New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Michael is bewildered as to why Lisa won’t play her trump card, because young impressionable people would be all “Wow, a TV star." But as he reflects, the rest of his tribe is so young that maybe they wouldn’t be impressed even if she told them. Maybe if Lisa told everyone she was Snooki? Or June "Mama" Shannon? That night, Michael reveals to Lisa that he recognized her immediately and she’s all “Ummm... that’s great...”. She doesn’t want to reveal anything, but maybe after the merge, if someone over there recognizes her, she'll come clean with her dark secret that she once played a preppy teenager on TV. Michael is waiting for her to play the game, knowing that her name is coming up in discussions about who to vote out. He’d like her to stay and to start playing the game and bonding with other castaways because she is the only one on Tandang who is a similar age to him (not counting Artis for some reason, who is 53 to Michael's 50 and Lisa's 49), but he has to “get with the team that’s playing the game, I’ve got to go with the game… as opposed to your heart." His heart. How romantic! I’m looking forward to Michael’s awkward proposal at the Reunion show already.

Over on Matsing, we meet Denise – Iowa’s only sex therapist – who is talking about Zane, and how he deserves a second look. Denise has noticed that even though he looks like trouble, he has a death date on his arm, and the serenity prayer on his hands, so there is more to Zane than meets the eye. When is she going to ask him about his Frankenstein tattoo? They form an alliance.

For his part, Zane says that thanks to his different experiences from holding down different jobs and interacting with different people he can relate to anyone. He claims this makes him “the perfect Survivor player”. So we see him forming an alliance with Roxy, and then with Angie – which Roxy sees and double-takes to – and then he goes back to talk with Russell and Malcolm, tells them he’s formed an alliance with everyone else and then forms an alliance with them! What an alliance slut. Zane believes this is a perfect plan, and that no one realizes he has an alliance with everyone else. No one except for those two guys you just told, mastermind.

Malcolm is not impressed with Zane coming to him last for an alliance – even though it plays out pretty well for him – and he forms an alliance with Denise. Denise and Malcolm both wonder if Zane is brighter than they think he is, and then they agree that he must be brighter than that so they both feel better about themselves for not picking on the dimwit. Denise says she and Malcolm clicked, and they invent a little finger-twiddle thing as a celebration for their alliance.

On Tandang, you’d think that Michael would be pretty careful with his hands, but we see that he already has a blister on his fingers, a cut on his foot and a split in his scalp with the machete. Michael claims that he’s not accident prone, he’s just “act first, think second," which is just a way of saying “accident-prone” in four words. RC notes that Michael does not seem to care about injuries. Or the inevitable pus-filled life-threatening infections, for that matter. There’s ample evidence of this when we see Michael trying to lever some flesh out of an open coconut with a machete, and cutting his hand. Artis is prepared to ban Michael from using the knife. Pete is just waiting to see what happens when they get fire.

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5