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?