Billy Garcia the second castaway voted off 'Survivor: Cook Islands'

The latest example that being considered lazy during Survivor's early days can prove fatal -- especially if you also follow it up with a last-minute proclamation that also makes you look delusional -- Billy Garcia, a 36-year-old heavy metal guitarist who currently resides in New York, NY, became the second Survivor: Cook Islands castaway to be eliminated from the game.


Last night's broadcast of Survivor: Cook Islands' second episode began with the African-American Manihiki tribe, despite having received firemaking flint at the Night 3 Tribal Council session in which they voted off Sekou Bunch, still struggling to make their first fire. While creating sparks was no longer a problem, Nathan Gonzalez -- the tribe's sole remaining male member -- was unable to get the sparks to ignite any of the kindling materials the tribe had gathered. Finally, after a dejected Nathan stopped to take a break, Rebecca Borman was able to spark a small flame that Stephannie Favor was able to cradle into a full-blown fire.

Needless to say, the tribe was excited to finally be able to boil some drinking water. "Ah, ha ha ha... we got fire... ha, ha... we got fire... whoopee!," Nathan, in a scene that invoked memories of Tom Hanks' Castaway film, excitedly shouted as he jumped around and celebrated the tribe's accomplishment. "The fire was started by Rebecca and the girls -- I knew they were all going to step up and be like the tough sisters and that's what they've done, I'm so happy," Nathan later commented to the cameras.

Over at Puka Puka, Yul Kwon -- who despite the premiere episode's inference that Rarotonga member Jonathan Penner had unintentionally poached Puka Puka's sole chicken, somehow ended up catching two free roaming chickens for his tribe -- established a nascent alliance with Becky Lee, the other Korean member of the Asian-American tribe. "Yul seems sort of like an older brother to me," Becky explained to the cameras.

Meanwhile, over at Aitutaki, Cristina Coria, a police officer who nearly lost her arm after getting shot in the line of duty, began to clash with Oscar "Ozzy" Lusth, who despite previously the cameras that he had no interest in becoming the tribe's leader, had begun to take charge of all of the tribe's activities and micro-manage everyone's efforts.


"A lot of the ideas that she has are coming from somebody who's not done a lot of camping, who's not been in the outdoors a lot, so it doesn't make any sense to me," Ozzy lamented during a confessional. "Cristina and I, we don't click very well."

As far as Cristina was concerned, the feeling was mutual. "Ozzy feels like he knows everything -- and he probably done -- but every idea has to be his idea, so he is getting under my skin a little bit," Cristina acknowledged during her own confessional.

But despite the growing tension between Cristina and Oscar, Day 4's biggest clash came at Rarotonga, where after returning from Exile Island and discovering the tribe had done little to improve the camp while he was gone, Jonathan's attempt to convince the tribe to improve their shelter was openly questioned by Adam Gentry. "I think it's the dumbest thing to be doing that... it's crazy... I just don't want to waste energy on something," Adam, who seemed more interested in spending his non-challenge time canoodling with fellow tribe member Candice Woodcock, shouted at Jonathan.

Finally, after losing a tribal vote in which Parvati Shallow admitted that, like Jonathan and Jessica Smith, she was in favor of building a more comfortable shelter, Adam agreed to help improve the shelter. "You gotta be careful... don't make him the enemy or it'll be rough," Candice whispered to Adam after the heated discussion ended.

By Day 5, Aitutaki had begun to grow weary of Billy's poor work ethic and ongoing attempts to avoid any camp chores -- behavior that Billy, a self-admitted huge Survivor fan, shockingly admitted was an intentional part of his game strategy. "I think it's stupid to just waste your time doing something you don't know anything about so since they know more about spearing fish and getting coconuts and what not, I just let them burn the energy and I just go ahead and have some of whatever they catch," Billy explained during a confessional.


Unsurprisingly, the rest of his tribe wasn't happy about Billy's freeloading ways. "This is really difficult if everyone is not pulling their weight," Ozzy vented to his fellow tribe members. "It gets tiring having to tell someone what to do all the time."

By Night 5, Ozzy, completely frustrated by Billy's behavior, openly suggested that the tribe intentionally lose the next Immunity Challenge and vote Billy off. While J.P. Calderon was immediately in favor of the idea and later admitted he had already begun to privately entertain similar thoughts on his own, both Cristina and Cecilia Mansilla initially had doubts about the soundness of intentionally losing a challenge in a game in which entering the tribal merge with more members than your competitors has historically been crucial.

By Day 6, Cristina seemed to be the only holdout against the idea. "You've got to get your head in this game if you want to stay in it longer because he'll take you out," J.P. urged Cristina. "I think we're booting someone that's going to be detrimental to us in the short run and the long run," Ozzy added. "Billy's just dead weight -- at this point it's just the second Tribal Council so we might as well just cut our losses now and get on with the game," Ozzy explained as the tribe departed for their Day 6 challenge.

After assembling for the challenge -- a competition that required the tribes to tie themselves together, remember a short story about Captain James Cook, navigate through an obstacle course and retrieve seven "answer plaques," and then use the plaques to answer five questions about the story -- Survivor host Jeff Probst explained that the competition would be a joint Immunity/Reward Challenge in which the first three finishers would win immunity and the first place tribe would receive a reward of two large tarps.

Despite Billy's vocal attempts to convince the rest of his tribe members to let him be the Aitutaki member to sit out the challenge, the tribe decided to force Billy to participate and J.P. sat out instead. From the beginning, Aitutaki made it extremely clear that they had no intention of winning the challenge. While the rest of the tribes immediately began navigating through the obstacle course, Ozzy -- having tied himself into the rope chain's lead position -- immediately decided to have his tribe spend crucial time reading a book that contained a written copy of the same short story that Jeff had just read aloud to all the tribes.


With Aitutaki deciding to turn the challenge into what Jeff later described as "a holiday," the challenge quickly turned into the three-way race in which Puka Puka and Rarotonga were neck-and-neck for first place and Manihiki remained comfortably ahead of Aitutaki. In the end, after initially declaring that Puka Puka had edged Rarotonga and been the first team to successfully answer all five questions, Jeff declared that, upon closer examination of the recorded video, both tribes had finished the challenge at the exact same time, resulting in a tie. Since both tribes tied for first place, Puka Puka and Rarotonga each received two tarps. Meanwhile, with Manihiki about to win third place and Aitutaki still well short of finishing the challenge, Ozzy appeared to take one final shot at Billy by intentionally shaking the rope bridge that the tribe was still crossing in a way that caused Billy to fall off the bridge and into the water below.

As the challenge's losing tribe, Aitutaki decided to send Yul to Exile Island. For reasons that weren't made clear, Billy ended up being the one to announce the tribe's decision. "We're going to send Yul, he's the biggest member over there so we're trying to weaken them up there," Billy told Jeff. After Billy revealed the tribe's decision and Yul began to gather his things, Candice -- still tied to the rest of her Rarotonga tribemates and standing on her tribal mat in a position that put her directly next to Billy -- offered her sympathy to the losing tribe.

"I feel really bad for you guys," Candice, after tapping her own elbow against his own to get his attention, told Billy as Parvati Shallow also looked on. "I'm next," Billy -- clearly realizing that his tribe had intentionally thrown the challenge and he would be the castaway voted out at the evening's Tribal Council session, replied. "[Well] we love you," Candice responded sympathetically. "I love you," Billy -- suddenly with a huge grin on his face -- offered back as Candice and Parvati smiled silently.

After arriving on Exile Island, Yul quickly found the coveted hidden Immunity Idol. After realizing that the first "use the mast and an island to form a letter" clue meant that he had to wander to a part of the island in which one of the northern islands was visible through the tilted mast (forming an "A"), Yul used the second "block out the south island and you're doing better" clue to narrow down the number of locations that would also fulfill the first clue. Then, using his machete, he dug into the sand until he found a box containing the old compass being used as this season's hidden Immunity Idol.

Meanwhile, back at Aitutaki, Cristina, feeling that Ozzy's foolish decision to intentionally throw the challenge meant he could no longer be trusted, approached Cecilia about allying with Billy and instead voting Ozzy out. Realizing that convincing Cristina to turn on Ozzy was his only hope to remain in the game, Billy fed Cristina's paranoia. "Once I'm gone, you're on the block... I just hope they don't throw another challenge to get rid of you," Billy told Cristina.


At Tribal Council, Billy shocked everyone by playing one final card -- the love card. "My prize isn't even the million dollars, my prize was that I fell in love in this game, love at first sight. Her name is Candice," Billy -- in a moment the shocked both Jeff and the rest of Billy's Aitutaki tribemates -- announced to everyone.

"After the last challenge, we sort of mouthed the words 'I love you' to each other, so that was my prize, my prize was her," Billy continued as Jeff sat speechless. During further prodding from Jeff, Billy insisted he was absolutely sincere and "dead serious" that Candice felt the same way and the two were "in love at first sight."

Billy's delusional comments appeared to kill any chance that Cristina might decide to keep him in the game and suddenly made Ozzy, by comparison, appear much more trustworthy. "I feel very leery for Billy," Cristina commented after Billy's shocking proclamation.

In the end, Cristina and Cecilia both joined Ozzy and J.P. in casting their votes for Billy, resulting in Billy unanimously becoming the second castaway to be voted out of Survivor: Cook Islands.