The Big Move
Updated 2005-05-09 17:00:00
Previously on Outwit, Outplay, Outlast One Out Of Ulong, Please Turn Off The Lights: Steph scrambled to stay afloat after wiggling out the week before by riding to safety on Janu's emaciated back. She tried to cobble together an all-girl alliance to make a dent in the emerging power triplets of Tom, Ian, and Gregg, but Caryn balked and leaked the plan to Tom, the only person who had bothered to show her much friendship. Tom told Ian, and Ian asked Katie, and Katie pointed out that it would indeed be sad if Tom just barreled through the remainder of the immunity challenges and nobody else stood a chance. Ian claimed to briefly consider flipping on Tom, but ultimately, the safe play got the best of everyone, and Steph took the long walk to the jury. In fairness, she had seemed to be doomed for a while now, and some situations do turn out to be just as gruesome as they appear, as we all learned after reading the recap of Riding The Bus With My Sister.
I want to begin by announcing that you will all be glad to know that my house was not, in fact, demolished by a severe thunderstorm, as the bottom of my screen throughout this episode informed me that it might be. But for much of the episode, the contestants were compressed into the top part of the screen, thus appearing shorter and squattier than they are in real life. They gave inches of illusory height to keep me from suffering a lightning strike. It's a brotherhood of man, you guys.
At Koror, we return to Day 31. The wind is rustling through the plants whose names I do not know, and the tribe is just beginning to wake up for another big day of doing basically nothing. The opening topic of the day is how bad everyone felt for Steph when she was voted off the previous night. They should look on the bright side, which is that Steph is probably getting to massage some Hope In A Jar into that increasingly leathery complexion of hers. Tom interviews that he was afraid he might go last night, and admits that if he were in his tribemates' shoes, he might vote himself off. For his part, Ian is wearing quite the strange-looking floppy nightcap-thing (I have no idea what that is) this morning, as if he's starring in some kind of Palau-ian revival of A Christmas Carol. Tiny Janu could sit there in the corner with her flower, ailing, while Coby Cratchet tries to bring her a Christmas coconut...I sense a very successful musical in the offing.
Tom notes that it seems that the rest of his five-person alliance is remaining an alliance. Nevertheless, he is all about covering his bases, and he takes a walk with Caryn in which she almost disqualifies herself from being recapped for the remainder of the episode by using the expression "What up, Tom?," which sounds about as natural coming out of her mouth as it would out of the mouth of the animatronic Abraham Lincoln in the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World, but it appears the conversation is strategic, so I feel obligated to convey its basic meaning. Tom tells her that he's been "trying to think of different things," whatever that means. I mean, I often find myself trying to think of different things while Caryn is talking (puppies, angels, bottles of vodka), but I don't think I would admit that to her. Tom uses perhaps the most worn-out "colorful" saying in existence when he notes that Caryn is "more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs." So you know he received his complimentary copy of Yer Darn Tootin': Down Home Clichés For The Frequently Interviewed. Anyway, Tom says that Caryn knows there's this five-person alliance, and that this suggests that if all remains status quo, she'll be next to go. Caryn tells Tom that she doesn't see the point in his getting rid of her; she thinks it would make more sense to get rid of, for instance, Gregg. Caryn interviews that she's been making the case for a while to split up Gregg and Anonymous Jenn. (Incidentally, Anonymous Jenn is so spelled, as I finally noticed this week after seeing it written on her reward-challenge torch thing, to be explained shortly.) (Okay, Wing noticed. Or, I should say, Winngg noticed. ["Eh. We're all on the same teammmmmm...mm." -- Wing Chun])