Against Shawna’s wishes, her tribe kept her trapped, opting instead to vote out JoAnna in Survivor: Amazon Episode 4.

Deena feels as if she’s in control now that she’s eliminated JoAnna.

Jeanne thinks her tribe consists of a bunch of idiots, having eliminated their strongest member in favor of keeping around their weakest member. Speaking of which, Shawna’s going to be whining for a while. She’s falling apart and can’t take it any more. Well, quit, then. You always have that option if you really want out. This ain’t Big Brother where you’re trapped until you destroy property or get violent.

The next morning, Jeanne decides to confront Deena. She overheard her saying “Your problem is that you weren’t part of the team.” She was talking about Christy about the first few days, not about the person lying in bed. Jeanne’s sure not making them want to keep her around by being confrontational about something she thought she heard.

Treemail tells them to send the youngest for wine and laughter. That means Dave and Jenna. If this comes down to a battle of wits, it goes without saying the rocket scientist wins against the model. Upon arrival, they are given plenty of food, bottles of wine, an outdoor shower (that’s partially see through), and a bed. Jenna says that her tribe is boring. She’d rather talk more. She’ll take that opportunity now, spilling all about what’s going on at camp, unafraid to reveal alliances and strategies in the process. When she’s done rambling, she says she probably shouldn’t be saying all this. No kidding. Dave realizes this and doesn’t want to reveal too much.

The next morning, as they’re chowing down on breakfast, they see Jeff. Uh oh. It’s good they just shared all that information about their tribes because they’re in charge of picking new ones. In his first pick, Dave immediately screws over Jenna, taking her most trusted ally. Dave also keeps the somewhat questionable Roger. As for Jenna, she keeps around the sickly Shawna rather than being stuck with hard working Jeanne, not that she can be blamed because Jeanne would have tried to get rid of her sooner or later.

Tambaqui: Dave, Heidi, Butch, Christy, Roger, Jeanne
Jaburu: Jenna, Alex, Deena, Rob, Shawna, Matthew

When he returns, Dave says that he strategized to get the best possible outcome for the tribe. Rob’s not buying and not happy.

Like Jenna, Heidi is upset to be split up. Jeanne, however, is thrilled to get away from that tribe.

The boys come into the Jaburu camp. All of a sudden, Shawna, who was at her lowest lows and wanted to get voted out because she was too sick to continue, is now doing just fine and can’tstop smiling. I hope somebody slapped her upside the head. If not on the island, at least at some point after she got home. This is a thoroughly pitiful display. At least we won’t have to watch her acting as if the end of the world’s coming any more, though.

Christy appreciates that her new tribe is making an effort. Unlike how it was with the girls, now she’s being included.

Deena, who believed last week when she got rid of JoAnna that she became the queen of the world, is now worried.

The first immunity challenge for the new tribes is in two stages. The first stage is a word scramble. When they solve that puzzle, they will paddle out and retrieve the corresponding flags. Tambaqui’s got a bit of a lead throughout, but they lose that lead trying to figure out the final word. Jaburu solves their fifth word as Tambaqui continues to work on their final one. Now they need to get the flags that match the words in their tribe color. Jeff tells Tambaqui that they can catch up, but it’s not looking like it, although it’s pretty close. Jaburu wins immunity.

Jeanne, Christy, and Heidi are the least likely combination. They’re only working together because they don’t see another option. Working together translates to drawing straws. Butch gets the short straw.

Dave then goes to Heidi, and he pitches an alliance with the guys. They intend to get rid of Jeanne, who was going home when she was on Jaburu anyway. She knows that, if they lose the next two immunity challenges, she’s gone. He doesn’t even attempt to deny that.

Votes
Jeanne
Butch
Jeanne
Butch
Jeanne
Jeanne

As Heidi switches sides, Jeanne has been voted off the island.

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This episode seemed well-timed to coincide with the World Series, and thankfully there wasn’t another washout. Instead, there were two walk-off blasts to win the immunity challenge; Kelly and Monica debuted their new line of baseball uniform fashion-wear inspired by Honus Wagner’s knee high stockings; and John Fincher coming out as Johnny Baseball. But the episode could have just as easily aired around Valentine’s Day.

Danger Dave continued his weekly series of cringe worthy comments. He scored some points with Natalie when he tried to toast Ritz Crackers with her and she laughed like a freak. I say that with live. Natalie has an endearingly silence-shattering laugh that sounds like it ought to be coming from the Philadelphia Phanatic or someone else with a horn for a nose.

Unfortunately, Dave quickly followed up on his apparent charm by letting everyone know that baseball isn’t his favorite sport. Ahem. Turns out that make’n love is his favorite sport, and he doesn’t play as often as he’d like.

Dave is that guy who makes off color comments to much younger women and thinks no one can shut him down because “he was joking.” The problem is, he’s never joking. Joking is when you don’t mean what you say. He’s just being honest and then laughing awkwardly. Thing is, most guys have done it. Reality TV is just a sound machine that makes awkward comments echo through the night like the “Hee hee hee!”s of kids in Michael Jackson Trick or Treat costumes.

Meanwhile, Russell shared his philosophy on why hyper-strategizing is bound to pay off, but he could have been talking about the dating game.

“You ever heard of a man named Babe Ruth? He struck out more than anybody ever. But he also hit the most home runs. So that tells me one thing. Keep swinging, baby. Eventually you’re gonna hit one.”

The self-proclaimed “king” of Survivor who says he’s “too sly for this game” demonstrated his law of averages strategy by telling half of Galu he had the Hidden Immunity Idol. You know, the same one he already showed to most of the people on Foa Foa. I know you’re proud of it, Russell. But keep it in your pocket. My philosophy is that you’ll be most effective if you only play it when the time is right.

Monica seemed to be onto something when she drew on the ancient tactic of getting brownie points by holding grapes over Russell’s head and letting him bite them off like a zebra. The Evil One ran off to brag to the camera afterwards. But her acceptance of his proposal was so sarcastic that she might as well have muttered something about Russell being a sucker under her breath. That honeymoon was soon over as he tried to set her up as Laura’s replacement for First Chair on the jury.    

Finally, Erik showed us his twist on the tye-a-cherry-stem-into-a-knot party trick, which involved removing a bottlecap with his mouth. He quipped, “What’s Samoan for get the #@$% off my island?” before answering his own question. Whoops. I guess it wasn’t Aiga.
 
So will Russell’s chances really dry up next week? Or will his seeds grow into a strategic bumper crop just in time? And will he forgive Shambo for voting against Jaison if she explains that she was still trying to remember, “Who’s Eric?”

When you’ve seen guys fall in the fire, suffer terrible collisions, break out in red spots and get carried away in helicopters it’s hard to be shocked by an evacuation. But there was one genuinely chilling moment on Survivor: Samoa.

When Russell stared up at the sky without blinking and the heart rate monitor went crazy he looked like he was dead. He wasn’t moving a muscle. I completely believe Jeff Probst when he says he’s never been so scared in 19 seasons of Survivor.

As much as contestants always try to impress on viewers how tough this game really is I’m not sure they totally grasp their own mortality. Some things are just hard to fully appreciate until you’re confronted with the reality of them. These contestants are pushing their bodies to the very limit. I’m relieved for Russell and his family that nothing worse happened.

That said, it was a terrible episode. Other than a guy almost dying nothing happened this week. Everyone sat around complaining for an hour and no one even got voted off. Things got so slow the editors even let Natalie talk. Call me Sue Sylvester but I want more.  

If it were up to me the two tribes would have shared the hot pizza reward. But first they would have voted on one person to sit in the rain and watch. Can you imagine Natalie’s reaction shots? That would have been great television.

What an apt reference to Captain Planet on Jaison’s part. For those of you still too short to have gone on this ride, Captain Planet was a wholesome 1990s TBS cartoon about five kids from different continents who banded together to fight pollution. Four of the kids had the power to control one of the elements but the fifth got stuck with the namby pamby power of ‘Heart.’

Like every kid I mocked the girl with Heart because, well, how were you going to Heart someone to death? I wanted to throw tornados or splash tsunamis. Jaison made a great point, though. In the real world which is the cooler super power – being able to throw rocks or having the heart to fix your problems? Heart girl FTW!


The advertising for this week’s episode was embarrassing. Obviously the fact that there was a near fatality this week is going to be a major marketing point. So in order to get audiences excited the producers showed Russell’s collapse and evacuation. There’s just one problem with that. If everyone has already seen who gets removed from the game and why there’s really no suspense left. Is there? It kind of freed viewers up to watch the Yankees game.

Really, if I were the Steinbrenner family and I thought I could get away with it I’d run that ad on every network I could. We already know from the preview that next week Russell forms an alliance with Laura from Galu, revealing that Galu wins the Reward Challenge and kidnaps him. I say this with love: Since when did the show that drew higher ratings than the Super Bowl start groveling on its knees for people to pay attention to them? In television – as with dating – groveling just never gets you what you’re after.

Okay. I know a lot of fans hate Russell Hantz. But you’ve got to give the guy some credit. When he said he just hated to see Russell Swan go out like that he sounded totally sincere. I almost believed him and I know better. This is the guy dumping the canteens.

If you talk to the contestants they all thought Russell was a great guy until they saw the episodes. Russell is the kind of guy who could steal your wallet while he was giving you a hug, then help you look for the guy that did it. He’s not the best player in this game because he’s pulling tricks. He’s the best player because he’s everyone’s best friend out there.  

Somewhere Charlie Brown is snickering. He may have spent decades trying to kick the football, only to end up on his butt every time, but at least he didn’t get clotheslined by a clothesline. That just looked funny. One second Erik was running at top speed through the woods. The next his feet were lifting off the ground and he seemed to be flying. He probably barely felt the wrenching strangulation of a rope slamming into his throat before he had crashed to the ground in a pile of leaves.

I’m sure that hurt, and I hate to be mean. But I hope Erik takes some consolation in the fact that win or lose he’ll always have a hilarious YouTube video to show for his momentary pain. I loved it.

I also loved this week’s host-less reward challenge, which posed the castaways with a really interesting dilemma. Without Jeff Probst there to enforce the rules, why follow them? Even though they were starving, Russell Hantz, Mick and Natalie handed over the chickens with refreshing good sportsmanship. But if they had grabbed the chickens by the scruff of the neck and walked off with them no one would have stopped them.

Love him or hate him, if Ben had still been in the game you know The Outlaw wouldn’t have played by any of those “sissy rules.” He would have gotten those chickens back to Foa Foa even if it meant he had to kick Russell Swan in his other leg.
            
In a lot of ways last night was like a second premiere for Survivor: Samoa. After three weeks of having to refer to Dave as “that guy who looks like Kevin Spacey” we finally sat down properly with the Galu tribe.

From what we can tell, while Foa Foa was burning the laundry and fighting about race, Galu was on “snooze patrol.” Rocket scientist John is, of course, the charter member and honorary captain of the Snooze Patrol. But Yasmin, Kelly and Brett all seemed happy to join him for an afternoon snore. I think Monica and Laura were too hyped up from sniffing the fresh towels to nod off. How has this tribe been winning? I’m surprised they found the challenge beach without a GPS.

Speaking of which, what was up with Monica in the challenge? So far, she has always competed with the heart of a terrier. She’s petite but don’t tell her that. She’ll wrestle people to the ground like she thinks she’s a Green Bay Packer. This week she was huffing and puffing before she was a third of the way across that rope. Was she having a panic attack trying to walk across the trembling rope? Or did that comfort reward last week come with a trunk full of Lucky Strikes?

On a final note, I’m already excited for next week’s episode. The gross food challenge is a Survivor classic, so catchy in its simplicity that it spawned one of the worst reality shows ever made. When it comes to finding foods that will give you nightmares, Fear Factor wins undigested. Err…. Contested. But Survivor: Africa’s blood drinking challenge did make my best friend toss her fafaru. So after next week’s seafood smoothies Jamba Juice blender-istas may be left wondering what happened to the morning drive time rush.

Do you like the new Galu? Do you think “riding Russell like a horse” (or a jackass) is a good plan for Natalie? And am I the only one looking forward to the backlash when it rains for 48 hours straight next week and Galu are left standing around with their towels and no tarp?

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