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Other members of the tribe are equally oblivious to what unfolds. What they see is Bill grow angrier as Colton behaves more and more deplorably. Survivor is a game of personalities forced to deal with one another during high pressure circumstances. Jay, Michael and Jonas are reduced to voyeurs as Bill finally loses his calm.

Bill unleashes the words he has withheld for the sake of diplomacy. “Listen, you little stuck up brat…You don’t sit around and talk to people everything you want to.” Colton’s fear of the black man has been escalated to its highest level. He attempts to flee the conversation but Bill blocks his way. The latter gentleman still seeks resolution even as he recognizes on some level that the situation has grown untenable. Colton is reduced to fleeing in terror and venting to the camera in a monologue. His “strongest” personal attack is that the comedian’s jokes are not funny…that’s every day of Dane Cook’s life, dude. The one moment of honesty is when he describes his unnatural hatred for Bill. This statement is primal.

The other tribe members witness their ostensible leader being upset. What occurs in the following moments is incomprehensible. We believe it is fair to describe this as the closest reality television has ever come to lynch mob mentality. Colton tells his side to Troyzan and Jonas, eventually leading them to The Crazy. His impulsive idea is to ask the women if Manono could take the place of Salani at Tribal Council. Astoundingly, Jonas briefly considers the idea. We presume it is because of the novelty of the idea, but Colton jumps on this as encouragement for the premise.

Within moments, Colton attempts to convince several members of his alliance to indulge him with regards to The Crazy. They do. We anxiously await the person who returns sanity to the conversation. At first, we expect Troyzan to be the one as he is clearly just tolerating Colton’s rant. When Jonas does not dismiss the idea out of hand, Troyzan finds himself in a conversation with two people who are both championing a bad idea. He does what any member of middle management does if they have reached the logical conclusion of the Peter Principle. He goes with the flow rather than making waves. Jonas confides to the camera that he feels the same way.

Jay is the next member of MaNoNoNononoMYGODINHEAVENNO who is asked to go to Tribal Council. To his credit, Jay states that this is a hasty decision. During the 20 minutes of television wherein this is debated, Jay is the only player who demonstrates the requisite level of common sense. None of the other men finds the courage to stand up to the mad man they have placed in control of their tribe.

The funniest part occurs when Troyzan recounts the events to Tarzan. He makes the entire situation sound like Bill is totally at fault and that Leif is equally unreliable. We are not even clear on how Leif was introduced into the conversation. Tarzan takes pause for a moment then quickly acknowledges that this is a fantastic idea that requires immediate action. Remember last week when we lamented Matt’s celebration of going to Tribal Council? Imagine how we feel about this. It is one step beyond throwing an immunity challenge. They won the damned challenge. Now, they want to go to Tribal Council anyway. When none of these men wins Survivor, remember this turn of events. And all of you sociological behavior students, here is your research paper topic. Lemming behavior has never been displayed better on network television. One man’s bigotry leads several others to follow him off the cliff into the oceanic mouth of madness.

This is really happening.

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