First off, I want to say a big thanks to Jill Rosen for pinch-hitting for me the past couple of days. I had a medical emergency over the weekend, so no DWTS or Idol for me!

I'm still recovering, so my presence here will be a little sporadic over the next couple of weeks, but I hope to be back to full blogging speed as soon as possible.

Anyway, I couldn't let tonight's Survivor go without comment!

I understand why the Heroes tribe believes that the Villains have an all-women alliance. From the outside, that seems like an easy conclusion.

But I cannot believe that they would be so unbelievably sure that there was no other explanation for Rob and Coach's ousters than an alliance of all the women.

So sure that JT came up with the master plan of all time -- the stupidest plan in all of Survivor history: To "save" Russell from the women, he would surreptitiously give him his hidden immunity idol along with  instructions on how to use it (ie: vote out Parvati, only for some reason this requires a full page of perfect cursive). For some reason, the other members of his tribe bought into this idea, too. (Although to their credit, some of them seemed to only so that it would get the idol out of JT's hands and out of the game. Not that the second part came to pass.)

Anyway, Heroes won, JT passed the Idol, and great moments in Survivor comedy were born when back at camp, Parvati did a dramatic reading of JT's detailed note on what to do with the idol. Oh, dear.

The actual Villains in danger, Courtney and Sandra, did a little posturing, but mostly they realized that one of them was out.

And in tribal council, Courtney got the boot.

But really, really??? Giving Russell the idol? I can't believe that actually happened.

The merge, which looks to be happening next week, should be epic. I can't wait.