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Anyway, Phillip makes a play for being the bigger man and getting the target off his back. He has “never had any bad feelings for Brandon. Where this is coming from, I have no idea. Your whole thing about being in charge and control is just a figment of his imagination." Phillip does a good job of keeping a straight face, but no one is fooled. “I hope you’re strong enough to realize, just maybe, you made a mistake.” Brandon doesn’t want to hear it. “Shut up!” “That’s your typical response. You need to grow up!” “You need to shut up! You need to get younger.”

But again Phillip loses the high ground. “That’s the way you talk to your elders. That’s right, you do that.” Phillip remembers how Brandon spoke about Russell at the reunion – “the uncle who let you live in his home, probably to the aunt that’s taking care of the kids that you left.” “Bring my f---ing family into this, I’ll come over there and knock your f---ing head off. Bring my kids into this, b----.” Probst has both arms around Brandon by now. Brandon sure looks like a big man, being held back by Jeff Probst.

Anyway, time to move on. Probst confirms that the “favorites” want to give up immunity. At Probst’s direction Erik hands over the immunity idol to the “favorites” and Reynold lamely asks if Probst can raise his hands and say “’fans’ win immunity!” Suck-up. Probst says we are having Tribal Council right now. No fire, no torches, no “tallying”, no urn.

Brandon is voting for Phillip. One by one, the other “favorites” from Corinne to Cochran say they are voting for Brandon. “You good with this?” asks Probst. “I’m good with it.” Brandon is the sixth person voted out of the game.

Probst tells Brandon “I love you, but I know you’re fired up," so he tells Brandon to walk over there around the back of the challenge and Probst will come find him later. “Phillip, you’re a b----!” he says over his shoulder.

As soon as Brandon is out of earshot, Probst asks if there is a sense of relief? Enthusiastic nodding from the “favorites”. “It was a long time coming,” says Erik, who never says anything. Could this be a big momentum shift? Meh. But according to Reynold, “I’ll take it, a win’s a win."

This episode just shows what a mistake it was to bring Brandon back for another season in the first place. In his first season, he was cast for a redemption story arc about restoring honor the Hantz family name. But his game was full of unpredictable emotional outbursts that no one wanted to watch. So, of course the producers decide to bring him back for a second redemption story arc. Because if there’s one thing that reality TV does well, it’s “provide appropriate therapy to people who need it."

Sure, Probst did a good job of calming things down when they were heated – but he also did a good job of keeping things simmering just enough to get some “interesting” footage of Brandon getting angry. Why else ask Brandon about his uncle and whether it’s in the blood? Sure, Russell has his issues, but they are completely different to Brandon’s. Probst was there to provide good footage, not get everyone cool with things.

The people who asked Brandon to be back on the show can wash their hands as much as they want with “Brandon chose to go on the show” and CYA games like “Brandon passed the psych test," but they asked him to come back for one reason and one reason only: they wanted him to act up at camp and televise the results. Again. And spend months hyping it. They should bring in Dr. Phil to learn about “enabling behaviors”.

Anyway, it was an unhappy thing to watch (and to re-cap). Hopefully this is reflected in the ratings, because I’d hate for CBS executives and Mark Burnett to be crying themselves to sleep on plush mattresses stuffed with money.

Next time on Survivor, Phillip plans to take out Corinne and Corinne plans to take out Phillip, but there’s something no one was planning on. It’s probably a switch, which we were all planning on, right?

Brandon’s post-boot interview is predictably full of denial, with Brandon declaring his exit was “nice, it was glorious” instead of uncomfortable and unnecessary. He wanted to go out Braveheart-style, but I re-watched Braveheart a couple of weeks ago and William Wallace had his intestines removed and only shouted one word. That scene was more pleasant than watching this. Remember when Survivor was entertaining?

“I... was the author of... my elimination,” says Brandon, still trying to make fetch happen. Some plagiarized literary advice to author Brandon: “Well, it started off badly, trailed off a little in the middle and the less said about the ending the better.” See you at the reunion! Well, probably not.

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