*** OFFICIAL RTVW SURVIVOR PHILIPPINES EPISODE 9 SUMMARY ***

"Little Miss Perfect Paranoid"

In review, we had a mind-blowing Tribal Council where Blair outed Braveheart's hidden immunity idol and revealed Plan Umpteen, Blabbi-Maria decided she wanted to fit in with the cool kids and unnecessarily revealed her own hidden immunity idol, and Penner threw away a vote which resulted in Jeff Kent getting the boot instead of a tie with Pete. Seems like everyone is unclear on the concept of a "hidden" immunity idol as Tribal Council normally isn't a place for Show-and-Tell.

Here's Byoffer to fill you in on what happened in the previous episode...

We pick up where we left off last, still putting out flames from the scorched earth speech by the freshly-deposed Jeff Kent Kan't, who finally showed the eternally sunny personality he was renowned for during his baseball days where he exchanged pleasantries over knuckle sandwiches with the likes of Barry Bonds and told an Astros teammate of his desire to leave Major League Baseball without a single friend. (Think I’m kidding? Read and weep) I went into this season thinking that he would never survive with the other alpha males out there and kept waiting for the inevitable explosion. Well done, Kent, to maintain your composure and for going all-in playing the game the way you did.

Back at Camp Gangrene after tribal council ended, Polysporin's happy that Blair let the cat out of the bag about Braveheart's hidden immunity idol as it had the effect of distracting the others from him as a potential boot.

Tactful-Maria then walks right by and said to Polysporin, "That was lovely, getting a vote from you." Turns out it was Penner who threw a vote to Crabbi-Maria, as he wasn't thrilled to be out of the loop and being 'played' on the change of plans. Spicoli, of all people, then provides Penner with a math lesson to make sure he wasn't following the Lisi Math® process – yeah he needed to use his hands to count, but still – and it hits Penner that he basically screwed up with his throw-away vote.

You know, Spicoli, it would help if you'd communicate more often with those supposedly in your alliance to make sure y'all are on the same page – first, there was the "I thought they were voting you out" beauty with Kan't and now this bit of not making sure Penner knew who else was voting with Spicoli. I think he's taking the "don’t tell anyone you’re in an alliance" thing a bit too seriously.

Blair is in tears over tattling to the headmaster and the rest of the class that Braveheart is hiding a hidden (see what I did there?) immunity idol and apologizes. Wild guess, she's not going to be on the Villains side if she ever gets called back for an HvV-type of season. Braveheart assures her that he understands she was trying to play the game and she reveals that while she loves the game, it might be too big for her.

Oh, look, here’s the credits. Who *are* these people, anyway? Well, since they didn’t do the intros this time around, I'll have to do them here. Plenty of people out there don't get my propensity for coming up with pet names on the fly.

Tribe: Gangrene. Yah, I know they spell it 'Dangrayne' for some reason but apparently the tribe misunderstood Polysporin when he crawled by during the discussion on what to name the newly-merged tribe, moaning "I … have … gan … grene" and they said hey that's a great name! Dangrayne! Perhaps they thought there was some guy named Dan Grayne that Polysporin wanted to honour from his Australian Outback season.

Polysporin: Black Knight-esque (‘Tis but a scratch!) returning veteran from season 2 remembered for killing a pig and for performing a swan dive into the tribe’s fire. Has a lifetime supply of Polysporin to tend to the almost-daily nicks and cuts – how does he *not* have an endorsement with them already?

Crabbi-Maria, a.k.a. Abi-Mania: True villain or just completely off her rocker? It's trending 80-20 in favour of "completely off her rocker" on Twitter.

Artpiss: Background- and alliance-filler who is a perpetually grumpy sort.

Pete-moss: From his profile, his pet peeves include stupid people, bad ideas and ditzy girls, yet his main alliance buddy is Crabbi-Maria. Go figure.

Blair Warner: Quickly discovering that the Gangrene camp isn't exactly Eastland School. The cliques you grew up battling against or being a part of back then never really go away, do they?

Normal Penner: A three-time veteran, this writer and actor is back to fulfill his ultimate dream of writing a season-long Kafkaesque fan fiction of how a Survivor season should play out, using other contestants as characters. That's why you saw him butting heads so much with Jiffy in past seasons - he was doing research.

Dr. Ruth: A tiny sex therapist who's not afraid to assert herself. One of two survivors of a thoroughly-decimated tribe, Matsing.

Braveheart: The other survivor of the Matsing tribe, has fought long odds to survive thus far and now holding a position of power. Tight alliance with Dr. Ruth (not in *that* way, just to be clear) from Day 1.

Spicoli: Dude. When asked why he continually wastes his time on the island and never speaks to the camera, he said, "I don't know."

The next morning... Penner is doing some character development for the fan fic. He's decided that Blair and Polysporin are the parents who will lead a Christian life while Pete, Backstabbi-Maria and Artpiss are the bullies. He places himself as the protagonist to take advantage of this split amongst the original Tandungs and sets out to psychoanalyze Blair on her years as a teen actor influencing her tendency to want to please everyone else at the expense of her own happiness in order to have others like her. By the time he's done, he has Blair so confuzzled that she’s saying 'uncle' and agreeing to whatever Penner tells her, and begins to cry again.

Reward Challenge. In a schoolyard pick'em, two teams of four players each are going to be tarred and feathered for our amusement, while Hapless-Maria, as usual, has been chosen to sit out. Penner/Braveheart/Dr. Ruth/Spicoli will make up the Red team while Polysporin/Blair/Artpiss/Pete are on the Yellow side. Each person will drag themselves through mud, dig out a bag buried in a muddy pit, then go through rice to a table at which point each side will toss 12 balls into a narrow basket. Reward is a visit to a Filipino village to hand out toys, games, and supplies to the children and to receive a local-cooked feast. Just as well that Crabbi wasn't picked because she probably would have shown some kid a toy then yanked it right back just as the kid reached for it, then claimed the kid betrayed her and the toy is actually hers. Usually the one not picked gets to pick a side to cheer for and partake in the reward if they win, but I guess the producers couldn't afford to risk having an international incident breaking out if Crabbi went.

Penner gets things going for the Red side by digging up all four bags and placing three of them into corners for his teammates to find easily, while Polysporin goes off in search of new locations to cut himself up with and builds an early lead for the Yellow team. Penner's strategy works, though, as the Red team quickly catches up, builds a huge lead and easily win the challenge. It wouldn't be a challenge without the typical innuendo thrown about by Jiffy: "Penner has already grabbed the balls and put them up there for Spicoli."

Off to the reward we go... We arrive at a Filipino village that seems almost too perfect, as if Penner hired a crew to build the set and found the kids in Central Casting for his fan fic. Dr. Ruth mingles with the kids, Penner tells them his name is "Normal" and breaks a piñata for the masses, Spicoli shows more personality with the kids than he ever did in 8 episodes with the other castaways, and Braveheart shares his memories teaching in Micronesia while saying it was more fulfilling than pouring drinks for hot chicks - maybe if he handed out pencil sets and played a game of pick-up basketball with the girls instead of pouring drinks, he'd have more success. During the feast, the four of them agree to work together and pull in Polysporin and Blair for the next vote.

Meanwhile, at Camp Gangrene, the five reward losers have turned it into Camp Gang-up-on-Blair as Pete-Moss and Squabbi-Maria took turns browbeating Blair over her gameplay, all the while forgetting that Blair was the one who told Pete about Braveheart's HII (which would have given them a shot at flushing it out if they were willing to work together) and Blabbi-Maria was the one who volunteered the info on her HII without anyone twisting her arm to do it. Pete talks about how they're going to have to play nice with the two non-bullies to get anywhere in the game. In the latest chapter of "Sh!t Abi Says" (this is what, chapter 472 by now?), Blair is told that she's gullible and naïve, which of course could only have been said by the person who made an enormously gullible and naïve move at Tribal Council the night before. Normal couldn't have written it any better than that for the increasingly epic fan fic. Beautiful.

What's amazing about all this is that Blair continues to struggle over whether she should stay loyal or if she should move on with the other group.

Immunity Challenge. It's another ribald affair with paddles and balls (perhaps borrowed from Dr. Ruth's clinic?) and more innuendo-filled bon mots from Jiffy. Each of the contestants are to balance a large paddle on a stand and have to get all six balls onto notches on the paddle without dropping them in order to win immunity.

It turned out to be a tough challenge with only two of the eight having any kind of success keeping their balls on the paddle (how else was I supposed to phrase it?!?) – Polysporin and Pete. It was relatively close between these two before Pete's balls dropped (Ach! Jiffy said it, not me) and then Poly locked up the win. What's surprising is that the sex therapist had so much trouble handling the paddle and balls, and turned out to be not a factor in this challenge at all.

In a script stolen from the manual on Survivor Foreshadowing, Artpiss promptly said that it was a good thing that Normal didn't win immunity and that he looked forward to getting back to camp and taking a deep breath and relaxing for a while. So what will it be tonight, Irony? Gonna smack him with a sledgehammer or what?

In another fine moment of storytelling, Assassin-Maria talks about how Polysporin would have been her first choice for the boot, but she’s got to play nice with him for now. Unless. Maybe she could kill him and make it look like an accident! Considering Polysporin's tendency to bleed profusely at the slightest paper cut, surreptitiously flinging a coconut at his head was a pretty decent strategy to get him out of the game. Alas, the Great Coconut Assassination Plot didn't result in an injury severe enough so it's time for Plan B, which apparently is to target Normal for the boot if Conspiri-Maria and Pete could keep Blair/Polysporin from flipping to the other side.

In an idyllic (and private) setting, Normal and Blair sat down for a little storyline plotting for the fan fic. I love how Normal earlier talked to Lisa about her need to please others as a young actress and how she needed to stop worrying about that … and now he's trying to paint a picture of how she should act to please the audience! Think of the viewing audience, what do they want to see happen? Does Blair want to be the fulcrum behind the start of Armageddon and the end of society as we know it that might result from her decision or is she going to go all-in with Normal? America awaits in breathless anticipation.

Naturally, Normal promptly hustles on over to Polysporin and tells him that he’s the fulcrum vote. Then Poly goes over to talk about the same issues with Blair, and she confesses she's still thinking about it all even after Normal’s elaborately-detailed scenario ringing in her head and supported by Poly.

It's now time for Tribal Council.

The attention-grabbing Eliza-Lite and Perpetually-Grumpy stroll in to take their spots in the jury box.

Round One is between Blair and Squabbi-Maria as they differ over who has shown more grace to whom after the previous tribal council. Chapter 827 of "Sh!t Abi Says" has her saying she showed grace to Blair – with "you're gullible"-saying friends like that, who needs enemies anyway?

Round Two is between Artpiss and Dr. Ruth, the former thinking that the Tandungs are one of the most powerful tribes in Survivor history while the latter is hiding a Cheshire grin and saying don't get too comfortable, then Artpiss wraps it up by saying he knows he could be blindsided at any time. Like maybe in about five minutes from now in TV-time, pal?

After a brief interlude from the holder of the immunity idol saying how happy he was to be safe from the boot and playing this far after 12 years of wanting to play 'Survivor' again, Round Three is a rematch of Blair and Scabbi-Maria, the latter picking at the open scab by saying that she doesn't trust Blair and the former expressing her surprise and pointing out she had always showed loyalty to the Tandungs, but now just maybe she needs to consider going the other way. Normal, the story writer, hops in glee.

The hidden immunity idols go unplayed, and the vote reveals that Artpiss is voted out by a 5-4 margin over Normal. As Artpiss goes to get his torch extinguished, Unhabbi-Maria glares at Polysporin who immediately looks up to the sky in feigned ignorance and then looks over at Blair who does the same in averting her eyes upward.

Stay tuned for Episode 10's summary written by Molaholic.

Thanks for sticking it out to this point with the summary. As usual, some names were created via my own questionable mind and some were generously lifted from exceptionally creative minds on this site and elsewhere so if you recognize your creation here, consider this as a big thank you.

A stocking stuffer from Agman