Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 7

For my money, tonight was one of the best episodes so far this season although it was missing the medical emergency promised in the ad. That recap filler episode during the Easter ratings break must have gotten them all confused down at Channel Eddie.

We weren't let down on the promise of a "huge" challenge. What made it "huge" (aside from the amount of grassland mown down to assemble it) were the twists. The first was that it was a combined reward and immunity challenge. The reward part was a barbecue at a nearby Panamanian fishing village for the entire winning tribe. As usual the reward winners also got to send a member of the losing tribe to Exile Island, and the second twist was that they were effectively granting individual immunity to that person since the rest of the losing tribe would have to attend Tribal Council that night.

The event itself was essentially a variation on the previous day's immunity challenge. Some tribemates collected puzzle pieces and the rest tried to assemble them faster than the other team. They even recycled the bit where the puzzle pieces are shaped like skulls, so the key difference to the previous day was that it was played on land and some production costs were saved by using regular grade plywood instead of the usual marine grade.

La Mina led from very early on and looked like a certainty to win because they had Sally and Dan the NASA engineer assigned to solving the puzzle. As soon as the game started they were trying to calculate where each piece would go, so they looked certain to win. Twist number three was that when the first skull turned out not to fit the way he thought it would, Dan fell to pieces and let Cirie and Bruce canter to an easy victory for Casaya.

The decision to combine reward and immunity challenges coincidentally freed up a good seven extra minutes to linger on Shane's descent into madness and confusion. The episode opened at Casaya's camp in the hours after Bobby was voted off, with the tribe all in bed and almost asleep. Shane makes an announcement: "We made the wrong decision tonight…Danielle. And we made that decision because of your personal feelings. Period. And it's a bad, bad, bad thing. Bruce is falling apart. It's not his fault, but he's 58 and nervous." And yes, Bruce was lying there the whole time pretending to just ignore it all.

Shane went on (and on and on, including the following morning) to say that he wants out of the alliance with Danielle, Courtney and Aras because he doesn't want to be beholden to people who make decisions based on personal feelings (entirely irrational decisions are OK, just not person ones). He also claimed that he can't leave the alliance "unless you guys allow me to take my son's name back" (?!?!) This was a strange burst of morality and blame-storming from someone who a few hours earlier voted against Aras, a member of his own alliance, and who was the one to first put the idea in everyone's head that Bobby should be voted out. Danielle just wanted him to stop, on the grounds that, "I came here to enjoy myself, not to be demeaned." Of course you did, darl, now just tug that bikini top down a little further.

Cirie has been a source of constant delight to me, both for the way her voice goes up three octaves just before she laughs and for the quiet way she plays a very strategic background game. She could easily make the final three at this rate. At the barbecue reward she was also the only one to really take some non-food nourishment from the fresh human contact. Sorry, that's not strictly correct. Shane managed to scab a cigarette from one of the villagers, offering most of his clothes and all of his dignity in exchange. His fervent consumption of it – which was just revolting to watch - very much fell into the non-food nourishment category because the nicotine suddenly made him sane. He apologised to Danielle, who seemed to actually believe that he was sorry and wanted to stay with her and that he'd never abuse her again. If she was hoping for some higher self-esteem out of that breast augmentation surgery she must be sorely disappointed.

You may have missed some of the subtleties of this week's episode if you haven't read Tom Wolfe's classic book, The Right Stuff . (It's a fantastic read, and one I recommend so much that I'm supplying a link to the appropriate page on Amazon so you can buy it. Or just rent the DVD.)

Americans worship their astronauts the way Australians worship those who are good at sport. This week Dan confessed his true role in the Shuttle program to Nick, who instantly fell to fawning and adoration. Since that went so well the secret was also shared with Austin, for whom the fact that Dan has merely dined with Neil Armstrong makes him a "stud", let alone his three space missions, four spacewalks and two visits to the International Space Station.

This hero worship is one of the key themes in The Right Stuff. The other is that those with the Right Stuff genuinely are heroes who behave with dignity and do the right thing (well, most of the time at least). With Sally relishing the safety of Exile Island, the La Mina menfolk had to pick one of their own to vote out at Tribal Council. Hero or not, Dan's failure to solve the puzzle at the reward/immunity challenge was the freshest sin in everyone's memory. As Terry broke the news to Dan that he would be voted out, Dan nobly accepted his fate (cue inspirational Hollywood music) and accepted responsibility for his mistake, or "my bad" as he put it. He expressed hope that it might come to a tied vote with the outcome decided in some little on-the-spot competition at Tribal Council, but the decision had already been made. Just in case we'd missed it, Terry reminded us in his piece to camera that "Dan has the Right Stuff."

The Jerry Bruckheimer music continued all the way through the walk to Tribal Council, the interview with Jeff, Dan's pointed observation that two people stuffed up the challenge but one of them has immunity (yeah Sally, take that!), his gracious acceptance of his fate and the reading out of the inevitable vote result. Austin, Nick and Terry all stood up as Dan's torch was snuffed, Dan saluted them (seriously, I'm not kidding), they all kind of saluted back and he strode off into the dark in slow motion.

That leave ten Survivors, the point at which the tribes traditionally merge, and if the ad is to be believed it happens next week. Also Bruce gets hit in the face with a machete, which apparently his karate reflexes didn't help him avoid. More fence painting and car waxing for you, Mr Miyagi!

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 6

Here's some highlights from last night's Survivor highlights show (with 17% brand new, never-before-seen-on-TV material!!).

• Courtney trying to open a coconut with a machete, and proving that she didn't watch Survivor Vanuatu, where the technique was demonstrated repeatedly.
  
• Shane declaring, "I like odd people!" Lucky for him Danielle picked him for the new Casaya tribe (bet she's regretting that now), because it's full of odd people.
  
• Misty getting absolutely grilled by the rest of her tribe about whether or not she really found the Individual Immunity Idol.
  
• Bruce insisting on using some of the Older Men's last half bottle of drinking water to wash his hands, despite his team's vehement opposition, despite all the water in the ocean being only a few feet away, and despite the rain pouring down outside.
  
• Courtney trying to cheer everyone up during a thunderstorm by singing. The trick worked every bit as well in Guatemala as it did in Salzburg in the 1930's, only they weren't quite a tuneful as the Von Trapp kiddies.
  
• Aras talking Shane into staying during those early days when he wanted to quit (bet he's regretting that now).
  
• Casaya tucking into a meal of roasted snake, and someone actually being surprised that it tastes like chicken. Everyone knows that every kind of meat you can't buy at a butcher tastes like chicken. Except human flesh, which apparently tastes more like pork.
  
• Casaya singing the most funereal version of Happy Birthday I've ever heard to mark the occasion of Shane's son Boston's 13th birthday. More noteworthy was the cheer at the end, which could have been either a genuine good wish for Boston, or relief that the singing was over. I cheered too, so it was probably the latter.
  
• Bobby tricking Danielle into taking care of the fire. She dragged him out of bed to help, so he played dumb and pretended he didn't know what to do. Cirie was in on the joke well before Danielle burst out "Oh, just let me do it!" Mission accomplished, Bobby headed straight back to bed.
  
• The soap scene. As we know, Casaya won Olay soap as well as the Charmin toilet paper. The girls quickly snagged one bar for girls' use only (the boys have two bars on which they are allowed to leave black hairs) and headed out to sea to clean up. Someone cried out "Thank God for that bar of soap!" It may have been Danielle, but I suspect it was a camera man or someone in the editing suite, because they suddenly had an excuse to show a very close-up shot of Danielle washing her lovely decolletage. In order to get a good view of the Olay logo (to keep the sponsors happy) they had to zoom in so tight you couldn't even see Danielle's head for once. Gee, sorry about that Danielle. Fortunately we didn't get such a close-up shot of Shane washing his butt and telling the girls he was doing it with their soap.

Probably the most noteworthy aspect of the show was that all the amusing footage came from either the initial four tribes or Casaya's camp. La Mina's only contribution was the dramatic counterpart when Sally confessed to Austin that her parents won't speak to her any more because she got a divorce. I felt bad for her, but I also felt bad for the producers that all the boring people ended up in the one tribe so now they have to create an episode like this to correct the balance between how much footage Casaya gives them and how much they can cram into each episode without it getting a little unbalanced. Bring on the merge!

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 5

Quote of the week goes to Aras. It occurred a couple of minutes into Scene II of Act I. Aras has announced that the day's objective for everyone – whether they like it or not – is to boil water. Bruce has decided instead to build a Zen stone garden. Aras tells Bruce he has to collect firewood. Bruce refuses. Nobody else is collecting firewood either, but Aras accuses Bruce of being selfish by claiming (here it comes!) "I'm working as a team!" There's no "I" in "team", Aras, but there is a couple in "dictatorship".

The reward challenge definitely required teamwork. Each tribe had to retrieve a bag of rice, a bag of beans and six huge tuna from a boat and pass them along a human chain, with the winner getting to keep all their food plus spices to flavour it and bottles of wine. Carbohydrates in bags is really easy to throw and catch. Tuna is not unless you're Dean Lukin. La Mina have generally struggled to catch fish, and Sally could only manage once it had fallen in the sand a few times and was less slippery. Just to make things gruesome enough for the 7:30 time slot, the last person in the chain also had to cut off the head and tail. Bruce the karate expert might, in theory, have had more luck with the side of his hand, but he persevered for stroke after stroke after gory, ineffective stroke with the cleaver to ensure we were all completely put off our dinner.

Bobby managed to win for Casaya in yet another close finish, which once again gave them the right to send Terry to Exile Island. La Mina at least got to keep their bag of beans as a reward, but without Mom supervising they didn't cook them long enough and ate too much, then spent the rest of the night wishing they'd won all those rolls of Charmin toilet paper the week before. May I just say a big thank you to Nick for doing his best to explain without being too graphic the effect of undercooked beans on his digestive system. Mine was still struggling to hold on to dinner after the fish decapitations.

Sickness was also a worry at Casaya. They returned from the challenge with 45kg of raw fish to discover an ankle-deep lake where their fire used to be, and no dry firewood for cooking. The Californians were all, like, totally cool with sashimi. Cirie is allegedly a nurse back in the real world, so I expected her to articulate her concerns at eating raw fish with a slightly more scientific phrase than, "I hope I don't wake up in the morning with some kind of … sickness or something!"

Bobby and Bruce did wake up in the morning looking kind of seedy, which could have been either the effects of drinking a bottle of wine between them or doing so in the toilet. Either way, the girls showed them no pity. Guys, never get between a woman like Courtney and a bottle of Chardonnay!

Maybe the immunity challenge tree mail had them all too excited, but nobody seemed to notice that Jeff failed to ask Terry on his return from Exile Island whether he'd found the Individual Immunity Idol. The challenge involved rowing out to sea, diving down to four timber coffins, opening them and retrieving from each one a set of four human skulls welded together in strange patterns. Back on land the teams had to assemble the skulls to form a pyramid. It was like one of those natty artistic timber coffee table puzzles that well-meaning guests pull apart the day after you forget what the one and only correct answer is, only slightly creepier because of the skulls.

Dan whacked his head on the bottom of their boat during the skull retrieval phase, but was able to shrug off the concussion enough to cheer when La Mina got it right and won their first challenge in weeks. More importantly they sent Casaya to Tribal Council, which put Shane's Alliance Of The Unwilling to its biggest test yet. His announcement, "Bobby. No other discussion. Bobby goes down today," had about as much effect as Aras ordering Bruce to collect firewood. Not surprisingly, Aras wanted to vote out Bruce. Bruce wanted to vote out Courtney because she desecrated the calm and sanctity of his Zen rock garden by practising yoga in it. Courtney convinced Danielle and Cirie (who a mere week early had been told she'd be next to go after Melinda) to vote Bobby out because he drank the wine. By this time, however, Shane had formed an alliance with Bobby and no longer wanted to vote him out.

Confused? Not as much as Jeff was at Tribal Council when four different people received votes, which is unheard of this far into the game. Shane's alliance of four voted for three different people, and in the end it was the new girls' alliance and their block of three votes against Bobby that prevailed and made him the first man sent home this season.

If quote of the week went to Aras, facial expression of the week went to Shane. If you've still got it on tape, watch the absolute bewilderment on his face when Jeff utters the word "honesty".

Don't forget that Survivor is on again Wednesday night as we try to catch up to the US in time for the final, although if the TV guide is correct it's a filler episode reviewing what's happened in the last five weeks. Shouldn't that happen closer to the end? How will we ever catch up at this rate?

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 4

The morning after is always an uncomfortable time for a man who has done a woman wrong, and both Nick and Austin were having a lot of trouble looking Sally in the eye following the Tribal Council at which they voted out Misty despite an alleged alliance with both girls.

In one of the strangest leaps of logic ever witnessed on Survivor, Dan the astronaut decided their alliance of four boys needed a fifth member to ensure their dominance after the merge. Here's just a few of the problems with that idea:

1. The merge usually happens with ten people left, so five isn't enough for security.
   
2. With six people left they can only afford to lose one more immunity challenge before the plan collapses.
   
3. Since they need to win the challenges they need the strongest players in their alliance.
   
4. Sally is by far stronger than Ruth Marie.
   
5. Dan didn't check with the rest of the alliance before making an offer to Ruth Marie.

At Casaya the inter-alliance arguments between Shane, Courtney, Aras and Danielle have reached such a critical – and utterly entertaining – stage they've had to implement a rule of "no arguments during dinner". Cirie is working her butt off, and Courtney and Danielle are at least in an alliance. Snoop-Bob (as he likes to be known) has no excuse for sleeping all day other than being too damn cool to really care.

The reward challenge involved two great Survivor traditions: marine-grade plywood and blatant contra. Each contestant had to retrieve a large triangular puzzle piece floating in the water, wrangle it into a frame and then work with the others to match the symbols on each side. It was basically a giant game of Triominos, which brought back my childhood almost as much as the "no arguments during dinner" rule.

The prize was a bathroom stocked with Charmin toilet paper, a nameless loofa, some nameless towels, five litres of nameless water and some Olay soap. The marketing folk at Olay obviously didn't pay as much as their Charmin cousins, because we only saw the Olay soap logo once whereas the timber portaloo was festooned with plenty of twee "Casa de Charmin" signage.

Casaya won the reward, and despite a team agreement that the portaloo be used to keep things like towels and firewood dry, Snoop-Bob declared – in quite specific detail –that he intended to christen it first. I think he just wanted to show off his impressive range of euphemisms for the number two. Hopefully he remembered to use both the Charmin and the Olay when he finished.

Of course the other part of Casaya's reward was getting to send Terry to Exile Island for a couple of days. Since the weather was perfect the whole time it was less of a problem for Terry than it was for the rest of his tribe, who couldn't cope without their SuperMom. Without him, nothing works in an orderly fashion and there's nobody who is completely in charge. Nobody knows how to use the flint to make fire. Dan even made all the kids promise that the place would be spotless when Mom got home.

Terry, meanwhile, was enjoying plenty of extra clues to the Individual Immunity Idol's secret hiding place. He very quickly picked up that two clues included the word "why", translated that into the letter "Y", deduced that it was referring to a specific tree of that shape, lifted a particular rock, dug a few feet and found the talisman. He's now pretty much safe until the final three so they might as well give him the million bucks now, but not until somebody asks some hard questions about how many hints the camera crew dropped. Maybe it was just skilful editing, but gee it looked rigged.

Since it wasn't dinner time, Casaya broke out into full-fledged war about Danielle's work ethic, or lack thereof. Shane took the not very subtle route of asking why she has, quote, "such an aversion to work." She was affronted because she has been a sports captain so he shouldn't speak to her like that. I'm not sure that I understand the logic, nor that I particularly want to.

The immunity challenge involved pairs roped together running along a balance beam course to collect water in little buckets. The water went into a drum as a counter balance to another tribe member sitting on a swing and waiting to be raised high enough to release a flag. The rain was enough to make things slippery but not help much with the bucket filling. In an exciting finish, Shane and Courtney's haphazard pouring was faster than Sally and Austin's more water-wise efforts, and helped Casaya to a narrow win and clean sweep of this week's challenges.

La Mina's pain at losing was eased by Mom being home and immediately taking charge. Sally made a no-nonsense pitch for survival, which obviously worked because Terry and Austin started looking for loopholes to vote out Ruth Marie instead. Technically only Dan had promised Ruth Marie membership, but Nick and Dan wanted to stick to the spirit of the deal more than the letter of the law. Austin declared himself the new messiah for pulling off the miracle of changing Terry's mind. Somehow I don't think Terry will share that opinion when he watches the episode.

At Tribal Council, Ruth Marie described being "small in statue" (sic) as the reason she feels on the outside. Sally admitted to having no idea which way it would go, but looked pretty relieve to be on the winning side when Ruth Marie was voted out 4-2.

Tonight's episode was brought to you by Charmin, Olay and the number 2.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 3

This is the twelfth season of Survivor, and yet the contestants still manage to miss fundamental aspects of the game. For example, it's unwise to rush into an alliance with people you barely know, but it's idiotic to then tell the rest of the tribe of both the existence and precise composition of that alliance. Why? Because when your coalition turns out to be more dysfunctional than the cast of a Woody Allen movie you look like a loser to everyone else regardless of whether you leave the alliance or put up with it. And Cirie is laughing like a hyena all the way to the merge.

Melinda's spot in Casaya was barely cold before Mr Miyagi was in it, imparting wisdom and making character judgements. Bruce says he can see at least six different personality types within Casaya, but didn't indicate how many of them Shane accounts for.

His first pearl was that filtering water through three layers of t-shirt gets rid of 90% of the bacteria. He's taught backpacking to high school students for 30 years so he knows these things. Personally I'm guessing that 10% of the germs in a third world country is still more than enough to kill a healthy adult, let alone someone who hasn't eaten properly in a week. I also wonder how many germs are put back into the water by a t-shirt that hasn’t been washed properly in a week. Or by sharing the one water bottle between seven.

La Mina isn't faring any better on the food front because choking back tears of frustration that Sally lost their spear doesn't count as nutrition. Luckily Terry caught one small fish, which was enough to give them all a protein boost going into the reward challenge. There were blankets, pillows and a tarpaulin for the winning team, but there must also have been something on offer to the camera men for whomever got the best shot of Danielle's lovely decolletage. Seriously, watch in future how often she gets a lingering upper-body close-up whenever she’s in a bikini. There's surely a drinking game in it.

The reward challenge involved four tribe members on a balance beam out at sea trying to catch cannon balls fired from a slingshot on the beach by one of the other three. La Mina won and got to pick which member of Casaya would be deported to Exile Island to stay until the next immunity challenge. Since Casaya had spent most of the opening chit-chat with Jeff raving about how much better Bruce was making their lives it was a no-brainer. He’s now spent more time on Exile Island than with either of his tribes, and for most of that time it’s rained. He’s also only got one t-shirt through which to filter his water, which must be frustrating.

The only thing in Panama that turns faster than the weather is Shane's mood. In the ads we saw him sitting on a stump throwing a tanty to make a three-year-old proud. Surprisingly it was far more dramatic within the context of the episode, since the moments leading up to it were quite warm and playful before he suddenly snapped. Everyone in his tribe – and most specifically those in his alliance – thinks he’s a few analogies short of a metaphor. He thinks they’re nuts, too. The funny bit is that they’re all too busy complaining about the lousy deal they’ve struck to do anything about it and try making a new alliance with some sane people. Cirie, Bobby and Bruce only need to lure one member away to tip the balance in their own favour. Danielle is probably the prime candidate, because Aras is on his own after telling Cirie she’s dispensable and Courtney is just as narky and unpredictable as Shane. She also thinks that La Mina's choice to send Bruce back to Exile Island was the most evil thing she's seen people do, so she needs to read more.

Things couldn’t be more different at La Mina, where everyone is being very careful to be nice to each other’s faces. Misty, who wants us all to know she’s a natural born flirt, has been giving all the boys back rubs, because that way they’ll like her and won’t vote her off. For such a book smart girl it was an incredibly adolescent strategy, and it got an equally adolescent response from Nick and Austin: they lapped it up but still thought less of her for it. We even got a nicely spliced in shot of Nick out in the ocean trying to scrub the ‘girl germs’ off his shoulders.

The immunity challenge was one of the most novel ones the producers have ever come up with. Five wrestling rings were laid out on the sand, one for each round. Buried within each ring was a pillow-sized bag. Each team had a mat to mark its own home plate. In each round, a few members of each tribe had to race to dig up the bag and get it back to their home plate, while simultaneously preventing the other team from doing the same. It was essentially a cross between a pillow fight, mud wrestling and rugby. Well, when the girls were competing against each other it was more like pillow fight / mud wrestling and for the boys it was more like rugby. At least that seemed to be the editing suite policy, along with enthusiastic deployment of the pixelating machine.

Like the reward challenge it was a very close contest, but unlike the reward challenge Casaya won. Misty explained that it was because "they’ve got so much more weight than we have", while looking smug and rubbing her neck at the spot where Cirie sat on her. Most members of La Mina got their first taste of Tribal Council, and we got the third rendition of Jeff’s incantation that fire equals life on Survivor. Austin nicely deflected a question about what happened to the spear without mentioning Sally’s name. Ruth Marie agreed that she’s vulnerable as the only member of La Mina without another member of her original tribe for company. Misty looked smug again while talking about how close everyone is. The boys and Ruth Marie all agreed with her, and then voted her out regardless.

In the final humiliation she was forced to reveal that she had not found the Individual Immunity Idol after all. As the third person voted off she’ll be in the back row at the reunion special, so at least she’ll get another chance to show off those neck rub skills.

Survivor Panama - Exile Island: week 2

Last week we learned that Shane is a 'character' so the episode opened with him complaining non-stop about how "this place breathes bad luck". He was promptly rewarded with a massive lightening strike and accompanying thunder clap that could only be the work of a vengeful deity.

In fact the entire theme for this week's show was "self fulfilling prophecy". Either the world truly moves in mysterious ways, or the camera crew just shoot so much film they've got enough to create almost any scenario necessary when they get to the editing suite.

Tina's absence was felt at the older women's camp; her shelter kept them warm and dry (well, relative to those at the other camps) but lighting fire using the flint and machete turned out to be not quite so easy as she made it look. The younger women, meanwhile, found some papaya and will have trouble topping their ecstasy-faking performances when it's time for a proper food reward in a couple of weeks.

At the reward challenge the familiar phrase, "Drop your buffs!" rang out as the four tribes merged into two new ones with proper names. Danielle and Terry led the schoolyard pick and set the early tone for the composition of each team. Let's just say that as a rule of thumb the grounded, sensible people ended up in La Mina tribe, and Casaya is obviously Spanish for "dumb loud white folks plus the token black people".

Bruce was led through a slightly cruel, but nonetheless entertaining, emotional roller coaster. First he was sad because nobody picked him for their tribe and he was the last one left. Then he was happy because he replaces whoever gets voted out at the next tribal council and is therefore immune this week. Then he was sad again because he had to wait for tribal council on Exile Island. Then he was happy again because he got a chance to look for the Individual Immunity Idol.

If he'd been able to see the challenge site he'd have been even happier, because it was yet another checklist of classic obstacles, with the added visual frisson of very large and startlingly good fake snakes that had to be collected and carried along with the team. The only interesting bit was when Cirie jumped into a mud pool and landed on Bobby's head, which may explain why he didn't utter another word the entire episode. We also learnt that Sally's wardrobe of navy blue Jana Pittman socks includes versions that reach just under and just over the knee, both of which look absurd with a bikini.

In yet another predictable development the winners of the first proper reward challenge got fishing gear. We had some lovely camera shots of how many fish live off the Panama coast, just to rub in how pathetic it would be not to catch one. A few minutes later we saw Sally and Nick paddling back to camp empty handed. In between we watched with a horrified sense of the inevitable as Sally talked about how bad it would be to lose their one and only spear. The true disappointment was that the camera was on Nick while her 'practice' shot disappeared into the wild blue yonder, and it was sadly obvious that the producers had gone back later on with another spear to get some useable patch-up footage.

Meanwhile, back on Exile Island, Bruce (aka Mr Miyagi) showed off his impressive karate routine and talked about the mental strength it would give him to cope all alone with just a cameraman, sound guy, gaffer, best boy and second assistant director for company. He didn't look quite so mentally strong when it rained all night.

The highlight of the entire episode was Shane. He claims to not need the prize money, but it's hard to work out how a man so incapable of behaving appropriately could be that successful. Maybe it's the effect of his cold-turkey nicotine and caffeine detox, or maybe he's like that all the time, but he spent most of the episode making a fool of himself. He declared at the immunity challenge that his entire tribe felt utterly weakened. With a pep talk like that it's little wonder they lost, and Jeff made it worse by pointing out that La Mina only won because Casaya was – quote – "absolutely inept."

Back at camp, Shane asked his tribemates to vote him off because he wanted to go home. Then he let Aras change his mind for him and announced he wanted to stay. Together they initiated one of the clumsiest attempts at tough love I've ever seen on TV. Aras told Cirie and Melinda that he wanted to be honest and not deceptive about the fact he'd be voting for one of them – "I haven't decided which yet" – and that the other members of his alliance agreed with him. Shane consoled them with the news that it didn't matter which one was voted off first since the other would be next voted off anyway.

Courtney, who likes to, like, punctuate, like, everything in this, like, totally L.A manner, was clearly upset to have her membership of an alliance with Shane, Aras and Danielle exposed so early and so clumsily (or perhaps she was just embarrassed to be in an alliance with Shane). Nevertheless she stuck with them and voted out Melinda in a 5-2 decision.

Next Tuesday we get more of Shane's descent into madness, and in even better news we don't have to wait much longer to find out what happens after that because Channel Eddie will be running another episode next Wednesday night.