Alright, one more time:

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So Ambuh got the million, Bahston Rob got Ambuh, Jerri got her wittle feelings hurt, Shii-Ann got a new car, Tom got an apology, Soozin got new tits, and Hatch got a Argentinian poolboy.

First, the overall event: It was a shame that once the game got down to the nitty gritty, the whole thing pretty much played out according to Hoyle. Everybody won what they needed to to ensure the most anticlimactic Showdown in the history of the show…

…made more so by Rob’s proposal. Trite, sure, but I admit I’m a sucker for stuff like that, and I have to give the guy props for getting permission from the parents that morning to pop the question and being forthwith about the fact on the show when asked.

Am I the only one who thinks that the application of makeup was all it took to turn Ambuh from Totally Hot Girl Next Door into Just Another East Coast Slut? Yeesh. Take twenty years off of her, she’s Jon-Benet Ramsey.

Jerri walking: Yes, the crowd was a little hard on her. But, c’mon. Save maybe for Hatch (who you’ll notice was also shouted down whenever he tried to turn the subject of conversation to himself), no other former Survivor has parlayed the Survivor experience into a greater extension of their fifteen minutes than Jerri Manthey. She was in NO position to say ANYTHING, and I hope someone was present to ensure the door hit her in the ass on the way out.

About the only upside to the whole proceedings was the announcement of the Viewer Vote for another million dollars, because this is our chance to give Rupert some financial props for being really one of the few truly entertaining elements in these last two Survivor series. So, if you haven’t already, get thee to this link and give Rupert your support. He’s the friendly fellow in the middle of the right-hand column who looks like Hagrid from the Harry Potter books.

It’s time for a special Thursday morning edition of the….

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I WAS gonna start this thing by offering up a shout out to my man Peter Sarrett, who has been trying to convince me for the last two weeks that Mogo Mogo is gonna get Pagonged, and that the champion of Survivor All-Stars is gonna come from Chapera. And I still will.

And, alas, he’ll be right if Mark Burnett is predictable and the merge does in fact happen next week. An immediate ejection for Boston Rob is about the only thing that could possibly stop it from happening, and even there I’m not so sure. I didn’t wanna see it before, but I do now. Lex has blown out all of his shielding. He’s first to go if the merge happens, unless Chapera concludes that they don’t want someone of Jerribitch’s questionable sanity on the jury.

And we know from the preview for next week that Probst does in fact collect gather everyone together and collect their Buffs. Could be to hand out the color for the new unified tribe. We’re down to ten, and that’s traditionally when that happens.

However, it could be to reshuffle players, too.

What should be the Greatest Survivor Ever is starting to get a little bit stagnant, and now would be a fine time for Burnett to swerve EVERYONE and do something wacky to the All-Stars. A postponement of the merge process, just for a couple weeks, could spice things up some, and not horribly affect the formation of the jury.

Thoughts?

It’s Friday morning, and that means it’s time for a….

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If last night’s show didn’t turn you on to Lex as the man in the best position to win it all (at the very least, among the Mogos), you just aren’t thinking. Sure, Jerribitch is annoying, but she’s incredibly expendable, too, especially with the Merge looming large. And Lex knew this was his best chance to pull a swerve that he would be able to get away with, because the only person left to exact revenge is Ethan, who still wears the target of Former Champion. Jerribitch, who KNOWS she is a target, has no choice but to trust Lex or be sent packing, and with Kathy snuggling up with the Chapera gang, the only people bothering to think on Shii-Ann’s behalf are Lex and Jerribitch, because Colby thought he had a sufficient majority already. And the Merge looks very likely to happen next week, so Lex’s gambit was timed perfectly. Just brilliant. Colby in an individual competition situation was an extremely dangerous man.

So, let’s look at Chapera. Big, big win for them, obviously, for emotional reasons as much as anything…it always helps to be the tribe who won the last Immunity going into the Merge. (I am assuming the Merge IS happening next week, even though with twelve remaining that would be somewhat early. The preview for next week’s show damn well looked like it was gonna, anyhow, with Probst calling for ambassador’s from each tribe to meet and such.) And taking Kathy The Human Swing Vote along with them on the reward meant that either Jerribitch or Colby was going home, a win-win either way. And Chapera seems to be a pretty unified team, once Tom stops a) drinking and b) dancing. Boston Rob pretty much runs things over here, and since he finally forms the beast with two backs with Amber next week, and as far as we know has something going on (though not in the same way, I hope) with Rupert, he has a voting bloc that can pretty much only be killed if the remaining Mogos gang up and nail him as a unit NEXT week. If a Mogo goes next week, and tribe lines stay solid (and Kathy integrates into Chapera), the rest of them will simply be plucked off one at a time.

But I think (I HOPE) Lex is smart enough not to let that happen. We’ll know next week.

(The following is a Survivor Update. Below is spoiler space for those among The Four Of You who haven’t seen the show yet and don’t want to have it ruined for you. You’ve been warned.)

(Man, I hope RSS doesn’t strip this out.)

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(There. We’ll see if that helps.)

Okay. I wanted to take a night to sleep on this to be sure that I’m ready to stand behind what I’m about to say. And it seems I am. So here goes:

Soozin Hawk is a fucking nutjob.

Over the course of two days, she took an brief encounter with Richard Hatch’s schwanz (and I’ll be the first to call it a wholly inappropriate one, but read on) and turned it into full-fledged, Grade-A, Holy-God-Do-I-Feel-Unclean sexual assault.

In her own words: CAHM AHHHHN. This is the same woman who handed Hatch the million dollars three and a half years ago by likening him to a snake. So why was she surprised when his snake raised it’s bulbous head? Did she all of a sudden not know it was a snake when she picked it up?

The lives of these two have been intertwined ever since that trip to Borneo, they have even engaged together in the ultimate act of reality-TV-celebrity-whoring: they’ve shared a box on Hollywood Squares. And now all of a sudden he’s a sexual predator. Sorry, I don’t buy it.

Oh, and this just in: SOOZIN, HE’S GAY.

She was weak, she was figuring out that being from The Original Game and keeping a high profile over these several years was a HUGE disadvantage, and she found a convenient out. She might try for the phat lawsuit, too. Not that I really care, Burnett’s got plenty of cheddar with which to shut up this Wisconsinite.

Alright, enough of her, let’s check the state of the tribes, now tied again at six heads apiece:

Chapera, says Amber, is the “happy tribe”. Well, ignorance is certainly bliss, I guess. Tom didn’t score himself any points with the ladies with his idiotic-and-only-slightly-less-faggy-than-Hatch’s-Fire-Dance Tribute To Soozin, and I suspect Alicia will be wagging her finger laterally in his face sooner rather than later. Rupert, God love him, has allied himself with Boston Rob, which means he’s next to go, and Jenna L. is doing a fine job of Gervasing, and while she won’t win, it may take her far into the game post-merge, so long as she stays off of the radar.

Over to the green side of the board: Lex “Oh, By The Way, I Can Fish Too” Van Den Berghe is still my favorite to win it all. Colby may perceive that as a threat, but he can’t afford to address it until after the merge. Right now, he needs to concern himself with Jerribitch, who, miracle of miracles, found someone even more void of original thought than Amber in Shii Ann, who is still reeling that The Holy Saint Richard The Great And Powerful Hatch was voted out of the game. (Another free Survivor hint for you budding applicants: NEVER WORSHIP YOUR OPPONENTS.) Ethan is still trying to find his place here; he would do well to broker some kind of agreement with Kathy, who holds an impressive number of cards as a swing vote right now.

So: “Another Twist” next week, followed by Jerribitch’s gaping maw. Bringing back an Outcast tribe would be in horrible taste, considering that fully 33% of the evictees up until this point have left by their own choosing. So what happens? Comments are welcome….

Ding, dong, the witch is dead. The original Survivor, Richard Hatch, has been voted out of Survivor All-Stars. And I can’t say I’m terribly surprised.

Hatch, while he made for great TV as a heel, reminded me of a baseball player from the 1930’s trying to play the game today: Survivor has changed so much over the course of – what, seven series now? – that his playing style, which might have been effective when everyone in the world was still trying to figure out what Survivor WAS, was just so out of touch with what the game has become that he simply didn’t have a hope in hell. Remember, he surfed into the initial million dollars on an alliance back when nobody knew what an alliance WAS. The game just doesn’t work like that anymore.

Interesting side-note. Of the four Sole Survivors who started this game, Ethan Zohn is the only one still remaining. And he seems to be in a pretty good situation right now, if he stays hooked up with Lex and Colby.

Also interesting: CBS has it screwed up on their website right now, they list Jerribitch as a member of Chapera, but I could swear that Mogo Mogo took her in the draft. CBS shows Jenna L. on Team Green, and that’s not right, because I remember a big to-do about Colby and Jerribitch being reunited.

Regarding Dick’s, well, um, dick, and it’s proximity to Soozin during that fateful part of the immunity challenge: if this is what she’s going to bitch vociferously to Probst about next week (no spoiler there, a pissed-off Soozin was screaming at Jeff about being humiliated in the promo for next week’s show), then I dun wanna hear it. She drives a truck, fer God’s sake, she hauls around concrete, she’s more man than Hatch is. He wants to expose his nutsack in a physical challenge? Grab him by it, and throw his dumb ass off of the rigging. I promise you he won’t try to do it again. Us guys learn early on in life never to show our balls to anyone in a position to kick them. You’d think Hatch would know better.

So, looking at the new teams, Chapera appears to be in real trouble, despite their genius of letting Boston Rob run the platforms when they figured out that he BY FAR was the best at it (Duh. Construction worker. High steel. You think he doesn’t have some balance skills?) He’s clearly in control there, since he’s doing Amber, who we already knew was incapable of original thought, and since Big Tom is quickly turning into a boorish drunk. Best thing that could happen to them is to run out of whisky. On top of that, Jenna and Rupert are fighting for their lives as outsiders – there just isn’t a cohesive unit anywhere in there, aside from Rob and Amber. Chapera blew their chance to break them up last week, and they’re gonna pay for it.

That said, I think the eventual champion is gonna come from Mogo Mogo. My money is still on Lex, but any of the Holy Triumverate of Lex, Ethan, and Colby could go the distance now that Hatch isn’t around to stir up the shit, and all three of them are too smart to trust Boston Rob any further than they can throw him.

So, play on…

My TiVo grabbed the first episode of Comedy Central’s foray into that excretable genre known as “reality television”, I’m With Busey last night. I just watched it now.

The concept is that this kid who claims to be a huge fan of Gary Busey’s writes to him to pitch the idea of this show. He can do that now ‘cuz he’s a comedy writer professionally. (Me, I’m keeping my amateur status for Athens.) And, probably because Busey thought it would be fun and a good opportunity to screw with everyone’s heads, he agrees to hang with this kid and let the cameras follow them around.

Now, if this kid were playing the part of a drooling fanboy, and doing his job, this could be a pretty funny show. Thing is, you can tell right off that he’s a better writer than he is an actor, and he’s NOT playing the part, he REALLY IS a drooling fanboy. And that’s more painful to watch than it is funny, because Busey spends his time generally abusing him. The two have no chemistry at all. The half hour didn’t end soon enough.

Clearly, me and my Tivo need to sit down and have a little talk.

Ho-lee-sheeit.

I’m watching The Anna Nicole Show on E! right now. This is the most amazing damn thing I’ve ever seen. This makes The Osbornes look like The Brady Bunch. I’m compelled to keep watching it. I can’t figure out if she’s baked, drunk, stoned, or just plain friggin’ stupid from scene to scene. She’s buying a new house, and the first thing she does in each house is make a beeline for the tub, hop in, and slide down to make sure that a) her fat ass fits in it and b) the tub nozzle hits her in the twat. Just amazing. It’s not good TV, but the fact that this silly bitch ACTUALLY EXISTS IN REAL LIFE just boggles me.