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by Jim Van Nest Published: September 27, 2002
SNORING, GOLF, SHELTER AND THE SEARCH FOR CLEAN WATER So this episode opens to the melodious sounds of Clay snoring. And this isn't just a little snore. This is a scare the children, wake the dead kinda snore. While Jan, Brian and Tanya have a good chuckle over it, Helen and Ghandia are not amused. With that, it's time to get up and start another lovely day on Chuay Gahn beach. The tribe decides it's time to get some water. Now, we all remember what pain it was to get the water last time, right? So, it makes it pretty obvious that if only 2 people can go get water, the 2 people best suited for this job are naturally, Jan and Helen. WHAT?!?!?!? Come on people, use your frickin heads, you know, the lumps 3 feet above your butts! Ok, Helen I can see, but Jan? What are they thinking?!? Anyway, so they take off to get the water. Helen, in her take charge mindset, decides she don't need no steenking map to find the water hole, so she leaves it behind. Brilliant! So, without a map and after only one trip to the water hole, Jan and Helen set out in a crappy little canoe in search of water. The first place they stop seems to be Snake Island. The entire place was covered with snake holes, and if you didn't believe her, we even saw some snakes. As it turns out, they overshot the actual watering hole by quite a ways, so now they have to backtrack to try to find it. Meanwhile back at the beach, the guys have been setting up a little mini golf course and having a good ole time with it. Back on the water search, Helen is getting a tad bit annoyed with the whole situation. First off they're lost and she's not happy about that. Second off, Jan keeps "staying with the boat" while sending Helen off into the woods looking for the watering hole. When they head back out to sea, Jan is pretty much useless when it comes to rowing, so Helen is doing all the work there and is getting pretty darn tired. She understands that Jan just isn’t strong enough, but it doesn't make it any better for her. Over at Sook Jai, things aren't going a whole lot better. Now in their 4th day building their shelter, Jed and Stephanie have stopped giving any help to the folks building the shelter. I can't say I blame them, I mean, seriously...what are they trying to build, Fort Knox? How can it take 4 straight days to build a little hut to sleep in? So, Stephanie has been concentrating on keeping the water supply high, while Jed has been finding and preparing all the food for the tribe. Hell, even a SEVERLY toned-down Robb admits that Jed has been doing a lot of work. Jed and Stephanie meanwhile have been discussing how ridiculous this shelter thing is getting. They seem to be seeing the big picture that it takes more than a roof to survive. Everyone else seems to be having some serious tunnel vision at this point. So we head back to Chuay Gahn, where Jan and Helen are still not back from the water adventure. The rest of the tribe is beginning to get a little worried now. They estimate that at the longest a water run should take about 3 hours. And they've passed the 3 hour mark now. Click over to Jan and Helen and they've FINALLY found the right cove and have come ashore to find the water hole. Of course, Helen is the one doing all the work again, while Jan scoops water out of the boat with her hands. Um...why not turn the boat over and dump the water out? Anyway, when Helen finally gets the water jug full, she makes her way back to the beach to find Jan just floating lazily in the surf. Ya know those times where the look on someone's face says more than any amount of words could? Well, this was one of those times. She was not a happy camper, that's for sure. So the ladies eventually get back with the water, and Clay can't help but have a little chuckle over the fact that Helen refused to take the map and because of it is now dog tired and worn out form her 5-6 hour water expedition. Hmmmm...wonder who'll go next time? SOOK JAI GETS HUNGRY AND HELEN HITS A MILESTONE So here we are 4 days into what is shaping up to be a grueling 39 days in Thailand, and all of a sudden, Sook Jai realizes, on crap...we DO need food. So in their darn near trademarked overkill fashion, 5 people go running out to a spot fit for 3 to search for food. They all stop working on the shelter and go on the food hunt. They find crabs and oysters and are quite proud of themselves for their find, only to be disappointed when they get back to camp and Robb, Jed and Stephanie aren't jumping for joy at their bounty. Writer's aside: I think now is a good time to discuss Robb again. Ok, this is a totally different guy than we saw last week. He's calmed down quite a bit. His "dude" count dropped dramatically this week and he's all of a sudden hanging out with Jed and Stephanie. Now, he and Jed looked like they were gonna be fighting last week, now they're buddies. Gotta love the editing of this show. So, as much as I was ready to blast him again this week, he was pretty much of a non-factor throughout the entire episode. So, they start boiling the water and cooking the food and for some reason, Jed, Stephanie and Robb decide not to eat the food. Why? Not explained. Had they just eaten a bunch of coconut and fruit waiting for the rest to get back? Don't know. All we know is that they are made to look stupid for refusing to eat and sorta separating themselves from the group. So, we finish eating and it's time for bed under the finally complete shelter that will define all further shelters. And for some reason, Robb, Jed and Steph decide to sleep on the beach. Jed is saying that the thing is uncomfortable and impossible to sleep on, so he prefers the sand. Ok, cue the torrential downpour. And Jed and Robb make their way back to the shelter to get out of the rain. Which prompts Shii Ann to comment on how Jed was knocking the shelter earlier, but now he's sleeping under it. Seems to me, Jed was damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. He sleeps out on the beach, he's looked at as if he's a big jerk who is too good to hang out with the rest of the tribe. He sleeps under the shelter, he gets comments like Shii Ann's. Anyway, the interesting thing here is, Stephanie sleeps out there all night and just sleeps through the rain storm. When she wakes up she's managed to catch herself a very nice cold. Way to go. In a game where strength means so much, why don't you do everything you can to see to it that you have no strength? Let's see...not eating? Check. Sleeping in a terrible rain storm with no shelter whatsoever? Check. Amazing. Over at Chuay Gahn, Brian has pulled out his guitar and started playing. Ted decides to throw in some lyrics all about food and what do ya know, we have us a concert. Even one of the locals, a monkey, comes down to check it out. A little while later, Helen is feeling a little down as this is her 20th wedding anniversary. The tribe then gets together behind her back and plans a little surprise party for her for that evening. They gather some branches and flowers to make her a crown. They figure this might be a decent way to help her get through the day without her husband. REWARD CHALLENGE #1 The reward challenge this time around is a trusting challenge. First, let's hear what they're playing for. This time around, they are playing for an extra lantern. Some fish hooks and fishing line and a 30 meter fishing net. Each tribe will pick a member to be the "eyes" of the tribe. The remainder of the tribe is blindfolded. The "eyes" will be seated on a Palanquin (think of the vehicle you always see in ancient Rome with royalty being carried by 6 men) and will be carried by the blindfolded tribe-mates through a figure-8 slalom course. The only thing to guide them will be the voice of their selected "eyes". The tribes will cross paths 3 times and will have to collect 7 bags in their tribal colors. The first team back to the start with all 7 bags wins. With Stephanie sitting out to make the teams even, Sook Jai selects Penny and Chuay Gahn selects Tanya as their respective leaders. The race is pretty boring to be honest with you. Every once in a while you got to see someone walk into a tree or something, but overall, not one of the better challenges. What made it ok was the fact that the tribes were neck and neck throughout the challenge. It wasn't until they had both gotten the 7th bag, that one team took a lead. And that one team was Sook Jai. To put in simply, their strength was too much to overcome. This was the type of challenge Jake was thinking of when he picked his team. Congratulations to them. CAN I INTEREST ANY OF YOU IN A SQUID? So, we're back in a severely disappointed Chuay Gahn tribe and they've just finished eating when the tribe decides to call Helen over for a talk. Her first instinct is to ask the group if she is being voted out. Instead, Brian pulls out his guitar and they sing the worst rendition of Happy Anniversary To You that has ever been sung. I mean, the guitar playing was bad, and the singing was worse...but the sentiment behind the song was quite nice. They gave her the crown they had made for her and it was quite a touching moment. Helen is then heard telling the camera that she was freaking out all day cause the rest of the tribe was sneaking around behind her back all day. She just knew they were all plotting to vote her out of the tribe, when in fact they were planning her surprise all day. So, they all sit down to have some dinner and Tanya is still not able to eat. The thought of eating any of the food is almost making her sick. The poor young lady is not doing well. The next morning the tribe awakes to find that their beach has been covered in dead squid. So they did what anyone else would do, cut them suckers up and fry them! Not surprisingly Helen has cooked raw squid before and was all about giving everyone orders on how to prepare it. Clay is beginning to reach his limit with Helen. He says she has no fun tucked away inside her anywhere. He then compares her to an encyclopedia, a lot of information, but no fun at all to read. A quick flash to Sook Jai camp shows Stephanie sitting by herself feeling pretty left out. She realizes that she's in some serious trouble with her tribe. She's alienating herself and got herself pretty darn sick. She realizes that she's going to need to do something pretty decent to be able to stick around. IMMUNITY CHALLENGE #2 As was promised before the show started, the challenges are indeed much more physically demanding. And this Immunity Challenge certainly shows that. Each tribe has a large Lotus Flower Puzzle floating in the ocean. In each puzzle 6 petals are missing. They are stationed further out in the ocean and anchored to the bottom. The object is for one person at a time to swim out to the piece, dive down 10 feet and unhook it, then swim back with the piece and attach it to the flower. Each piece is different so it has only one fitting place. One person is to remain on the flower to attach the pieces when they come back. The first team to have all 6 pieces attached to the flower and all members on the flower wins immunity. There is one thing, you can tag in another swimmer, but only after you’ve made the swim and touched the piece and come back. Ok, writer ready? Readers ready? And GO!! Sook Jai chooses Shii Ann as their one member that doesn’t participate. Jed and Brian start off for their respective teams and Jed jumps out to a small lead as Jake and Helen take over for their teams. Jake loses a little ground and the teams are virtually neck and neck after attaching their second pieces. Robb and Jan take of for the 3rd piece. What a mismatch! Robb blows her away and when she has trouble finding the hook to set the piece free, Robb builds a large lead and gets his piece attached before Jan's even got hers unhooked. The 4th leg for Sook Jai is Penny and she is reaching her piece about the time Jan gets back and Ghandia takes off. penny goes down for the piece once, nothing. Twice, still nothing. She finally decides she can't do it and has to go back to tag someone else in. Well, she tags Jed. By this time, Ghandia is at Chuay Gahn's 4th piece. Well, Jed takes off swimming like a madman and not only does he end up catching Ghandia, he actually gets his piece in place before she gets hers in place. So, the 5th legs take off. Erin for Sook Jai and Ted for Chuay Gahn. Writer's aside: At this point I'd like to take a second to say how impressed I am with Erin so far in this show. When I first saw her, she reminded me so much of Sarah from Marquesas that I kinda stereotyped her as the cute girl that would try to win with her looks. Boy was I wrong! She is looking pretty darn tough so far. Last week she was rowing her butt off in the immunity challenge. This week, when she took off to swim, she really slid off the flower and there's no way she didn't come out of this with some serious bruises on her. I mean, she hit awkwardly and pretty hard. This girl is a lot tougher than I gave her credit for. I'm impressed. So, Erin put some decent distance between her and Ted and when Stephanie took the final leg of the swim against Clay, it was all but over. Stephanie coasts to victory and Chuay Gahn is once again headed for Tribal Council. A TOUGH CALL When we get back to Chuay Gahn camp, the mood is just plain awful. The entire tribe is feeling sorry for themselves and not looking forward to voting anyone out. Brian asks Jan what happened out there and all she can say is she couldn't find the hook to get the piece unhooked. We cut to Ghandia, Ted and Clay in the water talking about getting rid of Helen. Ghandia is then saying she has a choice to make. She wants Helen gone because of her over bearing personality, but thinks since Tanya is still sick and very much the weak link, voting her out would be the smartest move for the tribe. Helen Also thinks Tanya might be the one to vote out for health reasons. TRIBAL COUNCIL #2 So we get to Tribal Council and the first thing Jeff asks is if Ted thinks the team's losing moral. Ted says a little bit. They're down about losing the challenges, but they're still in pretty good spirits and they're still a family. He asks Ghandia her opinion. She says it's hurting moral because their losses are so close. They're so close to winning one that when they don't, it's even worse. Clay adds in that he is expecting to win soon and suggests that Jeff might be seeing a lot of the other tribe here real soon. He then asks Tanya if the game is tougher than she thought. She says definitely without a doubt yes. She had no idea how hard this would really be. He then asks who will admit to thinking about how the other tribe members might be feeling about them. Helen says that she has been thinking about it with everything she does. She also mentions the anniversary party again and how great it was. She gets a little choked up and mentions how she is under orders not to cry on the show. When questioned about it, she mentions that she works with a bunch of Seals and Green Berets who will be making a lot of fun of her if she breaks down and cries on TV, so she has made up her mind that it won't happen. And the final question goes to Ghandia. He asks her what she is basing her vote on tonight. Her response is that she is voting for the person that isn't meshing that well with the rest of the tribe. And with that, it's time to vote. They only show 2 of the seven votes this time. They show Brian's vote for Tanya with the explanation that he feels like an older brother taking care of his younger sister. She's just too sick and too weak, and he feels it best if she got a good meal and got well. Then they show Ghandia's vote for Helen saying she doesn't care for the whole keeping the emotions inside thing. And she doesn't think Helen handles stress that well. She kinda starts "buggin." And when all is said and done, the vote turns out 5-2 in favor of voting Tanya out of the tribe. Helen received the other two votes and perhaps a wake up call QUOTE OF THE WEEK Well, this was about the easiest Quote of the Week I've seen since Big Tom out in Africa. Of course, one of the scary things is that both of my QotW so far are about boobs/ta-tas. To me, the funniest part of the show was watching Chuay Gahn discussing the reward challenge. Ghandia speaks up, noticing her low cut top, "I think it would be good to distract the other team with my cleavage. And if need be, it's easy access in case I have to pull the boobs out to distract the guys on the other side." Following up Shii Ann's "ta-tas" comment from last week, I sure hope a guy says something worthy of the Quote of the Week, or my faithful readers are going to start thinking I'm some kind of boob obsessed pervert! heh heh PREDICTIONS I knew it was too good to be true. I was dead on for week one, and it serves me right that one of my final four would the victim tonight. Can't say as I blame the tribe though. Frankly, I would've tossed Tanya last time. Just too sick. Oh well, hopefully my other 3 finalists (Robb, Jed and Stephanie) will stick it out, though they all seem to be distancing themselves from their tribe a bit and that's never a good thing. Becca: Before I write some more predictions, I want to send a message over to cutter and Tanya W. at MSN Survivor. I’m sorry that Tanya got voted off tonight, but it seemed like the right thing to do after all. I thought she’d make it to the final4 – as did Jim and Jakey. Oh great! I just remembered that I picked Stephanie to win this game and now she’s ill. I’d like to see her improve and very soon please! I was close, but no cigar, regarding Helen’s chance of getting the boot tonight. Was that the worst ‘happy anniversary’ singing you ever heard? I thought for sure it was a sign that she’d be voted off! Ghandia’s not giving her a break at the moment and that’s fun for me to watch. On the other hand, Ghandia told us that Helen couldn’t handle stress and therefore, she should be voted off. Hello? Is Ghandia in denial or what? ‘Clay has stayed’ and he’s funny; that is, whenever I can understand what he’s saying. What did he say about an encyclopedia? He seems to have Ted on his side and vice versa. I wonder how that’ll play out. Brian was strumming along in the background as well as on his guitar. He’s very much flying under the radar and it’s bothering me. It feels like I’m watching a time bomb, but he’s probably just honing his acting skills. Tonight’s vote told me that CG wants to keep some strong people around, especially since John is gone and they need to win some challenges. I think they will win IC next week, but if they don’t, I now see Jan or Ghandia as the next to go. I don’t want to pick one, but I’ll go with Ghandia. She’s strong and then again, she’s not so strong. I have no idea of what’s going on at Sook Jai. They haven’t really bonded as a team as far as I’ve seen, but they keep winning. I’m now more annoyed at Jed than at Robb. Although Jed is correct in what he’s saying and doing most of the time, it’s just coming across as complete arrogance to me. He sure has plenty of opinions about what his tribe is doing and he seems like one big outsider as far as the editing goes. Jed is safe as long as his team needs some brains to go with their brawn. Sleeping on the sand for a while seemed arrogant and childish, too. Since I predicted that CG will win IC next week, I can’t imagine who’s in trouble the most at SJ. This is quite a wild guess and it’s based on what I saw during the IC. Both Penny and Erin faltered in that challenge. Penny couldn’t unhook the ball and Erin looked incredibly bad diving in. So, it’s one of those two and I have to pick one again. I will guess that she isn’t a very lucky Penny. Jakey: Well wasn’t that episode a slice of frustration? Proof positive that persistent pukers perish prematurely. What a shame. I liked Tanya and perhaps they took the easy way out once again. Tanya didn’t cost them the reward challenge and certainly not the immunity challenge. Precious time was lost in the IC by Jan whose limited attention span leads to forgetting the location of the tether clip. Ghandia also lost time with a feeble effort when she failed to gain ground on Penny who bailed and had to be rescued by Jed. Personally I would have sent Jan home. A sick Tanya is still stronger than Jan. Maybe the tribe would have had a different vote if they had seen Jan’s behavior on the water excursion. I certainly wasn’t impressed by her dead man’s float while Helen did all the work. Obviously the men have bonded by means of a fast round of golf. Life is Good!! What lies in store for the Chewie tribe next week? Will they win an Immunity Challenge? I think not. Although the challenges have been close, this tribe doesn’t have the legs nor, I suspect, the brains. Ghandia and Jan will be in the line of fire with Ghandia getting the boot. She is becoming a major pain in the butt. According to the promos for next week it looks like she becomes a tad unhinged. By the way ----Did anyone else notice who had their hand resting on Ted’s inner thigh after the immunity challenge?----Ghandia –you’re nasty----you’re done like dinner! Still left to simmer is the obvious tension between Helen and Clay. Maybe if Helen was wrong about the cooking requirement for dead rotting squid, we will be seeing a platoon of projectile pukers next time! Now for the Sookies-------Jeez, where is Bob Villa when you really need him? In 5 days they still haven’t built a decent shelter!! Must be a strong union factor here! There are very strange things going on in this tribe. Jed and Stephanie are behaving like spoiled little brats sulking off on their own. Stephanie especially has self destructed with her isolationist behavior and is now sick due to her show of independence (ornery stupidity). The rest of the tribe seems to have come together and bonded and certainly during the challenges the great divide on this tribe seems to evaporate. Will Jake forgive Penny for running him smack into the pole during the reward challenge? Too funny. Also Erin certainly won’t be getting a call from the national synchronized swim team after her performance in the IC. Even the unflappable Jeff Probst winced when she made her bouncing dive. I think this tribe will continue to dominate in spite of their problems but if they should happen to falter and go to a tribal council I think that Stephanie will be their choice to go especially if she is still on the sick list. Jed better come to his senses soon though because his fan club is limited to Stephanie and the monkey population. CHEERS! Below you'll find an up-to-date vote counter. And if you have any questions, comments, complaints or compliments for me or becca and Jakey, please feel free to drop me a line anytime! Keep an eye out for the S-Ratings right here at The Trades. This is where a panel of Survivor Expert Wannabes all give their thoughts on who will be the next person voted out of Survivor: Thailand. Until then, take care and God Bless.
Survivor: Thailand Recaps at The Trades: Preview | Ep 1 | Ep 2 The S-Ratings at The Trades: Episode 2 On the Internet: CBS.com | SirLinksalot.net | SurvivorNews.net |
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