera guy.

Deena and Dave are laughing their faces off, although we aren’t allowed to know why. Or I just didn't get the joke? Maybe it had something to do with the loofah. Then Dave wants to get serious and talk strategy with Deena.

“The problem,” says Deena, “is I have absolutely no power to change the fate. The only way to do it is if we accelerate the 5150 status of Matt, because he’s getting funky.” But Deena promises to see what she can do. She'll "talk to them." She says she owes Dave that for bringing her on the reward. Again with the "owes Dave." It Had Nothing To Do With Dave.

On second thought, maybe Dave is deserving of some thanks. After all, he could have just chosen someone, and cut Deena out of even a 50% chance at being there right from the get-go. Somebody needs to slap me. I'm getting sucked in to the analysis again.

Back at Camp JackDAW Ridge, the Bitchy Twins are doing what they do best: whine. Jenna complains that this is Dave’s second bath. "He’s cleaning up.” (Does she realize how funny she is?) Heidi is all, “It’s just not fair.” Why isn’t it fair, Heidi? Are only Cute Girls allowed to win Clean Up rewards?

Heidi & Jenna go off for a bath, with Rob and Alex doing the voyeur thing from behind some trees. Rob informs us that their nickname for the two skinny girls is “Twigs & Sticks.”

Rob: “I know that I would catch on fire if I ever saw Twigs and Sticks rubbing together.” Another lame sex story from Rob's repertoire.

While the girls wash each other, and Rob, Alex and the camera watch them, for a split second we're shown Matt. He is facing away from the spectacle. I think he's back at the machete sharpening. Sweeek, sweeek. Unnnhhuh.

Rob proves he’s not completely stupid. Okay, I don’t like him, but he is at least not deluded about the situation. He tells us that he recognises that in real life, the two girls would never pay him any attention. They’re just trying to use their sexuality to get him to do things he wouldn’t otherwise do. What those things could possibly be, I can't imagine. Rob has told us he is willing to lie, cheat, whine, mooch, make dumb remarks, be a total idiot, and have sex with Twigs & Sticks. What is left for them to "get him to do" that he wasn't already willing to do?

Deena and Dave return. “Honey, I’m home,” calls Deena. Who is "Honey?"

The others ask if it was fun, and Dave & Deena both downplay the reward, making it sound much lamer than it actually was (if you can believe that.) “Ice-cream was all melted.” “Dumbed down bungalow type of thing.”

Then, Deena claims she’s hungry and wants some manioc. Talk about going overboard to make the mistruth appear believable. Still, it IS true that eating all those sweets can make a person want “real food.”

Rob and Jenna are totally annoyed about Deena's demand and confessional about it. Jenna: “I was like, screw you, you fat b!tch. You’re gonna sit around and eat ice cream all day and come back and eat my manioc and fish?" Excuse me, "fat b!tch"??? Even after spending an afternoon at a nice Reward, Deena will still come back and do a hell of a lot more work around camp than you, lazy b!tch.

On night cam, Dave is still trying to justify his and Deena’s requests to have some of the regular tribe food. “It wasn’t really a banana split.” Jenna is the Whine Machine. Once she starts up, she won't stop til she runs out of steam. "It's common courtesy that if you just got back from eating 3 different types of ice cream, you would let the others eat the fish." It's also common courtesy to pull your own weight around camp. Although I guess Rob is pretty satisfied with the "work" Sticks is doing.

Next we see Heidi & Dave sleeping together. Rob is pissed. (Rob sure spends a lot of time being pissed. It’s his emotion du jour.)

Rob thinks if Dave weren’t around, then it would be his arms around Heidi while she sleeps. Dream on, Doofus. I bet Heidi would rather sleep with Matt holding her than you. Even Jenna has to be higher on Heidi’s list of bed partners ahead of you. Get a grip, Rob.

While they sleep, Heidi & Dave hold hands -- well, he has her bones in his paw.

In the morning it’s time for the Icky Segment. As always during the middle episodes of Survivor, we have to have scenes of how yuckky everybody is. This time, our Jungle Guests are shown with gnat families circling around their heads.

“The dirty human head.” says Rob, “Gnats hang out at a dirty human head like it’s Studio 54.” And not just Rob's dirty head; everybody has a party going on upstairs.

Rob and Matt go off to do something, but it’s really to have a Strategy Meeting.

Matt has a confessional to say that he really appreciates the relationship with Rob. It’s at about this point that I start to feel sorry for Matt. I know it’s stupid, but there it is.

I don’t think Matt is really a bad guy; he’s just a weird-looking guy and he has had a different upbringing to most of these people, having lived in many different countries. He is different on so many levels. Yet, for all his worldlines, he is definitely coming across as naive. He’s even telling us he’s completely clueless about the game and has learned a lot from Rob.

Rob tells us his evil plan. It is a good plan for how to play this game, but it doesn’t make me like him. Rob tells Matt that the final three will be Matt, Alex and Rob. He tells us it is a ploy to keep Matt from turning against the basic final 5, which is actually Alex, Rob and all the girls except Christy.

And watch the Final Four turn out to be Christy, Matt, Butch and anybody but Rob. Please - anybody but Rob. Can we see him depart soon?

Rob tells Matt to keep it secret, because if people find out they’re in cahoots, they’ll try to make them into targets. This scene is a little stomach-turning, what with Game Master Rob standing over Seated Subservient Matt.

Rob confessionals that “in reality would like to get rid of Matt the sooner the better.” He says he’s taking his life into his hands with the amount of lies he’s telling him. We're taking our lives into our hands watching you each week. The fact that I've even enjoyed Rob's presence on occasion is scarier than Matt's machete ritual.

Next, somebody must have told the JackDAWs there’s a lot of stuff to bring back to camp, because in an unusual move, the whole gang goes for tree mail.

Your time we shall steal with this lame-o activity
Bring the crap with you for your bid for immunity
The poem went on, the way those things do
It won’t be so much what you know, but whether others see you.

The group drags crates containing giant masks, which they unpack to oohs and aahs and unnnhuhs.

Jenna says she is trying to draw what she remembers of how her face looks. It appears to be a big blob with a downturned mouth and few teeth.

Alex says he's making the eyebrows prominent.

Dave blah blahs about having his head on the chopping block. He intends to keep Matt from winning this immunity he says as he works. Dave has a “BooYah” coming out of his mask’s mouth. Funny thing is I don’t even remember Dave saying that much until this episode.

We see Butch working on his, but Butch is being kept extremely Under The Radar. He looks like Final Four Material to me.

Arriving at the Challenge Clearing, the JackDAWs have to listen to Jif’s smarmy remarks. “Looking good.” “Rob, you’ve got a survivor on yours.” “Ah nice, I like th’ glasses, Butch.”

Jif says one of my top 3 all-time least favourite expressions “Once again, ‘Munity, back up for grabs.” The other two are “Wanna know whatcha playin’ for?” and “Baby.” Why can't Jif get some new catch-phrases? Even he sounds sick of saying the same thing over and over.

The challenge is one of those Answer the Questions about Brazilian and Amazonian culture, and about Basic Survivor Skills. Chop chop chop will release the log and disintegrate the mask. Jif demonstrates. Everyone gasps. The person with the mask “fully intact” will win immunity.

The questions were mainly ones I didn’t have a clue as to the right answer. If you really, really, really want to know the questions, I bet they’re up at the Official Site. A lot of people moaned in forums all over the internet about how lame this challenge is, so I’m not going to bore you people further by setting out who chopped whom and what the questions were and who got them right and who didn’t.

The elimination went in this order: Matt, Dave, Alex (to whom Matt said, “welcome to the morgue.” Hee! Matt doesn’t realize how creeped out everyone is, unnnhun), Rob (2nd one eliminated by Christy - she did Alex’ 3rd hit as well), Butch (he says, “You know how many students would like to do that?”), Christy, Deena (Jif tries to make it sound like Deena was eliminated because she’s a threat, but Jenna says not a threat, just that she’s already won it - we’re gonna share it.) Left at the end are Heidi with 2 chops to her log and Jenna with one chop.

Both Heidi and Jenna got the final answer correct so both had the right to chop each other. Jif makes them go through the motions, so as to destroy Heidi’s mask and leave Jenna’s “fully intact.” Jenna looks very self-satisfied. Jif says, “Well earned, well played.” Jif gets smarmier with every episode.

About Jenna winning immunity, does anyone else think Deena could make a case that since Jenna isn’t “fully intact” there’s no way her mask could be said to be “fully intact” either?

Back at JackDAW Ridge, we get to watch Matt “macguyvering” his shoes into sandals. He is whispering this highly confidential information to the camera guy: “My objective for this afternoon is to take these shoes I ruined by leaving them too close to the fire and macguyer them into suitable sandals.” Why this had to be whispered like it was super-cofidential, only his therapist will know.

Christie says that she’d vote off Matt cuz she doesn’t know what’s going through his head. He just gives her the creeps. This material is from the same interview we saw earlier. Camera guy obviously put a lot of effort into getting Christie to make “I’m creeped out by Matt” comments.

Dave is also shown saying he’d vote Matt. So right away you know that Matt is safe.

Jenna & Rob have a confab. Camera pulls back to reveal Deena in there as well. Probably more talk about booting Matt.

Heidi & Dave have a confab. Heidi’s hand is so thin, it looks like the one from the skeleton in biology class. They agree to vote for Matt. Heidi does a pretty piss-poor job of looking convincing as she says she’s gonna vote out Matt. She has trouble looking Dave in the eye. She is also looking uglier with every passing day. How did she ever come to the conclusion that she’s a cute girl? At least Jenna does still have a pretty face or reasonable facsimile thereof.

At TC, Jif grills Matt, who agrees he had a tough start, but says that now people are more interested in what he has to say. He feels he has some great friends and has more Genuine Relationships. Rob is smirking. How can people not figure out that Rob is lying his ass off?

Jif calls Rob on his array of facial expressions and Rob says his facial expressions are that he’s so happy with Matt’s progress. In the beginning Matt was so into himself, but now he’s really integrating and he’s an invaluable part of the tribe. I note that Rob's voice takes on a slightly different tone when he's bullsh!tting.

Deena’s laughing cuz she knows Rob is blowing smoke.

Matt allows himself a small smile. It’s pathetic how happy Matt is because he's so sure that Rob is telling the truth. He seems to have no clue how easily Rob lies. It makes me despise Rob, because Matt isn’t really all that creepy, he just looks different and unusual. Rob is a garden variety doofus. What a total weed.

Heidi found it “rilly intristing” that the 4 girls were left. The guys pretty much eliminated each other, instead of working on the girls. Is this girl right in the “haid?” Way to point out where the guys are going wrong, you lamebrain.

Dave knows his name will come up tonight, but hopefully not as a majority and hopefully he’ll still be here. Dream on, guy. I’m glad that at least you’ll be around for the jury. I hope you don’t get too fat during the remaining days and lose all your good-lookingness, like Colby did.

Deena says human emotion can be dictated by human sentiment. She says, “I told these people I would but I just can’t do it tonight.” Dave is shown right then, to make it seem like Deena's comments are about him. (I really think she’s talking about Matt.)

Heidi’s words heard + Matt’s face on camera = No way Jose.

Jif tallies, reads “Dave, Matt.” Jif can’t help himself. “One vote Dave, one vote Matt.”

With the 6th vote shown, 5 of which were for Dave, that’s enough and it’s goodbye Dave. He knew it was coming and off he goes.

Jif finishes up by saying that clearly this is a game about relationships. With only 15 days left, “the question you have to be asking yourselves is, ‘Are the relationships I’ve formed genuine? Can they get me to the end?’” Jif is seriously trying hard to clue Matt into questioning his relationship with Rob.

Next time, Butch gets a bite on the finger from a dead piranha. A power struggle erupts at JackDAWs. Rob says Deena thinks she is pulling the strings, Alex thinks he is calling the shots, but who is really calling the shots is him, Rob. And I’m actually sure that’s right. How I hope that people compare notes and toss Rob. It won’t happen, but I can wish.

Dave’s final words are that he wishes them the best. “A great Nepalese saying is ‘blah blah blah, blah blah blah,’ which means, ‘What to do?’ I’m here now, I’m hungry and it’s food time. So take care.”

Bye Dave, it takes more than rocket science to figure this game out, lad. Uhhhhh hunh.