It's Not Me, It's You

Sorry for the late post, but I went to the opera on Wednesday night & only got to watch the show last night.  Many a parallel between the opera and Survivor....  Lots of deceit and treachery and promises and drama... Only in opera, the traitors/liars/lovers/jerks and sometimes even the good guys end up getting poisoned or stabbed to death.  Anyway, a Survivor opera in the future?  Maybe.

Can I just start out by saying how glad I am that things are working out in a certain way?  It's delightful. Again, I'm not one who thinks that lying in Survivor is 'bad' - indeed, deception goes a long way in this game!  However, I'm also glad to see that the final bunch of competitors is going to be made up of people who - at least on a handful of hours of TV - seem like good folks.

No big surprise after last episode that Pete was the one to get voted off.  Pete and Abi were not in a good place (yay!) and found themselves having to scramble.  At least their team won the reward (along with Malcolm and Carter) to go on a big spa day, so you they have that I suppose.  Meanwhile, everyone knows that when you come back to camp after one of those cool rewards, you don't ever blab too much about it. It annoys the hell out of everyone else who have been sitting eating rice and coconut, dirty, tired & sore.  Right? Seems kind of obvious that you'd say, yeah, it was great.... but you'd kind of play it down a bit. How was the food?  Good. That's all you need to say.  Did you get a massage?  Yes. How was it?  Good.  End of story.  Nope... not if you're Abi.  As mentioned - I think by Denise - Abi has no idea how to read social cues.  I mean, this has been clear from day one when she freaked out at RC, has been mean to Lisa, to Skupin, to Penner.  Pete was the only one who knew how to deal with Abi - and it proved to be his downfall.  More on that later.

So Abi goes on and on and on and on about the reward.  Tiny, exacting details on how the food was, what they drank, how full she is now, and how much she felt like a princess.  Seriously, you could have run a pretty good drinking game on how many times Abi said either 'princess' or 'cinderella' and who knows how many of those they edited out?  Dumb. So when the other guys started rolling their eyes and talking about her, she, of course, lost it. Again. (And the other guys listened to the princess talk politely for quite a while.) Abi told them in her Shakira way, that she was 'done wtih them' and was not going to cook any more.  She was going to eat, yes, but no more cooking.  Sigh. Ok, crazy-pants.

Immunity challenge was exciting, with Denise, Skupin and Carter duking it out.  Denise is awesome, non?  It was a pretty physical challenge & she kept right in there with the super fit men. And she's no spring chicken by Survivor standards. Anyway, Carter won.  No really big deal as far as no one was going to vote for him anyway. 

So Pete, being smarter than Abi and not in possession of his own immunity idol, started scrambling.  Now, let's remember that had he had anyone else in his alliance, he could have probably made something happen. Maybe.  First off - no one trusts Pete.  Second, he's too linked with Abi and the mean, axis of evil for anyone to change their minds now.  But also, Abi is selfish and would not have given him the idol (well, I suppose not many would - the others had the numbers to split the vote and even had she given him the idol to save him, she would have gone home for sure.  It was too late to use the idol to blindside anyone.)

Pete - to his credit - came up with the only plan he could and he worked pretty hard to sell it.  He tried getting people to blindside Malcolm, telling them (rightly) that Malcolm will get a lot of votes on the jury because he's nice, everyone likes him... plus he's a huge physical threat... plus he's got an idol still.  Really, it was a sound plan on paper.  If it was another season of Survivor with other people, Pete's plan may have worked.  It looked like it was allllllllmost going to work with Skupin - he did consider it - but in the end, chose to stick with the new alliance of 6:  Skupin, Lisa, Malcolm, Denise, Carter & Penner. These 6 have decided that they all want to go to the end with people they want to compete against - that they like - instead of taking someone they know they can beat - like Abi.  And if Abi's smart next week, that's how she'll try to sell herself, but I don't think it'll fly with this crew.  They've decided it.  As Denise said, "It's like playing poker against someone who's never played before just so you can take their money." 

I enjoyed how everyone was straight with Pete.  Nope, sorry.  Good try, but no.  I just don't have an alliance with you.  Even Lisa - who has made really one of the smoothest alliance transitions EVER - broke up with Abi and Pete.  Sorry, it's not you, it's me.  I've found someone else. You could have been nicer, but I don't hold anything against you. I forgive you, now it's time for me to move on.  I mean, Lisa is worthy of her own Kelly Clarkson song. 

At Tribal Council, Jeff is amazed at how little Abi gets about the fact that she screwed up last week with Lisa and how she doesn't understand that the rest of her tribe thinks she's ridiculous.  "Is it a cultural thing?" asks Jeff?  Yes, says Abi.  I'm sure that's it, because I just am not seen as very 'gentle'.  (Insert eye-roll and muffled laughter here.)  Again it's Denise with the good sound-bite.  "Jeff, I know other people for whom English is not a first language, and they are still kind, compassionate people."  Did you stand up and clap for her when she said that?  It's true. It's not cultural. She's not being 'misunderstood'. She's an unkind, selfish, narcissistic brat who is used to getting her way.  The end.  Again, we're meeting her on TV in a handful of episodes, but can you find any redeeming qualities besides the fact that her hair is nice and her bum looks good in a bikini?  Nope. Even some of the other Survivor 'villains' were that way because they were at least smart (Russell, Parvati).  They may not have played the way everyone would have - but they had that.  Other Survivors maybe aren't great at strategy but they're great physical competitors. Abi is not particularly good at challenges and honestly, doesn't even seem very bright. She has no strategy of her own, she showed off the idol, she angers and alienates her own alliance mates, she's rude to people.  And so when the rest of them told her so, yes, of course she cried. One would hope it's a wake-up call to this girl (or at least it will be when she watches the show) but I don't know.  I believe the tears themselves are a way for this type of girl to garner more attention. It's a performance. She doesn't really feel bad - she just wants someone to feel sorry for her.  Am I being mean?  Maybe.  Am I right? Probably.

And Pete - well Pete, when he got voted off, said that he felt bad for Abi.  (See, Pete has redeeming qualities.) He didn't quite say he liked her, but he "found a way to work with her" or something like that. And it's true. She tried to pull that crazy stuff on Pete once in a while, and he knew how to shut it down.  However, he never found a way to get her to just sit down and shut up. It's a good example of how the horse you tie yourself to on the first day can be your downfall. Pete could have extricated himself like Lisa, but he didn't and so he paid the price. Abi - barring any severe craziness - will go home next and then it'll be interesting again as the final 6 duke it out.  

The last thing to mention is that of those 6 - there's an alliance of 4:  Lisa & Skupin with Malcolm & Denise. Now, Lisa wanted to make a final 4 plan with Penner, who she trusts & likes more - but Penner, in a moment of unclarity (is that a word?) said, nah, I just want to deal with one thing at a time. Let's stick with the six.  It's like Penner used up all his energy saving himself over & over - and fair enough - and now he's sitting back a bit?  Anyway, Lisa called it a 'missed opportunity' and I think she was right. Every Boston Rob fan in the world knows you've got to play this game always a couple steps ahead of where you are. My prediction is Malcolm, Denise and Lisa in the final. Or can Penner outsmart them?  What do you think?