When we left our little show, Jonathan had just taken a powder in order to avoid having his leg turn green, fall off, and be auctioned for the benefit of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Airai was on a winning streak, Ozzy was demonstrating (over and over) that he wasn’t actually capable of carrying Malakal to challenge victory singlehandedly, and Kathy’s belfry was lousy with bats. Baby bats, maybe, but definitely capable of some high-level flap-flap-flapping if the situation were just right.

Ozzy’s appeal to treating chickens as renewable resources in the opening scene would make a lot more sense to me if he would at least acknowledge that Tracy’s entire argument was based on the fact that the chickens didn’t lay any eggs that day at all. It seems logical to me that egg production would slow, once the contestants were doing the feeding, and there would come a time to just eat the chickens. And I would note that Ozzy isn’t exactly the Chicken Management Wunderkind anyway, since I was helpfully informed after last week’s “oyster shells” discussion that the chickens are indeed supposed to have the oyster shell bits; they’re in there for a reason, they’re good for the chickens, and picking them out is not only tedious, but actually counterproductive. So there, smarty-mouth. Chickens love oyster shells! Whatever, I grew up in the suburbs; I only learned just recently that chickens start out with feathers. (I AM KIDDING.) Furthermore, Tracy is 100 percent right that Ozzy’s actual reason for not wanting to eat the chickens right now is that he wants to eat them later when there are fewer people to share with. No way that isn’t true.

I’m very disappointed, though, to see Tracy getting all depressed and apparently giving up. She’s right that Ozzy is bossing the tribe around, but that’s sort of his personality, and she’s going to have to roll with it if she wants to keep going. She seems to have gone directly from “I can’t let myself get discouraged” to “I am discouraged.” It’s like Lance Armstrong going on TV and advertising green rubber bracelets that stand for ennui.

I’m kind of mad that they took Jonathan out of the credits. They should have had a shot of The Leg. Just The Leg, oozing and swelling and taunting you with its infected goodness. “AH AM THE LEG! OOZE OOZE!” And the credits would say “THE LEG.” How great would that be? I’d rather look at that than Parvati.

Over at chicken-free Airai, James is pissed off that the ladies are complaining about the quality of the accommodations, but I’m not sure that’s what they’re doing. They’re just venting about the rain, but it’s like James interprets it as an attack on his ability to provide shelter. He’s like the worst grandma ever, thinking your stomach flu is a judgment on the quality of dinner. Of course, the big news is that Kathy’s last few mental Tic-Tacs are rattling around in the box pretty loudly at this point. I like the fact that, technically speaking, she mentions her washer and dryer before she mentions her family, when she talks about thinking of home. I have a feeling these people smell really bad, because it’s like, “I miss Tide…soap…loofahs…Stick-Ups…Glade scented candles…oh, and my husband.”

Meanwhile, at Malakal, Erik is in love with Ozzy. This is as close as the show has ever come to acknowledging a big boy-on-boy crush of this kind. As annoyed as I’ve been with Cirie this season, her comparison of this relationship to parts of The Lion King was dead-on. And now, as we know, Ozzy must be trampled by wildebeests and then appear as a floating head to address Erik at tribal council from beyond the grave. All of a sudden, I’m kind of looking forward to things a little more.

Boat-Moving-Gate! It’s not clear to me whether Cirie really protested going out by the reef or just giggled about being scared, but it’s true that whether somebody who’s afraid of the water should be coming on this show or not, you don’t get somebody in a boat and then, without their consent, row them out to where they’re uncomfortable. Like I said, it’s hard to tell whether she really said “no,” but if she did, then certainly, Ozzy should have stuck to what she agreed to, because he’s not authorized to engage in wuss-napping just to prove a point to a wuss. My sense is that Ozzy is so wrapped up in his little dynamic with Amanda, and so happy about the total lack of macho energy that would even try to compete with him, that he’s not understanding that he’s beginning to alienate people he’s been aligned with up to this point — like Cirie. And I don’t think he has any clue that Ami is looking for a chance to oust him. Ami’s been kind of inscrutable this season, and I like it. She’s hard to read, and she’s keeping quiet. It was interesting to see Cirie accusing Ozzy of being “about numero uno,” because on the one hand: duh, it’s a numero uno kind of world, but I don’t think she was talking about gameplay. I think she was talking about camp life, in which he doesn’t really care about anybody but himself, and he sort of expects everybody to fall in line when he gives the order. I mean, whom among his tribemates has Ozzy shown any willingness to listen to on anything? I’ll wait. You think about it. Maybe he’s taking advice from the chickens.

Reward challenge! Okay, I’ll be the one to say it: what’s up with using huge rocks as currency, Micronesians? Isn’t the entire point of currency to be a way to demonstrate value that’s convenient to use? Like, why would you exchange a goat for One Giant, Spine-Bending Round Stone if you just just buy a goat for, like, two chickens? Without convenience, I’m not sure why currency would exist at all, or why you wouldn’t just represent the value of stuff with the actual stuff. Unless those huge round stones have intrinsic value, you’re just using them to stand for actual wealth that exists elsewhere, aren’t you? Maybe it’s an anti-theft measure. I admit that it would make robbery less convenient. (”Stick ‘em up! I’m taking everything you’ve got! Okay, now…you stand there, while I roll this down the…actually, could you help me get this to my car?”) The best thing about this challenge was definitely Cirie’s inability to internalize the idea that her left was everyone else’s right, and vice-versa. She started out really snotty, barking at them for allegedly turning the wrong way, and then at the end, she was turning herself around, like Joey from Friends going Into The Map, just so she could tell them how to turn. In other news, Eliza has become her tribe’s challenge go-to girl, continuing her March To Mystifying Awesomeness. I seriously do not know what happened with Eliza this season, but she’s much less irritating, much more self-possessed, much less whiny, and much more likable than before.

How ripped off do you think production felt when Ozzy and Amanda won a reward shower together and all they did was concentrate on removing an inch of grime from themselves? With Ami standing right there? That was not sexy. That was like a hygiene film. Actually about hygiene. How To Wash For Young Men And Ladies. La-la-la-la…”Amanda and Oscar are both careful to remove the crust from the backs of their necks before joining their friends for dinner. Careful, Amanda, you missed a spot! Ho-ho-ho!” La-la-la-la…

Aaaaand then the rain comes for Kathy. Well, the rain comes for everyone, but it mostly comes for Kathy. (Flap flap, rattle rattle.) I feel like there’s more to this than we saw, because it just looks like, “I’m really tired from the rain, and I miss my family.” She’s the first person I can remember who didn’t even claim physical injury or anything, she just thought it was…too hard, in all the ways you’d totally know about before you came. Yeah, you get rained on. Yeah, you get wet and cold and uncomfortable. Yeah, you’re away from your family. But this is the game, you know? I don’t really get it.

The whole “I can’t feel my family” thing seemed dumb to me, too, like a rehearsed line to explain what she was doing. (Besides, isn’t the real question whether she can feel her washer and dryer?) Because…”I can’t feel my family”? They haven’t gone missing; you’re not breaking some psychic connection with them by remaining in the game instead of sitting around in Loserville with Joel trying to teach him how to play Hungry Hungry Hippos without eating all the marbles. When she talked about trying to send psychic vibes to her daughter and feeling like she didn’t hear anything back, she was thinking, “So I knew I had to leave!” whereas I was thinking, “So you know you’re not schizophrenic!” I mean, when people aren’t there, and you try to talk to them? You’re not supposed to hear anything back. That’s good news!

Also interesting? Jeff Probst doesn’t seem the least bit offended at Kathy leaving; it was more like, “Whatever.” I don’t know if he didn’t hassle her because she’s a nutter, or because she’s already a weakling, or because she’s not adding anything to the game, or because this is going to save them a double-boot later, but it’s awfully suspicious that with past quitters, he did everything short of running their flaming underpants up a flagpole, and with Kathy, it’s like, “Good call! Can I carry your moldy bag to the boat?” He actually said to her, “You’ve certainly given it your best!” When Osten told Probst that he was afraid his lungs were going to fill up with blood, Jeff was like, “Well, if you can live with walking away from your dick, which I will now put on this post and walk it around tribal council while singing ‘I Enjoy Being A Girl,’ then I wish you well, I GUESS.”

I think Alexis puts it best when she says, essentially: “ANYWAAAAAY.”

Cirie trash-talks Ozzy to Amanda, who pretends to be receptive. And Ami shows up, and they all discuss Erik’s overwhelming love of Ozzy and how barfy it is. Watch out, Ozzy! And Mrs. Erik Ozzy, too.

Immunity challenge. Jeff explains about Kathy leaving, and while people are surprised, it’s more of a “so that’s the particular item that the puppy chewed on this week” kind of surprise, rather than the “wait, there’s a gorilla on the Empire State Building?” kind of surprise. Oh, and guess who rocked the immunity challenge — Eliza. This is almost becoming monotonous. You know what this reminds me of? Duke point guards. During my early years as a Duke fan, they had a series of great point guards who were basically never big factors in the NBA, because they weren’t great individual stars, but in terms of contributing to a team, they were absolutely amazing. Eliza is just like that — I don’t expect to see her win a lot of individual immunity challenges, but this season, she seems to really elevate the performance of the team in almost every challenge. She’s been put in a pivotal role in almost every one, and if Ozzy had been central to as many challenge victories as Eliza has, you’d see Jeff falling all over himself to talk about it a LOT. So Airai wins immunity again, and if my math is right, without the medical and crazypants evacuations, Airai would be about to be up eight members to five, in the middle of one of the more emphatic pre-merge drubbings in history. BUT MALAKAL HAS OZZY! Right, right.

Obviously, Ozzy wants to keep Erik, who worships the ground he walks on. I wonder if anyone will catch on to his potential conflict of interest! Ami thinks that Tracy will be more useful for her to work with, and…unless she wants to transform herself into a barnacle on Ozzy’s ass, I think Ami is quite correct there. So Ami, of course, comes up with a version of Cirie’s (and, in fairness, Guatemala Brian’s before that) 3-2-1 vote. She tells Tracy that she’ll tell Cirie and Amanda that she and Tracy are going with them to vote out Erik, but actually, she, Tracy, and Erik will vote out Ozzy while Ozzy votes for Tracy. Okay, this…doesn’t really make sense, entirely. Why is Ozzy going to vote for Tracy if nobody else is? Is Amanda supposed to lie to Ozzy that she’s voting for Tracy? Is Amanda going to do that? I’m not sure this plan is fully cooked, although…it’s close.

Erik, of course, is too chicken for this plan, at heart, because he’s afraid that if he gets caught, then he’ll be “so done.” Like he’s not so done anyway? Who of these people is going to keep Erik after this week if they’re not going to take out Ozzy now? Interestingly, Erik does seem willing to vote out Ozzy, if it can be accomplished. Tracy appeals to Cirie, trying to get her to vote out Ozzy, which I didn’t think was the plan. What’s going on? Why isn’t Tracy telling her to vote out Erik? Ami tells Cirie and Amanda she’ll vote for Erik, so that seems to be the current plan. It does make me want to hurl, watching Amanda talk about how, if she votes in a way Ozzy won’t like, she can “kiss [their] relationship goodbye.” Aw, that’s so sweet. A relationship based on mutual willingness to act in the game to benefit Ozzy. Stronger than oak, that.

It seems at this point like the choices for booting are Ozzy and Erik, sort of.

Tribal council. Tracy, asks who’s leading, cites Ozzy, and he sort of laughs indulgently, all, “Ho-ho-ho, you silly girl.” Is he…denying it? I mean, at least swallow the responsibility if you’ve been chewing on the glory, Fisherman Fred. Hilariously, everyone else on the tribe makes “Whuh?” faces as Ozzy insists he’s not any kind of leader. I don’t think this is the most convincing argument Ozzy has going for him, I have to tell you. And indeed, the rest of the tribe basically says, “YEAH you are.” Even though Erik tries to say it nicely, because he still hopes he and Ozzy can hold hands on the way back to camp.

And then, after all the scheming and interesting plans and thoughtful mathematical vote-counting, it’s a boring vote-out of Tracy, following the same “Kathy, Chet, and Tracy are the punching bags” story that was established in the first week. I mean, Tracy did a great job staying around longer than it seemed like she might, but aside from the Mikey B/Joel boots that kind of shook things up, we’re really just yawning our way through the Pagonging of the weak. So does this mean Amanda wouldn’t vote for Erik? Because Ozzy wouldn’t like it? Does it mean Erik wouldn’t vote for Ozzy?

Just as I thought might be the case, I seriously lost interest in this season when people like Jonathan and Yau-Man were bounced, Cirie started acting snotty, and the whole thing turned into some kind of Ozzy-Amanda make-out party. They’ve left entire contestants almost entirely unexplored (I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get as deeply into the game with absolutely no airtime as has happened with Alexis and Natalie) in favor of spending absurd amounts of time on the same people (Cirie and Ozzy, mostly).

And how lucky is this awful, awful Malakal tribe? Only down by one person, after losing three immunity challenges in a row.

Next time: My guess is that nothing interesting is going to happen. Just a wild shot in the dark, is all.