Survivor China: weeks 7 & 8

Firstly just to answer some questions from last week: yes I really am pregnant, and yes I was totally joking about those names. Although maybe Jeff for a boy...

Another double episode this week, which started with more of Courtney complaining about the way Jean-Robert treats her. Here’s a free hint, honey: he might be upset about you calling him a "really crappy person" at Tribal Council last night. That might have played a small part in your not being his favourite person either. Just guessing.

At Crouching Tiger, James listened to a seemingly endless string of sentences from PG, punctuated liberally with the word "like", until she ran out of meaningless things to say and wandered off to bore Jaime and Erik. He used the opportunity to discretely wrench both plaques off the gateway, keeping the one with the words "Congratulations – this is an immunity idol" in big letters on the back and leaving the other on the ground while he hid his treasure.

Jaime and Eric found the leftover plaque and decided that of course it must be an immunity idol. Later that night they showed what sweet little Southern Christians they are by going through James’ bag while he was away. They found two plaque-shaped lumps wrapped up in his pants but didn’t unwrap them all the way to check. And yet, despite knowing that James had already discarded it as worthless, they figured the one in Jaime’s bag must also be an immunity idol. The only people laughing harder than James did when he discovered someone had attributed value to the junk one, were the producers. No, let me correct that: I was laughing very hard later on when Jaime did a whole speech about how good she is at playing stupid, and that she might resemble Jessica Simpson but she’s not as dumb as she looks.

At the reward challenge Jeff yelled out "Drop your buffs: you are merged," then handed out nice clean black buffs for everyone to wear. James immediately wrapped his around his armpit, so it probably doesn’t smell so nice and fresh any more. The traditional merge feast included a floor show by some local acrobats and dancers. China might be a communist atheist country, but the dancing was decidedly liturgical.

Just before they headed off, Jeff reminded them – very pointedly– that "this game never stops." Later, back at what was the Hidden Tiger camp but is now home to Hae Da Fung (which, according to PG at least, means ‘Black Fighting Wind’), Jeff turned up unannounced and waving this season’s individual immunity necklace. He declared that the immunity challenge was about to start, and – oh gee, nobody could see this coming after what he said, only apparently none of them did – the challenge was a memory test about the floor show. The first three questions knocked out eight of the ten contestants, and Frosti was the only one to get the last question right so he won immunity.

Naturally the politicking kicked into overdrive. Todd and Amanda split up to improve their lobbying reach, with Todd drawing the short straw of ‘talking’ to Jean-Robert. It wasn’t so much talking to as being threatened by. His threat is to be a vocal jury advocate against Todd if he gets 'screwed over'. Since nobody takes anything JR says seriously, it was far less a threat than the machete he was waiving around as he said it.

Far more pleasant for Todd was having Jaime offer to tell him who has both immunity idols. He managed to keep a straight face, and so did Jeff when Jaime interrupted Tribal Council to present her ‘immunity idol’ and claim protection. Jean-Robert – who remember is supposed to make his living out of playing poker and keeping his emotions private – looked horrified, then openly laughed when Jeff tossed the plaque in the fire, and went straight back to horrified when the first vote featured his own name.

Poor Jaime, and poor me because her seven votes put me out of our office sweep. She thinks she’s out because she’s just too nice for Survivor. I think she’s out because she did something horrible going through James’ bag, did it poorly, and didn’t have a back-up plan.

Jean-Robert’s utterly crappy poker face, and the question over who has real immunity idols, were the dominating themes in the night’s second episode. In fact the entire episode was neatly encapsulated in an early quote from James: "We need to keep Jean-Robert’s dumb ass in line because we’re stuck with him now."

After a few scenes of Todd starting to panic about his alliances, and getting peeved that James hasn’t bothered to give back the immunity idol he was handed, it was straight into the reward challenge. Three people from one team armed with buckets of water tried to sink a small boat piloted by someone from the other team, who was trying to simultaneously paddle out of reach and bail out the water. Wow, no knots or puzzle pieces this week!

For once Courtney actually got selected as an asset for her team, since her tiny frame would theoretically stop her boat from sinking as quickly. The plan backfired when in the first round she just sat in the boat, neither paddling or bailing, and in the second round wasn’t strong enough to get any water in the other team’s boat. And she complains that they always leave her out of challenges!

The close-knit group of Todd, Amanda and James, plus Jean-Robert, won a reward of food and relaxation. They also won the last clue to – gasp! – the location of the real immunity idol! Jean-Robert was the only person actually shocked by this, but the others did a very impressive job of covering up the fact that every single other person in camp already knows James has both.

Doing a less successful job of covering up was Amanda. Something happened to her bikini bottom during the challenge, and her entire butt was pixelated for the rest of the episode, so there's obviously some kind of major construction failure down there.

PG was just as hard at work as the editing suite staff, pointing out that the five who didn’t get to go on the reward outnumbered the four who did and trying to form a new alliance. It was a noble effort, but the only agreement she got was that it would be horrible to be voted out before Jean-Robert.

Speaking of the great man, he spent most of the night idol hunting. He’s got every single one of the clues they’re going to give – and those production guys are not subtle – but it still seemed to take most of the night. In the end he collected up the three remaining plaques and decided that one of them must be it, and he just needed to figure out which one and not repeat Jaime’s mistake.

Todd, still snippy about James not giving back a real idol, decided to vote James out as soon as he didn’t win immunity since that would knock both out of play. Amanda had to yet again try and talk him out of changing plans mid-stream. Common sense didn’t work, but the horrifying discovery that Jean-Robert had come up with the exact same idea about James made it suddenly seem far less appealing. Funny about that.

Even funnier was that Jean-Robert got the idea of turning on his best pal James after Erik blabbed about the idols in James’ pants. He tried to trap James in a lie about what he knew and when, but even James – who is sweet, but confuses the words "immunity idol" and "immunisation idol" – managed to wiggle out of the not-very-cunning ‘trap’ set for him.

In a shock outcome, Courtney won the immunity challenge. It involved staying balanced on a barrel that was leaking water. She managed to remain perfectly still for nearly forty minutes, a feat she attributed jointly to sheer laziness and a desperate desire not to fall in the swamp.

Jaime graced the Tribal Council jury box in a dress and cowboy boots, looking more like Jessica Simpson than ever. Jean-Robert managed to wangle in a poker analogy, describing PG and Erik - the last remaining Crouching Tiger members - as having been dealt "the deuce-seven off-suit in a no limit game". Even I’ve played enough Texas Hold’em to know that means a really crappy hand, but I’ve also managed to keep a straight face holding a straight flush. In a repeat of the first episode, Jean-Robert’s face swung from horror at the first vote, to glee as James got three in a row (with Denise voting for PG for some weird reason), and back to despondency as the final four votes knocked him out of the game.

In his final interview he claimed that they voted him out because he was the best player and the biggest threat. The sad thing is that even if he watches the show and hears what they really said he’ll still believe it, which is precisely the personality flaw for which he was voted out in the first place. I bet he counts his money when he’s sittin’ at the table, too.