Survivor: Cook Islands

Flirting and Frustration

By Jim Van Nest

September 29, 2006

We have absolutely no idea what she's doing here.

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column
Hello, good people, and welcome back to the Cook Islands. Now, I know we all shared a moment last week, but I have to be honest...it really wasn't love at first sight for me. I mean, you're all great and I'm sure you're extraordinarily good looking, but you're just not my type.

When we left Survivor, the Aitu tribe had fallen victim to one of the classic blunders. Never get involved in a land war in Asia, never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line and never throw a challenge in Survivor. Like Nate said in the first episode, "Karma's a bizzle" and she will repay you for doing something as stupid as throwing a challenge. Anyway, Billy was sent packing with nothing but heavy metal and Candice's love to get him through. We were promised a shake up on the show tonight and some flirting from the model/boxer. And who doesn't want to get right to that?

The show opens at Aitu after Tribal. The girls are discussing Billy's love at first sight comment. Everyone seemed a little put off by it and no one seems too upset that he's gone.

The next morning at Puka, we join Brad on an early fishing trip. As he returns to camp, Cao Boi is in the middle of another extraordinarily boring story that turns into a rant against the war, Bush, congress and all of that. He's entered into "really frickin annoying territory" for me and especially for Brad.

Probst sighting! The tribes come in to see Jeff and after collecting the Immunity Idols, Jeff tells everyone to drop their buffs. Uh oh...we're shuffling the tribes already? But what are people gonna complain about if the tribes are no longer racial? Through the choosing of stones, four people become captains - Parvati, Cecelia, Jonathan and Brad. Women will choose women, men will choose men. And they'll have to pick someone from a different tribe, until none exist. The picking is pretty uneventful and we end up with two groups of girls and two groups of guys. The last part of the shuffle is for each of the captains to take an egg. On Jeff's count, they are all to squeeze their egg as hard as they can. 1, 2, 3! Explosions of blue and red paint. The two groups with blue paint will become the new Raro tribe and the two with red will become the new Aitu tribe. With everything sorted out the new Raro tribe is comprised of Parvati, Brad, Nate, Jenny, JP, Stephanie, Adam, Rebecca and Christina. The new Aitu tribe is Cecelia, Jonathan, Becky, Yul, Candice, Ozzy, Flicka, Cao Boi and Sundra. Let me say that I'm a little bummed out by how the split went down. With Yul and Ozzy on one team and Nate on the other, my rooting interests are gonna be tough to decide.

After the break, we join the Raro tribe and Nate couldn't be happier to be in a new tribe. As they sit around the fire, the talk comes to the racial split in tribes. Everyone seemed to really like it, but they're all also glad to be mixed up now.

And in a perfect example of why I love Survivor, as we join the Aitu tribe, after checking out the camp, Cecelia gets down to the important issues. She asks Candice about the Billy, love at first sight thing. Candice explains the situation exactly the way it went down. She is totally in shock. Also in this segment, Cao Boi and Flicka tell us how happy they are in the new tribe and how they both feel more at home with the new people. And as we get ready to head back to Raro, folks take turns giving Candice trouble for leading Billy on.

Over at Raro, the guys seem to be collecting rocks. For what reason, I have no idea. But it gives Parvati a chance to notice they have all the buff dudes. So it's time to use the charm and flirting on them. Never mind that Brad is pretty obviously gay, and JP might be as well...fire away Parvati. Have a blast!

Back at Aitu, Becky and Candice are talking game strategy. Since Candice and Jonathan are tight and Becky and Yul are close, they make the smart move to join forces and try to ride it out. Jonathan lets Becky know that he's got Flicka in his pocket, which gives them the magic number of five. As Becky tells Yul of the new alliance, he decides to show his loyalty to her by telling her he found the idol. Normally, I'd say that was a really dumb move. But in this case, I have no doubts that Becky will never reveal this to anyone else. And, they now have what I think will be an unbreakable bond.

We interrupt this potential love affair to bring you a special bulletin from the Aitu tribe. Nate has speared an octopus. And a big one at that. He's so excited to have brought in such a huge piece of meat when no one expected him to. As they discuss the octopus, we see Parvati start using her A-game on Nate. And I have to be honest with you, watching her go out of her way to flirt just knocked her hotness down by a crazy amount. Even though it was just a couple seconds, it was a pathetic display. "That's a lot of meat. You could probably eat that whole thing yourself, huh?" Blink, blink, blink. For real, I actually threw up in my mouth a little bit.




Advertisement



Probst sighting. The immunity challenge is a rehashed challenge from one of the Bobby Jon seasons. The two tribes will walk around in a circle, chained together, each carrying a bag with 15 pounds of sand in it. As they walk, people can drop out, but someone else needs to carry their sandbag. The goal is to catch up with the other team and tackle one member. Early on in the challenge, Aitu tries an interesting strategy. Four women drop out, giving a bag to each of the guys. Jessica is the only girl still walking. After a couple turns, the Raro ladies start dropping out - all but Rebecca. As it turns out, Aitu's strategy was a bad one. Raro makes up a ton of ground and before you know it, the only thing Aitu can do is turn and fight. Yul does his best to fight off Raro, but they get to Cao Boi and take him down for the win. On top of immunity, Raro gets to select a member of Aitu to go to Exile Island. They have no idea how much havoc this pick will cause, but they select Candice to go to Exile Island, totally destroying the Yul/Becky/Jonathan plan.

On a side note, the good thing about Yul finding the hidden idol is that we don't have to spend anytime with Candice on Boredom Island. Woo hoo!

And now it's time to play "oh crap our wonderful plan was just shot to hell, what do we do now?" We see Ozzy and Cao Boi aligning and deciding that Becky should be the play. Ozzy tries to reel in Sundra, CeCe and Flicka. Of course, Flicka doesn't know what to do, so she goes to visit Jonathan. She tells him of the plan to oust Becky and then drops a bomb that she's probably gonna go along with it. This is even worse for Jonathan as now he has only three votes instead of five. Flicka doesn't want to commit to anyone because she doesn't want to be wishy-washy. And in an odd defense against wishy-washiness, she has decided to be, well, wishy-washy. Jonathan works her hard - too hard, if you ask me. Yul goes to Cao Boi to try to turn him. Cao Boi says Becky is the weak link, while Yul is saying CeCe is the weak link. He's doing his best to get Cao Boi to flip and it might actually be working. Jonathan is doing his best on Flicka, but doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. Flicka and Cao Boi get together to compare notes. What we get out of their conversation is that they don't trust Jonathan and that they both can't make a decision if their life depended on it.

Tribal is pretty routine. Jeff points out that Sundra is the only Hiki member on the tribe. She says that she can be either vulnerable or valuable in that position. Yul and Jonathan both discuss that there seems to be two kinds of people playing - those who are there for the game and the money and those who are there for the experience. Flicka has like one of the most like annoying speeches like ever on like Survivor. I have no idea what she said; I could only count how many times she said "like." (It was five, by the way.) As the players vote, I can't help but think that this is the first time in a long time that I didn't know who was going home. We see Yul, Jonathan and Becky vote for CeCe with nothing but compliments. We see CeCe and Sundra vote for Becky with nothing but compliments. And we see Ozzy vote Becky with some whining about her never trying to make a connection with him.

In what I think is a shocking vote...both Flicka and Cao Boi stick with Yul and Jonathan and we are now down by one hottie as Cecelia is sent packing. Frankly, I think Cao Boi and Flicka really screwed the pooch on this one. With Yul, Becky and Jonathan (and Candice) they don't have a chance of breaking through. With the others, they had a good shot of aligning with Ozzy and making it pretty far in the game. However, this is Survivor, and I'm sure there will be plenty of dumb moves to come.

Next time in the Survivor recap...the guys at Raro seem to be doing nothing, while at Aitu Cao Boi seems to be doing too much, as he is stabbing at a bird's nest and knocking down a baby bird. Um, that's even going a little far for me. But, we all know how the editing of this show goes. When the actual episode airs, the bird and Cao Boi might not even be on the same island. Until next week, take care!


     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.