Survivor: A Tribe Divided Cannot Stand

Dummy.

Well, that was exciting, wasn't it? If we were really honest with ourselves, we could all admit that this season of Survivor had, until last night, been something of a snooze-fest. I mean, Foa Foa just kept losing, girls just kept getting voted off, and Probst kept being snide about people's failures while pretending to be sympathetic. There were few twists and/or turns, no watercooler moments, nothing buzzy but the bugs. Perhaps sensing this creeping tedium, at Day 18 or so, the producers threw their ace card in the pot and called a merge. A merge! Oh how exciting! Two tribes become one, dynamics shift, empires rise and fall. Or, you know, the weaker tribe just gets picked off one by one and that's that. Luckily, that's not what we got last night.

Because last week's "Scenes from the next..." totally gave it away, we knew the merge was coming. But it was still thrilling to watch the two teams, bedraggled and weary, wander down the beach towards one another, knowing that something big was happening. And it was of course the biggest thing, that Foa Foa had fallen far enough and would be absorbed into fattened Galu. The Foa Foa camp was torn down and abandoned, the earth salted so nothing else may ever grow in that accursed place. The Survivor music swelled and, just like that, the whole game was changed.

Once the pandemonium of a celebratory meal (with alcohol!) had died down, relief and excitement gave way to tension and scheming. Because there was a clear-cut path in mind, Galu swiftly working through the ranks of Foa Foa then turning cannibal on each other, the Foa'ers had to scramble extra hard to try and save their skinny, malnourished necks. And scramble hard they did. Russell went into immediate bulldog mode and basically knocked over wicked Laura as he tried to sway her to his cause. But she held firm and steely and kindly reminded old Russ that, um, he doesn't have the upper-hand in any way shape or form, so he ought to maybe play nice. Russell's eyes turned a fiery, confused blue and you could see it right there. He lost the game right there. Though he got a stay of execution last night, I don't think he's long for this camp. He's just not nearly as smart as he thinks he is and, as it turns out, he really cracks under pressure.

The dumbest thing he did was show Laura the immunity idol. Why on the first round of the big poker championship a player would decide to just wave his hand around saying "Look, look! Look what I've got!" is pretty beyond me. Again with that whole Russell not actually being so smart thing. Laura, naturally, ran and blabbed the whole thing to her friends, and in about ten minutes everyone's suspicions were confirmed. Russell had an immunity idol, and now it was up to them to get rid of it. So they hatched a neat little plan, to make Russ think that he was getting voted out so he'd play the idol. Haha, joke would be on him, and then they'd kill him and dump him in a quarry next week when he's unprotected. It was a surefire plan. The only person who could potentially botch it was Erik, who had machinations of his own whirring away.

See, Erik wanted to remain firm in his Shambo and The Boys (great band name) alliance, so aimed to get rid of Monica or Jaison. Confident with his be-immunity'd status, Erik swung his, erm, idol around the camp like he just didn't care. He thought he was running the show, and for a second there so did I. But a lot of the campers didn't take too kindly to his bossiness, and so their true final solution began to form. They'd still get Russ to play the idol, but then, instead of some helpless other, they'd pounce on and devour Erik. Man, Galu turned on each other quicker than a box of Samoa cookies get eaten at my house. It went at breakneck speed, this sudden dissolving of Galu's tribal lines. Sad. But also fascinating.

So when Tribal came, of course Russell was successfully hoodwinked into playing his idol for no reason. Oops! Now it's gone and he has no bargaining chips left, so I think he's out next week. And then came the swift brutal axe for Erik. All the Galu girls voted for him, naturally. As did the Foa Foa kids. And so did Brett. That fink! That turncoat! That adorable, huggable traitor. Oh, Bretty. I can't stay mad at you. But seriously, that was surprising. Erik looked flabbergasted—thunderstruck and speechless. I kinda was too. A player I thought might win the whole damn thing was devoured by merciless island people a whole 12 spots short of the million. What a disappointment.

And now we have all these weird new shaky alliances. Obviously the Galu boys will have to do some scrambling of their own now that their leader has been killed. I predict that some dynamics will shift and the three remaining Foa kids, realizing suddenly that they might not just be cannon fodder, will end up siding against the Monica/Laura/Kelly trifecta of evil and we'll watch those griping girls get picked off. Which means... oh boy... I think Shambo might end up falling ass backwards into like a fourth place finish on this. Just by sheer virtue of being such a shambling shambles, Shambo might pull this one out and keep slipping through cracks until someone finally says "Hey, wait a minute! What the heck is she still doing here?" I don't think it's strategy on her part, but wouldn't it be amazing if it were? It would be on Cerie levels of awesomeness. But, again, I don't think it is. I think it's just dumb luck. Let's see if anyone notices.

That's that! Erik, victim of another "blindside", as Probst so loves to call it. The Foa Foa kids did a nice job of insinuating themselves into the new group, though I guess it wasn't that difficult as apparently Galu was a lot weaker than we'd thought. What will happen next?? I mean, it felt like the game really started last night. It's on. The pistol's been fired. Cue music.

Uhhhoowweeeahhhh Uhhowweeeahhhh...