‘Survivor’ makes the world’s worst cream cheese analogy

This week’s episode of Survivor was two hours long and featured two eliminations. At least 20 minutes of those two hours included Jon and Jaclyn having a fight and refusing to talk to each other. Luckily, it was just a red herring. Wait, sorry, that should have said “infuriatingly.”

Reed and Alec were eliminated, leaving us with a mere six contestants remaining. But that’s not as important as the nitpicking, so let’s get to it.

- Keith’s alliance takes exception to him blurting out STICK TO THE PLAN during the last Tribal Council, thus tipping their hand and allowing Jon to play his immunity idol. Keith is dumbfounded, meekly offering, “How’d he know that was the plan?” Reed sums things up: “Keith is not very good at tribal.” I know, right? He doesn’t even have one of those badass Goldberg pieces going on.

- Jon appears to think that a great way to stay strong in the game is to tell everyone that Jon thought of all of the great ideas and not to give other people credit. It was a real-life version of Homer Simpson putting his hand over his mouth and going, “Yeah, listen to Homer! Homer’s right!”

- During the physical challenge “Newlywed Game” nonsense (more on that in a bit), one of the questions about the contestants was, “Who owns their own tanning business?” The answer was John Rocker’s girlfriend, Julie! Aw, we miss you, Julie. #TRAILMIXSCANDAL NEVER FORGET.

- Jaclyn and Jon are being courted by the two factions once again. Jaclyn says, “I don’t know why this keeps happening!” IT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE THE CRUCIAL, FLIP-FLOPPY SWING VOTES, JACLYN. YOU’RE OHIO.

- Ball’s Up’s Brother makes perhaps the worst analogy ever, when he says making Jaclyn comfortable is “like cream cheese.” His rationale is that it never hurts anything to put cream cheese on it. CBS helps us out by putting up a #CREAMCHEESE hashtag for three seconds.

- After the first elimination (Reed), Balls Up’s Brother tells Jon that the game has been “an emotional roller coaster.” Jon levels with Balls Up’s Brother that he’s probably going to be the next person out. I almost felt bad for Balls Up’s Brother. Almost. Then I ballsed up a little.

- Jon talks about how interesting wine is and how it’s a “conversation piece” and how he wants to be a sommelier. Understandably, Natalie talks about how irritating this is and responds to his ramblings with “UH HUH YEAH COOL.” This is how you react to this when you’re not interested in talking about wine. See also: people who keep bringing up their home brew experience unprompted.

- Natalie: “If Jon wins, I will literally kill myself.” NO NATALIE DON’T.

- Baylor suddenly gets the hots for Alec (AKA Balls Up’s Brother) out of nowhere. During the final immunity challenge, Alec says he’s so hungry he would eat a rat. Cut to Baylor giving him GOOGLY MEGA-CRUSH EYES.

Baylor, honey, no.

- The physical challenge is a version of “The Newlywed Game” where the wrong answers lead to heavy rocks CRUSHING SKULLS FILLED WITH FAKE BLOOD for some reason.

- When the first physical challenge gets down to the five-person alliance of Jon, Jaclyn, Missy, Baylor and Natalie, the groups starts discussing how to maneuver to give their chosen winner the win. Jeff Probst suddenly gets all indignant. “OH IT’S JUST GONNA BE A CHARADE FROM HERE HUH? WELL WHY EVEN BOTHER HAVING THE GAME THEN?!” And then he straight-up ends the game. On one hand, I get it, don’t bother wasting people’s time with a rigged game. But don’t get so up in arms about the show you orchestrated for a decade to involve “alliances” splintering off into alliances.

- To that same point, mere instants after Jaclyn’s fivesome winning the physical challenge, Jaclyn talks about how seeing three of those five players (Natalie, Missy and Baylor) be so close-knit “changes everything.” I have a hard time believing anyone on this show has friends in real life.

- The reward for Missy, Baylor and Natalie is to take a horseback ride just across one field and over to a Nicaraguan estate that looked like it could be used to portray a stereotypical drug lord’s compound on an episode of 24. It’s one thing to set up a taco stand on the beach for everyone, but the reveal that, “Oh, yeah, there’s a huge villa just over the rise” sort of pokes holes in the already-paper-thin veneer of a show that is ostensibly about people being stranded in the wilderness.

- Every single time Jeff Probst talks about a food reward that they could win, everyone goes OOOOOHHHH GAHHHHH UNNNNFFFF GRUUUHHHHHHH and it’s so absurd.

“You will win ... barbecue--” OOOOOOOHHHH MANNNN “-- chicken--” UUUUUUUHHHHHNNNNN “--beef--” MMMMMMNNNNNUUUUUHHHH I LOVE BEEF.

Everyone stop this immediately.

- The second reward (this time for Natalie, Jon and Jaclyn) is chicken parm and wine and a king size bed ... which is delivered to the camp. They hem and haw about how they feel bad about enjoying the bed in front of everyone, as though they couldn’t just invite more people into the bed. A king size bed is big. Big enough for a king, almost.

- Natalie complains about how Jon is acting like “It’s all about money. It’s not about the game for them.” Uh ... aren’t you playing the game to win the money? Are you just doing this for the experience, Natalie? This show makes me feel like I’ve lost any grip on reality.

BONUS SURVIVOR CONTENT: Twitter user @PatrickLHaynes alerts me to the fact that Baylor MAKES COUNTRY MUSIC. Please enjoy this video which contains lyrics such as, “I feel like I stepped in gum / Got honey in my hair.”