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by Jim Van Nest Published: November 22, 2001
DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD As we join Samburu after they dispatched Lindsey, we are treated to a large sigh of relief from Brandon who is really glad she's gone. He had grown way tired of her constant complaining and crying. We see the tribe around the campfire and Brandon is explaining to Lex, Tom and Kelly how Silas and Lindsey just sort of took over their foursome and he and Kim just went along with it for the protection. This is an obvious maneuver to try to get in the good graces of the former Boran when the tribes finally merge. You can tell Tom's not buying it. Back at the Boran camp, Clarence is the first one up after the big chicken feast from the night before, and he seems to have some digestion problems. He grabs a shovel and heads out to "do a little business." What he doesn't realize is that while he's doing this, a herd of elephants is slowly closing in on him and the Boran camp. Of course, he sees them in time and is never in any great danger, but the thought of someone getting trampled by elephants while taking a dump did bring a smile to my face. Once everyone is up and about, the cornmeal is served and the term "brunch" is used to describe the meal they're having. Frank has never heard the term brunch. You can only guess that in his strictly by the rules world that no meals are to be eaten outside of specified times. THE BIRTH OF THE UBER-SPOON When we rejoin Samburu, we see Lex, Kelly and Tom discussing how things are looking good for them to reach the final four. Boran is in the majority with the merge pending. Meanwhile, Brandon has decided to distance himself from the rest of the tribe. He is ready for the merge and the "every man for himself" mentality that comes along with that. In the tradition of the great Sean Kenniff (Survivor 1, remember?) and his invention, Super-Pole, Lex has found a stick and starts whittling it a little bit to create a large spoon for Big Tom. He calls it "Uber-spoon." Kelly isn't fooled. She is, in fact, a little tired of watching Lex kiss everyone's butt in an effort to make himself more likeable for the jury vote that he seems pretty sure he'll last until. She's ready to vote him off now, but realizes that it's not a possibility at this stage of the game. First thing the next morning and both tribes have tree mail informing them of a challenge to begin in about 20 minutes. While the poem is pretty vague about the details of the challenge, various hints are given. By the sounds of it, this challenge will be the "endurance challenge" for Survivor: Africa. You know, the one where the survivors had to stand in the same place or something for hours upon hours until only one is left. Also, it certainly sounds like an individual challenge rather than a team challenge. IMMUNITY CHALLENGE #7 And sure enough when everyone gets to the challenge, they are told that they are now one unnamed tribe. Their new color is green (Frank's favorite) and they unanimously vote to make the Boran camp their home for the remainder of their time in Africa. As expected, this challenge is for immunity and is an endurance challenge. It's real simple. You choose an arm to raise over your head. You fasten a rope to it. The other end of the rope is attached to a bucket of water. You lower your arm and you get soaked. You get soaked, you're out. As we've seen in the other two Survivor seasons, this kind of challenge has the tendency to last for hours. Right here, I'll resent my timeline for this challenge: 14 minutes - Kim J and Kelly both drop out. (Wow, that was quick.) 18 minutes - Brandon's had enough and quits. (Huge surprise there, right?) 36 minutes - Kim P drops out. (Hmmm, maybe this won't take so long after all.) 44 minutes - Big Tom's done. (Can't believe he lasted that long.) 55 minutes - After wavering for a few minutes, Frank finally loses it. 74 minutes - Teresa begins to lose it and sings a chorus of 'Tomorrow' from "Annie." (I'd vote her off just for that.) 2 hrs 17 mins - Jeff shows up with some incentive to quit. A nice hot juicy cheeseburger. No one quits. Others chow down on burger. 3 hrs 10 mins - Clarence, Lex, Ethan and Teresa remain. Jeff now brings a pizza. No one quits. Others chow down on pizza. 3 hrs 18 mins - Lex moves just a bit, but enough to bring the water down. Bummed cause he could have bowed out 8 minutes earlier and had some pizza. 3 hrs 38 minutes - Ethan finally bows out leaving only Clarence and Teresa. At this point, Clarence starts trying to work Teresa into quitting. Or at the very least into having a "rock, paper, scissors" game to decide who wins. She refuses. 4 hrs 30 mins - Jeff's back with a plate of chicken, corn and rice. A glass of beer and a cold soda. Still no one accepts. Clarence resumes talking to Teresa. He's telling her she's safe and that because of his strength they want him voted off. She won't cooperate with him, so he begins looking over to Lex and Kelly trying to get some sort of signal that he's safe this time and that he can go ahead and quit. They offer no such signal; they simply wave to him. 6 hours - Finally at the 6 hour mark, Teresa agrees to play "rock, paper, scissors." Clarence does "rock." Teresa does "paper." As everyone knows, "paper covers rock." Teresa wins. Clarence steps down and has some chicken. Teresa will have immunity at the first merged Tribal Council. THE BIRTH OF MOTOMAJI As they take the walk back to the camp, it's very obvious that one member is not fitting in. That member is Frank. Everyone is chattering away and getting to know each other and Frank is walking off to the side completely alone. He likened it to receiving an invite to the Wagner family reunion, but your name's Smith. When they arrive at the camp, they find that all the supplies from the Samburu camp have been moved over here and they find a big basket set out in the middle of everything. Inside is a fabulous array for fruits, wine, cheeses and crackers. Since, cheese and fruit won't keep, it's decided to just have a big celebration in honor of the merge. As everyone gathers round the basket and begins to eat and pass around the wine bottle, we see Frank out gathering wood. Not because he's a jerk and thinks they should be working instead of playing, but because he really isn't fitting in and this isn't his type of scene. Finally, Teresa calls him over and makes him join the group. In an effort to get to know each other better, it's suggested that the play a round of "I Never", the old high school game where you say something wild that you've never done and anyone in the group that has done it has to fess up. Anyway, we learned 3 things from the "I Never" game: 1) Teresa's has sex in an airplane. Brandon hasn't. 2) Frank has never broken the promise that comes with a handshake. 3) Tom has apparently been turned on by Kim J. Writer's aside: It's become apparent to this writer that Big Tom is a complete "horndog" and is bordering on dangerous. When you add up everything we've seen, if I was a woman on this show, I'd be scared to death of this guy. First off, he enjoyed messing with the tick in Lindsey's butt WAY too much. I love my wife, but I certainly don't want to be digging parasites out of her ass. Second, his comment about being turned on by a 56-year-old woman could only have been directed at Kim J. And the last thing was in one of the interview segments, he was speaking very fondly of Teresa. VERY fondly of Teresa. Ok, thanks for listening, back to the recap. I don't really understand why the next part of the show wasn't edited out, but the next several minutes were spent focusing on a large bull elephant that seemed to be headed toward camp. Frank sees the elephant and begins to mess with it a little. He sways his arm and his canteen behind his back like a tail and seems to think he's had some sort of interaction with the elephant. Either way, it seemed like "filler" to me. As night falls, the tribe begins discussing what their new name should be. Lex is quick to suggest that they should use the Swahili words for fire and water, since both are so vital. No one has a problem with it, and everyone agrees. The new tribe's name will be, Motomaji. LET THE BACKSTABBING BEGIN As the sun rises the next day, so does the tension at the Motomaji camp. With Tribal Council looming that evening, everyone begins jockeying for positioning. We see several different shots of a couple people standing around whispering. We see Tom and Ethan discussing who they're gonna vote off. We see Clarence working on the flag for the new tribe. We see Tom and Lex discussing who they're gonna vote off. At the end of that conversation, Lex decides he is going to talk to the person they're voting off. He feels it's nobler to do this. We're then treated to sound bites from Kelly and Kim saying they don't like that decision and they're getting a little tired of Lex and his leadership. So, Lex searches out Clarence for the big talk. He tells Clarence that because of his strength, he is the biggest threat out there and that he is going to be the one to go. Clarence understands, but you can tell he's a little confused and pissed to be having this conversation. The next thing we see is Clarence talking to Big Tom basically saying he thought that Boran was going to stick together and get rid of Samburu before turning on each other. Tom wants to do that. He wants to vote off Brandon. At the same time we hear that because of the immunity challenge and the fact that Clarence honored his word and dropped out, Teresa will honor her word and not vote for Clarence. Kelly actually likes Clarence and would rather him stay around and vote Frank off, since he isn't part of the group anyway. TRIBAL COUNCIL #7 Tribal Council begins with the tribe telling Jeff what their new name is and what it means. Jeff asks Brandon if during the celebration of the new tribe did he get a different opinion of anyone. He actually said Frank. That Frank was laughing and joking and that was a side of Frank he hadn't seen at all. Next question goes to Tom. Is the game always in the back of your mind? He's quick to agree with that. Sure they had fun eating and celebrating and joking around, but that only lasts a few minutes and then you're back to thinking about the game. Next question goes to Teresa and Clarence. He wanted them to discuss the importance of immunity this time around. Teresa, of course, is part of the original Samburu tribe who are now outnumbered 6-4, so she was worried about getting the vote. Clarence isn't sure how well the alliance with Boran is holding up for him. Also, he said he could tell that Teresa wasn't going to quit. He could tell she was hurting real bad but that wouldn't stop her, and I think he gained a lot of respect for her during that challenge, and figured if she'd go for the "rock, paper, scissors" thing, he'd stand by the results. Time to vote. They show 3 of the votes as the voting is taking place. They show Clarence voting for Lex saying that he respects Lex's decision to tell him ahead of time about the vote, but he wasn't gonna sit back and let it be easy for Lex to make it to the finals. We see Teresa's vote, also for Lex, basically saying that she gave her word she wouldn't vote for Clarence and she was keeping her word. And they show Lex's vote for Clarence with the cliché "you're the biggest threat" comment. As it turns out, those 2 votes for Lex were the only 2 votes for Lex and Clarence took in all of the other 8 votes. Clarence is history. And now it's time for our Quote of the Week. As much as he's beginning to scare me with his obsession with the Survivor women, Tom is a walking sound bite. And he scores another quote of the week with this gem, which comes from the beginning of the show when discussing Lindsey being voted out, "Lindsey's gone and the other two, well they're nervous as a whore in church." Nice. Well kids, looks like that'll do it for this week's wrap-up. As you can see, we have a new chart to reflect the new Motomaji tribe. This will be the chart for the rest of my columns. Again, I've included # of votes against in parentheses. Also, I have all of the original Samburu highlighted red and the original Boran members highlighted yellow. Glad you could stop by again and check it out and you can be sure I'll be back next week with another. Until then, God bless.
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