Survivor Fiji: week 11

A word to the wise:
Remember past actions; they
Foretell the future.

That they do indeed, Alex, and this week was very much a case of your past actions biting you hard in the backside. Oh, and thanks for dictating this week’s Haiku.

So much of the episode was devoted to Mookie And Alex scheming with each other that I’m just going to use the acronym MAA to save keystrokes. It started out with MAA’s past actions towards Dreamz – and vice versa – coming to their entirely foreseeable conclusions. MAA were mad because he hadn’t come to apologise and explain that it’s just part of the game. Dreamz can’t understand why they don’t want to play with him anymore, even though he betrayed them and lied to them and voted for Mookie. He went to try and explain that they all got outsmarted the night before - which was exactly what they wanted him to do - and they turned on him for turning on them. The funniest part was Dreamz lying while attempting to make MAA believe that he hadn’t turned on them, then admitting that he’d voted for Mookie, but still absolutely insisting he was on their side.

The other person who hasn’t learned anything is Stacey. In the early days at Moto while she was in the majority she treated Dreamz and Cassandra appallingly, giving Cassandra the coffee dregs and laughing at Dreamz for thinking it was instant. Fate did its thing, and she hasn't been in a secure alliance since the reshuffle in week six. Yet the first thing she did this week on return to camp was gloat about MAA being unnumbered and declare "They’ll be lucky if they get fed." That was too hypocritical to be funny, although the night-vision camera made her eyes look totally evil as she said it, which was rather amusing.

This week’s Reward Challenge was brought to us by the good folk in Olay’s marketing department. Survivors had to play lacrosse in a mud pit, so they were good and dirty by the time the randomly selected green team of Stacey, Earl, Dreamz and Alex beat the orange team. Their prize, along with a night at a luxury spa resort, was a very nicely presented basket of the NEW! Olay Ribbons body washes range which comes in Aloe Lotion ribbons, Jojoba Butter ribbons and Almond Creme ribbons. It’s NEW! And it’s from Olay. And it’s called Ribbons. And all the Survivors were desperate to win it so it must be good.

Stacey is the only babe left on the show, so luckily for both the producers and Olay’s marketing department she was on the winning team and was happy to do a slow strip down to her bikini in the resort's outdoor shower. She spent several minutes applying NEW! Olay Ribbons body wash to a loofa while holding the bottle label-side out, then rubbing NEW! Olay Ribbons body wash all over herself and moaning "Olé! Olé!" (no, I'm not kidding.) We also had to watch Earl picking dried mud out of his armpit hair. At least Dreamz now smells like apples and strawberries, for which everyone seems grateful.

Boo injured his knee so badly during the challenge they had to call out a medic who – luckily for him but oddly for the tropics – was wearing gumboots. He helped Boo stand up and there was a distinctly audible and utterly revolting click as the knee snapped back into place. Lucky for Boo he was apparently fine and quite happy to finish the challenge. Unlucky for Boo he was on the losing team and got sent to Exile Island for a night, although that had the bonus of getting a clue to where MAA's Immunity Idol has been reburied. Hmm, if you had to choose the person out of Boo, Cassandra, Yau-Man or Mookie who would be least likely to understand the clue and find the turtle before you got a chance, who would you pick? Smart choice, Earl.

Alex spent the entire reward trying to, quote, "wiggle my way back into this alliance," which was strange considering he's never been part of that alliance to start with. His efforts were a complete failure, especially when he tried to convince Earl to vote out Mookie next. Yeah, that’s a great way to prove that you’re trustworthy.

Back at camp, MAA got the idea of going through Yau-Man’s bag to see if he had the other immunity idol. They thought they were so smart when they found it. They thought it was a big strategic win for them. They thought they’d be able to call him out publicly at Tribal Council and make him look like a snake to the rest of his alliance. They thought they’d be able to get Yau-Man’s friends to all suddenly change their vote. They didn’t seem to think it was strange that there was one camera crew focused on them, and another camera crew focused on the nearby bushes. Yep, Stacey and Cassandra had been having a little pow wow of their own right near where MAA decided to hatch their evil plans and it was only Stacey standing on a stick which gave away their position, not the aforementioned camera crew.

MAA ran off down the beach in a paranoid frenzy to confront Yau-Man. They were out of breath and puffing by the time they got there, which took some of the impact off their carefully rehearsed line "We know you have the idol. Do you want to tell the group yourself or do you want us to do it?" Yau-Man just looked at them, shrugged his shoulders, smiled and said "You guys do what you think you need to do."

Yau-Man is so smart. He just moseyed back to camp and told the others that MAA had admitted going through the bags and then tried to blackmail him when they found the idol. In the horror of wondering whether MAA had been through their own bags none of them reacted to the idol news at all.

The immunity reward was a game of Battleship where everyone had to pick three adjacent squares on a grid, tell Jeff in secret, and then try to hit everyone else’s positions. Dreamz dropped the first bomb: out of 25 squares to choose from he hit one of his own and put himself a third of the way out of the game. Cassandra was next and did exactly the same thing! Stacey wasted a chance by bombing a square that had already been declared empty but somehow managed to win anyway, proving Earl’s point that the immunity challenges are all about luck not strength.

MAA were still mouthing off and threatening that if they were going down they were bringing hell down with them. Um, according to conventional wisdom Hell is already down. We know what you mean.

Boo came up with a crazy idea of half his group voting for Mookie and half for Alex. It was unclear what a deliberately tied vote was meant to achieve, and Earl expressed some well-placed fears that the plan was too mentally challenging for some of them to cope with (he didn’t name names but their initials might be Boo and Dreamz).

Tribal Council didn't go as well for MAA has they'd expected. Alex stated baldly that last week the snakes and rats came out, and then Mookie played his trump card by announcing how he knows that Yau-Man has the other immunity idol. A clearly stunned Jeff finished off the job of pointing out what an awful betrayal of trust that is, even to the point of highlighting MAA’s hypocrisy at complaining about snakes and rats.

Dreamz, true to form, blabbed that his alliance was planning to split the vote. Alex, true to form, used the information to save himself by voting for Mookie to make sure there was no tie. And Mookie, true to form, doesn’t seem to have done the math and clicked that Alex voted with the others.

A word to the wise, Alex: Remember past actions; they foretell the future. And methinks your past actions foretell you getting voted out very soon.