Survivor: Tocantins: Tooth or Consequences.

Hello darlings. Let's do the time warp again!

As I mentioned last week, the location used for Survivor: Tocantins is surrounded by a LOST Island-style, time-displacement ring. It's not unlike the dirt berm surrounding Disneyland. It keeps Reality out of this ""Realty Show," by dislocating it in time.

Therefore, even though the show was shot months ago, they were nonetheless able to respond to my criticisms of their last episode in this space last week, and to adjust the program accordingly.

I was stern with Taj last week, although let me be perfectly clear about this: when I wrote "Taj must die" I wasn't "calling for violence," nor "inciting" anything. How silly, and un-needing of legal proceedings. I was merely calling upon The Universe to smite Taj in some horrible cosmic way for her having written "Joe" on her Tribal Council ballot last week. Restraining orders and summonses are really over-the-top responses.

Taj herself responded in a calm, sensible, perfectly normal fashion to having Death called down upon her by one of the most glamorous and beloved stars in the world (Me! Keep up!): She read my comments here on The Huffington Post, feared for her soul, and traveled back in time to the shoot, where she begged and pleaded with me, by way of apologizing for and explaining away her voting for Joe Adonis in The Past, in a desperate bid to appease my wrath, back in The Future.

Taj's excuse: "I only wrote Joe's name down on the paper at Tribal Council was because I didn't want to put Sandy's down." Why not? It's early in the game. Sandy isn't going onto the Jury; she's being returned to that nice "home" that has been looking for her ever since she hid her medications for two days, tied the bed-sheets together, and escaped out a window to Survivor. Taj will never see her again except at the reunion special. As long as Sandy never chews through her restraints and escapes again, Taj is safe from her. That's no excuse for voting for Joe. Why not Sydney Vapid Ditz? Why not Spencer Closet Case? Why not herself? (That would be a Survivor first!) I am not convinced. She is off my hit list provisionally, but she's on Double-Secret Probation. As an act of penance, Taj provided Stephen with an experience of which he said, "I've never brought such pleasure to a woman before." Now that, my friends, is Realty!

Since Taj believes she's in The Awesome Foursome with Stephen, and Stephen is fine with her thinking that, they went off Immunity Idol Hunting together, and Taj found it, as Brendan did two episodes back in his camp, thrust deep within the treemail idol's butt crevice. I'm surprised Spencer Closet Case hadn't found it, but we'll get to Spence in a bit.

Taj then cemented her feet in a bucket of concrete teetering on the end of a pier (an experience I once had for real, and let me tell you, it's not as fun as it sounds.), by immediately handing over the Immunity Idol to Stephen, because he had pockets. If she had only paid a moment's thought to where she had just found the idol in the first place, she might have realized where she could conceal the idol on her own person, a specific locale with more than enough room.

Instead she made a truly stupid rookie mistake. She gave the Idol to Stephen. If she thinks she needs it, he'll just give it back to her. Sure he will. If, that is, he's playing for her to win instead of for himself to win. Bonehead move, Taj. The man gave you one little backgasm, and you handed him the Immunity Idol and your spare car keys.

Back at Timbira, everyone was off to the riverside to wash their pot, while Brendan stayed behind to make fire, because he's the hottest tribe member. Sierra Animated Skeleton was a little peeved with him for not telling her she was a member of The Awesome Foursome. He explained that he was going to tell her, only he hadn't. Both find this non-explanation satisfactory. Brendan tells us "Every time we've layered more people into The Plan, we've gotten more and more powerful." They've only done it once. They asked two outcasts if they'd like to have secret help. Of course it "worked." And "layered on more people"? What exactly are they doing over at The Awesome Foursome Klubhouse?

Reward Challenge: Further evidence of the time warp effect this week. Last week I railed against the dull challenges, particularly on an episode that went head-to-head with American Idol. They needed to bring their A-game. Instead they had word puzzles, and people standing still, holding increasingly heavy poles.

This week, the challenges were much better! Clearly Mark Burnett, feeling deeply stung after reading my column last week (Mark lives or dies by my slightest comment), traveled back in time and replaced the about-to-shoot challenge (a round of "Playing Statues," in which the Survivors assumed poses, and when they made so much as the slightest twitch, were eliminated) with this wonderful version of Sit On It and Spin. I should have been playing! It involved walking a straight line while overwhelmingly dizzy and disoriented. I silvered in this event at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. And I have been challenged to "Sit on it and spin" literally thousands of times over the years, and have thus gotten damn good at it.

The Reward Challenge consisted of people sitting on turntables, while team mates ran off tied to them, making them spin as the ropes pulled out. Then, when the sitters were thoroughly spun about, they had to walk a wooden rail when they could barely stand up, all while Jeff Probst yelled taunts at them. It was fine TV viewing, and bore a strong resemblance to my living room at 2 AM most any day of the week.

Nice recovery, Mark; too bad you weren't competing with American Idol this week. You sure gave Smallville a taste of it anyway.

And the reward was an afternoon at The Charmin Café, a toilet-paper-sponsored reward which was basically, they got to use a civilized toilet for an afternoon. There was also food, non-alcoholic beverages - pointless! - and hammocks, but the clean, indoor toilet, with unlimited amounts of Charmin, was clearly what they were fighting for.

In the second round, it was Ex-Coach Psycho who was to spin his imaginary arch-enemy Erinn, a grudge spin if ever I saw one.

In round 3, the dizzy-stagger was between Sierra and JT. When JT was bent over, trying to remain on his feet, Jeff rudely yelled, "Like the end of a bad Friday night for JT." Frankly, it looked to me like the beginning of a first-rate three-day weekend.

In a Sydney Blonde Ditz/Debbie Bad Nose Job match-up. Sydney walked off with it, being a much-dizzier blonde than Debbie.

Jalapeno won an afternoon at The Charmin Café. (Sounds posh I know, but frankly, the place is a toilet!)

When Brendan took Stephen with him to Exile Dune (to cement The Awesome Foursome), Tyson began to get suspicious of a possible inter-tribe alliance. Taking Stephen meant that Taj got to participate in The Charmin Café, for which she was grateful, and she spent the afternoon simultaneously stuffing and running her mouth. For the first time in a while, her tribe got to spend time with Taj, and be reminded of what a non-stop talker she is, and how annoying she is, and how her ego is even bigger than her butt. (They measured with calipers!) Joe Adonis began remembering how she gets on his nerves.

During the afternoon, Jalapeno discovered that the reward included Letters From Home. I hate the Letters From Home segments every season. We see people who have been gone from home about two weeks go all sobby and sickly over letters from people they probably avoid for more than that when they are at home. Great Heavens, Why do you think they went on Survivor in the first place? To get away from their families of course. People who can't stand to be separated from their parents or their kids or their spouses for a fortnight without carrying on as though Grandpa Jim had just returned from the grave to attend their high school graduation, don't go on Survivor or Big Brother in the first place. If their families are actually that important to them, they stay with them.

I used to cry whenever I got a letter from my mother as well, but that was because it meant she had found me, and I had to move, again! My own daughter, Pattycakes, disappeared without a trace back in 1959, the night before my perfect-match liver transplant came from that never-identified, headless teenage female accident-victim my daughter's general age, whom they found near my home in my daughter's wrecked car. For 50 years, I haven't known if my daughter is alive or dead. In 2003, the post office delivered to me a letter my still-missing daughter had written to me in 1957, two years before she vanished, which the post office had mislaid, and had only just found behind the 'fridge. I've had that letter for 6 years, and I still haven't gotten around to reading it, let alone blubbering over it the way Mrs. Huge Jackman will sob once Huge finally meets me! So suck it up, Survivors, and savor this time away from your families. Come Thanksgiving evening, you will wish you were back in Brazil.

Ex-Coach Satan and Tyson the Nude Mormon grew suspicious of Brendan picking someone other than Taj to take to Exile Dune, although if he had taken Taj, they would have been saying "Why does he keep taking Taj?" No matter who he picks, they're afraid he's making allies. Well he is. Is it his fault he's personable, attractive, and likable, while Ex-Coach and Tyson make any normal person's skin crawl? But this is the first time Ex-Coach has plotted against a male, so he's making progress. Baby steps, Ex-Coach, baby steps.

During a storm that Ex-Coach correctly predicted a few seconds before it started, Erinn made the most accurate observation that anyone has made all season, including: Jeff Probst: "[Ex-]Coach is kind of a jackass." Start printing the T-shirts and bumper stickers.

Exile Dune: Men on The Dunes. Brendan and Stephen, male bonding at its yakkiest. Brendan, believing all to be entranced by his beauty, knows not that Stephan's heart has already been won, in his mancrush on JT (maybe his vision is bad), so Stephen listens and agrees as Brendan babbles out all his strategy, while Stephen tells us that the alliance is okay with him if it works in his favor, but that if the wind blows some other direction, he and his idol are gone. Loyalty and commitment are not in his playbook, and reserving trust isn't in Brendan's.

And now for my favorite moment of this season so far, Spencer Twink's coming out party, by invitation only.

It began with a surreal image worthy of Dali. Sydney Lobotomised, the vacuous blonde model that most of the Jalapeno men pant and drool over, is telling Spencer Jail Bait about a dream she'd just had of her boy friend holding chips and salsa during an earthquake. Now normally I'd come to a halt here to analyze what this dream tells us about Sydney (Her boy friend shakes his groove thing at Taco Bell?), but I was noticing what was clearly lost on Sydney, who is not given to noticing people that aren't her.

This dream-spiel is typical of the excruciatingly boring blather that pretty girls spew non-stop at anyone unfortunate enough to have them believe they have their ear. It could have been a sound-bite from The Hills. It's the crap that boyfriends of pretty girls put up with, day after day, month after month, year after year, until one day they slice their girlfriends' throats open with a salsa chip during an earthquake. It's why straight men hate women.

Girls like Sydney are used to letting this stuff drone from their lips day and night, with the nearby menfolk hanging on every syllable of it, because they never know which part will be important later. ("But I told you this afternoon? Weren't you listening to me?") But Spencer was just ignoring her. He looked utterly bored. He obviously didn't give a rat's posterior what the hell Sydney was saying.

Oh my God, Spencer is gay!

Sure enough, a few moments later Spencer is telling us, the home viewers only, that he's gay, but he's not out to his tribe mates. He's out to the millions of people watching at home, but closeted to the 11 other people on the show. Very selective closet.

Spencer has just assumed that, as JT is from rural Alabama, he must hate gays. Hello? Back in the first episode, Stephen just assumed JT hated Jews. Turned out he was wrong, and now they're man-friends. Now Spencer has decided on the basis of nothing more than JT's accent (We've never heard him utter a homophobic remark), that he's a bigot. That's twice JT has been prejudged to be a pre-judger. Hey Spence; Tyson's the Mormon, and I don't think we'll find he has a girl friend waiting for him and his tiaras back in Salt Lake City.

Brendan is afraid he'll be voted off for being gay. Hello? Richard Hatch? The tax cheat who is in prison? The first Survivor winner? They don't vote people off of Survivor for being gay, or Richard Hatch would never would have won. They do, however, sometimes vote you out for being lame, Spencer. Are you listening, Spencer?

Immunity Challenge: Another great, action-packed challenge. Balls are shot into the air by giant slingshots, and then another player must catch them in a net.

Catching balls in Annette? That's something Annette never did in her entire film career.

Further, the men realized that shirts would create wind drag, and provide something for people trying to louse up their catch to grab onto, so it was played mostly shirtless. (Ex-Coach, you can wear a shirt, and a ski mask.)

Well maybe there is hope for Spencer, at least in the Brazilian dating department, as it turns out that JT is a great catcher! I would have pegged him for a top myself.

This challenge yielded what instantly became my all-time favorite Survivor outburst: Jeff Probst yelling: "Both balls in the air!" You go, girl. Among the other precious tidbits that Probst hollered during this lively competition were: "Debbie goes deep! Steven goes deep!" (Well, Stephen had just learned so much about pleasuring a woman.) "Joe, in and out, in and out!" (Great advice, Joe. Come up and see me sometime, and I'll let you practice.) "Erinn and Sydney both release their balls." (I'd like to see that.) "Taj is wearing down; that's given Brendan a big opening." (Now I made some rude comments last week about the immensity of any pair of pants that has to contain Taj's over-ample posterior, but Jeff darling, even I wasn't that rude!)

Then came the big moment. Sierra tackled JT as he caught another ball. (JT was really great at the ball-snagging.) JT fell, hit his mouth on the metal racket, and knocked out "Half a tooth."

Now it's always pure gold when a Survivor contestant actually loses part of their anatomy to a challenge, but this was topped by JT's reaction, which was to shake it off, and toss his tooth away! If he'd sliced off a finger in a challenge, apparently, he'd just toss it in the weeds and get on with it. Let's hope his Family Jewel never gets caught in a wheat thresher, or he'll just feed it to his cattle and get on with it.

But Jeff wasn't about to allow chunks of contestants to get just discarded about the set, and launched a search until JT's tooth was found, which Jeff then pocketed. This was getting weird. Does Jeff keep "souvenirs" of all his contestants, in a ghastly private collection of body bits? Or just the - ah - special ones?

Even after losing the tooth, JT is still making amazing catches but now Tyson, probably dreaming of that man tiara he covets, began getting the knack of catching balls, and wins Immunity for Timbira, destroying my hopes of sending Ex-Coach home this week, and pissing off JT, who had given his tooth in vain. Jeff gave JT back what he told him was his tooth. Sure, like Jeff Probst has never heard of eBay.

So it's time to pick someone to send home. Taj was a total lox in the challenge, contributing nothing, failing to keep Brendan from making catches, and "wearing out" fast. Apparently her husband's athletic skill doesn't - ah - rub off. Spencer also failed to keep Tyson from making the two winning catches, and JT is furious at him for it. Okay, now JT does in fact hate Spencer, but he still has no idea Spencer is gay. He legitimately dislikes Spencer, for being lame, manly lame.

Taj however, is running her mouth, pissing off Joe, who remembers a certain vote last week. Taj's idea of finessing the tribe's vote consists of "Everybody can kiss my ass." Well, there's room for everyone. Taj deliberately tries to start a fight with Joe. What on earth for? To charm him out of voting for her? Well now I have proof that her mea culpa at the top of the episode was just garbage. I've offically rejoined the We Hate Taj Society, particularly as she does her best to toss Spencer Closet Twink `under a bus. For a woman whose waddling around camp in a family-size bikini makes for a walking eyesore, maybe she should give serious thought to becoming a touch more pleasant to be around.

Stephen finds himself in a moral quandary, that is, if he had any morals, it would be a quandary. Taj is digging her own grave with her tongue every time she opens her mouth in company, which is as unsanitary as it is unpalatable. Stephen hears the scuttlebutt from those who would vote her off. She thinks he will give her the immunity idol back if she's in danger of going home. But Stephen is aware that Taj going bye-bye and leaving the idol with him would be best for him. Dopey Taj actually thinks Stephen would act against his own best interests for her sake. Every year, there are these idiots who forget that their "alliance" allies are all in it to win for themselves.

But JT is out for Spencer's blood. When Spencer shows up at a plot-against-Spencer communal bath (Naked men plotting against each other. It's like Spartacus.), JT is frank about wanting to get rid of him. JT will stab you in the front.

Tribal Council: Taj: "At every challenge I do give 102%, no matter if we lose or win." No you don't. First off, 100% is all you can give. It's all you have. (Of course, the boring sports cliche is "I give 150%," but Taj is only willing to surpass the laws of mathematics by a mere 2%, not a ridiculous 50%. She only does a small impossible amount.) Secondly, Joe's knee is swelling from where he twisted it throwing himself into the challenge. JT lost a tooth. They are giving 100%. Taj got tired, and moped about, complaining endlessly that she was hot. It's 110 degrees there. Everyone is hot. I was impressed though that, whether they go on to win or not doesn't affect how much she gives. If a psychic told her that they were destined to lose the next challenge, she'd still give 102%. Man, is she full of it.

Taj: "We're down to no more expendable people." Taj, on behalf of your previously-expelled tribe mates: screw you. You are the very definition of an expendable person.

Taj was coaxed by Joe into announcing "I do not have the Idol." She was telling the truth, but implicitly lying. A neat trick.

Spencer was voted out unanimously. Spence, you never came out, so it's a gay rights victory. They did not vote you off out of homophobia. They genuinely disliked you just for you! I was deeply touched, though not as deeply as I'd like. (Joe?)

In the previews of the next episode, we saw Tyson dancing about naked again, so have anti-nausea medicine at the ready, but we also saw Erinn ask the Question of the Season, saying of ex-Coach: "Who is this jackass?"

Survivor is pre-empted next week, but will return the week after, on Wednesday that week only, so look for my next recap on Thursday, March 26. Till then, Cheers darlings.

To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to
The Morehead the Merrier.

Comments

[TRYKER]

Watching the show, I wondered what the producers/someone must have secretly told Taj that would make her throw herself essentially under the bus -- right out of the blue? Why would she deliberately stir up resentment against herself when until then, she had been pretty cagey with her strategy?
The coach is cruising close to the edge, no one seems to admire him like he assumes they must. He'll probably be on the receiving end of one of those surprise evictions. They better hurry up though, cause he looks capable of handling most anything.
And what is with Tyson, is he trolling for some big Mormon love in the jungle with that minnow he keeps baring, like it is some magnet? Icky! Hint to men: women do not idolize your twinkies that statistically only produce 1/8th of the time they're used.

[Tallulah Morehead - Huffpost Blogger]

What makes you think Tyson is trying to attract women?

1. Do women tend, overall, to react favorably to a skinny bag of Sadistic bones dancing about naked and, tiny and flaccid?

2. Do men who ARE sexually attracted to women fantasize about wearing "man tiaras," or refer to "my pretty little fingers," or list their hobby as "looking awesome," or dance around naked in front of other men?

[IndyReader]

I like reading your blog but could you lay off of Taj? So she isn't the size of Sierra, her "fat" won Jalapao the reward challenge from last week, didn't it? I suspect that you don't really know any black women if you insist that she's so fat Who's next for you, Michelle Obama?

[Tallulah Morehead - Huffpost Blogger]

Well, my referring Taj as "fat" referred only to her being too fat to wear a bikini withoug being an eyesore. It had nothing to do with her being a "black woman;" it had to do with her being a fat woman who insists on prarading around my TV screen in a bikini. Race, hue, and tint are not factors.

To the best of my observation, Michelle Obama is not fat, but then, I have not seen her in a bikini.

Why would I care that Taj won the standing-s­till-holdi­ng-heavy-p­oles competition last week? I wasn't rooting for either team, either way.

I will lay off Taj when she stops antagonizing my darling Joe.

And you will notice that all contestants are subjected to similar abuse. I doubt Debbie likes having her tragically-botched nose surgery constantly referred to either.

And for the record, Sierra would look every bit as bad as Taj in a bikini, though for exactly opposite reasons.

And Tyson looks horrific in his loincloth.

I'll give you this, black people have been woefully poorly-presented this season. No stunningly beautiful black persons of either gender. We had Jerry, a hero, but also an overweight sack of goo who got sent home sick, and Taj. The days of hot black men like James from two series last year are over for now. As a lifelong fan of darkly-tinted men, I was most disappointed at the season's black casting.

[meg4fancast]

That's the best Survivor recap I've ever seen! Well done :) Also, little Spencer will be chatting with (angry?!) fans today on Fancast at 12:30 PST. Should be interesting!