Episode Name: Pulling Your Own Weight
Original Airdate: June 28, 2000
Here are the remaining contestants.
Tagi:
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| Sean - Doctor |
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| Kelly - River guide |
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| Rudy - Retired Navy Seal |
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| Richard - Corporate trainer |
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| Susan - Truck driver |
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| Dirk - Dairy farmer |
Pagong:
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| Gervase - Youth basketball coach |
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| Colleen - College student |
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| Gretchen - Teacher |
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| Greg - Recent Ivy League graduate |
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| Jenna - College student |
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| Joel - Health Club consultant |
Pagong's feeling their numbers decrease, and they're in a bit of a rut. Greg has an ear infection. Their camp is a disorderly mess. Gretchen's been down. Joel's noticing the lack of people, and it's sort of messing with him. Overall, the mood is not that great.
Tagi's seemingly doing pretty well, though. Problems lurk on the surface, however, in the form of Dirk and Sean. When they're not sitting around chatting, their sitting on the boat, fishing. Or as Kelly sees it, they go out to fish only to appear like they're actually contributing, and it's starting to irritate her. Rudy sees their efforts as "useless." And Susan, of course, does not mince words: she lets them know to their face that they're wasting time, and shouldn't spend time during the day fishing when they could be looking for salvageable food in the forest.
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| Sean and Dirk hard at work |
Jeff brings them news of the challenge tomorrow: it's a target practice, using three different weapons which three members per tribe must master in order to win. The weapons are a blowgun, a slingshot, and lastly, a spear. He also allows them to practice by providing the weapons for them.
Sean's apparently quite good using a blowgun, Richard a slingshot, and Susan a spear, which brings her to the happy thought that she may be able to defeat a guy on national television, providing Pagong chooses a male to toss their spear. On the other tribe, Jenna's got the blowgun on lock, Gretchen's decent with a slingshot, and while Joel's not overly good with the spear, he does better than the others.
Come the Reward challenge (the reward being food in the form of both fruit and chickens) starts out well for both tribes. It's only on the spear tossing round in which Pagong truly gets ahead, Joel manages a clean center shot, and while Susan puts up a valiant effort, she's not able to do as well, allowing Pagong a needed victory.
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| Joel's mastery of the spear toss |
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| Joel's spears (in yellow) - the winning shot near the center |
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| A portion of Pagong's reward |
Susan, on Tagi, is disappointed that she lost the challenge, but doesn't believe that the chickens were that big a deal. Richard catches an eel for the tribe to eat, almost as a replacement for the chicken, but it's close to completely inedible, and the meal is, for the most part, tossed aside.
Leadership is discussed on Pagong - Gretchen has long considered Greg the leader, but Greg wishes they didn't. He has no interest in being the leader, and would prefer spending time alone in the woods. Well, not always alone. Greg sleeps by himself out in the woods at night, away from the tribe, and recently, Colleen has been joining him, spurring conversations back at camp about the nature of their relationship. Jenna believes there's definitely something romantic going on, and while Colleen jokes that "it's all about sex" in a confessional, Greg affirms that their friendship is purely platonic.
Dirk and Sean have been helping out more around Tagi, but Susan believes it to be a bit late. The news of the Immunity challenge arrives - one member of each tribe must row a boat, and the rest must swim. The choices for each tribe for rower comes easily - Kelly is a commercial white river guide, and Gervase isn't overly competent in the water. Greg also breaks out in song, but it seems a common occurrence, and isn't commented on.
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| Greg singing a Disney-esque tune |
The challenge is a blow-out, to the dismay of Kelly. Gervase rows far quicker than does his female counterpart, and it's barely a competition. Kelly's unable to restrain her tears and Pagong happily doesn't have Tribal Council to attend.
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| Jeff talking to Gervase and Kelly before the challenge |
At Tribal Council, it's a moderately pedestrian affair. Kelly apologizes for her efforts at the challenge, Sean admits that he hasn't found his niche yet, and Dirk states that he cannot think himself into being more effective around camp than he already is. Amusingly, Richard is asked about intra-tribal alliances and their potential effects on voting, and he skirts the question, wisely so, stating that the whole tribe is the most important alliance, and the smaller ones don't detract from that.
With that, the voting begins. And of course, given Richard does have an alliance, the results aren't overly surprising.
Below are the results, with the individuals who voted each person in brackets:
Dirk: 4 [Kelly, Richard, Rudy, Susan]
Susan: 1 [Dirk]
Rudy: 1 [Sean]
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| Dirk being voted out |
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| Sean's reaction to the vote |
On Pagong, not that much in the way of strategizing has been going on.
Greg and Colleen's friendship is an interesting one. While I don't believe sex to be a component, it certainly does seem to be doing wonders for them. Colleen's just as happy as she's ever been, and Greg's literally bursting out into song. As I've said before, Greg's a bizarre character, and his actions here only further my belief in that. If you noticed, when he did begin singing, many began laughing, some slightly uncomfortably - from this, I don't think this is considered odd behavior anymore. It's simply Greg being Greg.
And apparently, he's seen as the leader, which is something I didn't expect. Gretchen herself sees him as a leader, and while Greg wishes he wasn't in that role, it seems that by now he has no choice but to stay in that role. And really, aside from Gretchen, no one else comes close. Gervase or Colleen, a leader? Laughable. Jenna? I barely remember who she is half the time, and we're down to 12 people already. And Joel? Ha ha ha.
But Greg can probably make a good leader, being urged on by Gretchen and assisted by Colleen. In fact, the three of them could make a good alliance. I don't know how close Jenna is to any of them, but I suspect Colleen could help pull her in.
It's all speculative, though, because one thing is very clear right now: Pagong doesn't do alliances. There's no Joel/Jenna/Gervase vs. Greg/Gretchen/Colleen - the idea would seem simply foreign to them. They've only been to Tribal Council twice, and neither time was a landslide - the closest was voting off B.B. and if you recall, Greg voted for Ramona, and not with the majority. So Pagong has no clear alliances, and right now, I don't even know if any are being discussed. If there were to be alliances, who would even propose the idea? Gretchen, a teacher, certainly wouldn't. Colleen's smart, but the picture-perfect definition of naive. Greg would rather spend time in the woods than scheming against his tribe.
I'd say Jenna is the most likely person. And I don't say that because we've seen anything so far that indicates such, I say that because I get the vibe from her that given a more cutthroat environment, like one provided in Tagi, she might be a bit of a mover and a shaker. I have no idea if she'd be good at that, but I do believe without a doubt she'd be better than almost any of her tribe mates, aside from maybe Joel.
And while on Joel, I wanted to say this: I know I've not given him much time in my analysis of episodes, but so far, Joel's been pretty much a non-entity. Oh, he did great in the Reward challenge today, but that was more luck it seemed than skill. Either way, he did help win it. But what's his plan in the game? What is he willing to do to get to the million dollars? I'm not entirely sure he has one. Could he be as foolish as Dirk and Sean? It's possible, but then again, in his environment, which is safe from the threat of alliances, strategic thinking like that, which would have helped Sean and Dirk, just doesn't seem necessary. What's Joel planning on doing? In short, we don't know. He has a good thing going, and for now, he seems pretty secure in his placement.
One last question to pose prior to moving onto Tagi - who would Pagong vote off if they went next to Tribal Council. Based on what we know now, that's a really hard question to answer. Greg did once vote for Jenna, but does he actually harbor any ill will toward her? Unlikely. Gervase, along with then-member Ramona, voted for Colleen, but does Gervase still want Colleen off? Very doubtful. So who would they vote for? Truth be told, I don't know. Obviously, anything could happen within the period of the upcoming episodes to switch things up, but for now, it seems that Pagong is quite a solid, unified tribe, and their two victories this episode will only allow them the momentum to keep this up.
Tagi, on the other hand, is a fractured tribe, thanks to Richard's alliance.
Voting off Dirk was a good way to go. Sean certainly seems to be stronger insofar as body mass in concerned, and it makes sense to keep him on. Though as Dirk and Sean were such good friends, and Dirk leaving bothered Sean greatly (just look at that last picture - Sean's never appeared more dejected), maybe Sean will realize that there's a game to be played, and there are things he could likely do to ensure his survival. Because right now, it's not looking too hot - there's a four-person alliance in a five-person tribe, and Sean's not in the alliance. Next time Tagi loses Immunity, unless Sean schemes something up, he's gone.
What's funniest about Sean's oblivious nature is just how out of tone he is with his tribe. Prior to Tribal Council, he stated that he believed Rudy was the most likely to go (when he voted for him, he gave the - gasp! - logical reason that come physical challenges, Rudy wouldn't be that useful), and yet Sean is the only person to vote for him. For a doctor, he certainly doesn't have his fingers on the pulse of his situation. Not even his friend Dirk voted with him, meaning that Dirk and Sean likely didn't even discuss who to vote for. So why does Sean think Rudy was the most likely to go? Well, Sean also thought a few episodes back that the seas were overfished, and that no fish was to be found, right before Richard brought back a bunch of them. What I mean to say is, for the most part, Sean's an idiot, and if he's voted out next, it's more a mercy for him than anything.
Richard's alliance, or the Tagi Four as I will from now on refer to them as, is doing very well for themselves. Dirk is their first victim, and given the way Pagong's playing, he may well be the first of many. Is Rudy officially in the Tagi Four? Well, he may as well be, as I don't see him turning on Kelly or Susan when someone like Sean is still around.
Obviously, Richard has this thing together. Rudy's loyal, Susan's smarter than you might expect, and Kelly, while the weak-link, isn't likely to run over to Sean and help him out. Sean's fate, provided they lose next the next Immunity challenge, seems sealed. There's not a whole lot he could really do by this point. His one ally is gone, and so even if he had come up with some strategy (though this is Sean, so it's not likely), he has no one to turn to.
Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh, because Sean seems like a nice guy, but I don't much care for him. He's oblivious to almost everything around camp. Sure, he's starting to help out more around camp, willing to do more work, but you see where that late-shift got Ramona. I don't overly like Sean. And I certainly didn't like Dirk. Susan sort of grates on me, but at least she has my respect, as does Rudy. Kelly and Richard are the only two Tagis which I actually like, though I admit, Kelly's arrogance can get a bit old. I also don't believe her overly loyal to the Tagi Four, but right now, it's the only choice she has.
Over on Pagong, we have a more likable bunch. I still don't understand Greg, but he's a fun character. Colleen's always of good value, as is Gretchen. Gervase is a mostly amusing guy. Joel and Jenna are sort of background characters right now, but there's still plenty of time to shine, especially for Joel, as he's probably one of the strongest competitors left.
On paper, Pagong appears a stronger tribe. But what they have in strength, they lack in strategic thought. It's not too late at all for them to come together and vote as a whole, but so far, we've seen no indication of that happening.
Hopefully they start to learn before it's too late.
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