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Thursday, February 23, 2006

Survivor Exile Island - Episode 4

Come on in Guys!

Let's review episode 4 shall we?

Survivior has become very formulaic, first we had the 'previouslies' and the credits, then we come up after asuper long commerical break to the new episode.

Let's check in with the tribes!

First we check in with La Mina since they lost Misty last week. We start with seeing themget a fire going, but don't worry we soon get into tribal politics. It seems that while Misty was voted out Ruth Marie was left out in the dark, and she tought Sally was going. That much is all part of good game playing. The 4 men of the tribe form a gender based alliance, and with having 4 of the 6 spots on the tribe right now, they already have a lock unless some sort of shake up happens.

The guys decide they need to bring a fifth person into the Alliance. They are already thinking post merge, becuase when an Alliance is more than the minimum needed to rule the tribe, it is getting unweildy and must crumble at some point.

We then check in with Casaya. Casya is having work ethic issues. We start with showing some tribe members coming back with a pail full of snails to eat, and they are already to start cooking them when they return to camp, to see no fire, and that nothing had been accomplished by the rest of the tribe while they were sourcing food. The usual finger pointing, hurt feelings and bickering over 'pulling their weight'ensues.

And, it's time for Reward Challenge #4
"Want to know what your playing for?"
Prize: Casa De Charmin - It's a bathroomfor your tribe. The prize package includes an outhouse complete with real toilet seat. Did I mentiionthe outhouse came stocked with several rolls of Charmin. Outside the outhouse is a bush shower, wash basin, some bars of soap, some bath towels, back brushes, and a 5 gallon bottle of purified water. The losing tribe gets the usual booby prize of loosing a tribe member to Exile Island until the next imunity challenge. "Worth playing for?"

The challenge: Its a variation on the perinnial floating puzzle challenge. Out in the lake each tribe has 6 floating triangle shaped puzzle pieces. Each tribe also has a hexagonal shaped ring out in the water. One by one the tribe members have to dive off the dock, swim out to a puzzle piece, unclip that puzzle piece,and get it completely inside the hexagonal ring. The next player can't dive off the dock till the previous player has their puzzle piece in the ring. After all the pieces in the ring, the tribe can start to solve the brain teaser. Each side of the triangle pieces has a symbol, you have to move the pieces and place them in the hexagon so that whenever two pieces touch, the symbols match. The hexagonl ring itself also has symbols on it that adjoining pieces much match.

La Mina is way ahead on the puzzle piece gathering phase, but don't blink, becuase Casaya comes from behind to win the challenge by excelling at the puzzle solving phase. Casaya wins the bathroom reward and Casaya elects to return the favor by choosing La Mina's obvious leader, Terry to send to Exile Island.

Terry atually sounds thrilled to go into Exile, he calls it a vacation, and shouts out "Bring in the boat!", he is seen smiling and waving his way off to exile.

Time togo backand check in on the tribes again:

La Mina looks deflated by their second challenge loss in a row. They vow to make Terry proud by keeping camp life up and possibly improving upon the way Terry left it. Uhm, that lastsabout 5 seconds, till the tribe mates decideto break for lunch and naps. In short you can forget about productivity on this tribe.

Over at Casya, we get to see their deluxe bathroom. The tribe can't enjoy thir prize as someof the tribe members decide that the outhouse would makea better woodshed than outhouse. We also get another dose of the work ethic dispute. Its getting nasty, and Courtney seems to be th target of the laziness-police. We learn that Cire, ever the pro at playing the interpersonal game decded that this is the time to fly under the radar. Good move!

Lastly we check in on life over at Exile Island. We learn that not only is Terry alowed near the big wood skull, me must go to the top of the wood skull to get the clue. Tery recieved a scroll with a map that has red zones that show where the idol isn't. Also since he is the fourth exile, he recieved all 4 clues.

Clues thus far:
"WHY" has fate brough you here
The idol is above the tide line
The idol is underground
The idol is under a rock.

Well, this is all Terry needs. He soon goes on a no stone unturned search of the island. He finds one stonethat comes up way too easy, and just doesn;t look natural. He digs out the sand and dirt under the rock. He then remakrks this doesn't belong here. He digs out a wood crate. In the rate is a glass jar, inside the jar is the immunity talisman. A note attached to the jar instructs him to break the bottle and claim his prize. He uses the rock that was covering the idol to smash open the jar, and claim the rather startling looking idol.

I, for one, am shocked that they let us see him claim the immunity idol. Well, we also now know that Bruce does not have it.

Speaking of immunity , its time for the immunity challenge. They welcome Terry back to the tribe, and Jeff really tries hard to make Terry slip up and spill the beans. They go onto the challenge.

In this challenge one player getswto take it easy and sit on a swing (
Jeff calls it a chair, I call it a swing), another ribe member climbs to the top and stands in a crows nest. The other tribe members are split into pairs and are teathered together. The runner must, as a pair, negotiate a criss crossing balance beam. Yes, both tribes have to cross each other several times. Not onlythat but they have to negotiate the balance beam course, teahtered in pairs, and while carrying what look like paint cans. When they get to the other end of the course, they are lakeside. They dip their cans into the water and fill the cans up with water, then they have to negotiate the balance beam course again, this time teathered together and carring full cans of water. Any water spilled is lost. In addition falling off the balance beam means that both members of the pairhave to empty their cans, and start the balance beam portion over. If they get the water cans back to the home station, they are to pour them intoa larger bucket. After they pour the water into the bucket, the person in the crows nest uses a pulley arangement to bring the water bucket up to the crows nest, they then pour the bucket into a larger water drum. After emptying the bucket into the drum, they lower the bucket back to the other tribe members. The water drum is connected via a pulley system to the swing with the last tribe mate. Once the weight in the bucket exceeds the weight of the swing and tribe member, the drum will go down and the swing will go up. After the swing has gone up, the person in the swing can pull a large pin out of the support post, which will cause the tribal flag to unroll. First tribe to have its flag unrolled wins immunity.

Oh, and not originally part of the challenge, but it rains and then thunderstorms during the challenge. Its a very close challenge but Casaya finished just seconds ahead of LA Mina to claimthe seond immunity challenge in a row.

WE get one last visit to LaMina's beach for the backstapping portion of the episode. Their seem to be some work ethic issues on this tribe as well, but remember how at the start of the episode the idea was to keep Ruth Ann and evict Sally. Well now they want to kick Ruth Ann out, There issome dissention amongst the alliance about this however.

We then go to tribal council. Jeff asks Terry to describe Exile Island, but Terry isn't talking about it, but he did share the fact he got tosee all four clues, but only after his tribe mates asked him directly. We then talk about performance at the immunuty challenge. Sally claims she gave it her all. Jeff then talks about how Misty was blindsided last episode.

We go to the vote, and as expected its Ruth Ann and Sally. In a 4-2 vote, Ruth Ann is evicted, but we are shown that the two women each vote for each other. That means one of the men, probably Dan,did not vote along Alliance lines.

Jeff evicts Ruth Ann comments that the tribe still has a positive outllok on life, and that's important.

And the previews: LaMina's food situation does not look to have improved, and over on Casays it looks like somethig bad happened to Casa De Charmin.

Until next week, take care, and remeberAmazing Race starts Tuesday

Feel free to Curl amongst yourselves until then. I mean the sport, what did you think I meant? The Linz's Curling rink should be opening any day now! :)

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