How could her tribemates not love this face?

By Kerri Fleming

In a season that was supposed to focus on the battle of the sexes, this episode of Survivor turned into a battle of the ages, pitting Life Experienced Nina against Young and Supple Kat (or Kitty Kat, as some of her teammates have been nauseatingly referring to her). I think I can speak for both 20-somethings and 50-somethings everywhere and say that neither of these women are indicative of any age group, no matter what they might think, but we're all about stereotypes here on Survivor, so let's have at it.

This episode started where the last one left off - the girls returning to camp after a surprisingly heated Tribal Council, considering nobody actually got voted off. Christina tried to make amends with Alicia after their blowout, and Alicia is gracious to a T to Christina's face while doing her best snarky high school girl impersonation to the camera. Why does she need to be buddies with Christina? She's got her five-girl alliance! And an enviable skill at dropping non-sequiturs, stopping in the middle of her Christina rant to opine: "Nina looks like a big bag of rocks and I don't even know what that means." (Foreshadowing!) That makes you and everyone else in the world, Alicia.

The next day, tree mail arrives and with it comes the weirdest reward challenge ever. Each team gets a box with some knotted rope. The first team to untie the knots and free a keyring gets to keep a tarp for their shelter. But for some reason, the whole thing was happening at the campsite with NO JEFF. He better have had an awesome explanation, like a sale on cargo pants at LL Bean or an appointment to get his dimples cleaned (side note: when I did a Google search for that photo, I discovered that Jeff Probst's dimples actually have their own Facebook page. I am not too proud to tell you I spent five minutes looking for their Twitter feed).

Anyway. Bill does a decent job at getting his Probst on while reading the clues, etc., dropping the host's catchphrases and even his tone of voice. But the challenge itself, featuring the world's largest version of those keychains I used to make in elementary school, somewhat lacked from the snarky comments. LET THIS NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

The boys win the challenge again, further disappointing the girls because "nobody remembers second place," says Sabrina. Too true, especially when it's the second out of two teams. Luckily, the girls did get a consolation prize in the form of a 200-something-pound leach named Colton. Congrats, ladies, it's a boy! Uncomfortable with the manly men at his own camp (or possibly just intimidated by the existence of not one but two Tarzan impersonators), Colton klings to the girls. He even eschews helping to build and maintain his own shelter but then weaves fronds for the girls' shelter. Despite the manual labor, the novelty of having a clingy baby brother has worn off and the girls - first politely, then more firmly - tell Colton to vamoose.

Colton drudges back to his own tribe, but then something wonderful happens. Tarzan does an interpretive song and dance around the campfire, and the pure magic of the moment - the body hair, the tighty whities, the mustache - brings Colton closer to his group. Namely, the other guys on the outside of the Pec Pack alliance: Troyzan (blarg, worst name ever), Jonas, Leif and Tarzan. He shows them his immunity idol. He goes from being the pest to being the Big Man on Campus, King (or in his words, Queen) of the strangest collection of misfits ever to join forces on a reality show since Erwin and Godwin befriended David and Mary on Amazing Race 10.

Two things you need to know about the immunity challenge: 1) The girls really need to learn to strategize with their smart players (i.e. Monica) and 2) Kat likes to jump in the water. A lot. Even when she doesn't need to. The teams basically had to stand in a line on a balance beam, with each person crossing past their teammates to the other side without falling in. With Leif in charge, the guys got the hang real quick. Leif crossed, then Colton, Jonas, Bill and Jay. Meanwhile, Kat fell in. And again. Then she jumped. Or something. By the time Monica took control and figured out how to do it, the boys had all but finished, sending the girls to Tribal yet again.

There were many things to blame the loss on. Kat went with anatomy. Nina went with lack of communication. Eventually everyone agreed that Kat was the problem. "I'm sad for women," said Sabrina, speaking more for her team in general than the specific challenge. The gender appreciates the sentiment.

There was much scrambling back at camp by Nina, who went after Kat's ditziness to anyone who would listen. "She's a dumb blonde!" "Survivor is outwit, outplay, outlast, but we're witless!" Evidently, quality insults is not something they teach you in the police academy. Which means we were all lied to.

Nina makes some headway with some of the more reasonable people on her tribe, but nobody's going to bust up a five-person alliance this early, so we know where this is going to end. Nina's not going down without a fight though, and at Tribal Council, it takes her about eight seconds to call out Kat for her lack of "life experience." Ugh. Here's where you lose me. "Life experience" is the argument of the old and useless. If your life experience is useful, tell us that: "I always make fire with one hand and untie a knot with the other while standing on a balance beam - we do it all the time in the force!" Now THAT'S a life experience. If you use the phrase life experience, your experience is useless. Being old is NOT a skill in and of itself (and I realize Nina is not old, but she was making the argument that young=bad so here we go). 

In addition, being young is NOT necessarily a detriment. And three of the younger women in the main alliance (Sabrina, Chelsea and Kim) seem to have good heads on their shoulders. (And while I don't think Alicia's stupid, I also think she may be insane, which is a different blog post entirely.) And there are so many things to make fun of Kat about without getting all ageist on us! She's vacant, she has no idea what she's doing almost all hours of the day, she looks like she's still wearing eyeliner after six days on an island. 

Anyway, the vote goes the way everyone knew the vote was going to go. We all can say good-bye to Nina and begin to immediately forget about her existence until the reunion finale, when we all say, "Wait, which one was Nina?"Ah yes, the bag of rocks.