By Elaine
Throughout this game, I kept picking different titles for the episode: Parvati plays nice. James gets batty again. Girls gone wild. Erik sucks. But nothing fits the episode quite as well as Killer Bitch.
And, good Lord, isn’t she? I mean Natalie, of course, who used the B-word so frequently to describe Jason (who hadn’t done a single thing to earn the title but be fiercely loyal to her) that I suspect that parents who let their young kids watch this show as either a lesson in how to grow up to be Dick Cheney or the next CEO of some Enron clone, must have given up on holding their precious darlings’ ears. CBS is the network that blurs plumber’s cracks and the castaways’ lips when they swear. Perhaps they should have bleeped the word and flashed it on the bottom of the screen because every kid old enough to read already knows it. That would have been apropos because it would have made it seem like it applied to Natalie and not what she was saying. Or, as Pee Wee Herman put it, “I know you are, but what am I?”
So, for those who missed this episode, let the drama (or at least as much of it as I can remember) unfold.
It begins with James, Amanda and, especially, young pup Erik dealing with the fallout of losing Ozzy. Erik shows he can suck it up with the best of the favorites, telling Cirie and the others that he understood why they didn’t let him in on their decision to blindside Ozzy and it was OK with him. Had he possessed a pillow, he would likely have been crying silently into it that night. Meanwhile James and Amanda comfort each other. She patted his head in a particularly sweet gesture (and what girl wouldn’t want to do the same?) as they considered what to do now that the strongest member of their alliance was gone. Any viewer could tell them what they needed to do next, but then we aren’t there for all those days of scheming that got edited down to just one hour. Who knows what they contemplated and then stupidly discarded?
Since she also blindsided James and Amanda, Parvati engages in some damage control. She tries to make nice with James, who tells her, “You are an apple chewer. You can just leave the apple alone.” A nice biblical reference, though I would have preferred Jezebel. She seems to do a little better with Amanda, but only because Amanda is afraid of her, commenting that Parv seems to be in charge of the game.
The reward challenge is the food auction. Cirie gets the first plate, a hot dog and fries. Erik takes what’s under cover number 2 – a wise move since it is nachos. James eats the fruit bats Erik didn’t choose. This reminded me that, rodents — even rodents with wings — likely taste like rodents. Now, in New Orleans at one point, chefs were trying to figure out if there is a dish especially suited to nutria, the area’s version of the cane toad. Even Emeril got involved. Perhaps James has some experience as a nutria taster?
Amanda wins peanut butter and Natalie gets a bottle that lets her choose to send one person to Exile Island and take all that person’s money. She chooses Jason, who is then told he can go and look for a new immunity idol. A new idol! Natalie keeps her cool, only venting later. Natalie then buys what turns out to be a large chocolate cake which she can share with three other people. She chooses Parvati, Cirie and Alexis, who can only chow down for just one minute. In a gesture that can only be seen as motivated by hunger Erik pays $40 to lick Cirie’s fingers. Does this remind anyone else of Ozzy’s comment about Erik’s doglike loyalty?
Meanwhile, out at Exile Island, Jason finds the idol and is immeasurably thankful to Natalie for sending him there. “The game has thrown me so many curveballs,” he says. ” Since stepping down from the last immunity challenge, I think things have definitely changed for me out here. … She went along with me at the last tribal council when we voted out Ozzy. And it’s in her best interest to keep me around in this game.” Yeah, right.
As soon as he rejoins the group, Natalie hugs him and whispers that he mustn’t let James win. They are voting him off. Ecstatic that he is still in an alliance, he agrees.
In the immunity challenge — one of those combo things in which they have to break the tile, assemble the puzzle, use it to get planks that let you cross the bridge — Erik narrowly defeats James. They weren’t going to vote him out anyway because it’s is birthday so it’s not that important.
At tribal council, Jason tells Probst, “I feel like for the first time in this game I am a part of a successful alliance.”
“Has your social status really changed?” Probst asks him, possibly as a means of throwing the poor clueless kid a hint. “It’s difficult to know where I stand right now,” Jason answers. He should have listened to himself. Probst asks Natalie if she really can do this. “Oh, yes,” she says. “This game is changing all the time.” That was probably the first time she told the truth in days.
Of course, James, Amanda and Erik didn’t alert Jason to what was going on and he doesn’t play the idol and off he goes. Watching this, it occurs to me that this is a game in which you eat or are eaten. Just standing around, thankful that you are still just standing around, will not get you very far. Or, as Probst said, “Anybody who still feels safe in this game is a fool.”
In those final moments before the DVR asks if you want to save or delete, Jason waxed philosophical then plotted revenge. “They did the same thing in voting out Ozzy. … What they did tonight will definitely haunt them when I’m sitting on the jury. I just wish I’d been a little bit smarter and played the idol when I had a chance.” Jason, so do we. And we hope, that when the right girl comes along, you will be able to trust women again.
P.S. I’m feeling a bit more friendly toward Evil Probst since learning that he will be a guest on Supper Club when it launches in June on the new eco-net Planet Green. But does Probst’s eco-friendly stance REALLY go beyond finding some unspoiled and photogenic wilderness in which to dump more people to torture who pollute the ground with their bitter tears when they know they are about to be voted off? That remains to be seen.