Survivor: All Stars - Episode 11 Summary

'Worst.Summary.Ever.' By SherpaDave

While trying to figure out what the hell to say about one of the dullest episodes of Survivor ever, I went back through some of the old summaries, including one in which I begged Mark Burnett to jump the shark. And just as that was a god-awful summary of a god-awful episode, I’m afraid you’re in for more of the same. And do you know why? Because it has not been several episodes since Survivor officially jumped the shark. Or rather, bit it.

Seriously… has anything remotely of interest happened since Dicque took a mouthful of meat? I’m hard-pressed to think of an example. For me, all interest in the show pretty much ended the moment he got “bamboozled.” And now, here we are, several episodes later, having arrived at a point when “Survivor” not only has to compete with “Friends” for attention, but it’s not even the most interesting reality show on Thursday nights.

Let’s take a look at what we probably should have been watching instead of or immediately following “Survivor,” shall we? On FOX, the pen salesman finally met his end and epileptics everywhere are pining that Joe Cocker’s apparent heir will twitch no more. What? That was dancing? Sorry, my bad.

Following Survivor, we could have flipped over to NBC to learn that the best way to succeed in business is to a) not hire Omarosa, b) be a homophobic gossip-monger, c) not hire Omarosa, d) be the hot chick’s favorite instead of the old guy’s favorite, d) not hire Omarosa, or e) all of the above. Hmm. Perhaps I shouldn’t write this while taking care of my kids, since my five-year-old just saw “Omarosa” squiggly-red-underlined several times and proceeded to spell it aloud for me. I’m going to have to wash his mouth out with soap now.

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Unfortunately, one show that was not on was “Deep Sea Fishing with Richard Hatch.” I’d watch that. Frankly, I’d be all over watching him get drunk and trade scar stories with Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. You know that somewhere Peter Bentley is salivating at the thought of a sequel featuring a fat, naked, gay shark hunter.

Basically, what I’m saying is that “Survivor” ranked, at best, third out of the reality shows on the air on Thursday night. And I don’t get cable, so there’s a good chance there was a better episode of “Trading Spaces” or “Iron Chef” to punch up on most remotes.

So if you haven’t figured it out by now, this isn’t going to be a very linear summary. I didn’t take notes since my kids were all over me. I did tape the show, but I can’t bring myself to actually watch it again. And really, we’ve pretty much seen everything that happened on this episode at least once before. So let’s just go over what we can without incurring a migraine.

As Shakes so astutely pointed out, the show really ought to be titled “Boston Roblic.” Because the show is all Rob, all the time. And you gotta love the fact that he didn’t have to change his tattoo much for this season. Two extra words complete the inking: “I’m with.”

Which brings me to a point I want to make: how were “All-Stars” chosen? Clearly, it wasn’t based on intelligence. Amber is outsmarting the other players. Let me repeat that. Amber is outsmarting the other players. This is hopelessly confusing to me and begs the question whether this is really “reality” television. Are there really seventeen people stupider than Amber in the United States? I guess there must be. It would certainly explain our current administration.

I suppose I probably ought to say something about what actually happened in this particular episode. Well, it rained a lot at the beginning. Big surprise. We all knew things would be wet once Rob and Amber got back together. So everything before the first commercial break was about how awful the rain was. And I’ve already used up my quota of wet jokes.

This was followed by a reward/immunity challenge, which was almost a stroke of Burnett genius, because it makes the winner appear to be even more of a challenge threat than he really is. And we know, as stated above, that these people are stupid, so they’re almost all certainly now thinking, “Rob is a huge threat. He won the reward AND the immunity challenge.” Unfortunately, they’re all too frightened of him to do anything about that. Apparently, Mariano sounds a lot like Soprano. Remember how fearful Lex and Kathy were about voting Amber off? Pathetic.

So where was I before I started regressing into past episodes? Oh, yeah. The challenge. Obstacle course comprised of teams for reward of letters from home and then individual puzzle for the winning team members to vie for a video from home and immunity. I’d say who the winning reward team was, but it doesn’t matter because Rob “sacrificed” his video of his brother acting like an idiot so that everyone could get their letters from home and we could watch lots of weeping. Ugh.

Rob commented that his brother would be pissed and I’d have to agree: from what little we saw, it seemed fairly clear that his brother was attempting to use the opportunity to audition for a role as Johnny Fairplay’s wrestling sidekick. Ah, well. Isn’t it time for someone’s grandmother to die yet?

So then the scrambling begins to forestall the inevitable. And at this point, I’d like to relay a little story.

When I lived in Chicago, I used to go to Lincoln Park Zoo on a fairly regular basis. And there was something fascinating about the monkey house. Every time I walked in—this is no lie, EVERY time—at the exact moment I reached the end of the hall, which was right in front of the chimps, the biggest male chimp raced down the littlest female chimp. You’d think this might’ve been a daily habit or something, but I went at all different times of the day. I’m not sure what this means, exactly—maybe I’m drenched in chimpanzee pheromones?

Anyway… whenever big Papa Chimp caught Britney Chimp, he’d bend her over and bang her silly. It usually took about a minute and a half. When he finished, he went off and sat by himself while an older, fatter female chimp walked over to him and waved her butt in his face. The young female, by the way… well, I’m not going to go into what specifically she did except to say that she made it pretty clear she hadn’t enjoyed herself.

Why in the hell are you telling us this, Sherps? Because American men are like that Papa Chimp. And Kathy never freaking figured this out. Back when she and Boston Rob were negotiating one-on-one, she fell for his rap hook, line, and sinker, even though it should have been obvious that he was only interested in Bolt-on Sarah.

But did she learn? Nooooooooo. Here she is again, supposedly an all-star this time, and she’s fallen for his rap yet again, that he wants her to go with him to the end. And now she has the audacity to be upset that he engineered the voting off of her other ally? Silly Kathy. Papa Chimps like skinny girly chimps. Papa Chimps like Ambers.

So yeah… Kathy tries to get others to vote off Britney Chimp, but it just ain’t happening. And we knew it wouldn’t happen. And the only thing of the remotest interest in the rest of the show is the fact that Lex is now attempting to channel Sid Vicious from the jury.

And that’s about it, really. There’s only so much to say about an episode that was a foregone conclusion throughout and that used challenges we’ve already seen a half dozen times. My advice? There are only three episodes of “Friends” left. They’ll probably be a lot better than this.

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