Good afternoon, JT. The man you are looking at is Russell Hantz, evil genius of the Insufferable Tribe. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to get an immunity idol to him in the stupidest Survivor move in years. Good luck, you moron.
This week, Survivor began with two flesh-crawlingly creepy night-vision shots of glowing-eyed rats. What? I'm sorry. Apparently only the first shot was of a rat. The second shot was of Russell, aka Bulbous Baggins, "the Hobbit on Crack." Natural mistake. I apologize to rats. Nothing personal, you rats.
Bulbous indicated that he was behind the ouster of Voldepussy last week (naturally he'd try to take credit for one of the few good things to have happened in this disastrous edition of Survivor), but that he wouldn't write Voldepussy's name down. The only reason I can think of for his not voting for Voldepussy (since Voldy already hated Bulbous, so it's not like he was going to get her jury vote, nor did Bulbous know Voldepussy would be going onto the jury, since jury-building usually begins after the merge) is that Bulby doesn't know how to spell "coach."
Tree Mail, which is usually a four-to-six line bit of doggerel verse telling them almost nothing about the upcoming challenge, this time was a novel a bit longer than Catch-22, only not nearly as funny, which described the upcoming endurance challenge in detail, and asked them to rank their players by strength for the match-up. Fortunately, it was by physical strength. If it was by mental strength, everyone would be listed last.
It involved standing wedged between two walls, balanced on tiny nubs. Finally a challenge in which Courtney's skeleton can shine. She weighs less than an ounce, and is only three centimeters wide. The villains had the interesting idea of only fielding the girls. Yes, they weigh less than men. Courtney's skeleton's weight may even be a negative number, but the sight of nearly-naked, albeit emaciated, young women standing with their legs wide apart might just keep the guys up a lot longer than they expect. Bulbous, the only male on the villains tribe since Rob was voted out, is married with daughters, and so has undoubtedly forgotten that some men react sexually to women. None that I know, but I'm told many still do.
Rupert was mildly put out that his tribe wanted to rank him the weakest. He said: "I think I'm the strongest of all eleven of us still left out here." Rupert darling, they're talking about physical strength, not who smells the strongest. And even there, you lose to Bulbous, who hasn't bathed since the Clinton administration, and has a stink so foul I can smell him over my TV. In any event, it involved standing on increasingly smaller footholds, the last only a quarter of an inch wide, and you have a broken toe. This will not be your moment of triumph.
Reward challenge: When asked by Jeff: "What's the reaction to seeing its Coach now gone from the game?" Rupert replied: "That women's alliance looks very strong; it's kind of obvious." This is stupid on two levels:
1. It is, of course, wrong on the face of it. There is no women's alliance. If there had been, Voldepussy, the mouthiest woman on the tribe, would still be there. It's the Bulbous's Harem Alliance. And the assumption is based on pure sexism. Men are going, therefore, ipso not-a-facto, it's women engineering their ouster, not taking into account that it could be Bulbous winning a whose-is-larger contest, which short men like Mr. Baggins spend their lives engaging in. Indeed, Bulbous has the most virulent case of Short Man Ego Overcompensation Syndrome since Napoleon Bonaparte.
2. By blurting it out like that in front of the other tribe, he's pretty much announcing to the insufferables how to beat the pathetics. Close your fuzzy mouth Rupert.
Jeff, apparently in the pay of Bulbous, even did a follow-up question on it to JT, just to insure that the Pathetic Tribe had this misinformation firmly cemented into what passes for their brains. Oh Probst, you're supposed to be impartial. I don't have to be, but you do.
Rather than playing until all the players of one tribe have dropped out (which admittedly could take hours and hours) they were only playing until one tribe lost three out of five players. This is why I hate endurance challenges. They can't be broadcast in anything like real time, though I understand why they need to have a few of them. "It's ours for the taking," said JT stupidly, not noting that the other tribe is only playing women, who are both much lighter, and have smaller feet, both advantages in this challenge. Fortunately, it's a reward challenge, so it doesn't actually matter who wins. It's essentially filler action, except that, since it's an endurance challenge, it also has no action.
The reward was a feast provided by a famous restaurant chain. Though it's a restaurant chain I rather like, and sometimes patronize, they paid Palin's pimp for the product placement, but they neglected to pay me, so I won't be repeating their endless plugs here.
(Speaking of Palin's pimp, can you believe that he got Sarah Palin's hideous TV show sold? A woman to whom the environment is something to exploit, cash in on, and destroy, hosting a "documentary" on the Alaskan natural wonders that she's out to obliterate. I can hear her in my mind now: "This lovely forest we will be clear-cuttin'. This gorgeous landscape will be strip mined, and this wildlife preserve is a great place for huntin' endangered species from helicopters. I'm hopin' to hunt my third species into extinction! You betcha!")
Now as TV viewing goes, endurance challenges are long and boring. They can take hours, yet there's seldom more than a minute or two that's interesting to see. Bulbous was sitting out, but Bulbous never stops playing the game. While they were all stuck there essentially doing nothing, Bulbous was exploiting Rupert's idiotic proclamation of his tribe's belief in an Insufferable women's alliance. He's making facial expressions and gestures to JT (whom his laser-like weakness-scoping powers told him was the dumbest of the Pathetics) to indicate, well, basically, "Help! These women are out to get me! I'll flip. Honestly, I'll flip." Once again, he's planting his "Russell Seed." Is JT stupid enough to fall for it? Does the Pope cover-up for child-molesting priests? Do I want another vodka martini?
Colby went out first. That's right, the "athletic" Colby they kept instead of my beautiful James didn't even last as long as the man with the broken toe. James may have been hobbled, but it's Colby who is lame.
Sandra was matched against Rupert. As Rupert started showing signs of buckling, we heard Jerri tastefully say, "Hang on, Sandra. You popped out some babies. This ain't nothing."
"Two of them. Didn't even get a aspirin," answered Sandra. No pain relievers? What? Did she give birth in a mud hut? Was her mid-wife a Christian Science practitioner? How barbaric! When my daughter was born, I insisted on a full anesthetic, and she was adopted! (There is no pain greater than the agony of child adoption. All of the misery, that is to say, having to raise the ungrateful brat, with none of the rewards, like the sex at the conception.)
Not only did Rupert, of course, lose to Sandra, but she further humiliated him by remaining up a bit longer even though once he was fallen, she was allowed down. Just to show she could have gone much longer. Is Rupert now Rupussy?
The next weak spot looked to be over in Amanda vs Courtney's skeleton. Poor Amanda. Courtney's skeleton weighs less than one of Amanda's ginormous boobs, and she's saddled with two of them. Sure enough, Amanda fell, and the Insufferables won the huge feast from Product Placement Restaurants. Go to Product Placement for the finest in dining. There's a Product Placement Restaurant near you. Eat there today.
Bulbous made a point of shaking JT's hand as they left, further working his plan to deceive those idiots into thinking he was ripe for the turning. He never stops playing the game.
Sandra, just to show exactly how much class she has (none), made a point of mock-wiping tears from her eyes, while saying "Waaah, we lose," to the Pathetics as they trundled off. When I went to school, the coaches always said that sports build character. From OJ Simpson to Pete Rose, to boxing, to Sandra and Voldepussy, the tradition of poor sportsmanship once again demonstrates what liars my school coaches were.
The Product Placement feast, along with sirloin steaks (is there such a thing as "ladyloin steaks?"), loaded baked potatoes, and grilled shrimp on the barbie, also included lots of booze. Finally a reward worth playing for: booze. By the time we came back from commercial, Sandra was a potato too, which is to say, she was both loaded and baked. Although not receiving any bribes from Product Placement Restaurants, she's such a fan of Product Placement cuisine, that she did a lengthy testimonial on behalf of Product Placement Restaurants, which, since it was delivered drunk, meant so much more. In vodka veritas.
Jerri blurted out, "Thank you, Lord, for this meal." Okay, Product Placement Restaurants is a large chain, and Palin's Pimp is a successful TV producer, but neither is God. (Actually, no one and nothing is God. God is a myth, like a "compassionate conservative.") If you want to thank someone, thank the very people Sandra mocked, for losing the feast to you.
For some reason, they also served a salad. Why? Are these emaciated players dieting? Are they rabbits? It just takes up stomach room they could fill with more steak, potatoes, shrimp and booze.
"Oh my God, I'm using a napkin," said Parvati, who had never used, nor seen, one before. Wait until she learns about indoor plumbing. Parvati found a hidden immunity idol clue in her napkin, concealed where the producers could be sure Bulbous would never find it. For the first time this season, someone had the sense to keep their finding the clue secret! She stuffed it in her underwear, a promised land she tempts men with, but never admits them into. She's a flirt, not a slut. (I am just the opposite. No flirting, all slutting.)
As they discussed the Pathetics' delusion that there is an all-girl alliance, and how to exploit this idiocy, Courtney's skeleton did an almost-convincing job of pretending to eat, but I wasn't fooled. You can't eat when you have no internal organs.
The "loaded and baked" potato turned out to be a baked potato with sour cream, cheese, chives, a three-bedroom house, and the city of Brisbane, all lopped into it. (What is the point of chives? Really, it's just plate litter, like parsley. Who actually eats chives or parsley?)
Once Parvati got a good look at the food, she announced she was full. Eating it would just have been redundant. Then, after excusing herself to go to the little survivor's room, she blabbed to Danielle that she'd found the idol clue. Well, she kept it secret for the better part of five minutes. That's a record for this edition of Survivor.
Parvati explained that she did this because: "I want Danielle to feel tighter with me than she does with anyone else." Why? Do women care if another woman feels "tighter," even Lesbians? Isn't it solely men who are concerned with how "tight" their women feel?
Anyway, since Parvati either didn't have any pockets, or wasn't quite sure what a pocket was, they hid the clue in Danielle's breasts, where no one will ever find it. The shot of Parvati rolling the clue up underneath Danielle's boobs is probably getting replayed more than any other moment in the whole episode all across America.
"We'll fill Russell in on a need-to-know basis, and right now, Russell doesn't need to know," said Parvati. So now there is an all-female alliance, only it's secret. As for Russell. In the past he was famous for finding idols without a clue. Will he find this one without a clue, and if he does, how will he explain what he was doing scratching around under Danielle's boobs?
JT informed us how he lives on steaks. He's a cattle rancher. (Still? If I worked as a ranch hand, outside, with smelly cattle, on a smelly horse, and I won a million dollars, as he did a year ago, the first thing I'd do is stop ranching!) He raises cattle, kills them, butchers them, cuts his own steaks out of them, and eats them. How do you eat an animal you've raised? "Oh bossy, you were a great cow, and now you're a great lunch." I wouldn't want to be the kid he may someday generate with a blind woman. I'd live in terror of Daddy one day feeling peckish.
And then JT, that hyper-genius, announced to the Pathetics his brilliant plan. He'd give his hidden immunity idol to Bulbous at the next challenge, so Bulbous could vote out Parvati. JT even wants to wrap it up with instructions as to what Bulbous is to do with it. Like Baggins takes orders from anyone, let alone from a back of rocks with a mouth. As overwhelmingly stupid plans go, this one is the gold standard. What could possibly be more moronic?
How about it goes like this:
1. JT gives the idol to Bulbous, who no longer has to look for them at all; people just hand them to him.
2. Bulbous doesn't vote out Parvati, his closest and longest-reigning ally, but hangs on to it.
3. After the merge, he uses it to vote out JT.
Does such a perfectly-plausible series of events cross JT's mind? If President Obama said: "We should elect more Republicans," would the Republicans oppose it? Am I ready for another cocktail?
Amanda demonstrated that she is at least sane, by noticing that this plan is imbecilic. Candice pointed out to her though that the upside for them is, it gets the idol away from JT, so they can vote him off.
Parvati and Danielle got up early to go idol hunting in secret, not thinking how the very fact of their getting up early is suspicious enough to set off warning bells in Bulbous's always-paranoid head, let alone then heading off carrying a shovel! We saw Bulbous lurking about while they found the idol and celebrated quietly, but we were given no hint as to whether he saw them find it or not.
"Dear Russell, I like you. Do you like me? I luv a man who doesn't wash. You smell like my cattle after two long weeks on the trail, so you remind me of home. I want to be friends, and more-than-friends, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. How 'bout you? Here is a free Hidden Immunity Idol as a token of my love. Use it to blindside that bitch Parvati so she can never come between us. Do not use this idol to backdoor me. I, well, I luv you. There I said it. Also, could I have a new bike on Christmas? Yours forever, JT, aka, the future second Mrs. Hantz."
Okay, that's not what JT wrote, but it's what he should have written. The problem for JT, seen writing his mash note, is that the longest essay he ever wrote in his whole life was: "Mom, eye is gwine ot. Bee bak lat - let - lot - ah, in a wile. JT." You know why he is called JT? Because that's as much of his name as he can spell, or remember.
Oh, but his real note was funny enough: "This is not fake." Well then I believe it. It must be real. It says so! "Just by competing against you, and the few handshakes we've had, I feel I can trust you." Clearly the boy wants more than just handshakes, but really, this is so excessively stupid, it could be used against JT in a competency hearing. The boob is a millionaire thanks to Survivor: Tocantins, after all. Pinocchio had sounder reasons to trust Honest John. By the way, JT moves his lips when he writes.
JT went on: "Play the idol tonight, and save yourself. All the girls should be writing your name down." Well, in a sense he's right. All the girls indeed should be writing his name down, only that's not at all what's going on over at the other camp. It's happening only in JT's fevered imagination. "I think you should write Parvati's name down." Just in case Bulbous failed to grasp the importance of this one point, JT underlined Parvati's name twice. I couldn't see well enough to tell if he was dotting his i's with little hearts.
Rupussy suggested adding, "This is your chance to show you're not a villain." Rupussy, being a good person who pours his winnings into charitable works and devotes himself to helping at-risk youth, fails to realize that not all people are good people, and has no idea that Bulbous wears the villain title as a badge of honor. "This is Survivor history," piped in Colby, who is right. This is a move so stupid, it makes previous giant blunders pale by comparison.
"If that works, it'll be incredible," said JT, who is right, but not in the way he means, since it is true only in the exact meaning of the word incredible: not capable of being believed. It's almost too bad Tyson didn't make it to the merge, to have a chat with JT. If ever there was a fool who could believe Joseph Smith's blather and lies, it would be JT.
Across the top of the note (above all the scribbled-out words, and Heaven only knows what kind of spelling) JT wrote in large letters: "Read in complete privacy." Hope he reads that part in complete privacy.
However, the plan also hinges on one other point. The Pathetics have to win the immunity challenge. Well, they've been doing better since Rob went home, but then, who won the Product Placement Feast?
Immunity Challenge: JT was making so much meaningful eye contact with Bulbous, Mr. Baggins must have thought JT was hitting on him. There's a sex scene that could turn Richard Simmons or Sir Elton John straight.
Another weird challenge: from a floating platform, one at a time, players would wade in, while running a bag full of -- oh no -- puzzle pieces along a rope twisted through obstacles. When all the bags were through, they would then assemble the pieces into a jigsaw totem pole.
The first big shock came when Jeff asked the Insufferables who they were sitting out. Sandra, who is good at puzzles, was sitting out. What? Courtney's skeleton competing in two consecutive challenges? This is a first. How will she wade in water? She's porous, and weighs less than an ounce. She floats. She'll need to wear weights.
Nice twist: the bags are absorbent, so they get heavier as they soak up sea water, just like Rupussy's beard.
"You don't want to lose your lead early," hollered Jeff, who apparently thinks the teams would prefer losing their lead late, when there's no time to get it back again. Actually, they don't want to lose their leads at all. Jeff, listen to yourself sometime. You do say ridiculous things.
Thanks to Jerri's pathetic performance, the Insufferables took the lead quickly.
When Colby and Bulbous were all that were left on the starting platform, Colby tipped off Mr. Baggins to the Pathetics' insane plan to save his not-endangered butt. Bulbous, who unfortunately actually is smarter than anyone still in the game, played right along, even asking who he should vote out, and agreeing with them that Parvati is running the show. "Get rid of her ass," ordered Colby, although I think he actually wants all of her gone. Colby ruined all the surprises in JT's note. He should have said "Spoiler Alert."
"Russell is going to have to be Superman out there," yelled Jeff while Bulbous was coming in dead last. There is so much wrong with that:
1. Bulbous now wants to lose the challenge, as he knows if he does, he gets a prize: a free immunity idol. Lose tribal immunity, gain individual immunity.
2. It doesn't matter. They still have to assemble a jigsaw puzzle, something the Pathetics have shown themselves incapable of doing. How many times have the Insufferables come from behind to win in the puzzle-assembling leg of a challenge?
3. It's an insult to Superman, who, Jeff, is a hero. How about "Russell is going to have be Doomsday out there"? (For those of you too sophisticated to keep up with DC Comics, Doomsday was the brutish supervillain who beat Superman to death back in The Death of Superman. And he was still more pleasant company than Bulbous. Better looking too.)
So, unsurprisingly, Bulbous futzed about in the water, pretending to be tangled up and unable to manage a leg of the challenge that Courtney's skeleton had breezed through, making sure the Pathetics had their totem pole finished before he got his bag back. You just knew he realized that even if the Pathetics had only one piece left to fit in when he reached the end, his team would probably still assemble their totem pole faster, so he made sure they had no chance. Bulbous was now focused on one thing only, getting JT's package. (That doesn't sound right.) The two teams hugged congratulations (Why?), which gave Bulbous ample opportunity to feel up JT, while JT slipped his package into Bulbous's shorts. The whole thing would have been homoerotic if they weren't repulsive. It's like gay porn made by trolls. But JT pulled it off, a bigger brick of stupidity than a large-print edition of Atlas Shrugged.
This season shouldn't have been called "Heroes vs Villains"; it should have been "Morons vs Slimeballs." At the Pathetics' camp, JT and Rupussy were bursting with pride over making Survivor history, by pulling off the most elaborate shooting-of-oneself-in-the-foot ploy ever. Theorizing the reactions of Bulbous, about the true nature of whom, Rupussy knows zilch, Rup said: "Russell is probably having trouble containing himself right now." Actually, it's Bulbous's filthy shorts that are having trouble containing him.
Bulbous took the notice "Read in complete privacy" to mean, read with Parvati, because we cut right to Bulbous and Parvati reading JT's idiot mash note, and having a good old laugh for themselves. We got to read more of it, such as the so-pathetic-it's-kind-of-sad sentence: "Hopefully I can trust you, and you're not truly a villain." There's where Bulbous's advantage of no one having seen his game play before, though he's seen all of theirs, has come into play. I see JT writing to Hitler, and saying, "Hopefully you're not really a mean guy, and together, we can rescue the Jews of Germany from all them Nazi followers you're stuck with." JT is an inglorious idiot.
And then there was the best notation, at the end: "Destroy this right when you finish reading!" I guess he couldn't figure out how to rig it to explode: "If you or this idol are caught or killed, Jeff Probst will disavow all knowledge of your activities. This dorky note will self-destruct in five seconds."
We also learned the Parvati diet when she said: "JT gave Russell his heart today. And Russell is just going to stab it a million times, a million times over, and hand it to me, and I'm going to eat it." She giggled like crazy all through this disturbing speech. She scares me. Don't hire her to babysit, or cater.
She did make a cogent remark: "What is wrong with him? I can not believe that kid won." No one can, dear, no one can.
Meanwhile Sandra, who was smug as all hell after the Reward Challenge, and Courtney's skeleton are in deep doo-doo. With Parvati owning one idol (which she hasn't told Bulbous about) and Russell in possession of another (which he has told Parvati about, which actually makes Parvati the bigger schemer at this point), one of these girls will be eating in the hotel and bathing by midnight, unless they can all swing it together to vote out Bulbous, who is so overconfident at this point, that there's no way he would play any of the idols. He would make for a perfect blindside target tonight.
Maybe I should write Parvati a note suggesting it. The new Doctor Who debuts this weekend. (The 11th Doctor. How exciting!) I could give him the note to take back in time to Parvati last August. I guess I'll see in Tribal Council if I'm going to do that or not.
Sandra on her inevitable ouster: "Me without Courtney, that's like rice without beans, you know." You mean like having some delicious Rice-a-Roni with no farting afterwards? In fact, why would I want rice with beans? Remind me never to eat at Sandra's. No wonder her husband enlisted. Army grub in the Middle East has to be better than rice and beans. Is Sandra leaving her absentee husband for Courtney's skeleton?
Bulbous took aim at Courtney's skeleton, saying he didn't trust her, and that she might flip. My understanding of "flipping" is that it means you betray your alliance for someone else's, but Courtney's skeleton is excluded from Bulbous's alliance anyway, so how could she "flip" on him? She's already against him.
And if JT learns that Bulbous got rid of Courtney's skeleton instead of Parvati as ordered, will he demand his idol back? When he does that, will Bulbous laugh in his face?
Courtney's skeleton is made of stronger calcium than some, and she's not taking it lying down. She met with Parvati to propose -- wait for it -- an all-girl alliance. Where did she get that idea? She noted that, at the merge, Amanda would ally with her (and though she doesn't know it, Amanda would bring Candice along too) and they would have a six woman alliance in a tribe of ten. It's not a bad plan. It would almost insure a female winner, which would please fellow HuffPo blogger Joan Dowlin, who still thinks Natalie beating Bulbous last season was some sort of triumph of the Traveling Sisterhood, instead of it being people just not liking Bulbous.
Courtney's skeleton still got one detail in her plan wrong though. She proposed voting out Jerri. Jeeze, Jerri was Voldepussy's main squeeze. Hasn't she suffered enough? Blindside Bulbous. Keep your women together and strong. Joan, you talk to her. I can't do a thing with them.
But Parvati was listening. She likes Courtney's skeleton for some reason. (Nice bone structure? She doesn't really have any other qualities.) But Bulbous hath decreed Courtney's skeleton must go. If Parvati is going to defy Bulbous, wouldn't it be better if she did so by blindsiding him rather than Jerri?
Parvati went still another way. When Bulbous was showing off the gift idol to Danielle, Parvati suggested to him keeping Courtney's skeleton, and throwing Sandra under the bus. Damn! Another shot at sending Bulbous home blown. Ladies, I'm no Lesbian, unless there are no men around, or I need a good deal on a pick-up truck, but you know, that all-girl alliance sending Bulbous home is a really sound strategy. Send the gnome home.
Tribal Council: I couldn't help wondering if Bulbous was going to brag to Jeff about JT's stupidity, and maybe even share the idiot's mash note.
Sandra and Courtney were upfront with Jeff that it was one or the other of them going home. Please let that be smoke and mirrors to hide Bulbous's blindside.
Danielle and Sandra quickly devolved into a playground -- "You left me out," "No, you left me out," -- squabble that was, if anything, less interesting to listen to than actual ten year olds having the same argument. I was shouting at the screen: "Oh shut them up and vote already!"
Parvati: "In the beginning of this game there was a strong division: Boston Rob's Girls vs Russell's Girls." (Glum look from Jerri, who was Voldepussy's lesbian lover.) Well there's the problem. She thinks of them as Boston Rob's Girls and herself as one of Bulbous's Girls. Rob isn't even there anymore. She's defining all of the women, including herself, solely in terms of the men they are cleaving to. (And both are married men, I might add. Boston Rob's Hussies, and Bulbous's Ratbags would be perhaps more appropriate.) Until she can stop thinking of herself as a man's possession, the wisdom of an all-female alliance will never break through to her.
In the end though, Parvati didn't flip, and Courtney's skeleton went back to her graveyard or haunted castle or wherever it is that living skeletons hang out. Poor JT. Totally betrayed.
And poor Courtney's skeleton. Rice voted out beans, as even Sandra voted for Courtney's skeleton, as also did Ray Harryhausen, who animates her. Rather lamely, Courtney's skeleton said: "It's actually one of my Survivor Dreams to be on the jury, and get all pretty, and make all the bitches jealous while they sit there in their dirty rags." (Voldepussy isn't wearing rags. I think that's a silk kimono. Oh, she meant the other bitches!) Sure, people watch the show and then try to get on it because they dream of one day getting on the jury, and deciding which person that isn't them gets a million dollars.
To believe that, you'd have to be dumber than JT, and if you're that dopey, you'll never be able to fill out the application, let alone write mash notes to Bulbous.
Cheers darlings.
To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to The Morehead, the Merrier, or buy her book, My Lush Life.