This show has to fail.

The audience? Fall asleep and let your hand slip onto the remote so the Nielsen people will record a sudden boost for the Food Network. The sponsors? Retreat in droves and bring your commercials to a more respected venue, like a two-hour Drunken Sorority Girls Who Didn’t Think There Was Film In The Camera infomercial. The producers, writers, set designers, editors, camera operators et. all? Traumatic amnesia. All of ‘em. It’s that or a three-hour tour around Hawaii, and we all know how that would turn out. Either lose your memories or be lost to the world: those are the only options I’m giving you.

Why? Because if the ratings don’t come back as a solid 0.0 for the fourth episode, there’s a chance – a tiny chance, but a chance – that the series will turn into a success. And that means the First Rule Of Hollywood (also know as the FOX Clause) will be invoked: what succeeds must be duplicated and forced in front of us until the revolution cuts into regularly scheduled programming. If this show doesn’t fail, there will be others coming. Shows that are in development right now, awaiting only a positive ratings response to this one and a TBS producer saying ‘Hey, we could rerun that for a synergy bonus, too!’

Not convinced? Fine. What sort of reaction does the title The Real Saved By The Bell generate?

Twitching? Imagining a line of Screeches waiting for their auditions? Too bad. I don’t think you’re in enough mental pain to have been convinced. I think we need a little more avoidance therapy here. So: coming to TBS in the spring of 2005, get ready for: The Real Family Matters! Featuring six different groups of contenders, all containing one player fighting for the right to be recognized as the one, the only, the irritating, the death-is-better-than Steve Urkel, and the only way to do it is to out-Urkel each other twenty-four hours a day during a live simulcast!

There will now be a short break to let everyone stop screaming.

This show has to fail. It has to. The alternative is Urkel. And there are some places reality television just should not go.

Unfortunately, it’s already gone to Playa del Carmen, and brought two competing casts – I can’t say ‘tribes’ – of contenders to the dubious titles of The Real Gilligan, Skipper Too, The Millionaire And His Wife, The Movie Star, The Professor And Mary Ann, here on (censored) TBS, and it’s moved into its third hour. And as long as it still exists, it has to be summarized, if only in the name of providing an object lesson.

Network executives, please remember: we get one sniff of The Real Full House and we start killing until it stops. So…

Previously on The Real Gilligan’s Island: the producers found two casts’ worth of contestants who had some resemblance to the sitcom’s original roles, partially through profession, occasionally through brute stupidity, but mostly because no one could understand why you’d want to spend three years giving them money either. The newest oxymoron added to the television dictionary was ‘Lovey Donna’, we learned that the producers couldn’t challenge their way out of a plagiarism lawsuit as one Survivor challenge was ripped off down to the mats, and the World’s Stupidest Looking Potential Elimination Set, also known as Voodoo Village, made its debut. The ‘stop fighting and allow your opponents to remove their wounded’ rule was not followed, mostly because no one knew it existed until that moment. We’re down one Skipper (serious and unbashable) and one Professor (ten out of ten for how the raft looked on camera, three out of a million for the way it actually floated and steered), with five eliminations left before we can get down to our Final Seven, at which point they’ll either award a team prize or give them all some of Gilligan’s notorious radioactive super-veggies and see who can throw their teammates back to the mainland first. And Gilligan Gooner looks too much like the ‘before’ shot in the secret identity files to pass that up.

Who will be permanently banished to the other side of the island tonight? How much does Mark Burnett plan on suing for? What genius let this floating hunk of fecal matter onto the air in the first place? Where are my eight episodes of Outback Jane?

One of these questions may be answered in the following summary. But don’t hold your breath.

In fact, there’s no need for anyone to hold their breath – not when it’s completely germ-free! The show opens by taking another moment to rip off A Certain CBS Show With Many Lawyers using a strategically-inserted product placement. Most of the Gold Team – with the focus on the Professor and Mary Ann Kate – are enjoying a snack of Listerine Pocket Pack strips, because while proper nutrition and hydration are no concern of the producers’, making sure the contestant have kissably-sweet mouths is a top priority. The Professor feels the strips are really tasty, but this is a man who’s spent the majority of his life choking on rock dust. And if there’s anything Listerine comes off well in comparison to, it’s shale.

Ginger Rachel approaches her team with a discovery: the island’s newest form of transportation! It’s not a bamboo car, but it’s almost as good: a home-cobbled broom, being ridden in a fashion that probably won’t lead the Rowling estate to join the lawsuit fun, if only because the CBS line to file is up to eighty feet. However, as Lovey Mindy points out, GR is entirely the wrong person to be taking that ride, with Thurston Glenn adding that it is the right mode of transport for a certain other resident of the island who is going unnamed because both he and I are trying to get as far as possible before we have to invoke the pain that is –

-- Lovey Donna.

Musical sting. Shot of Lovey Donna walking out of the Millionaire’s Hut in her bathing suit. Pain. Horrible, horrible pain.

Gilligan Gooner takes the first confessional-tell of the episode by noting that ‘A little bit of Miss Beavens goes a long way.’ In this case, it went a thousand miles offshore from the United States, and that still isn’t enough to save us from her charming points of view. GG has made a classic mistake: he’s tried to ask an innocent question that couldn’t possibly be taken the wrong way. To wit, he wants to know if Lovey Donna cooks. This is a fair question. Many tropical islands contain some form of poisonous plant life, and if like attracts like, everyone had better be prepared to keep Lovey Donna away from the campfire. Which unfortunately minimizes the chances of her falling in, but sacrifices must be made. And if the first sacrifice happened to be Lovey Donna – they’ve already got Voodoo Village, is it really too much to ask that –

Err… right. Anyway, he wants to know if she cooks. We’ve already seen her on a continual low simmer that frequently flares over to full boil.

‘Every once in a while,’ she replies, ‘because our whole family likes to go out.’ (You mean there’s more of them?)

At this point, Thurston Bill makes a mistake. He opens his mouth and words come out, to wit: ‘Once a year is not a lot.’ You’d think a few years of being married to Lovey Donna would have cured him of the whole speaking habit, but alas, even seven words are too many. Cue LD, who immediately goes on the defense about the quality of her cooking. And keeps going. And going. And going. While staying exactly where she is and not, say, walking into the ocean, never to be seen again.

Gilligan Gooner c-t continues with ‘She’s like a bad case of hemorrhoids. You try to get rid of her, but she just won’t go away!’ Gilligan Gooner is now the smartest, wittiest, most observant man on the island, which is quite a feat when you consider there’s just enough poundage there to make about three-quarters of a man. Given his height, possibly three-eighths.

LD continues to protest to all and sundry that she’s a good cook, that she really knows her way around the kitchen to where the servants work, it’s not that she has anything against the lower classes who make their own meals, and it’s not the least bit true that her husband would be worth closer to 500 million if it wasn’t for all those restaurant bills. Oh, and gay people are the spawn of the netherworld, all Democrats deserve to die, and the poor should be sterilized before being sent to work in the cotton fields down on the plantation. Which has nothing to do with the cooking discussion, but she can’t get five minutes without saying it.

‘She seems like a nice person,’ Gilligan Gooner c-ts, ‘but there’s times when she needs to shut her mouth!’ Okay – make that half-wittiest…

The camera briefly freezes on Lovey Donna. Six editors are condemned to life in prison under California law.

(How do you describe Donna Beavens, physically? Imagine a typical Jerry Springer guest. Add the whitest white women in the Hamptons. Mix in Jesse Helms’ moral code and about half of his facial features. Blend well and transport to Kentucky for forty-five years of isolated aging. Shake twice and flush down toilet.)

Ginger Rachel takes a moment to recap the last episode for us: the Professor is still here, the Mary Anns are the next on the chopping block, and she doesn’t care. She just wants to play this thing out and get back home where she can sneak in quick stares at Stacey’s little boyfriends.

Mary Ann Kate cares, if only a little. She cares so much that she can only express the deep emotions inside her by parading around Gilligan Chris’ hammock in a bikini top. (Did you know Mary Ann Kate’s already posed for Maxim? It’s as if she’s been working her entire life just for this moment. And such supportive parents!) Of course, she couldn’t do it without Gilligan Chris, whom she feels understands her better than anyone else on the island, which is why she’s completely comfortable stretching out on the hammock underneath him. Not that they’re going to do much about it. Romber has lawyers, too.

Gilligan Chris c-t opinionates that he’d like to keep Mary Ann Kate around for a while longer because A. she’s fun to look at and B. they’ll sue TBS before they think to sue him, and we swing into a team meeting called by Thurston Glenn. The Gold millionaire – the one with the spouse you don’t want to automatically and repeatedly throw into the lagoon – wants to make sure everyone’s on the same page before the competition starts, and that would be the page with the chapter heading Pagonging and you. Now that they all know they can work as a team to save one person in the group, they’re ready to fight for their Mary Ann. And if all else fails, he can always hit the host with his wallet. Lovey Mindy coos ‘Oh, my little girl!’ and protectively cuddles Mary Ann Kate, which unfortunately sends the ratings to an all-time high.

Thurston Glenn feels the fire has gone out of the Green Team. They lost what seemed like a cakewalk when their Professor went out. They’re wounded. They have no competitive spirit. They are, according to my really-badly timed Google research, named after one of the worst comic books ever created. (Don’t look it up. Just don’t.) They still have to deal with Lovey Donna every single waking hour, plus she talks in her sleep. The Gold Team’s path to victory is clearly marked and runs right over LD’s mouth. How can they possibly lose? Do you think it’s possible the producers remembered to rip off the hubris angle, too?

‘What do they have to pump them up?’ asks Thurston Glenn. ‘I wouldn’t get pumped up by Mrs. Beavens!’ This is very probably not code for anything, nor should it ever be code for anything, and if anyone decides it is code and tries to translate it, I will hurt them very badly.

The camera immediately moves to Lovey Donna, who is still trying to claim her place among the great chefs of Europe, which is yet another place where she could be that she wouldn’t be annoying me right now. The argument goes something like this: LD points out that she does cook sometimes. Her husband insists that once or twice a year barely qualifies for sometimes. LD doesn’t think he can talk, because he doesn’t know how to cook. In fact, she can point out a million things he doesn’t know how to do, and ‘Marry well’ is just one of them. That doesn’t make him a bad person, although you could put in a major debate for ‘cursed’. Which in turn means she does know how to cook, is an excellent cook, oh, and it’s been five minutes, so it’s time to whip the poor people again.

Gilligan Gooner’s skinny frame collapses, with his head tucked protectively under a wing. Lovey Donna immediately concludes that this is his assent to her cooking abilities, not to mention his very obedient, textbook-form pre-whipping posture. She approves. All is right with the howling storm of darkness that is her world. The camera can leave her now.

I said, the camera can leave her now.

I said…

Lovey Donna smiles in triumph. The worldwide death toll is four hundred and twelve.

Finally, the radio crackles to life and summons the castaways for a few details on the Mary Ann-off. They’re going to meet under the big palm trees in a few minutes for the next crackdown, and one of their coconut-cream pie-sweet Kansas girls will be returning to the magazine trail.

Ginger Nicole c-t speaks for the Green Team, feeling that despite the Gold judgment of them, they’re actually very calm and collected, and that’s mostly thanks to Mary Ann Amanda. Her cool demeanor in facing the challenge is spreading to the rest of them, and after Lovey Donna scorched them with a few harsh looks, it’s an outright relief.

‘I’ve been saying this all my life,’ Mary Ann Amanda rallies the others. ‘Let’s just do the damn thing!’

A Mary Ann has just said ‘damn.’ Television’s karma gods prepare to collectively descend.

Think about it. So far – all of two hours worth – the show has smiled on those who act the most like their characters. The winning Professor brought hard scientific knowledge to the table, and he stayed. The remaining Skipper was shown in the commercials walloping Gilligan Gooner with his hat, and he’s still here. Thurston Glenn tried to buy his way out of a situation, and thus, he is not married to Lovey Donna. A Mary Ann should never, ever say ‘damn’. ‘Sugar!’ is pushing it.

The challenge is now irrelevant. The winner has been determined. But they’re gonna air it anyway.

Mary Ann Amanda c-t feels that ‘Whoever God wants to stay here is going to stay here.’ Plural, MKA. You don’t want to offend the television karma deities any more than you already have. (And if it’s singular – well, it’s still a pity about that ‘damn’, isn’t it?) She then adds ‘A lot of people feel that if Mary Ann Kate was banished to the other side of the island, the island would be better off.’ Her, herself, and Lovey Donna. Of course, LD is also trying to get the rest of the cast, the entire production crew, all of editing, and every person who watches the show banished to the deepest trench in the ocean, where they can never ask about her cooking again. Always look beyond the overlap in your alliance.

The camera shows Lovey Donna slipping into the water – wait. My bad: that was an alligator – the teams head for the palm trees, and we go to the first commercials. And in the name of mercy, I will spare you the idiot edit precaps that TBS has chosen to place before every last commercial break. What will happen in the next segment? Who will be the Final Seven? Who will ultimately be rescued? Why are you doing this to us when you’re already inflicting us with endless amounts of Lovey Donna?

Generic Host v3.6 meets the casts at their Exhibit H mats and explains the challenge. Because food is important to survival on the island and the producers have no intention of providing very much, the Mary Anns are going to be gathering an ingredient for their infamous coconut cream pies: coconut milk. The coconuts are right there, overhead, still attached to their trees. Two cast members for each Mary Ann will be assigned to knock the coconuts down using piece of coral from a handy pile. (Somewhere in the United States, a man named Colby is arrested by agents of the Australian government. Again.) The Mary Anns will gather the fallen fruits, crack them open, and fill five 32-ounce glass containers with coconut milk. First Mary Ann to have 160 ounces ready to go wins the right to be called Mary Ann and have her real first name dropped from the summary. Isn’t that special? Oh, and her cast will win a wicker chest full of ice that’s good for at least thirty seconds before it melts in the island heat, plus a coconut cream pie of their very own. The losing Mary Ann will be banished to the other side of the island, where she will have to have be called by her real name for the rest of her life, prefixed by the initials DAW.

Mary Ann Kate chooses Gilligan Chris and Thurston Glenn to throw coral. Mary Ann Amanda goes with the Skipper and Gilligan Gooner, setting the Gilligans against each other and setting up an unfair advantage, as Gilligan Gooner can just stretch on tiptoe and pick the coconuts, especially if a light breeze drifts up under his hat and forces a complete takeoff.

GHv3.6 blows a whistle to start the competition – you thought he was going to drop his hand, didn’t you? Admit it – and the throwers get to work. The glue holding the coconuts up hasn’t had time to set, so a rain of hard shells begins almost instantly, and the Mary Anns scramble to get cracking. The low rock formations used to crack the coconuts is a few feet away from the tables with the glass jars, so a little milk is inevitably lost during the run over – with more pouring out onto the rocks at first impact. The camera is very careful to follow the movements of slim young Maxim models wearing ultra-short-shorts and halter tops, just in case there’s something happening essential to the challenge. In fact, watching the Mary Anns run is so important, it requires a split-screen shot to make sure no details are lost. Thoughtful editors, these. When was the last time Survivor went split-screen? And when was the last time anyone placed coconut-breaking rock formations that low, making sure the cast members would have to bend over at exactly that angle every time? (Somewhere in California, several CBS lawyers offer to drop a lawsuit or two if they can just borrow some ideas…)

Mary Ann Amanda pulls ahead early, but Mary Ann Kate gets a semi-bright idea: instead of standing over her jars waiting for all the milk to drain, she leaves the coconut upside-down over a jar while she runs back for more, increasing her work speed. MKA spots and steals the trick – but only after a few coconuts have passed. MKK responds by getting a coconut drain assembly line going, getting one inverted over each of the five containers while MKA is still leaving a few untopped.

‘I was praying for strength’, Mary Ann Amanda says in c-t. ‘Not muscle strength, but spiritual.’ Okay, if that’s what it takes to break – wait a minute! In the c-t shot, MKA doesn’t have the green ribbons in her hair that denote a member of her cast! And her halter top is missing! (She’s. Wearing. A. Bathing. Suit. Breathe, people.) Those ribbons and costumes are like Survivor buffs: unless you’re bathing or out of the game, they stay on at all times. The editors just completely gave away the winner of the challenge before the challenge was even over!

Of course, we knew she was going to lose the instant she said ‘damn’, but – wow.

Meanwhile, back at the completely-spoiled competition (still in progress), the non-participating cast members are yelling lots of encouragement about ‘get more juice!’ and ‘harder, harder!’ Just to mention.

Mary Ann Kate’s starting to get tired, but that doesn’t matter because the editing has just shown she’s going to win, and don’t we all trust bad editing? The camera moves to show the juice dripping into the last few jars, using a Bernie Mac font and graphic to point out the thirty-two ounce fill line. Four times. In a row. Just in case we forgot where it was at some point during the first three. The idiot edit apparently felt it had to make some adjustments for long-time Gilligan fans.

By the way, my spellchecker recognizes ‘Gilligan’. This does not come as a surprise.

A quick shot of the running Mary Anns, and make that five times on the fill line shot – six – and Mary Ann Kate wins! She’s officially juicer than the other Mary Ann, and hugs the Professor as exhausted relief washes across her face and the camera moves to Mary Ann Amanda’s final container to show one last fill line shot, which makes it clear that she lost by one scant ounce of coconut milk. It’s amazing what the television karmic gods can make evaporate into thin air, isn’t it?

Mary Ann Kate hugs the rest of her cast, while Mary Ann Amanda accepts consolation from hers, then angrily removes her halter top and slings it across the beach (I repeat: Bathing Suit Underneath. I thought we’d already been over this. However, this is in the all-time top ten for anger reactions on a reality show. You can just about see the fumes rising from her skin) before being summoned to her mat. The Mary Anns gather around GHv3.6, who tells Mary Ann Kate ‘Congratulations. You have earned the right to be called – Mary Ann.’ Because this is an honor. Because there is no higher aspiration in life. And because I don’t have to type ‘Kate’ for the rest of the summary. DAW Amanda, however, is permanently banished to the other side of the island. The competitors engage in a half-fake hug, and DAW Amanda says goodbye to the rest of her cast. Gilligan Gooner c-t declares there are winners and losers, and they’re the losers. Ginger Nicole is c-t surprised to be feeling a small amount of emotional pain not related to being passed up for a part. And DAW Amanda heads through the gate, with her final c-t dedicated to how much she’s going to miss Ginger Nicole and Lovey ‘Donna. Those are the angels of the island.’

The editors, spotting LD’s name, strategically remove the word ‘fallen’.

Commercials, and the Gold Team returns to camp, quickly spotting their overflowing ice and the coconut cream pie. The Professor, noting their shrunken stomachs – you can really get a lot of compaction in what, three days? – wonders if they’re capable of handling the rich food. The rest of the cast is more than willing to try, and the chowdown begins.

Meanwhile, back on the beach, we get to see the dark side of Thurston Bill, who’s sharing a meal of raw coconut with his spouse while declaring ‘You know we won that contest. Even they know we won.’ Getting ready to demand a juice recount until you get the results you want, TB? Sorry: we already spilled all the liquid chads into the sand. Maybe you can spend all of the less than three million dollars in your bank account getting the second season staged in the Florida Keys.

Lovey Donna agrees with her spouse completely, especially since he’s just parroting the words she planted in his head during the walk back, then adds that DAW Amanda lost because she made the mistake of topping off some of the jars that were already at the fill line, so she had more total ounces than Mary Ann and should have been the winner. This is followed by LD’s imitation of Mary Ann at the moment of false victory, which looks a lot like Eliza after having been run over by a truck six times. And it still doesn’t do a thing for the results. Even if they’re right – and given the source, I give this idea no credibility whatsoever – it would be DAW Amanda’s fault for not paying attention to the containers and the rules. Plus anything that upsets the Green Howells makes the baby Antichrist cry. So all is right with the world. Now shut up and go back to curdling your coconut milk with your gaze.

Of course, shutting up just isn’t on LD’s list of Things To Not Hurt People With Today, so as soon as Ginger Nicole joins them, she goes on to say that Mary Ann only won because she’s a ‘squeaky fake person’ and if the producers want more squeaky fake people to win, they’ll have to go with the millionaires, because the Howell Beavens are real. That’s right, LD. When it comes to stupid, unreasoning bigots who should be locked away from human society for the rest of their lives, you are the genuine article. Now: either the camera moves to someone else or I book a flight for Atlanta and have a short talk with the TBS casting department. This is not a drill.

Camera switch, and the Gold Team elects to show a little light discretion and takes the pie into the Professor’s hut to eat in private instead of gloating in public. Mutual feeding ensues between the couples, with the Howell Stearns playing icing-nose and Gilligan Chris furthering his flirtation with Mary Ann. See? Threaten the producers enough, and they’ll give you what you want. (Only TBS producers, of course. The other networks assign bodyguards.)

But it’s a short-term thing (the producers call for temps to serve as human shields), because we go back to LD and watch Ginger Nicole try to explain that bad things like this mean good things are right around the corner. Lovey Donna feels GN’s been spouting this for a while, and it didn’t work after they lost DAW Eric either. Not that she minded losing DAW Eric, although she would have liked to have killed him and sucked the marrow from his bones first. (Ginger Nicole c-t admits that she likes to remove negativity from her life, which is why she’s trying to see the positive side of events on the island. She likes to remove negativity, and yet, she has yet to drown Lovey Donna in the lagoon. Maybe she’s just saving her strength.) Gilligan Gooner joins the group, which triggers LD’s overfill explanation yet again. And the squeaky fake bit. And the kill all poor people bit, and other fabulous favorites that can be found on Lovey Donna’s Greatest Assassination Hits, coming soon from Purity Records!

Gilligan Gooner sums it all up in c-t – ‘Blah blah, blah blah, blah blah’ – and wins an elevation to three-quarters wit.

Too much Lovey Donna puts people in the mood for an elimination – preferably hers – ‘from the face of the Earth’ would be nice – so at nightfall, the Professor and Mary Ann head down the trail to Voodoo Village, where the next voodoo doll(s) of whoever’s on the chopping block will be found. The ground shakes. The tiki idols quake. Dramatic music plays in the background. Lightning flashes across the sky. A giant #2 appears for no apparent reason. The cheese piles up to knee-depth. And the box, sitting alone in the empty village, is fetched and brought back to the huts, where the other cast members are sitting around the fire, waiting.

‘It feels heavy tonight!’, the Professor declares. That’s probably because it’s packing a magical representation of a triple-weight of ego: the voodoo Millionaires are in the box, and the chopping block is made wide enough for two necks.

(At this point, the screen briefly flickered black with odd white patterns – just barely enough to notice. I had to slow the replay down to the frame advance before I found a single image: a black card with white words. ‘Ted: better remove all the footage of the castaways grabbing Donna’s doll and throwing it into the fire. We don’t want to destroy anyone’s faith in voodoo, and it’s our own fault for not weaving some of her hair into the doll before we put it in the box. It may start as a fun, funny scene, especially when they try to use her hat as a starter, but let’s not let everyone down when it doesn’t pay off. The cast members were crushed enough. Sincerely, Sherwood.’)

Lovey Mindy c-t admits they’ve been ready to go against the Howell Beavens for a long time, and her husband supports her suit, proposing that tomorrow’s competition be in animal calls. It seems Lovey Mindy is very good at animal calls, and that’s the special quality which really draws a potential spouse to make that proposal. This calls for a demonstration, so LM provides a variety of sample sounds for the castaways. She’s actually pretty good at it. This deeply annoys Lovey Donna, but so does the fact that everyone reading this summary isn’t dead yet. Don’t worry about it too much. She has less than three million dollars, and assassins don’t come cheap. In fact, the more people who read this summary, the safer we all are. Think about it.

Thurston Glenn c-t states his desire to get the Millionaire’s Hut down to one couple, what little of the audience remains starts rooting for the Howell Stearns like no one’s ever rooted for a reality show couple before (and yes, this breaks the old record, with an added bonus for the laughter generated whenever the editors show that ‘worth over 500 million’ with the Stearns vs. the ‘worth less than three million’ for the Beavens), and we go to commercial while the producers prepare the next challenge set and meet with the legal team from Fear Factor. Just in case.

We come back in at the next morning to find the Gold Team conferring in the Gilligan/Skipper hut. Mary Ann notes that ‘Donna feels like she’s staying.’

‘She is,’ Lovey Mindy confirms. ‘On the other side of the island.’

Mary Ann suggests that Lovey Mindy practice a few animal calls or baby cries just as the challenge starts, to shake Lovey Donna up. LM agrees and immediately does an excellent impression of a rooster, waking up the Howell Beavens in the Millionaires Hut. LD, completely annoyed, attempts to scavenge some hair from the Howell Stearns pillow for use in a new voodoo doll, but too late, too late… She heads down to the beach to vent her spleen instead, even though she’s already at the point where she has a drive-through window installed in her abdomen, which is still a more pleasant sight than looking at LD in a bathing suit, or looking at LD at all, or listening to LD for so much as one second, or thinking about LD, or continuing to write about LD during a summary. Get out of my (censored) summary, you (censored) (censored) (censored)…

…right. Anyway… Ginger Nicole’s on the beach, so Lovey Donna vents in front of her, declaring that ‘the more worked up I get, the more ready I am to compete.’ GN has the logical reaction to this statement and throws up.

Seriously. She’s been feeling very sick all morning, she’s a little dehydrated, and she needed to throw up. The timing just happened to work out really well. ‘Everything was sort of spinning,’ GN admits in c-t, ‘and it was hard for me to see straight or walk straight…’ Come to think of it, that’s also a perfectly natural reaction to being around Lovey Donna. I think I know the cure.

In fact, we’d better get the treatment started immediately, because Gilligan Gooner has also fallen victim to Ebola Beavens. He’s miserably ill from hunger, moaning to Ginger Rachel about how he can barely keep food down (Donna symptom!), he needs something other than coconuts and their milk, if he sees a bird he spotted the other day he’ll have to kill it and see if its blood can be used in a spell to get rid of the evil influence in the camp… He’s visibly not feeling well. He looks really bad. He also has his shirt off, he’s 6’7”, and he weights about one ounce for every inch of height. He’s the world’s most competitive toast rack. He looks like, so help him, Eliza’s big brother, and that’s no compliment to anyone.

Ginger Rachel’s mothering instincts kick in at the sight of this pitiful wreck, and she spends a little time helping Gilligan Gooner get some water into his system before stepping further across cast lines by proposing a hunt-and-gather trip across the island together, to take his mind off things, get him away from Lovey Donna, and maybe even find some food. There are many who would use their dying breath to say ‘yes’ to a trip with Rachel Hunter, so Gilligan Gooner summons the last of his strength and goes a-gatherin’ with the competition. This is surprisingly successful, as the duo locates a few kiwi plants, a couple of apples, and a banana. ‘Gooner’s gonna eat tonight!’ GG declares with a laugh and smile that cannot be described here because it’ll send a team of doctors out to try and determine his exact species, and the pair head back to the huts with their gatherings. Nearly all of the remaining castaways group around the table to get a look at the goods: Ginger Nicole is still somewhere being sick.

There’s enough kiwis for everyone to get one. Ginger Rachel proposes that GG and Ginger Nicole get the apples, as the ones most in need of food. No one argues too much with this. (Read: Lovey Donna.) She then proposes that GG and GN should also split the banana. Someone argues with this. (Read: Lovey Donna.) In fact, someone picks up the banana and walks off with it, despite Ginger Rachel’s protests that she’s only trying to give it to the members of the other cast that need it most, and doesn’t a certain someone want to help her teammates, or have any human empathy whatsoever, or realize that there’s more of them than there is of her and they can kill her any time while the cameras are reloading film. Someone ignores all this and leaves with the fruit. (Read: Take A Wild Guess.)

All the remaining members of both casts stand around, stunned by Lovey Donna’s complete disconnection with reality. Thurston Glenn notes that going beyond the game, Gilligan Gooner and Ginger Nicole just need food more than anyone else: can’t LD see that? Ginger Rachel isn’t the least bit surprised that she can’t. Neither is anyone else.

And, down on the beach approach path, Gilligan Gooner stands over Lovey Donna like a vengeful scarecrow (I swear, if they ever cast The Real Wizard Of Oz, he’s got to try out for it), using his raw skinny presence to force LD into handing Ginger Nicole the precious banana, which appears to be missing the top third. LD grudgingly hands it over, then immediately tries to guilt GN into letting her have the apple instead, since she’s made such a tremendous sacrifice in the name of not having everyone on the planet try to kill her on sight. Gilligan Gooner shoves the apple at her in the name of shutting her up, sadly missing the mouth.

Rain starts to fall on the island, and most of the cast breaks for the shelter of the hut – excepting the Howell Stearns, who relax in the middle of the compound, enjoying the shower. Thurston Glenn is hopeful of the rain continuing through the challenge because after all, Lovey Donna will melt in the rain. Lovey Mindy immediately does a beautiful, perfect imitation of a certain other melting witch, turning the moment unbashable and getting an early lead on the part for TBS’ next series.

Meanwhile, Lovey Donna is in the Millionaires Hut, planning to throw every single thing the Howell Stearns brought with them out the window just as soon as they’re gone and there’s no risk of dangerous splashback from the landing points. Would this be a really good time for the stolen hubris element to kick in?

The radio goes off, and the casts gather around it to hear that the millionaires have a taste for the good life – but do they have the stomach for what comes next? Everyone except Ginger Nicole has kept their daily dose of Donna down up to this point, so I’d say we’ve got a pretty well-steeled group here. Even Lovey Donna, who has a naturally high tolerance for herself and guesses this challenge means eating ‘Bugs, spiders and snakes. Well, I’m already living with a couple of snakes – I guess I can eat snakes.’ Did anyone really need to know about LD’s sex life?

And Lovey Donna goes into c-t, reproduced in its entirety at great personal expense. ‘Mindy Stearns – she’s just a wanna-be.’ (Reminder: Lovey Donna’s net worth: under three million dollars.) ‘After a while, it starts getting on your nerves. She has no class.’ (Reminder: Lovey Donna is talking.) ‘When Scott says ‘You are the true Millionaires’, I’m going to say ‘No, fake. So get the hell out of here, you – other people.’’ (Reminder: it’s not just you. No one else thinks this woman makes any sense, either.)

By the way – does anyone know who Scott is?

The Howell Stearns c-t discuss their willingness to eat anything if it’ll get the Howell Beavens out of the compound, Lovey Mindy displays the impressive size of her mouth (not describing because – well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you), and everyone heads down to the picnic tables, where Generic Host v3.6 is waiting with a full spread of covered food plates. (Who said the producers don’t care about the welfare of the contestants? Other than the producers.) Everyone takes a seat with the casts dividing themselves between tables, and the host explains the challenge. The goal is to run up the highest dinner bill. Each covered plate contains a food item. Each plate of food has a value. The fellow cast members for each set of millionaires can choose an item from the menu, and they’ll have two minutes each to eat their dish and add its value to the bill: only finished plates count. After all of the currently supporting cast finishes, the Millionaires and Wives will have thirty minutes to eat as much as they can. Whoever’s got the highest combined total at the end wins and stays in the compound. Tips don’t count.

Some of the dishes displayed are:

Lobster tail: $5.
Egg salad (quail, ants, and fly eggs): $25.
Wild boar brains: $50.
Chicken feet and rectum: $50.
Boar heart: $50.
Boar testicles (larger than the heart – each): $50.
Bee larva in honeycomb: $100
Live Sofabas worms: $100

Chow down.

The Gilligans go first, with each one choosing a bee larva plate. They both manage to down the contents within two minutes, although Gilligan Chris manages to bring his back up in less than one.

The Gingers are next up. Ginger Nicole goes with another bee larva plate, while Ginger Rachel samples the worms. The slimy feeling of the larva gets to GN while GR is relishing the taste of anything containing protein, which results in one finished plate and one left half-full. The Gold team is now $100 ahead.

It’s time for Skipper vs. Professor, and wild boar brains vs. wild boar heart. The Skipper wouldn’t mind having some wild boar brains at home, as they contain the same vitamins as a human brain, and he’s sure they’ve already ‘jacked up my IQ a couple of points.’ (Err… how does he know?) The Professor is actually enjoying the taste of his boar heart – oh, for that protective coating of shale dust – but it’s hard to chew, and he just can’t finish it within two minutes. The Skipper has no such problem with the soft brains, and the Green team is now only down by fifty dollars.

The final in the prelims is Mary Ann vs. – well, the teams are unbalanced (and not just because of Lovey Donna), so the Thurston Stearns get to pick one Green cast member to eat again. This turns out to be Ginger Nicole, who goes for the $5 lobster tail, because she just can’t face anything else and who knows, it could turn out to be the winning five dollars, right? Mary Ann, not wanting to let her ‘island parents’ down, takes the $50 plate of boar brains because who knows, pulling an extra $45 ahead might be a good thing! Both cast members finish their plates to the expected financial effect, and the score going into the Millionaires’ half-hour is Green $155, Gold $250.

‘Testicles, bee larva, worms,’ Lovey Donna c-t grouses. ‘It, in my mind, degraded millionaires.’ Trust me, Lovey Donna, there’s nothing there that could do to you what you haven’t already done to yourself.

The Stearns c-t joke that they can’t buy their way out of this one, and don’t even try: Thurston Glenn takes the worms and starts swallowing them whole to avoiding the popping sensation from biting down (apparently they taste just like caviar, and Lovey Mindy hates caviar), while Lovey Mindy goes to work on some bee larva. Both finish their first plates.

Thurston Bill also takes on the worms, getting in a rare c-t while admitting the only problem was having them trying to crawl back up. (Then again, since feeling like something was trying to get back up his throat has been a constant sensation since his wedding day, no problem.) He finishes his plate, briefly considers the lobster tail, and goes for the boar testicles instead, perhaps feeling some degree of empathy for removed male organs. Or just loneliness.

Lovey Mindy just barely gets the egg salad down (nearly tossing it at one point), and then goes to work on psychological warfare. After taking a sniff of the testicles and heading back to her table, she starts on her repertoire of animal sounds. This instantly distracts Lovey Donna even more badly than the sight of someone making less than $50,000 a year, and LD stops eating in favor of complaining to Thurston Bill. This was, of course, the whole idea, and Lovey Mindy continues her noisemaking to good effect between bites, losing less time to sounds than the Thurston Beavens are to be-yotching. Not to mention c-ting, where the TBs (oooh, how appropriate) talk about how fitting a meal this was for the Stearns, and how Lovey Mindy (in LD’s c-t opinion) once again demonstrated her complete lack of class, and has thus been designated honorary poor and must die with the rest of them, right after Gilligan Gooner is forced to choke on a banana.

The half-hour ends, Lovey Mindy crows the sunrise, and the bills are announced:

Gold Team: $575
Green Team: $355

Lovey Donna is dead.

Sadly, DAW Donna still lives, but we only have to put up with her for a few more seconds. Just choke it down for a little while longer…

GHv3.6 congratulates the Howell Stearns and turns them into the Howells for the rest of the summary, then banishes the Beavens to the other side of the island. ‘That’s great. Thank you,’ replies DAW Donna, thus saying the first thing anyone can agree with her on in the entire series. A few hugs are forced onto the remaining members of her team under the watchful eyes of the cameras before she goes into c-t to say – brace yourself – ‘I mean, nobody likes to lose. But winners – lose. That’s just the way it is. In my opinion, the classy millionaires lost today.’

DAW Donna – no one cares what you think. Okay? Nobody. Not okay? Too bad. No one cares that you think that, either. Do you know whose opinion we care about? Gilligan Gooner’s, because he’s a three-quarter wit and is therefore seventy-five percent ahead of you. So we’ll let him write your c-t epitaph, because A. he’s earned it and B. I hate you.

‘With Donna gone and off the island, you’re not going to hear any more yapping and whining and complaining and bluh-bluh-bluh and you’re going to see a lot more of –‘ (The expression cannot be described. It’s a smile. I’m pretty sure of that. If it’s not a smile, he’s trying to cut off the top of his head using his jaw. So it has to be a smile. I hope.)

The Beavens leave. They go away. They will never be seen again. They’re gone forever. No more will they taint our screens. And even if they come back, it’ll be in someone else’s episode. I’m – free. I’m free! I’m off to see the world! I’m –

-- right. Few more minutes of episode to go. I’ll stay if you will. But if you need to take a party break, go right ahead.

The Gold cast returns to the compound and finds their reward: a fully-stocked cocktail bar with snacks and more Listerine strips attendant, plus a freshwater plunging pool big enough for the entire cast to share. (Lovey leads a toast to ‘Swallowing the whole thing.’ Judging by her expert pacing on the sentence, you sort of get the feeling she’s done this before.) The alcohol immediately starts to flow, with Gilligan Chris c-t hoping that the drinks will help lubricate the gears of romance with Mary Ann and perhaps even lead to a shared hammock. The camera, however, decides to do ‘A Tale Of Two Casts’ first, as Gilligan Gooner wanders by to see what food was served at the reward and look pitiful. Primarily to look pitiful, which he does very well as the Professor details every last item on the bar in response to his question, while not serving him any of it. (This probably isn’t deliberate cruelty. Rewards can’t be shared between casts, and we all know what happens when you ask the Professor anything.)

Gilligan Gooner mopes off to find some food, and turns up a few kiwis and a partially rotten banana, which he shares with the Skipper and Ginger Nicole in an empty hut. They may not have been winners today, but they’re winners in the end, he insists. They’re the Green Team! And if that’s just another way of saying ‘Pagong’, he can live with that!

Meanwhile, the Howells get in a few knowing winks at the freshly-greased slope between Mary Ann and Gilligan Chris, and then join their cast for a dip in the freshwater plunging pool. This means Ginger Rachel has to get in, which she does over several carefully-tracked, music-accompanied seconds of camera time. Mary Ann and Gilligan Chris, both somewhat buzzed, are left behind in the Millionaire’s Hut to drunkenly talk about – alliances.

Right. Alliances. Mary Ann feels Gilligan Chris is her best friend on the island, and she wants to make an alliance pact with him. Gilligan Chris swears on his life not to let her down, which is the only thing he can swear on after Jon and Twila already had their way with the language of trust, and the pact is formed. They will not – well, voting isn’t a factor yet, and no one’s said a thing about immunity, and we actually have no idea whatsoever what’ll happen once things get down to the Final Seven. But they’re going to do something, all right. Or not do something. Or do something not now, but later. Or… it’s an alliance, okay? You know the drill. Or not.

An ominous shot of clouds moving across the moon follows – but don’t worry, it’s not foreshadowing betrayal. It’s just Voodoo Village again, and the Howells are going to make the trip. Ginger Rachel notes that they’re down to the Gingers and the Gilligans for competitions – but who knows who’s next? Duh. Everybody. They’re going in reverse order of the song, GR. We all figured that out when Mary Ann followed the Professor. It’s so obvious, you’d have to be on a reality show to miss it. How can you – oops. Right. Never mind.

The ground shakes. The tiki idols quake. Dramatic music plays in the background. Lightning flashes across the sky. A giant #3 appears for no apparent reason. The cheese piles up to waist-depth. And the box, sitting alone in the empty village, is fetched and brought back to the huts, where the other cast members are sitting around the fire, waiting.

C-t pre-return jitters – Ginger Nicole thinks she’s ready for a challenge, Gilligan Gooner wants the Gingers to go at it so he can get one more day on the island, Gilligan Chris wants to win his spot and flirt with Mary Ann some more – and the Howells open the box to reveal a Ginger doll waiting inside. The kinda-sorta-demi Movie Stars are up next, and Ginger Nicole wants nothing more in life than to win her role in the Final Seven. Not a good part in a series, not a ticket off TBS, not an Academy Award nomination. She wants to be Ginger. Period. It’s the achievable goals you have to think about.

Ginger Rachel also wants to win her spot, but her concern is her fellow cast members: they may be going into tomorrow’s competition with hangovers, and that doesn’t help her odds at all. She ate worms for them, and they drank the worm for her. It may sound fair, but…

Mary Ann, freely c-t admitting that her night of drinking may not reflect the original, decides it’s time for bed and heads into – Gilligan’s hut. With Gilligan Chris, bemusing the Howells to no end. The television karma gods turn beady eyes on the screen – but nothing happens. They share a hammock, but nothing happens. They snuggle together for body heat, but nothing happens. The Gingers and Gilligan Gooner cluster around the hut and listen for giggling while the Skipper sleeps in an outside hammock, not wanting to know what’s going on in his residence, but – nothing happens. Why? Because we’re all out of episode, thanks to the editor’s interesting pacing. But most of all, because you do not insult the television karma gods.

And if we’re very lucky, you do not watch the rest of this series, either. Remember: The Real Mary Kate And Ashley are waiting in obscurity for their discovery. Let them stay there.

Next week (not that you’ll get to find out): the battles of the Gingers and Gilligans, the Final Seven, and the television karma gods, realizing that there’s still a Beavens about (albeit out of sight), send a hurricane. VolsFan may live through it. There are no guarantees in this game.

Peace, over and out.

(And a one, and a two, and a three – Ding, dong, the witch is dead!
Whicha witch?
The Beavens witch!
Ding, dong, the dumb blonde hag is gone!

Ding, dong, the beyotch is dead,
Hit her high,
Shoot her low,
And just to make sure, cut off her head!)