Episode Recap: Cook Islands, Week 2

Episode: Dire Straights and Dead Weight Original Air Date: Thursday, September 21, 2006 This week's episode opens with the "Hiki" (Black) tribe. After four days without clean drinking water, the team is desperate to start a fire. They take turns striking their machete against their newly-acquired piece of flint over and over again until finally, after a lot of frustration, Sundra succeeds in starting a fire. I expected to see a victorious Tom-Hanks-in-Castaway kind of declaration, "I... HAVE MADE FIRE!" Instead, Sundra looks around and says, "Um guys, it's lit. What do we do now?" The team gets together and builds the fire bigger, enabling them to boil much-needed water. As they dance around the fire, part of the screen is blurred out directly behind Nate. Apparently, Nate is smiling at both ends, if you get my drift. And this guy isn't even a plumber. I would think that minimal behavior when on national television would be the ability to keep your britches up. Next, the "Aitu" (Latino) tribe. They've just speared a bunch of fish and crabs and are pretty full of themselves. "Latinos are just good workers," Ozzy says, "It's in our blood." They next decide to challenge themselves with catching a couple of the chickens, which are now running free on the island. It's odd, because they're free, but they never seem to stray too far from the castaways. It's like they're taunting the tribes, messing with their minds. Evil chickens. The tribe members devise a plan that involves setting some bait out, then dropping a net over any chicken that comes near it. It sounds so crazy it just might work. However, the planning stage of this brilliantly complicated plan takes a while as Ozzy and Christina disagree about how to execute it. This is completely understandable. You can't just go out and hang a chicken net all willy-nilly. I mean we're talking about outsmarting chickens, for Pete's sake - evil, jungle chickens. Eventually, they hang the net and trap a chicken. Shortly thereafter, Christina walks off into the Jungle, noticably upset. Ozzy provides some insight, "Christina and I don't get along, because one thing, she's a cop. And also just the fact that I'm ten years younger than her. And I understand. If I had a fourteen-year-old telling me what to do, I'd get a little [ticked] off myself." He goes on to add, "I feel like I've shown what I offer to the tribe, so I'm comfortable with my standing in the group." Ozzy doesn't get it. In this game, your teammates don't care if you're Crocodile Dundee. They don't care if you can make a fire just by looking at kindling, or that you can catch fish with your teeth. They don't care. If you annoy enough of your teammates, or worse, if you're so good you look like you might be a threat, your butt will get voted off the island. But for now, it seems like Christina is the only person annoyed by Ozzy. "Puka" (Asian) tribe. This tribe is also busy attempting to thwart the evil chicken menace. Yul is trying a slightly different approach from that of the Black team - he's placed bait under a crate propped up with a stick tied to the end of a long string. He manages to catch two chickens at once this way. At least now we know that if there is a Great Chicken Uprising, humans will be able to defeat them quite easily. Evidently turned on by Yul's mad chicken-trapping skills, Becky forms an alliance with him. To have an effective Survivor alliance, you really need at least four people. But that may not be the kind of "alliance" these two have in mind. "Raro" tribe (Team Whitebread). Jonathan comes back from Exile to find that no work has been done on the shelter since he's been gone. He and Jessica immediately start building a floor for the little shack. Adam seems irritated that he wasn't consulted on this decision, and complains that whether or not the shack should have a floor should have been put up to a vote. "I think this is the dumbest thing to be doing this," he gripes, then asks Jessica, "Why do you think you'll sleep better if it's raised than sleeping on the ground?" "Because it's cold and wet." "How will it being raised change that?" "Because we won't be on the cold, wet ground." Duh. After failing to get support for his position from either Candice or Parvati, Adam declares, "I just don't want to waste energy," like he's got so much else to do while he's on the island. How selfish of the other team members to disrupt Adam's busy schedule of tanning and gossiping with the girls by working on their shelter! The jerks. Back to the Latino tribe, Day 5. Everybody is busy spearing fish, gathering coconuts, and cooking food. Well, everybody except Billy the Heavy Metal guy. He mostly spends his time sitting around. I guess Ozzy hasn't given him the speech about hard work being in Latino people's blood. Billy describes his philosphy this way, "I've been trying to conserve my energy because A) I don't have a lot of energy to burn, and B) I think it's stupid to waste your energy on things you don't know anything about. Since they know more about spearing fish and getting coconuts and whatnot, I'll just let them burn the energy and I'll just go ahead and have some of whatever they catch." That's a brilliant Survivor strategy! Lay around while the rest of the castaways do all the work, then eat their food. Brilliant! There's no way anyone would vote you off the island if you do that. Meanwhile, at the Asian camp, Cao Boi is leaving one of those nasty red marks on yet another patient. This time Jenny has the headache and needs some of Cao Boi's Vietnamese mojo. She asks him not to leave a mark on her head like Brad got on the last episode, but winds up getting two. She's happy anyway. Dr. Cao Boi's headache therapy obviously works. It just seems like a violent way to get rid of a headache. Later that night, Cao Boi starts telling a bunch of Asian jokes to his team mates, who are not amused. Why doesn't he just volunteer to get voted off? The Latino tribe. As if he hasn't endeared himself enough to the rest of his team, Billy is snoring so loudly that no one else can sleep. Ozzy suggests to the rest of the group that they "throw" the next day's challenge so they can vote Billy off the island. JP is all for it, but Christina is dead-set against it. She thinks it's wrong and will make the tribe look bad. She decides Ozzy is not to be trusted. Morning of Day 6. The Latino tribe is still discussing losing the challenge on purpose. Ozzy keeps saying how Billy will hold them back. Hold them back how? By making the tribe lose a challenge? Isn't that what they're planning on doing anyway? There is no logic in Ozzy's argument. He and the others just don't like Billy (for good reason). Instead of pretending it's some sort of creative strategy, why not just say, "We're all tired of this guy. Let's lose him." Convoluted Challenge 2. All of the tribes are gathered at the challenge site. First, they must listen to Jeff tell the story of James Cook. Then, while tied together by rope, they must traverse an obstacle course, climb some scaffolding to retrieve several wooden planks with answers on them, then cross a rope bridge and proceed to a board with a list of questions on it and line the answers up with the board. If they are not %100 sure they can remember all of the details of the story Jeff told them, they can choose to stop and read the same story in a book that's been laid out for them. Of course, if they do that, they can lose valuable time. However, they must do this with only four members instead of five. One team member must sit out. Billy begs the rest of his team to let him sit out, but they choose Oscar instead. Hmm, how odd - they make the tall athletic guy sit out in favor of the fat lazy guy. Yes, odd indeed. The race starts and all the teams run straight past the book. All the teams except the Latino tribe who stop at the book and carefully read its contents. What a strange strategic decision. Between the four of them, they wouldn't be able to remember a few details from a simple story? Hmm... As the three other teams are climbing the scaffolding and retrieving their answer planks, the Latino team is just now starting the obstacle course. Yet, they don't seem to be in a hurry. I wonder why. Don't they see that the other teams are far ahead of them? The Asian and White tribes get their planks and run to the question board while the Black tribe has only a couple more planks to grab. The Latino tribe gets to the scaffolding and starts leisurely removing answer planks. The White and Asian tribes finish the challenge at the same time and the Black tribe crosses the rope bridge and makes it way to the answer board shortly thereafter, leaving the Latino tribe way behind. As Ozzy spies the other teams progress from his spot on the scaffolding where he is slowly untying an answer plank, it almost looks like he's smiling. Now why would he be doing that? As the Black tribe finishes answering the questions, the Latino tribe is just now crossing the rope bridge. Wait, is Ozzy purposely swinging the rope bridge to make his team members fall off? No, he couldn't be. Confirming his loser status to the world, Billy is the only tribe member to actually fall off the rope. The challenge is over, with the Asian and White tribes tying for first place and the Black tribe in third, or second, I guess. The two winning tribes win tarps to put over their shelters while all the tribes except for the Latino tribe win immunity. So thanks to Ozzy's clever strategy, not only will the Latino tribe be a man short, but they won't have those tarps either. The Latino tribe gets to choose who from the other tribes get exiled. They choose Yul from the Asian tribe. Once Yul gets to Exile Island, he follows the simple clue and promptly finds the immunity idol. When Jonathan came back from Exile Island, he told his team mates that he "looked everywhere" for the idol. I don't think he even really tried. Back to the Latino tribe. Billy concludes that it's "looking pretty bleak" for him. Thank you, Captain Obvious. But Billy plays it smart and approaches Christina, who hates Ozzy. Christina knows she's the next to go if Ozzy remains in control of the tribe. She approaches Cecilia who feels badly about throwing the race. Cecilia comes on board. This could be a huge upset. Throughout the episode, Ozzy and Oscar keep talking about how they can't "trust" Billy, without giving a reason why. Yet, they are the ones who threw the race. Tribal Council. It comes out that the team did indeed throw the challenge. There is some bickering back and forth and suddenly, out of nowhere, Billy reveals that he's in love with Candice from the White tribe. "Candice?" Jeff asks in disbelief, "from the Raro tribe?" "Yeah," Billy explains, "after the last challenge, we sorta mouthed the words 'I love you' to one another." Jeff tactfully asks Billy why Candice would be in love with him. This is a reasonable question. After all, most women do seem to have the odd habit of only falling in love with men to whom they've said at least two words. They can be picky that way. Billy responds, "It was just love at first sight, a rapport kind of thing." Then he concludes, "I'm dead serious." Billy is crazy, and not in the good way. Each member votes. The votes are read. Billy is the second castaway voted off the island. As the closing credits roll - footage of how each tribe member voted is shown. Everyone, even Christine voted for Billy. Maybe she and Cecilia were a little creeped out by his hallucinated love affair with Candice. Having a stalker on the island could get a little awkward. Next week - Parvati makes her moves on Adam. On a more serious note: When the Black team was trying to start a fire, there was once again talk about how the pressure was on for them to "prove" they can start a fire, since they're the African-American team. Last week, I thought this kind of talk was silly. After all, there are Black senators, brain surgeons, astro-physicists, writers, and Supreme Court Justices. I wondered why anyone would think that Black people need to prove they can paddle a boat or make a fire. But reflection on this has led to me to realize that this feeling didn't just come out from nowhere. Obviously, race relations in America still have a long way to go if the everyday experiences of at least some Black people move them to feel this way. Maybe racism is a bigger problem than most of us would like to admit. So, maybe this season's Survivor is a beneficial, thought-provoking, "social experiment" after all. ... nah.