Day 26, and James wakes everyone up with singing, and Courtney hugs up on Frosti.

The Reward Challenge is another team game with each person carrying a different sized drum. The goal is to bounce a little ball on your drums and keep it in the air as you move it along a course until you can bounce it into a barrel. The winners get an overnight cruise on a riverboat.

The drafted teams look like this:

PG > James > Todd > Denise
Erik > Frosti > Amanda > Courtney (the last pick this time)

And it’s not even close. Erik and Frosti turn out to be the drum-ball-bouncing dream team and their squad wins in a 3-0 sweep.

Back at camp PG yells at James for not hustling. He tells her she always loses because of her attitude.

Now that Jean-Robert is gone James wants the old Fei Longs to stick together and resist the temptation to flop. “Be naked,” he philosophizes. “Be happy. Just don’t eat the apple.”

Over on the boat Frosti puts his hands all over Courtney. He tells us she’s way out of his league. What league is that? The Well-Nourished League?

The other “highlight” on the trip is Erik sounding like a goat. It is at this point that I realize just how young the game has become. We’re barely halfway through the season and you’ve got Denise at 40, James at 30 and everyone else is in their 20’s. Who needs wisdom and maturity when you’ve got backrubs and barnyard animals?

The Immunity Challenge is like the old electronic Simon game, only instead of a disc with flashing colored buttons to push you have really big knives. The goal is to remember the animal sequence Jeff reads and stab the cards in the correct order.

But the twist is you can choose to eat cheeseburgers and fries instead of playing. Courtney, Todd, Denise and – surprisingly – James choose to eat. How’s that apple taste, James?

Round 1: Erik goes out.

Round 2: Amanda sits down.

That leaves Frosti and PG, and Peih-Gee wins! When you earn Immunity, I spell out your name.

So with the easy out off the table the talk turns to the two Zhan Hu boys. Todd talks to Courtney about voting out her boy pal but she doesn’t commit to it. Todd wonders if he should dump Courtney instead.

At Tribal Council Jeff asks about the line between friends and strategy and lots of people talk but no one says anything.

Frosti and Erik vote for each other and the tally goes: Frosti, Erik…and – like a family trip to Wendy’s – four more Frosti’s. Courtney has neither body fat nor heart.

Now for the big twist that was in last week’s preview and…what? To be continued? They gave us a preview for two episodes later?? To quote Erik, “MAAAAA!”

Next time (maybe) on…Survivor: Everyone has ugly legs, James gets mad, and Todd fights back.

As for Erik, he was gone before we got to know him, which is hard to do after eight episodes. Think about it - besides the goat thing, what do you remember out Erik’s time on the show? He took a swim with Jaime once, and that’s about it. Never has a Survivor lasted so long and done so little.

Kinda like this episode.

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