Last week’s episode ended on a cliff-hanger: Hein and Lorette in a tie-breaker at tribal council. Hein stood with his eyes shut and seemed to wait for ages after Lorette acted, before himself signalling. Her estimated 30 seconds had actually been 26; but Hein's was nearly 48 seconds.
Advertisement
As you'll see in my interview piece on Hein, what actually happened is really controversial. Did he, as some believe, actually fall asleep briefly? Or did he deliberately lose this challenge to save Lorette? She herself is convinced he did just that: "I'll believe it the rest of my life".
And Amanda, who looked sincerely tearful to see him go, is of the same opinion, and thinks this was an admirable thing to do. Dyke said to Mandla, in Zulu, "It looked like he was sleeping.”
Angie’s smirking again
Hein's departure was met by yet another smirk from Angie, who is clearly relishing the role of resident bitch/ villainess and her scornful sneers are unwholesome to watch.
She sees nothing admirable in sacrificing oneself in any way for someone else. She's so ruthless; it must represent a complete congenital absence of ruth. Several times she made it clear that she has no intention of keeping any promises or agreements she made and will decide everything purely on the basis of her own best benefit.
That may, indeed, be a wise policy for succeeding in such a game, but is it wise to boast of doing so?
Grant appeared almost disappointed at the loss of the subject of his best sarcastic comments. Angela appeared to babble constantly and vapidly as to make Amanda resemble a mute.
The reward challenge was for a day at a spa and a chance to promote Radox products. Yet it’s one of the most interesting challenges, as they were asked to nominate others in a range of categories, scoring if they matched the group consensus.
The best and the worst
Who smells the worst? Mandla. Who's the most difficult to sleep next to? Dyke. The most untrustworthy? Dyke again, and he cheerfully voted for himself.
Cleverly, though he lost points at the start by apparently voting truthfully, he soon realised that he's received more negative votes and could score better by voting for himself, too.
Who talks the most? Amanda scored even higher than Angela. Who's the biggest charmer? Again, Dyke won by voting for himself. The biggest whinger? Amanda (but Lorette had a problem, as she didn't understand the meaning of whinge).
So, though the prize was trivial, Dyke wons again, and chose to take Amanda with him to enjoy the spa treatments.
Apparently this was the first time he had ever had a professional massage, and when clean-shaven again, he looked astonishingly young and rather odd, maybe because his face revealed that he has indeed lost weight.
Dyke may have become disarmingly charming, but has shown such consistent dominance in winning challenges, that the whole group now wants to get him out as soon as he loses an immunity challenge - otherwise they may never get another chance.
Bondage and fetishism again
The immunity challenge involved the whole tribe. Wrists shackled to a leather waist belt, wrestling to push each other out of a ring on the sand. Did anyone else noticed an intriguing touch of bondage and fetishism in some of the challenges?
Anyhow, Dyke was the obvious target and got eliminated. It’s not surprising that Mandla was in the last two and eventually won - but somewhat surprisingly Angie was the runner-up. She's not just a nasty mouth!
Grant was thrilled. He didn't care who won, so long as it wasn't Dyke so he could then engineer the departure of his main rival. He calmly told Dyke: "You're just too good".
Dyke suggested he needed to watch for a girl/guy split. Angie continued to strut around, cold-blooded, a sabre-toothed peacock, flinging her nose in the air as Amanda clumsily spilt the food.
At tribal council Dyke, inevitably, got voted out - though there's one vote for Angie and two for Grant. As they leave, Mark pointedly reminded them that in this game "nothing is ever cast in stone". Is this a hint that some significant twist is coming?
(Professor M.A. Simpson, aka CyberShrink, October 2007)
Bookmark with:
What are social bookmarks?