By now, you should all be convinced that Survivor: Guatemala is the most difficult reality show ever attempted. Forget the bug eaters on Fear Factor, the Survivor players are suffering from dehydration, painful open sores, 120 degree heat, swollen ankles, boob grabbing challenges and death by chocolate rewards.
Down to eleven players split between the two tribes, the Reward Challenge offers a dizzying and ditzy ring around the maypole contest. The tribes are required to spin like whirling dervishes as they wrap four members together in sheets of fabric, then try to unspool just as quickly. The 30 feet of material proves too much for Nakum who panic and fall down in a heap. Steph and Lydia are wrapped up in bondage and Yaxha wins in a walk.
Reward for Yaxha is a zip line tour of the jungle canopy and a enough chocolate to make the hot and dehydrated team very sick. The glider tour is at a local park and it looked like they had a blast gliding through the jungle like Tarzan. At the end, they tucked into bowls and bowls of chocolate, cakes, cherries, and strawberries and large glasses of milk. Later, in honor of Danni's birthday, Yaxha invites Nakum over for a pool party, but Jamie and Cindy are huffy about hanging out with people they're trying to get rid of. Judd is all for it and Steph says "Hell, yeah, I'll go in your pool and eat your chocolate." (No unintended double meaning there.)
All play nice-nice together until Jamie the party-pooper insists they all leave to go back and chop wood or something. This pisses off Steph who starts whining that Jamie is gonna get his. And what's with that flabby white body of his? Everyone else is getting tan and buff and he seems to be gaining more weight than Big Hurley on Lost.
Left to himself in the pool, Bobby Jon contemplates the open festering sores on his shoulders and snaps his jaws at tiny minnows in the water. Oh, those private moments when people forget they're on camera. Meanwhile, Amy taunts Gary again about his NFL past while he continues to out-lie and out-wit the dimwits on his team.
Immunity challenge arrives and it's another puzzle challenge. Hey, some things on survivor never change. Tribe members race to dig up 12 large, heavy pieces - seriously, they looked like slabs of flagstone - and haul them back to the starting line where two other players put them together to form a giant Mayan Sundial. Nakum wins immunity and Yaxha gets to pick another sacrificial victim for the torch-snuffing ceremony.
Losing tribe Yaxha begin the ritual of back-stabbing as Amy and Danni hunker in the jungle and feel sorry for themselves. Amy thinks she'll be voted off because of her ankle injury while Danni knows damn well she is the weakest physically. But then Danni tosses Bobby Jon's name out there and Amy pounces on the idea like Judd on a banana. Why hadn't she thought of that! Brilliant. Only one more vote and second chancer Bobby Jon is gone.
Danni approaches Brandon with the scheme and he talks of Bobby Jon as being "less deserving" of winning since he had his chance on Survivor Palau. After all, how many chances should a guy get to win a million dollars? This is the part when fans yell at the TV screen, "You idiots! If you only knew Gary is an ex-pro athlete who's lived the millionaire life since the mid 80's and he's been lying to you all along, you'd vote him off in a minute!" Who's less deserving, the ex-Dallas Cowboy or the waiter from Alabama?
At tribal council Brandon says quietly that long-term alliances are important to him (he's known Bobby Jon all of 17 days!) but he also has issues with people being "deserving" (that word again!) and Bobby Jon suddenly shows alarm. Could his team members be thinking of voting him off? In the end, though, it's Amy who's deemed the weakest link and gets the official fire snuff from Jeff.
Next week, the two tribes merge as one... yes, Jamie and Judd and Bobby Jon together ... chest-bumping, testosterone-crazed, Alpha males out-shouting each other in the jungles of Guatemala.
