SURVIVOR

Thailand Episode 7: Assumptions

Oh, evil evil Mark Burnetto. You evil man. You machinated a plot, the tribe members bite the bait, but alas, it is the Shii Devil who lost the plot. The tragedy here is Shii Devil's own vulnerability, inability to control herself, and Mark Burnetto's evil scheme. If there has really been a merge, she may just pull it off. As it is, I've lost my favorite gal, and now I want Magilla the Magic Monkey to win the one million dollars. Failing that, Porno and Helen. Everybody else, including Ken Doll, can get diarrhea and fluke off.

Incidentally, did you see Ken's publicity photo on survivorfever.net? That man is a famewhore as much as the rest of them, and worse, he is posing in what seems like a photo for a gay porn film audition. The body isn't bad, but the face! Maybe Porno can give him pointers on film career after this show, because there is no way Ken is winning this. He's doomed next week or the week after, and this is partly because of his stupidity in ditching the Shii Devil. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the recap.

It is full moon, and Bray is howling at the moon. Wait, I made that Bray thing up. It is day eighteen, and it's night time in Soochie, right after they have sent Mrs Ken Doll packing. Erin Boobavich is chattering in her special brand of inane how hard it is to bond with someone and then vote that someone out. I guess this is because she has a tough time thinking. She's Penny's shadow and bitch, and the camera shows them whispering to each other. Probably Penny is saying, "Breathe in, Erin. Then breathe out. Remember, you stop breathing, you die. Keep breathing." This will be a lesboeroto moment if Penny isn't such an eyesore once malnourishment and starvation have taken their toll. Erin adds that she doesn't feel comfortable with Shii Devil and Ken because they aren't like the plastic mall mannequins she hangs out with back home.

Shii Devil and Ken discuss his lost love and how sneaky the Evil Penny is. I finally get the gist of the Tooollll/Ken argument last episode: Toooolllll was warned by Ken that Penny was voting for him, and Penny denied it, so Tooollll accused Ken of betraying their true love for each other. Now Ken is on to Penny. He knows gals like her in high school, he says, and he knows her game. He also knows he is at a disadvantage because of his physical presence. Well, he should know. He deliberately sat out on physical challenges in the past. Later that ass would vote off the Shii Devil. Moron or what? Missing Toooolll must be ruining his thinking faculties.

Shii Devil and Ken Doll hug and they promise to see each other again in the morning.

Morning. Jake reads a scroll aloud. There are bottles of paint, one color for each tribe, and each member is supposed to use one color to decorate his or herself. Then they are to meet up with the Chewing Gums. Shii Devil is excited. Was it a merge, she wonders aloud. At the Chewing Gum side, the same thing is happening. Everybody is now beautifying him or herself in ways that will make grade school problem kids scream in horror. Helen draws a purple racoon motif around her eyes. Saggy Manboobs try to imitate Goldmember, read that any way you want, what with his bald fat head and all. Porno's body is getting hairier day by day, wow, and he is looking more and more like a refugee from Jesus Christ Superstar more than ever. Saggy gives the camera a nice shot of him painting one saggy manboob gold. Nice. Can someone pass me my eyeballs? I think I gouged them out in instinctive horror.

The freak parade meet Jeff Proboscis where Jeff announces that the freaks of the same color will pair and pick up one cylindrical cheap Thai handmade souvenir thing and march off to a reclusive place to chit chat. Helen and Ken Doll, royalty of freaks in the color Purple, are to visit Soochee's turf. Bray and Shii Ann are to visit Chewing Gum. Boobavich and Saggy, mammary soulmates made in heaven, have a picnic somewhere where they probably grind away enthusiastically, and Jan and Jake, senior geezers, hold hands and have a picnic. Porno tries to kiss Evil Penny on the cheeks, but the ugly freak turns her cheek in time. Slimy Porno is trying to mojorize his enemies, I see. Penny and Porno - two motherFUTRs. If this isn't a sign that the tribe members are psychic and somehow put on the same color as their soulmate in freakiness from the other tribe, I don't know what is.

Shii Devil meets Magilla the Magic Monkey. She says hi. She loves the caves, it's better than Soochee.

Helen marvels at the ramshackle Soochee hut, and she loves the chickens. Tooollll misses them too, I'm sure. She is envious of the abundance of fruit trees and the close proximity of the water hole.

The Ken Doll, ever a subtle one, plumps his ass down and seats Helen beside him and growls out most charmingly, "So, you and tribe mates get along?" Very subtle, Ken Doll. I pray you never get any undercover assignments in the future. Helen, ever a smart one, recognizes his game at once and deftly evades his attempts to squirrel out things from her. Ken isn't deterred. He doubts Shii Devil will spill anything anyway.

Wrong!

Shii Devil is going on like a train on fire to Dear Father Bray of all people. Penny the Evil Manipulative Bitch, Erin her shadow, Ken, everything. The poor gal just loses it, and here we are, the Giggles, screaming at her, "Shut up, gal, shut up!" Then again, I kinda understand. If she has been ocstracized by Penny, Tooolll, and the rest of the Soochees like she claims to be, if I'm her, I'd probably be blubbering to anyone who listens to me even a little, even Bray, yes. Bray nods, even if he is probably cackling with glee inside.

Chewing Gum has found a way to tilt the 5-5 tribal feud to their advantage.

Pow-wow with Proboscis. He announces that from now on, the tribes will live on the same beach. The merge! "The merge!" hubby says. I point out that Jeff didn't really mention that it was a merge, so I won't be too sure. Proboscis says to the tribe members that they will be starting over. Now that's unfair. The poor pathetic people really believe now that they have merged. Hoo-boy.

They haven't merged yet... right?

They choose to stay on Chewing Gum's side of the island. They all cheer and even call themselves Chuay Jai. Now I know there is no merge, because we all know merges take place only after they give you new banners and asks you to make a stupid name that usually translates to "The Sun Ate My Tribe's Ass" or something. There is lots of fruits and huge bottles of wine waiting for the freaks, further making them believe that they really have merged. Erin Boobavich is so happy, she tells the camera, bending forward a bit to let me see how unnaturally wide apart her breasts are. I think one can build an airstrip and several terminals between those plastic balloons of hers.

Lots of close-ups on smelly, bearded, drooling mouths gorging on fruits and more. Thank goodness I've eaten.

Porno babbles something about mi casa bla casa, welcoming his enemies to his kingdom. He's happy, he's Boston Robb with a sexier chest and pubic arches. I look at his kingdom - a batty old hen with a funeral fetish, a mean lil' old man, a fat ugly groin grinder baldie with sagging manboobs, and... well, Helen. He can keep his kingdom.

Shii Devil really loses it. There's a "You like me! You really like me!" air around her that borders on desperation, and I feel really sad for her, because if my instinct is right and this isn't a merge, she is digging her own grave. She is openly happy, even toying and cleaning Porno's paint-stained chest (bitch!) and Ted's and laughing over everything the Chewing Gummers tell her, she can't announce her jumping ship anymore than if she jumps off the Titanic. Ken, doing a Naked Chest Confession, says that this is the first time in a long time that Shii Devil is happy. My heart really aches for this gal, who is no longer playing the game as much as she is playing the lost puppy came home at least. She's screwed.

Evil Penny and her Boobs stand aside as everybody else cavorts in the sea, Penny scheming and bitching while her Boobs just nods at everything she says. If they have stripped nude and sing and cabaret-dance "We're in an alliance!" they couldn't be any more obvious to the rest of the Chewing Gums. And the Chewing Gums - Saggy, Porno, and Bray, at least - are watching, oh yes.

Shii Devil tells the camera that she feels as if she's breathing for the first time. We see her telling Saggy about her being discriminated, flirting mildly with the race card issue but never actually letting Saggy drag her into openly playing it. Saggy tells the camera that Shii Devil is "really appreciative" of his company and listening ear.

Poor Shii Devil.

Boobavich laments that she feels like an outsider. Duh. Can this walking silicon bag be any more insipid? Don't tell me.

At night, everybody's partying. Saggy is abstaining from drinking, I didn't catch who else is smart enough to abstain, but Jan, her hair unbound like Granny Gorgon, is whacked. "It's like somebody has smacked Grandma on Thanksgiving," Bray says, that mean lil' delightful old coot, heh heh heh. Porno says that Jan is a lush, and whoops, we see Jan stumbling and falling. If Jan does a striptease, I'm so out of here.

Shii Devil sings to Porno's guitar playing (the worst guitar playing ever, Saggy announces). "For one day out of twenty, I wasn't thinking about the game," she tells the camera. Poor, poor Shii Devil. Damn you, Burnetto!

Boobavich looks stumped. She's probably remembering Penny's instructions: breathe in, breathe out...

Pot, kettle, black. Porno is so drunk that he starts throwing up. Or is he? Maybe he's pretending, I wouldn't put it over that slimeball, especially when he is listening most alertly when they are alone to Saggy's telling him to watch "NY". I take it he means watching Ken as Porno does his mojo on Shii Devil. Saggy amazes that Porno is still thinking about the game even when drunk. Saggy will still be amazed when Porno stabs him to death from the back. There's no way I think Porno is as committed to Saggy as Saggy would like to imagine. He didn't even give his word when Saggy tried to make him give it a few episodes back, and evil Porno, he twisted his words such that Saggy didn't even notice. Saggy patted Porno's arm. Uh-oh, Porno, you better watch out, or Saggy will wanna sleep with you and then we'll be talking about the grinding. Remember the cow, Porno, and shudder in fear.

Day twenty. Porno is wearing only those loose dirty grey khaki shorts of his (what happened to those lovely short shorts?) and half-heartedly clean the pots as he tells the camera that he hopes he has made himself popular with the Soochees. I don't think he means that we have missed out a massive orgy in the Chewing Gum cave... did he? If I missed Porno in action, I'm suing Burnetto, I really will. I seethe over the possibility of missing Orgy Naked Porno until I see his butt crack again and life seems so much sunnier already. He says that he will recruit Shii Devil into his kingdom of freaks and they will expel Evil Penny. If even the evil Porno believes that the tribe has merged, I wonder... nah. I don't buy it. There's no merge yet, I can feel it.

And so he does, and I tell you, that man is bloody brilliant. He really knows how to use the right words to exploit Shii Devil, and when he says that everybody here loves her, boy, he's really laying it thick and well. The Shii Devil has no choice. Porno is so winning this game. Porno, Porno, Porno! Now pull down those shorts a bit lower.

Confused, Shii Devil runs to Ken Doll. I guess she is torn between her loyalty to Jake and Ken, whom she says are the only ones to treat her kindly, and the newfound buddies in Chewing Gum. Maybe she wants Ken to assure her to stay onboard, because that gal spills everything to Ken, suggesting that she is thinking of voting with Chewing Gum to kick Evil Penny. Ken, that idiot, instead of doing a Porno and win Shii Devil back to the fold, high handedly talks about tribal unity and how both tribes will gun her down if she defects. He agrees that Penny has to go, but first he wants to see Chewing Gum weakened, 5-4. Hey moron, tell her that you're on her side, and that she can still count on you and Jake, that's all she wants to hear. Fool, fool, fool!

And Shii Devil, lost and deciding to jump ship to Chewing Gum, walks away. Ken goes and tells the rest of the tribe of Shii Devil's potential defection. Fool, what a fool.

They've got mail. Immunity!

Hmm, maybe this potentially fake merge is a way for Burnetto to save on those cheap fake scrolls as well.

The tribe rushes off to kiss Proboscis' ass, and look, here comes Magilla the Magic Monkey! Look how he (she?) looks around sneakily before eating the tribe's food. Eat everything, Magilla! People, I think we have found the real star of this season's Survivor. He's probably a trained monkey Burnetto bought to raise the ratings (no one can resist monkeys, right?). Maybe next week we will see a rogue elephant using the caves as a toilet (no, I'm not talking about Bray and Saggy), and the week after that they will find a baby washed up on the shore. Babies and monkeys, what more can one ask for in good TV?

Jeff asks for Erin's opinion on their new living arrangements.

Erin: blahblahblah chirpchirpchirp merge...

Jeff: Who says there is a merge?

Shii Devil's face is priceless, no amount of "Oh crap!" can match.

"Oh no!" I wail. This is one time I wouldn't mind proven wrong. "Not my Shii Devil!"

Her game's up. Shii Devil knows it.

Immunity is this: the freaks are locked in cages, bound by hand and feet, just like nature intended, surely, and they must use bamboo poles to grab fifteen keys from the outside to free themselves. Then they must unbind their shackles and dig themselves out of their caves. Porno is Chewing Gum's superstar - he gets one key. Rain falls. God is angry with Burnetto. Ken tries to grab a key, but fails. Saggy gets the next key. Shii Devil scores one for Soochee, and the next, followed by Ken. Porno. Ken. Porno. Ken. I'm getting a headache.

Oh no, Chewing Gum have all the keys! Oh no, they're digging themselves out! No, no, someone stop Helen! Stop that Saggy! Stop them, no!

I want to cry along with Shii Devil as she watches the Chewing Gummers hold aloft the immunity doll. Her game is up. It's over.

Night, and bats fly out of the cave. I hope one of them pelts guano on Ken Doll's head.

Bray and Jan are walking back. Porno appears wearing those tighties, and I fail to capture what everybody else is saying for the next few minutes.

Tribal Council. Wind and thunder and rain rage, almost blowing Jake's hat. Mother Earth is crying with Shii Devil and me. Boobavich is shocked that someone is thinking of voting her out after she trusted them (yeah, she trusted Shii Devil, right) and gawd, how could people in a game called Survivor think of voting her out! How inhumane.

Oh shut up, you idiot.

Penny in her typical hypocritical Alanis Smugsville style talks about how "one of my tribe members" whom she "trust" (yeah right!) blah blah blah...

Oh shut up, you idiot.

Shii Devil has no time for passive aggressive nonsense like Penny and her abuse of third person speeches. She calls Penny out for being manipulative, and she states her case. She is loyal to Ken and Jake, and she has never betrayed Ken even when Chewing Gum asked about him. She has not made a decision to betray the tribe yet. but she will remain loyal if she survives this vote. Her knowledge of the Chewing Gums will also be useful to the Soochees.

No go. Jake and Ken cast her to the wolves, thus ensuring their own demise. Shii Devil goes, and she isn't even a jury member, so I won't even get her trademarked snarky commentaries at the finals. Damn!

Penny gives an evil smirk of victory. You watch, you hag - you're next. Shii Devil has so thoroughly poisoned Chewing Gum against you, when they see Soochee coming back without the Shii Devil, they will really gun for you. Or Ken.

Either way, Ken has shot himself in the knees. What is he thinking? If he has to kick off someone, why keep Evil Penny and kick off the one whom you know is loyal to you? If she isn't loyal, she wouldn't have come to you and she would have still a chance to escape this game with her hide intact. You think Erin and Penny will stand by you when you, the New York cop version of Colby, face the executioners from Chewing Gum? You think Soochee is a tribe united in the first place? You are a fool. Shii Devil could have cement your alliance with Jake. She could have helped you bond with Helen or Saggy, who may save you when the time comes. As of now, you're flying solo, Superman with a bullseye on your forehead. Bye Ken. I hardly know you.

Next week, Magilla the Magic Monkey avenges Shii Devil!

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