Survivor: Caramoan - Episode 7
Tubby Lunchbox
By Ben Willoughby
March 28, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
We also learned that Corinne really, really, really likes “her gays." I wonder if it is like how Donald Trump has a good relationship with the blacks. Anyway, Bikal “fell apart” at the immunity challenge, possibly due to the tribe being on sleepy medications, and Matt was voted out.
After the credits, the miserable Bikals arrive back at camp, and Julia describes how she nearly peed herself, and how she had never come that close to peeing herself before. And people say she has no personality! Corinne consoles the “fans” with the news that she loved and adored Matt. And I’m sure she’ll love and adore Mike and Julia before voting for them.
Mike interviews how it sucks to have his closest ally in the game voted out, but face-to-face is playing it cool. “You don’t honestly have to explain yourself,” he says all Survivor-professional-like. He’ll be focussing on building trust and friendships.
Anyway, Corinne interviews that she wants Mike to stay and dump Phillip because gay trumps annoying, but regrets that she can’t make a move this early in the game. She has an up close and personal with Mike about going to the merge, kicking ass and taking names.
For Phillip, who seems to be watching, the feeling is mutual. He doesn’t like that Corinne is off having conversations with others without disclosing them to him – and that’s unacceptable! He has a moonlight chat with Cochran, which he probably didn’t disclose to anyone, about how he wants to get rid of Corinne. “Not next, though,” says Cochran, like a middle-manager to a CEO who has decided to move the company from selling gumboots to smartphones. “Maybe. I don’t want her going to the merge.” insists Phillip. Cochran urges caution, saying that the “favorites” on Gota won’t want to work with them if they have turned on one of their own, but Phillip gets right in Cochran’s face and whisper-maintains “This is me as a Federal agent. I don’t trust that woman.” Cochran makes a look at the camera that says “see what I have to work with.”
Next morning there is treemail, which to Bikal’s dismay implies they will need strength. Well, the dismay of everyone except Phillip, who insists he has great upper body strength and “without being arrogant, I’m almost certain I could win it.”
Corinne complains about Phillip’s “I’m the strongest guy out here” bravado, while Phillip talks about power-lifting and later interviews about how he likes to find suckers with big muscles who he can beat at arm-wrestling. “Phil Shepherd, Arm-Wrestling Hustler” sounds like it would be a failed pilot.
Anyway, we cut to Phillip giving Cochran a lesson in arm wrestling. He even teaches him a wrist pull technique where he drags his opponent’s arm closer to him. It doesn’t do Cochran much good, though, and eventually he is losing to Phillip with both hands. Then, “to butter up his ego,” Cochran claims, he put all his weight on Phillip’s hand and Phillip could still keep it off the ground. Such is Cochran’s demeaning life.
But Phillip is happy, and Cochran is playing him well. The others are prepared to put up with Phillip, but Cochran is the only other person we see actively engaging him. If we have Phillip on the jury and Cochran as one of the final three, Phillip’s vote is already decided.
Then we get another Phillip interview where he talks about his assets in challenges as being the will of a lion and the determination of a gorilla. Are gorillas known for being determined?
Probst sighting! Come on in, guys! Get your look at the new Bikal tribe with Matt voted off.
We’ve seen this challenge in a couple of seasons. It’s the one where each tribe is clipped to a rope and laden with 20 pounds of sandbags while doing laps of a course that is knee-deep in water. Castaways can pull out whenever they want, but someone has to carry their sandbag. The tribes start on opposite sides of the lap, and first tribe to catch up to the other wins. It’s usually a good challenge, but don’t count on it being exciting this season.
And what do they win? Coffee! The castaways all oooh. Cookies! Everyone shouts cookies. Croissants. No one has much enthusiasm for croissants. Brownies! They all orgasm. We see a bit of the pre-challenge strategy, which seems mostly to be about Phillip arguing that he should be in front because he believes he can run faster and doesn’t want to be stuck behind some slow-poke. That should give you a hint about how this challenge will go. Meanwhile, Gota are assuming that the challenge is already won.
The tribes get underway and after a lap Probst points out the discrepancy between the two tribes. Gota is led by the fittest guy in front, who is Erik. Erik? I’m surprised Probst can see past Eddie, Reynold and Malcolm. Meanwhile, Bikal is led by the oldest guy, Phillip. Probst’s assessment looks correct. Phillip is probably right not to run the half of the course where the tribe is thigh-deep in water, but then they turn the corner he takes about six running steps and then slows, his excuse being “Let’s just walk it. The girls will tire.”
“Can we run?” asks Michael. “Nope,” says Phillip. Later “Can we run?” “I think you’ll tire more.” It’s like Phillip is talking to the kids in the back seat who want ice cream. We get plenty more frustration from Bikal, with the non-stop-walking and no running, until Phillip eventually gives in and says “I can’t run, guys.” Gota is now on the same side of the course as Bikal, so Bikal makes an effort to run. Michael even passes Phillip for a time, while Probst mocks Bikal’s strategy.
Dawn drops out, and Corinne takes her bag. Gota starts to run again, while Bikal keeps up their walking pace. Cochran and Julia drop out, so Corinne starts carrying 60 pounds of sand. Then Phillip falls, and Erik is able to continue running to tag him on the back. “Worst strategy ever,” Julia says, smacking the platform. Anyway, Dawn claims that losing this particular reward wasn’t the worst thing because Gota is all going to get diarrhea. Nice bright-side, Dawn.
However, back at camp Dawn is interviewing about how she really doesn’t want to call Phillip arrogant, because it sounds mean. But as “he sees all of his strengths and none of his weaknesses”, she’s not left with much option.
After the break, we look at the reward. Everyone squeals at the sight of the sweet food. Andrea talks about how this is a chance to bond with the “fans”, who are on their first reward, so she can get as close to them as possible before voting them out.
“Spring break! No parents!” shouts Reynold, who clearly wishes it was spring break forever for the rest of his life. He talks about how he is a bacchanalian who always wants to have a good time. Meanwhile, Malcolm is saying the caffeine has hit him because he is saying “I love you” to everyone and kissing them in the head. But in interview, he talks about how on the surface everything is great because they win all the challenges, but he is in trouble game-wise after the merge, because no one wants to go to the end with him so he has to make a move.
Back at Bikal, Phillip is talking about how inevitable it was that their tribe would lose. In interview, Corinne agrees, saying that Phillip is a “tubby lunchbox” and an “amoeba, ten pounds of potatoes in a five-pound sack.” She claims to Cochran that she could have carried all of the sandbags and won the challenge, which just shows that outlandish claims are contagious.
Cochran talks about how the vibe around camp is “like a death sentence” and it’s not a certainty they’ll be voting for a “fan” tonight. Yeah, whatever. Cochran would like to vote for Julia, who he would say has a vanilla personality, if it wasn’t such an insult to vanilla. Poor Julia. Even Cochran is scoring off her! He demonstrates that few things are less appealing than a bullied nerd who picks on people even lower on the social ladder by continuing with this motif, saying that people like vanilla flavor but nobody wants Julia flavor. Especially after no shower in 19 days.
Poor Julia, though. The editors must hate her to put in so much footage of the other castaways saying how boring she is. It’s like they are blaming her for this boring season.
But what eludes Cochran is Phillip’s sudden interest in Julia. No one could possibly be interested in Julia! Phillip is certainly on-again off-again with her, because he’s giving her another talk about becoming a double agent. Not just any double agent, but one of the best! Julia makes a series of non-committal faces while saying, “Understood” and “I understand.” Phillip instructs her not to talk with anyone about this except him, and she could go far. And then he interviews about how excited he is about having a double-agent at last.
Julia actually gets an interview of her very own, where she talks about how she doesn’t find Phillip intimidating at all. All she can do at this point is obey him, because it’s her one chance of staying. And then she says something about “Phillip will destroy the unity of the tribe by driving everyone crazy, so why not get rid of him?” Turns out Julia isn’t a very good player after all. Oh well.
Over at Gota, Malcolm is thinking about putting together a foursome as there are 13 left and there’ll probably be 12 come a merge. His pitch to Reynold is that there are four alpha males – the two of them plus Eddie and Erik – who are going to be targeted after the merge. Reynold is all over this, blabbing about how he and Eddie are tight. Reynold claims in interview that in a game like Survivor, you can’t trust anyone and you have to rely on instincts. Then he goes on: “Malcolm strikes me as a guy who’s like me. This one feels right, or it’ll be the nail in the coffin for me if I’m wrong." Doesn’t he realize that a guy just like Reynold is exactly not who you should be trusting in this game? Who should know that better than Reynold himself?
But apparently he just doesn’t get it, because he blabs to Malcolm about how he has an idol. Dummy. Malcolm gleefully interviews that he trusts Reynold because “he has gone so over the top” by telling him about it, and now he knows where both idols are he will be able to make a move. He says he is looking forward to when he is in control of this game, which means he is doomed.
At Bikal, Dawn is urgently saying “we have to talk” to someone. Surprisingly, it’s Julia. Has anyone actually needed to talk to Julia since the switch? Julia proves that she will never make double-agent status because she immediately tells Dawn the very thing Phillip told her not to tell – which was that Phillip was thinking about her coming along with them post-merge. She feels both “indebted” and “bullied” about this.
Dawn is intrigued by this because she wasn’t aware that Julia has been thinking about the game at all – obviously because no one has been talking to Julia, or even noticing she is there. When Julia’s not around, Dawn and Corinne and Cochran are probably all wondering “who’s Julia?” Julia is doing some wondering of her own. “What if everyone overthrew Phil? I’m not saying that’s what I want to do, but I want to understand the dynamics.” “I’m not going to tell a single thing to anybody,” says Dawn.
Of course, Dawn goes to tell Phillip that Julia said Phil wanted to work with her post-merge (but not that Julia hinted at dumping Phillip), and gets the reaction “She’s an idiot. I specifically told her not to tell everyone.” Dawn is too diplomatic to ask, “what are you doing making side alliances without telling the group?” and instead says “that’s why I told you”. Nicely played, Dawn. Phillip interviews about how about Julia has “committed several faux pas."
Probst sighting! Immunity challenge! Here’s how it works. Three members from each tribe will paddle out in a boat and clip it to a pontoon. Then they’ll dive and release a big statue. They’ll take the statue back to shore, clip the boat up to a stand, and then put the statue at the base of a tower. Then the other three tribe-members will use a grapple to retrieve five keys, use the keys to unlock some locks, which will allow the entire tribe to pull the statue up to the top of the tower and release the tribe flag.
Losers go to Tribal Council where someone will be the eighth person voted out. Sherri is sitting out of this challenge.
Brenda, Erik and Eddie paddle out for Gota while Dawn, Corinne and Michael do the job for Bikal. Bikal gets off to a slow start and mockery from Probst as they nearly tip their boat over. However, Gota forgets to clip into the pontoon, so they have to retry and both tribes arrive at the pontoon at the same time. Get in the water. Release the statue. Load it into the boat. Get back to shore. Load the statue onto the tower. Bikal almost capsizes again, which would have been unfortunate for them but hilarious for the viewers, but both tribes arrive back with Gota slightly in the lead.
Unsurprisingly Reynold is grappling for Gota, and he gets his first key as Phillip steps up for Bikal. Probst slobbers over Reynold’s “nice toss” and “another great toss” while Phillip “just misses.” By the time Phillip has his second key, Reynold is collecting his fourth and Probst has amped it up to “Reynold is on fire!” There’s more grappling of rings, and Reynold finally hauls in Gota’s fifth key and races off with Andrea to open the locks. It happens very quickly, as Gota hauls the rope to pull the statue up the tower and wins immunity. Tribal Council for you tonight, Bikal, if you were thinking any differently.
After the break, the Bikal sad sacks arrive back at camp. Dawn says to Michael that he did really great, which probably makes Michael worry that he’s the one going home. Then we get a narration from Cochran about how spirits were low, and then Phillip pulled him aside and said “I have a confession.”
Phillip interviews about the challenge. “It was close. We could have won that challenge... [pause for emphasis] had I wanted to.” He repeats this version of events to Cochran. Cochran laughs because it’s just so ridiculous. And the reason? Double-agent school drop-out Julia. Phillip claims he had to get rid of her before going to the merge. She knows too much! Cochran believes Phillip – to his face at least, but in interview he is talking about how ludicrous it is that they needed to throw a challenge to get rid of one of the “fans”. Cochran thinks it is “complete crap” and “you can’t make up this level of delusion,” which is apparently what excites him about playing with Phillip.
He continues to butter Phillip up by asking about Phillip’s “razzle dazzle” challenge-flopping techniques, and letting him go on about how a new male lion kills all the cubs. Cochran never really keeps a straight face through all of this. I think his poker face is getting worse with practice. Phillip doesn’t seem to notice, though. Back in interview Cochran muses on what the story would have been if Phillip had defeated Reynold with the grappling hook – “the spy’s basic tool” – and won the challenge for the “favorites”. I agree that would have been a corker of a speech.
It’s time for the Bikal “favorites” to decide who to vote out, which gives us our only real moment of tension this episode. They are planning to split the vote, counting on Michael and Julia to vote for each other and flushing any idol that by some fluke remains. Corinne argues against splitting because they don’t need to. After last week, it’s clear that they don’t have any idol.
But she goes too far by arguing strongly for not putting Michael through a split vote because she wants him to “trust us” and work with them after the merge. Dawn just stares at Corinne. She does not seem on board about working with any “fan”. Cochran is looking anywhere but Corinne. He’s not on board either. If Corinne was in the loop about Julia flunking out of Phillip’s double-agent academy, she would have kept quiet and let things play out. She should have done that anyway. But in interview, she clearly doesn’t get it. No “fans”! That’s the rule!
“I have the numbers without him,” claims Phillip “We do need him,” “No we don’t,” avers Phillip. “I played with Boston Rob. He would never say...” I can think of a lot of things that Boston Rob would never do. Like play this way with people who aren’t first-time rubes and don’t worship him.
Anyway, Phillip goes off to grouch in interview about how Corinne is “in love with Michael” and she is “putting her selfish interests above the ‘favorites,’” as though he only has the “favorites” good interests at heart.
He has a talk on the beach with Dawn and Cochran about how the three of them are the core alliance in this group. Phillip doesn’t want to be “bullied into doing something that’s against my core interests just to satisfy her new friend.” I see Phillip’s point, but he’s done a lot of bullying himself, which he learned from playing with Boston Rob. In interview, Phillip claims that “here’s what BR would do. Say OK Corinne, we vote Michael out of the game”. Would “BR” really tell that to Corinne? Really? I think he’d say “yeah, we’ll all vote out Julia”, then engineer the vote switch knowing Corinne is voting for Julia, and then vote out Michael 3-1 on the re-vote.
Right after Phillip says he is going to vote for Michael just to spite Corinne; Corinne comes up and asks what is happening. Phillip gets annoyed at her for interrupting, and his response to Corinne’s “but we’re in an alliance” is “so what?” “You’re being so mean to me right now,” says Corinne. He denies it and then suggests that if Corinne feels that way she should let him continue his conversation with Dawn and Cochran. “Thank you. Appreciate it.” he patronizes.
Corinne heads back down to the water’s edge to wait until it’s time to vote. “She was never part of our core alliance,” Phillip self-justifies to Dawn and Cochran. Phillip is dead on, in that Corinne’s budding relationship with Michael is a threat to Phillip. But he’s simultaneously being mean and not doing what BR would have done.
Anyway, it’s an excuse to give Cochran a bit more Survivor-narration as he spins a story about how “tonight’s vote is probably what sets into motion a series of events that completely bring the Phillip and Corinne feud to the surface and make it clear why they can’t play together.” This is almost a plea to viewers to keep watching the show. “Something will happen soon, I promise!”
Tribal Council. Michael gets the first question, about how horrible things are in the tribe with the losing. He says there is tension in the tribe. Why would any of the “favorites” be tense? Julia talks about how the “favorites” know they have the numbers, but they are looking further ahead than this vote.
Probst asks Corinne whether the tribe tension is about who to vote off, and she agrees and says that “you don’t want to screw something up here and regret it down the line.” Phillip talks about “understanding the process.” Even Tribal Council is boring tonight. Self-Deprecating Comedy Improv Nite starring Cochran would be better than this.
Probst asks Dawn if she’s seen Corinne and Phillip try to work through the process, and she makes an uncomfortable face when she says “seen it, felt it” but she thinks if they all have the same goal, the conflict will work itself out. Probst wants to stir up... well, something, so this Tribal Council isn’t a complete wash, so he points out that Phillip put himself in the hero role again tonight. He admits that it was him who lost the challenge, but he also picked up that whole statue by himself (reviewing the tape – true), like that erases the loss.
Probst asks Michael what his pitch is, and the reply is that he has been working to stay since he landed on the “favorites” beach. Probst wants to go deeper, so he asks Cochran about how Corinne “likes to play with the gays” and if that would work against him. Cochran points out that people would see Michael working with Corinne which could be a threat. Corinne says that it is all exaggerated. She says she has no loyalty to Michael because she’s only known him a handful of days and a two-some alliance makes no sense, but “it’s neat that he’s gay.” I think this is true, but not the whole truth. Michael is a good post-merge play for Corinne, who needs to bring more to the table in any move to vote out Phillip.
But Michael is ready for a vote. Even he’s bored with Tribal Council, and he might be the one going home. He says he’s felt like a cat dangling from a tree for five days and just wants it done. Probst stretches things out by asking Julia another question, and it’s a long rambling answer that I’m not even going to bother recapping. It’s time to vote.
When Probst returns from the “tally”, and as the “favorites” planned, the vote is tied between Mike and Julia. Revote. Will this episode never end? Why do we have to see Phillip having trouble getting the lid off his pen?
Julia. Julia. Julia. Michael gives her a kiss on the cheek, and she tells the tribe it’s been fun and good luck before getting her torch snuffed. “Who was that?” at least one of the “favorites” thinks to themself. Probst doesn’t need to tell Michael that he has his work cut out, but he tells him anyway.
Next time on Survivor, There’s a merge! Andrea is worried about everyone. And there’s a food-eating challenge. With a montage of contestants gagging. Prepare for balut.
Julia gets to say more in her farewell speech than we saw for the entire seven episodes she was on. She says it was so difficult going up against veterans and “being at their mercy” but that she couldn’t have done anything different. I wonder if anyone will even remember her at the reunion.