"Survivor: Gabon" - October 23, 2008 episode

At Fang, Ace looks for another ally to strengthen his position, and he makes an alliance with Matty, who also includes Ken in the foursome, though it was unclear to me whether Ken knew or agreed to be included. The tribe is dangerously low on rice, without enough to ration amongst the tribe until the merge. Ace tells Sugar that he thinks the rest of the people know she has the idol because they must have gone through her bag, so she gives the idol to him for safe-keeping. I didn't understand that move at all. OK, so they know you have the idol, but if you give it to Ace, aren't they still going to want to get you out, but now, you don't even have the protection of the idol? How is giving it to Ace going to make a difference if they already know you have it?

Things are going much better at Kota, where food is abundant, but even still, tribe mates notice that Dan is eating much more than his share of the food.

The reward challenge has each team carrying a 200 pound cloth snake, and they have to race around a track to catch the other team. Members can drop out, but that leaves the rest of the weight for the remaining team members to carry. They've done a similar challenge before, except the team members had sacks of weight that they'd have to transfer to others when they dropped out. The reward is a variety of different pastries as well as the ability to make fresh coffee and tea.

The two teams start out fairly evenly, but members of Fang tire quickly. They manage to pick it up a bit when Sugar, Ken and Kelly drop out, leaving Matty, Ace and Crystal, but they soon falter as well, and when Crystal drops out, Matty and Ace struggle with the weight of the snake all on their own. Kota is able to easily overtake them and win the challenge.

Usually, when there's a reward food win, Jeff tells the winning team to take their stuff back to their camp with them. In this case, he takes the tray of pastries and offers them to each member of Kota, who each take something and eat it right there, in front of Fang, devastating Fang even more. Pretty evil on Jeff's part!

Crystal is especially defeated and cries a bit that it's hard to lose all the time, and Randy mocks her, which I thought was pretty mean. Yeah, it would have been a nice morale booster for Fang, but in terms of doing them actual good, the prize wouldn't have helped that much. It was all sugar and caffeine, no protein at all, so they would have had the sugar and caffeine high and then the inevitable crash.

When Kota gets back to camp, they decide to ration the pastries then and there, so each person can eat their share whenever they want, and the division is implemented mostly because they don't want Dan to eat more than his share. Dan still wants to have a regular meal in addition to the pastry treats though, a thought not shared by his teammates.

After the challenge, Fang again sent Sugar to exile, but she's no longer enjoying her "Sugar Shack". She's hurt and crying and she's tired that she keeps getting sent away from the rest of her tribe and that she has fruit to eat while the others are starving. Well, at least they have one less person to feed for their next meal.

Back at Fang, Kelly and Ace have gone for a walk, and Kelly is bad-mouthing Crystal for crying. When Crystal catches up to them, Kelly greets her with "How'd you get here?", and Crystal calls her on her stupid remark. Ummm, it's not like you guys climbed a huge mountain or teleported anywhere - it's just a path - what do you mean "how did she get there?"

At Kota, things just keep getting better for the tribe when they catch a fairly large turtle and make turtle soup, providing them with even more protein. I was sad for the turtle, though.

For the immunity challenge, tethered pairs have to run through obstacles to retrieve flagpole pieces, with each subsequent pair having an extra obstacle to conquer and farther to run. Kota has a decent lead after the first two legs, but Fang's last pair of Matty and Ken do an amazing job with the obstacles, and with obstacles that others are climbing through, they are instead just climbing on top, which is easier and faster. The last two pairs get back pretty much at the same time, so it's a race to untie the pieces and put the flagpole together. Kota is doing a good job of using teamwork to make quick work of the flagpole while at Fang, Ace tries to take over and stubbornly tries to keep fitting one piece onto the flagpole base, ignoring the fact that there are many other pieces, one of which might actually fit. He puts Fang at a standstill, and Kota easily wins. This is the second week in a row where Ace has lost the immunity challenge for Fang.

And when Fang gets back to camp, Ace criticizes Kelly's performance! OK, she wasn't great, but the team had made up any setback she might have created since they were tied when they started putting the flagpole together. But it was Ace who completely screwed up the challenge by taking over and refusing to let anyone else help him. But I guess that doesn't count. Ken wants Ace out, and he tries to talk various people into it, including Sugar, who then tells Ken that she gave the idol to Ace, which Ken can't believe. Sugar then later tells Ace that she's taken back the idol.

In the end, though, it's Kelly who is voted out after a very contentious tribal council discussion. I can't believe she didn't out Ace by saying at tribal that he had compared Crystal to GC, which might have turned Crystal's vote, and her outrage might have turned others' vote as well. I did laugh when they showed the vote, and they had to blur what I presume is the finger that Crystal gave to Kelly when she put in her vote.

In the grand scheme of things, it was probably smarter to vote out Kelly since she's weaker in the team, but Crystal is right in that even though they have Ace, they haven't won an immunity challenge since he's been there.

Next week should be a good episode, when both teams have to vote someone off, and machinations abound. It sounds like Sugar isn't quite as much in Ace's pocket as Ace thinks, but we'll see if that actually plays out. I would like Ace out of there - he's too arrogant and too much of an ass.