Tue, March 11, 2008

Jeff Probst appeared on Adam Carolla's radio show this week (alarmingly, not wearing his coaching hat). It turns out he's funny, decent, and nearly as willing as I am to poke fun at Survivor, its contestants, and its tiresome tropes. Nice work, Carolla – now I like the guy; where do I go from here?

I. "Camp Curve"

With the contestants mingling into two integrated teams (each half fan/half favorite), this concept is back at the forefront. Airai's fire is built so close to the water that an incoming tide extinguishes their barbeque. They're sleeping in a pile of sand fleas. In no time, the newly commingled Jon, James, Parvati, and Eliza set about reorganizing the camp and constructing a new shelter. Alexis and Natalie are only too happy to have this assistance.

It's nothing Airai couldn't have figured out on its own. But having Joel out of the way means someone else can direct the process, which allows quicker progress since ideas don't need to be vetted through him. Natalie is overjoyed to see a new shelter canopy taking shape within the first hour. I think the four favorites are motivated to remove the "camp curve" advantage from Malakal as quickly as they can now that they're not on that team any more.

With that out of the way, challenge performance should begin to normalize to the potential of individuals, rather than showcasing merely which contestants are drastically undernourished.

II. Not a Balance Beam in Sight

If you're tired of challenges in which tiles are smashed, tangles of knots are untied, or puzzles are assembled, you'll want to take a break from watching Survivor for at least a decade. In this case, four bundles of puzzle pieces are suspended above the sand by ropes which wrap around four large tiles. Breaking the tiles will release the ropes, dropping the bundles. Once that's done, teams can drag the bundles over to a puzzle table, untie the pieces, and assemble a puzzle. Since it's a big puzzle, they'll have the help of one remaining teammate who acts as a "spotter" from a high tower (though it turns out any team member can chime in with "instructions," for better or for worse).

It's challenging to smash these tiles with enough force to drop the ropes, because players are throwing rocks this time instead of using the traditional slingshot. Accuracy and speed must be coordinated precisely, and a little luck is needed as well. In Airai's case, two of the tiles fail to shatter completely, which means they must fusillade the smaller remaining targets until the ropes are jostled loose.

Jonathan, of course, misses no opportunity to whine about this, since it means Malakal has taken the lead and begins assembling its puzzle first. ("I mean... my ASS!") James displays what I think is the appropriate response: he cackles with laughter while lining up his next throw. Jon is just blowing off steam, like anyone would do, because it kind of is unfair – in the sense that life is unfair, not in the sense that someone on the production staff is secretly reinforcing Airai's tiles to slow them down. Coach Probst is ready for a fight. He defends the props department, saying the ropes and tiles are identical, and adding that Airai should "stop bitching and start throwing." (Which, obviously, they haven't stopped throwing to bitch – they can, and do, simultaneously do both.) Of course Jonathan ("getting aggravated by me!") refuses to let Coach Probst have the last word, so he sings back, "Just hitting them as hard as we can, Jeff." I love this stuff. I was Jonathan, and Oscar nominee Bill Haugse was Coach Probst, in the version of this we did in our film school class each week, and it never got old. Each of us fought for the last word, each knew we should be more mature about it, and each knew we were mostly kidding (but not completely). Unbelievably entertaining. Yay!

III. Strength Without Strength

This sets the stage for Airai's awesome come-from-behind win, in which Jonathan and Eliza demonstrate that there is more to victory than physical strength. (Obviously, they'd never get this far without some physical strength – but they prove that the mental part of the game can overcome deficiencies in the physical part.) Eliza, of course, is Airai's "spotter," and after attempting to psyche out Malakal by calling to her teammates that their opponents "aren't close," she sets about methodically working the puzzle pieces into place.

Ideally, she'd have spent her time observing Malakal's puzzle and looking for patterns which might prove useful once her teammates got their puzzle untied, but failing that, at least she's quickly adaptable. Jonathan points out that there's probably a larger pattern to the puzzle – it's not just random pieces twisted every which way, it actually creates an image when it's completed. Hearing this, Eliza quickly snaps into action. Malakal can't help hearing it, too, but by this point Joel is interrupting Chet (Malakal's spotter and his general nemesis), so the process is too confused and no one can tell what they're doing. I hate to side with Coach Probst here, but teamwork really pays off.

God bless Jonathan. He's flawed, of course, but he really is my proxy out there. Needling Probst and searching for ways to be smart about the challenges. I never understand why the puzzle-makers on the trailing team don't peek at their opponents for clues. Jonathan doesn't do this (maybe if he weren't so busy whining!) but he applies the same thought process, which is nearly as good. It's almost a shame he's guaranteed to shoot himself in the foot and catastrophically engineer his own premature elimination from the game. (Though, if things continue on their current course, his leg will be numbed by infection and at least he won't feel that shot to the foot.)

IV. Show No Mercy

So, it's Malakal at Tribal Council, then. They consist of OzzyManda, Cirie, and Ami from the favorites and Joel, Erik, Tracy, and Chet from the original Airai team. Collectively, the dumbest strategic minds and the weakest physical players in the game. Joel has inherited the all-consuming Chet-hate from his departed teammate Mike, which serves to deepen the rift between the younger, stronger people and the older, weaker ones. In the reward challenge directly following the mingling, Joel and Chet are lashed together and forced to flee, then later chase, Parvati and Eliza on an obstacle course. In the first round, Joel pulls Chet along, but in the second running he absolutely drags* him. Chet is partly to blame for this. At every challenge, he is the least invested guy. He'll run, but he won't run hard, and he's quick to give up. He can't totally give up with this ox tied to him, but he can pause for breath, and that slows and infuriates the ox. At a certain point, though, once he's being dragged headlong across the ground, it's not his fault he can't get his feet under him and catch up with Joel. Then Joel smashes Chet's head into a cross bar. Okay, sure, Chet should try harder. But pummeling him until he physically can't stand isn't going to make that happen. They lose, because Chet's body refuses to snap in two and be pulled behind Joel through any obstacle. Then there's a magnificent exchange between the two of them, still tied together.

Chet (still panting): I hit my head back there.

Joel (looking the other way): I don't care.

Chet: I know.

That "I know" is delivered with complete and sincere resignation. (I know this will make sense to exactly one of you, but I can't help it: every time I hear it, it's exactly the reading I imagined in Joe's college spec script when one boy tells his brother, "You should quit piano, you suck at it," and the brother can only respond, "I know.")

The point is, by the time the immunity challenge rolls around, Joel has loaded every disappointment of his entire life onto Chet, and he refuses to acknowledge that Chet might be able to do anything right. Thus, he forces his way into the puzzle solving, and contributes as much as Chet does to Malakal's confounded and sputtering loss.

Between the challenges, Joel negotiates with Ozzy to eliminate Cirie first, then Chet, because he feels more comfortable maintaining a numbers advantage for the fans just in case anyone should try anything tricky. Makes perfect sense; Cirie's actually a bigger threat long-term, and Ozzy isn't giving up much letting Joel have the numbers, since Joel desperately needs to cut Chet loose. But after the immunity loss, Joel reconsiders. He can focus on nothing other than eliminating Chet, who now represents everything that has ever gone wrong in Joel's life. Chet beat him out for starting quarterback in high school. Chet slept with his wife. Chet bested his bench pressing record at the firehouse.

But Tracy still refuses to give up without a fight. Her friendship with Chet is more important than Malakal's ability to win challenges (or even show up at challenges caring whether it wins or not). She targets Joel for elimination, based on the cockamamie assertion that he has too much control of the game. (This didn't bother her a week ago, but now that he's run out of other people to vote for, it's an issue.) She recruits Cirie. ("Hey, you're weak and useless. Join our group!") If Cirie is good at one thing, it's needlessly stirring shit up.

V. Post-Merge Politics

Cirie subscribes to Tracy's short-sighted approach: if they get rid of the bully, sure they'll still lose challenges, but at least they won't get yelled at while they do. (She's forgetting Coach Probst!) I guess her reasoning is that as long as she maintains the numbers, she can keep eliminating stronger players, and then at the merge, her alliance of the game's four weakest people can go toe-to-toe with the strongest players from Airai. Airtight!

She approaches OzzyManda and lays it out for them like this: Yes, Joel is a big, strong brute who might help put food in their stomachs at reward challenges and win them immunity. But he's "Playing The Game" already. He's engineering votes and "Playing To Win." He's only going to do more of that in the future, whereas Chet has yet to do anything to win, especially play. He's just a big, spindly pawn they can use for whatever they want; why not keep him around?

Sound reasoning, but it makes a lot more sense at or after the merge. Right now, teams would be wise to maintain some semblance of a competitive force. You don't let the stronger members push you around, but nor do you trash your team's hopes at immunity to spite them. Not that this matters much to OzzyManda. They've got the mini idol from Exile Island, so one way or another they should be able to make the merge. (And if they can't both get there, the half of them that makes voting decisions like this one is guaranteed to survive.) So, they vote with Cirie and hand her the numbers to control the game even further. Should be fun. I wish Joe could remember why he liked her at the end of the Exile Island season, because I almost started liking her this time around but now I hate her. Her self-satisfied smirk as Joel leaves is all it takes. Ozzy, take heed: who's Playing To Win now? Think about it.

Coach Probst says the same thing Coach Jason would say: I guess physical strength doesn't mean much to you idiots. Then he sends them on their way.

VI. Under Pressure

None of this would have happened in a normal "fans vs. other fans" season. The pressure of playing against people with an assumed strategic advantage caused Joel to make an early play against Mike, which fractured Airai and gave opportunities for smaller alliances to emerge and start pushing the game around. This put Tracy in a position to make her move, which secured her ability to team with Cirie and dominate the younger, stronger players even more. This is great for the weaker people, and maybe it'll work out for them, but it's all part of the insanity that results from the shadow the favorites cast over everyone's alliances and strategies.

I don't think Ozzy or Amanda would be as prone to accept Cirie's logic on a normal season, either. People are frantically trying to align themselves for an individual game that they expect to be completely insane. It's making them unpredictable which – aside from making my self-assigned job harder – is going to make it challenging to rely on alliances as the game progresses. A player who places an unusual amount of trust in the alliance concept is doomed. Poor Jon! If he (or his leg) is forced to leave the game, at least it will spare him the indignity of watching another brilliantly constructed alliance blow up in his face.

Study Questions

1. Here's Cirie, reacting to the impending slaughter of Malakal's rooster: "I work in surgery, so it's not a big issue to me." What kind of operating room is she working in where decapitation "is not a big issue"?!

2. Alternate joke: Watching a squirming bird have its head cut off doesn't bother her, but a good-sized leaf will give her nightmares?

3. Jason actually managed to put a tree between himself and James in the reward challenge, tangling their rope around its trunk and making them sitting ducks. Can he still defend physical strength over intelligence with a straight face?

4. Ozzy confides to the camera that watching Amanda pull a four-foot shark out of the ocean turns him on. If you're Amanda, are you excited or terrified by this? Do you hesitantly begin Googling "cloaca porn"?

5. In next week's scenes, we see Jason recovering Ozzy's hasty, half-assed fake immunity idol, and treating it like it's real. Can he still defend physical strength over basic human logic with a straight face?

Viewing for Next Week

"It Hit Everyone Pretty Hard," in which Ami senses the direction of the breeze and cuddles up with Cirie's alliance, while Jon's sexy doctor tells him if his infection reaches his bloodstream, it's likely to kill him. And I can't wait to see Jason's face when Airai gets its "first look" at the new Malakal without Joel. My bet: thrilled beyond belief. Those idiots continue to do everything backwards, but now their loss is his gain. I actually won't be surprised if half of Airai is unable to stop itself from blurting out "What the fuck are you doing?" during this first look.

© onebee · all rights reserved