Victim of a party-line vote: Jeff
After several revotes, Jeff went down 5-4 in a party-line vote against Colby, because of his controversial past. In his concession speech, Jeff blamed the loss on a loose-tongued tribemate who had let on about Jeff having a vote against him in a previous Tribal Council — and would thus lose the tiebreaker in any 5-5 vote. Those are the rules of the game.
Did Ogakor really need a hot tip to spot Jeff? The guy had pizzazz, but he practically has "has enemies" tattooed on his forehead. Anyway, he didn't poll well with viewers — he never had a kind word to say about anybody, not even Colby — though he did eke out a "Waaaa" upon seeing the cowboy up close — and he's clearly a little creepy.
"I thought we were going to lather them up," he remarked after hearing the Ogakor girls would not be joining them for dinner, "and go pick 'em flowers."
Why Kucha settled on Colby is another question. Seems Jerri or Tina would have been a better bet. Maybe once Keith, the guy with the hangdog look and the big bull's-eye on his shirt, was off the market after standing on a pole in the Immunity Challenge for 10 hours and 18 minutes (Tina gave it to him), Kucha's braintrust just got confused.
In Week 7, CBS took two distinct tribes of five contestants each, and put them in a blender with some hormones. It kicked into gear with a nice first act of a Shakespearean comedy — a mixer, mischievously billed by Jeff Probst's winged messengers as male-female, but quite the opposite. It's tricky — I didn't get all the wording down — but Keith and Colby ended up paying surprise court to Nick and Jeff instead, and the ravenous ladies of Ogakor were visited not by pond-rinsed shirtless men but Alicia and Elisabeth. Everyone was properly disoriented. Jerri made tortillas.
The funny part was when Keith had taken the matches with him, and you could tell Jerri really wanted to lay into him — but she had to bite her lip so that the Kuchas wouldn't find out how much of a loser he was. Keith, of course, ended up admitting it by standing on that darn pole like there was a million dollars riding on it (which, of course, there was). When that didn't work he begged Tina to get her butt off for the good of the team, and she did it.
The pole stand is a "Survivor" classic — remember Richard's curt surrender last year because he knew he had Rudy in his pocket? — and CBS risked a little by wheeling it out so early in the season, before there's enough subplots to last the audience 10 hours. (The network was kind enough to speed it up.) The role of Plucky Little Girl was played by Elisabeth, who was clearly not going to be targeted in the Baramundi Ten's first vote as a tribe, yet for some reason felt the need to stand shivering on that pole until tears streamed down her face.
There's a lot of Oscar buzz around her performance, though.
But that's all behind the nation now. Now there are nine, and there is a slender majority. Colby, Keith, Tina, Jerri and Amber remain from the Ogakor tribe, and you know those Ogakors always vote together. Nick, Alicia, Elisabeth and Rodger, goes the logic, will now be powerless to stop their own expulsion, week by week and one by one. (It's on Wednesday next week, by the way.)
That's how this stage is supposed to go — party-line votes all the way for four more weeks. Of course, there is the possibility of a surprise — the immunity challenge is a big wild card, and there's always the possibility of bipartisan centrist coalitions springing up willy-nilly, like what's going on half a world away on the reality TV game show called the Senate.
But this one certainly gets better ratings.