Day 25: It's the day after TC at Camp Hot Water and Brandon's in it. Gruel and glares are on the menu for breakfast. Nobody but Lex trusts Brandon anymore.

Ethan, resident jock and America's paranoid heartthrob: Brandon has no loyalty to anyone but Lex. He just screwed over his own friends. I don't trust him. Trust is a big issue here. We live on trust and sometimes beans." (Rumors persist about Ethan's hospitalization for a charisma-ectomy prior to his Survivor appearance.)

Lex: My gut trusts Brandon and I trust my gut. Brandon saved our ass at tribal counsel. Those guys are delusional. That psycho downer Frank has been messing with people's heads. (Imagine a lunatic on acid spinning his arms like a whirligig and that's Lex.)

KimP: I used to trust Brandon but now I feel, sob, the agonizing pain of a 24 day friendship shattered.

Brandon, the great strategist, is as welcome around camp as a turd in a punch bowl.

The Survivors prepare for a hike to the waterhole and Tom complains about the women.

Tom: It doesn't matter where you are or where you're going, you've always got to wait on the women. . Frank agrees. (Just added sexist to homophobic and racist as epitaphs suitable for Tom.)

While at the water hole, Tom shuffles in a manner suggesting that Frank has slipped a frog down his shorts. Ethan picks up a rock, filling me with hope, but it is dashed when he throws it at some nuts in a tree. (Tom is still on the ground.) Women with sponges bathe Tom's bulbous head in water. Everyone chatters and washes at this very social occasion. Brandon sits alone.

Brandon and Frank won't be in the same alliance due to the one thing they can agree on, mutual loathing.

Lex: Frank tried to form an alliance with me but I refused. Now, Frank is behaving like a boorish jerk and ruining my Africa head trip. (Has he threatened to cut off anyone's ##### head? What a heel!)

MamaKim: The flies here are almost as abrasive as Frank. They make me scratch myself like a baboon. A very old, decrepit and slow baboon.

Ethan: Tom has a neck boil and I can't stop looking at it. We're waiting for it to morph into a third eye or maybe an extra brain. It's hypnotizing and way better than TV! (Yeah, especially now. We're watching you watch a boil. Sad. And you know what they say about a watched boil never pops.)

Suddenly, twangy fiddle music starts up and everybody gathers round the boil to touch it and offer it sacrifices. Yee, haw. Tom pulls something long and snaky-looking from his nose. Lex cuts off its head. (But is it something important? No, only Tom's brain.)

Brandon on Tom's boil: The women take turns squeezing it to beat the amount of pus obtained from his last boil. Roughly a shot glass full. (The boil is more popular than Brandon on the latest CBS poll.)

Tom: Women, some things you want them to touch and they won't. Other things you don't want them to touch and they can't keep their hands off. This boil is growing into a horn as a physical manifestation of how horny I am. If the next immunity challenge is humping Jiffy Pop or oozing large quantities of pus from a boil, I'm a cinch to win.

Tom's boil: I deliberately chose the most mentally challenged Survivor to ally myself with. I've convinced Tom that he and Frank can have an antler dance once I've fully grown into a horn.

Ethan retrieves the tree mail for the reward challenge of dinner and a movie.

Some poor shmuck
Is gonna get stuck
Running with granny.
So hustle your fanny
And chose someone
Who can actually run.

The Survivors will compete in pairs so for fairness, they draw numbers from a hat. Lex and T-bird are paired up as are Ethan and MamaKim, Tom and Lil Kim and the unlikely duo of Frank and Brandon. Oh, what zaniness. The tribe is in heaven that the twosome must work together to win and then their reward would be spending an evening together.

Tom: I could not think of a better joke to play on Frank if I tried.
(Well, he might make Brandon a gay, black man but other than that…no wait, that's Tom's nightmare.)

Frank: My camping trip just went to hell.

Brandon: Frank is Satan without the warmth.

Tom's boil: If the challenge is physical we'll win, but anything mental and we're screwed.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

The challenge is another tired test from an earlier Survivor, an obstacle course. There are things to climb up, things to crawl under, and a ladder to assemble and use. F/B compete in the first round again T/KP. Frank tumbles in the first five feet and Tom also falls with a satisfying thud but the race is close until the ladder assembly. Apparently some of the holes are round and some are square and the Survivors struggle with the mechanics of this test suited for the average 3 year old. Frank and Brandon advance to the finals.

During the next round, Ethan and MamaKim pass Lex and T-bird at the ladder assembly and get to face F/B in the finals. During the finals, Frank leads and Brandon stays right on his tail playing dominatrix. "Come on, Frank, faster. Keep going, move." Brandon is hustling, girly-man style, and his verbal slapping keeps Frank moving. The other Survivors smirk on the sidelines watching the taskmaster at work.

Ethan is screwed. He could easily have won this challenge paired with anyone but MamaKim. He scurries up a rope faster than she can climb the same distance with a ladder and she crawls over the wall using his back as a stepping stool. But because of the brittleness of her bones, Ethan does not toss her around like a sack of potatoes and they fall behind. As F/B cross the finish line, Brandon yells, "I'm going on a date with Frank." F/B high-five each other and T-bird runs between them to prevent inadvertent touching.

Back at camp, the Survivors are having a good old time with the odd couple's date. They like the rhythm Frank and Brandon achieved and how Frank assumed his position well. F/B worked together as one and Brandon kept the whip on Frank. (Such repartee has not been enjoyed since the demise of Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin table.)

Brandon & Frank hike through the underbrush to find hot dogs, candy and Mountain Dew. Instead of a helicopter ride through the bush and snorkeling, B/F get hyperactivity and a fifteen-year-old chick flick. But at least the characters in "Out of Africa" get to fly over Africa, right. Frank is excited about the sucky reward but not the company.

Brandon: I wonder what Tom's boil might be up to back at camp?

Frank: No flying over Africa with Brandon for me. After Teresa talked about sex in an airplane, that's not somewhere I care to go.

The two chatter amiably and remove their shoes but the disrobing ends at socked feet. They wiggle their toes, watch someone get syphilis, yadda, yadda. There is no real change in their relationship.

Next day, Tom and Frank form the Africa branch of the "I loathe Brandon for moral reasons" society. Frank teaches Tom the fraternal secret handshake. They agree to evict Brandon while exchanging underwear. Tom takes a leak with Frank standing five feet. (Benefit of the doubt here. He was either peeing or playing with himself. Why does Brandon annoy them so?)

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Catty Boy with a whip: (extending the olive branch to KimP as they go for treemail) We'll be friends forever. (BFF!) I'm upset that you feel like I betrayed you by lying and voting off the double-talking Kelly. Even if I did. Our friendship has lasted longer than my marriage and I treasure it. Vote for me if you want to but I can't stand to have you talking bad about me.

KimP: Okay, thanks.

Next comes the treemail for the déjà vu immunity challenge that everyone is desperate to win.

Your challenge is building a fire,
Both hotter and higher.
But please don't inhale,
Either the smoke or the smell.
Because your care would be intensive
And helicopters are expensive.

The challenge is to start a fire in a circle of rocks until it burns through a wick that raises a little flag up a pole. The Viagra challenge. They are given magnifying glasses and strict instructions not to let anything but fire touch the wick.

Everyone runs for brush, with KimP and Lex starting their fires first with Frank close behind. The Survivors keep running back for more brush to stoke the blaze. Frank hits the wick with brush and Jiffy disqualifies him. No cheating is allowed now that Colby is gone.

After a few minutes of confusion, everyone resumes building their fires except Tom who is prone. KimP seems desperate for immunity and babbles more than in all previous episodes, "Come on fire, please burn, burn." But Kim's Dr. Doolittle act with fire fails. Lex wins immunity and gets hugs. Tom never moved.

Thong Granny: Jump ship from your team too soon and you get gooned. Plus I don't jump well.

Tom and Ethan try to get Lex to vote for Brandon, but he refuses. If they want to get rid of Brandon, they'll have to get the votes elsewhere. (I keep hoping that Ethan's Medusa-like hair will turn Lex to stone or one of the snaky tendrils will bite him in the throat. But it just makes him act stoned.)

Ethan: (to Lex) Does your word have different levels? Is your word to Brandon as important as your word to us? Am I still your favorite or am I going to have to ##### slap your new boyfriend into last week?

Lex: (to Tom) Frank is thinking final four and would screw you over in a minute. Don't stop to think about it because if you think about it you've lost. Why won't you listen to my gut?

Tom: I'm starting to wonder about Lex.

At tribal counsel, Jiffy asks the usual inane questions while a shiny clean Kelly watches.

Ethan: Confidence is needed to win. Confidence in yourself and confidence in your friends. Like my good friend Kelly. That we just screwed over. It was Lex's idea.

Brandon: I wouldn't do anything immoral or disgusting to win.

Jiffy: Define disgusting.

Tom: I love camp because there's always women to wash and singing and dancing to do.

Tom's boil: I need a new symbiotic relationship.

Lil Kim: I think that I've been too naïve and trusting but now I've switched to vindictive and vengeful.

Lex: My gut still reigns supreme over my other body parts.

Mama Kim: Blah, blah, blah.

Lex has a wild-eyed, deranged look when he votes. He skewers Frank: You are a rude, insufferable, grouchy downer of human being. I can't wait to see you go, man.

Lil Kim votes for Brandon: I hate that it's come to this but I can't trust you.

It's a landslide for Brandon's eviction with only Lex and Brandon dissenting and voting for Frank.

Tom: (to Brandon as he's leaving): Bye, Sugar Bear. (Hey, didn't you just arrange Sugar Bear's boot?)

Brandon is gracious in his final speech and says he's happy to go and more upset about Lil Kim feeling that he betrayed her than losing.

The Queen is dead! Long live the ???

Next Week's preview: Lex is in trouble with his tribe. Frank gives Ethan a political lecture. Tom bathes the women.