Survivor: Exile Island – Survivor Live Recap, Episode 9

Of course, the booted player this week was social worker Sally Schumann. I could say she looks yummy, but I’ll never be able to out-drool Dalton this week. Sally tells us Shane wore the tee-shirt-as-a-skirt for several days. He wasn’t great at remembering to cross his legs. Too much information!

Let’s start off this article with another trivia question. I don’t have anything on knee socks and I used the “double-immunity” thing last week, so let’s settle on what is, regrettably, most likely the most memorable event of the week. Yeah, I’m going there – I mean Shane’s crotch rot! The question is: Although Shane has made a serious bid, who suffered the most famous case of you-know-what in Survivor history? As usual, the answer will be near the bottom of this article.

Dalton has CBS tape of the pre-show roundtable predictions played. He had picked Sally to win. He had called her sweet, with a killer smile, but ready to be devious when she might have to be. He now thinks she didn’t have much chance to be devious. She agrees, but being down in numbers limited what she could do. She saw the voting out statements on Survivor: Insider, and primarily they seemed to like her. Well, maybe not Danielle.

Dalton asks Sally if she saw any opportunities to get inside the former-Casaya group. She says she tried to get the women into a girl’s alliance, but without any success. She thinks the Casaya women were afraid to anger potential jurists Shane and Aras. That’s silly, how do they expect to win the million without voting them out? Sally adds that she didn’t feel much like a part of the La Mina tribe boys club and was never formally allied with them.

Michele from LA asks if Sally asked Terry for immunity. No. She thought she would be offered it if Terry won the immunity challenge, and tells us she’s not usually that congratulatory toward winners when she herself has lost. Terry brought up the idea of possible immunity sharing at tribal council to try and shake up the others – to no avail.

Brian wonders why he didn’t loan her the idol to parade it around camp and threaten them with an Aras boot.

Sally thinks Terry felt he needed to keep it to give to offer to someone like Danielle to buy votes for later in the game. She recognizes that Terry had to play his own game.

Brian wonders if you can steal the idol. Dalton relates that Probst told him the biggest mistake you can do is to ask if you’re allowed to do something. If you ask, then Production has to give you a ruling and it might not be what you want to hear. If you just DO something, it will probably be allowed to stand.

The first caller is young Will from PA. It’s OK he called, this is not a school day. He asks Sally how she felt when Terry said he had the idol. She thought maybe he did have it, but was upset that she had earlier wasted so much effort digging up Exile Island looking for it.

Dalton notes that we didn’t see her much on Exile Island. Sally said, “It was good. It was either go there or go home.” It was rainy at times but she had a good sleep. There was one tree all the wildlife huddled under, and she was with them. However, for the first time she could smell herself the next morning. Yes, it looks like this is “rude body things” week. Dalton says that even at that, she did better than he did.

The next caller from Chicago asks what Sally did to prepare for Survivor. She jokes that she didn’t stand out in the rain. She did exercise a bit and tried to put on a little weight. She admits that’s nothing much, so I’m guessing she didn’t bulk up too significantly. She was excited to just go there and “be herself.”

Dalton runs the clip of Sally and Terry discussing strategy. Prospects were pretty grim. Terry did a good job of threatening the Casayas regarding when he would use the hidden idol. Since the Casayas didn’t seem to fully believe he really had it, the impact of Terry’s threats was lessened.

Sally worked on getting Courtney onto her side because she thought Courtney was the easiest to read. Also, Sally felt Courtney might be on the outside since she argued with Shane a lot, and she also thinks Courtney was closer to flipping than the Danielle ever was. Brian is sure Courtney was not close to either Shane or Aras. Sally thinks Courtney knew she had a better chance in the later challenges going up against her comparatively inept alliance-mates.

I think there are very few true bonds among the six. After all the dirt hits the fan and the final betrayals unfold, it’s possible they might not be six life-long friends. But they stayed true to the greater goal of making it deep into the end game, and one of the key rules of Survivor is that anybody who improves your lot in the game is a potential ally, without concern of their character flaws. Too many games have been lost because someone chose friendship over game play.

The Casayas didn’t seem worried about the playing of the hidden idol because they were quite willing to lose Aras, who was seen as the biggest threat after Terry. I’m not sure who’s beating Terry in a challenge if it’s not Aras, but that’s the kind of fuzzy thinking that rules Casaya.