Episode 12: Umbrage is a Dish Best Served at Room Temperature

If I could graph my level of excitement during this episode, it would look like this:

I am numb. Disgusted. Disappointed. Enraged. Flummoxed. Perhaps a little gaseous. Absolutely gLambertenous...

...but overall stultified. I can't think straight now. Coach has been sent packing at precisely the wrong moment, upsetting the balance of the universe, robbing us of our expected karmic satisfaction, sending us to a finale fraught with boring, undeserving contestants with no yang. 

You can't kick the man when he's down and expect to feel good about it! You have to allow him to believe he's in absolute control, a brilliant strategist, an invincible dragonslayer...

And THEN you pummel him.

Instead, what was promising to potentially be one of the most fascinating endings to a Survivor season has now been reduced to: ...remember when Vecepia won Survivor Marquesas? No?

Exactly.

Well, let's at least reminisce the good times while they fleetingly remain in our happy places...

From the start of this second-to-last episode, it's a friggin' monster truck powerhouse: Coach schemes with King JT and Prince Steven, seemingly gaining a modicum of humility while keeping the option of his uncontested (in his mind) supreme greatness alive. "I'm like the lamb that was led to the slaughterhouse," he says, "but Steven and JT saved me!" This in response to JT/Steven's disclosure that Debbie was the one who voted for Coach. 

JT and Coach in happier times

He actually realizes that for the first time:

1. he's not in control
2. he's speechless
3. he's scared to go to exile sand dune
4. he's not invincible
5. ball sweat attracts Brazilian fruit gnats

True, these are enlightenments that each of us have had come to Jesuses with at one time or another in our lives - but each is a first for Coach. On top of all this, his asthma is acting up, his back aches, he's got some ingrown pubes aggravating his pre-Survivor boyzilian wax, and his future rests solely in the combined hands of JT and Steven. He pleads for his survival, and the men unequivocally grant him their promises. 

However, his one immediate wish is not to be sent off to exile sand dune - because he's not sure he can make it...(maybe if it was a few weeks down the Amazon with nothing but a pen knife and a few stalks of lemongrass...but please, not exile sand dune!)

At the reward challenge - the single worst reward challenge in the history of reward challenges - JT blazes to a ridiculously fast victory. In literally about 2 minutes. How long did it take CBS to build that Survivor maze, level the ground, raze the vegetation, construct the contraptions, and then test it all out...only to have it over in less time than it takes Shirl to toss out another raucous barb at Dwayne and Rerun? 

Of course, in the ultimate of gloriously anticipated ironies, JT quickly selects Coach to be exiled, and Coach literally starts freaking out - spewing nonsense, proclaiming he's taking a "monastic approach" to the exile, basking in his promise not to eat or drink...

And of course, EriNn can't contain her exuberance at his predicament, babbling her own venomous nonsense and fully empowering Coach's wish to be a martyr...

Coach flits off to exile sand dune

But now Coach is in his element - at one with nature - fully invested in experiencing his own enlightenment - committed in every way, shape and form to reaching a higher ground. "It will make me a man...I'm already a man...it will make me more of a man!"

Even more man...the "highest" ground

Meanwhile at the reward, JT and his boyfriend Steven are living it up in the lap of boyzilian paradise. They're shocked when they catch themselves in the mirror, aghast at the their hair and beards, but letting it loose in the shower...

"OH! OH YEAAAAAAH!' OOOOOOOOH!!!" JT grunts from the shower...

Meanwhile, Coach is barely hanging on in the exact polar opposite environment: no luxury, no roof over his head, no churnin' the foreskin butter. When he finally gets to return in time for the immunity challenge, all he can barely muster up enough strength to say is, "it was friggin' awesome, man!" 

Jeff gives him props, and Coach elaborates with effort, "No water, no food, no sleep, no fire...it was perfect, exactly what I needed."

And as Jeff begins to explain the rules of the challenge, the camera picks up Coach leaning over to Steven and softly pleading, "Can I get some water?!?!?!"

Coach quenches his thirst

It's a challenge of stamina, and Coach is 100% convinced his wilderness enlightenment was the perfect precursor to a sure win. And as contestants drop out one by one, it's actually looking like my dream is coming to fruition: a final four that includes Coach. How could it not? EriNn: out. Taj: out. Steven: out. And JT isn't looking so good. Coach, meanwhile, looks like he's barely interested enough to even pay attention to the task at hand - there's too much introspection going on to worry about the physical realm. 

He's got it in the bag...and all will be well with our world. 

But then Taj. Friggin' Taj has to say the one thing to cripple him beyond repair, "Coach - don't hurt your back any more than it already is!"

Ugh! Seed of betrayal firmly planted in Coach's mind, he immediately crumbles into a worthless, quivering heap of back spasms and acrid failure. God damnit!

And there it is: at his nadir, his most self aware moment in the game, perhaps his most vulnerable and helpless point in his entire life...and Steven chooses it to tip the scales Coach's way and boot him off (after a stupendous poetic recitation by Coach, perfectly capturing a final moment of yang).

Unnecessary. Uncalled for. Unctuous-inducing. 

I take umbrage, Steven, you friggin' bastard. Here, sitting in my living room, thousands of miles and months removed from a pitiful reality TV show in which I vicariously live my Thursday nights in, I take f-in umbrage.

Man, I really need that hiatus between seasons more than I thought...

My required reading this summer

But life must go on...as it did after the Ropers left Three's Company. As it did after Diane left Cheers. As it did after Ted McGinley replaced (insert actor name here) on (insert cheesy Aaron Spelling production here). And as it will in Survivor Tocantins as well.

Coach - we hardly knew ye. Not that we really wanted to, or that anyone on the planet should expose themselves to your ego at any point now or in the future. But you were good for the show. And for that, I thank you.

Until next week when I can extract my enjoyment from Coach's final speech on the jury...

...a pissed off, but broken-hearted PB