The elephants, unsurprisingly, give Clarence a wide berth.
"It would have been a really embarrassing way to die," Clarence says.
As opposed to merely having footage of him doing his business broadcast on national TV, we suppose.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
No one knows what's up with the merge. Regular viewers know that, once the teams are down to 10 total members, the Great Producer Gods force them to abandon their camps and create a new joint one. After that, it's every survivor for her- or himself.
The remaining 10 toss one more member off the show. Then, of the remaining nine, the first seven subsequent ejectees stay on the show and serve as panelists on the Jury From Hell, which will watch the ongoing tribal councils and eventually vote to award the first prize of $1 million to one of the final two players.
This forces the original winner not just to survive, but to play politics efficiently enough to acquire four of the seven votes for the final showdown.
Or, as we've put it before, be the second most dislikable person on the show. It's what gives "Survivor" its rather unappetizing charm.
But there's been some doubt sown as to when the merger will actually occur. The tribes are five and five, but since Mark Burnett mixed up the tribes a week or two ago, everything's confusing.
Of the original Boran, there's Lex, the tattooed guy; Big Tom, the goat farmer who can't herd goats; cute Kelly; hunky Ethan with the good teeth; strapping Clarence; and the elder Kim. From the original Samburu, there's the exasperating Brandon; dumb Kim; Frank, the Army guy and bowhunter who can't start a fire or shoot an arrow straight; and Teresa, the go-getter from Florida who's had twin lives as a flight attendant and a real-estate agent.
If there is a merge, it looks like the Samburu are in trouble. Brandon is a searchingly dislikable person; Frank and Teresa certainly aren't going to be getting into any alliance with him. But the Boran have their own fissures, mostly revolving around Clarence, who's big and strong (the better to win immunity challenges, as Colby did last season) and managed to lose a lot of friends straight off when the group found him sneaking some food on the side. Clarence has always been the odd person out.
Anyway, the Boran tribe now has the admixture of Frank and Teresa. As we see them eat one morning an odd, almost Beckettian sequence unfolds in which we see that Frank is unfamiliar with a certain common English word.
"What is 'brunch' again, exactly?" he asks.
Says the elder Kim: "Depending where you go, it's seafood or eggs and it's a set price and you get a lot of food for your money."
We didn't know Sizzler served brunch.
"I can't believe he's never heard the term before," she marvels to the camera.
Back to the breakfast: "A combination breakfast and lunch," Frank says thoughtfully. "And it's served when?"
"Frank is a three-meals-a-day man, very regimented," observes Kim.
And they say reality TV doesn't have real drama.
Meanwhile, Lex, Big Tom and Kelly are privately grooving on what they see as something of a sure thing. "I think we're pretty much locked and loaded," says Lex, who has too many tattoos.
Kelly does a celebratory little boogie. The camera swings over to Big Tom, who does an approximation of the groovy little dance he's seen African-America action-comedy stars like Martin Lawrence do when they're happy.
On Tom, it kind of looks like he's having some of the same problems Clarence was having.
Next page: "This is horrible, absolutely horrible!"