The One Where One Tribe Has A Toilet
Updated 2007-02-13 16:00:00
The season gets off to a weirdly abrupt start as nineteen people (one bolted just before filming started, apparently) land on a beach together. They receive a box, which several studly dudes try to open by dropping giant rocks on top of it, and it comes open only when Yau Man, a genial older gentleman, drops the box onto the rock. It seems like a metaphor for something. The group is instructed to build a fancy-pants shelter with a toilet and a kitchen and all kinds of neat stuff, and they're all pretty confused, but why argue, right? When Jeff finally gets them all together, he pulls out Sylvia, who has emerged as the bossypants "leader" of the first episode in the great tradition of many early-exiting contestants. Sylvia divides everyone into two tribes, and then she heads off to Exile Island, not to return until after the first tribal council, when she will join whichever tribe loses a member. And the fancy-pants shelter will belong only to the team that wins. The other team will be sent off to live on a horrible, empty beach, with nothing but a pot and a machete. You know the drill. The first challenge goes to Moto, a tribe including a lawyer named Alex, someone named Boo, a guy who rather hatefully calls himself "Dreamz" (yes, with a "z"), Gary The Minnesotan, and a bunch of other people. The losing tribe is Ravu, a tribe including a B-Rob wannabe who will be calling himself "Rocky" owing to a not-entirely-imaginary resemblance to Stallone; a very negative lady named Erica; Nick Verreos's sister Rita, and a bunch of other people. Rocky seems to think that he and two women he expects to be able to control can run the show, but it turns out that pulling that move is harder than it looks, and one of his chosen women, Jessica, is the one everyone else wants to get rid of. It turns out that three people cannot, as Erica suggests at one point, dominate a nine-person tribe, so Jessica is excused, mostly because it's very early, and she didn't do very well on the first puzzle. She is shocked to get booted, probably in part because Rocky assured her that it wouldn't happen. Because he can't count, apparently.