Pirate Master: Episode 11

Somehow, Louie managed to survive for another week on Pirate Master, despite making one of the stupidest moves in reality show history.

As soon as Nessa was eliminated, Jay began planning a way to ensure that his puppet captain, Christa, would stay in power. Step one: make sure that Christa's Black Crew won the next challenge.

Jay had his chance the following day, when Christa was joined on her crew by Louie and Ben, and Jay lead the Red Crew of Laurel and Kendra. Even though his team was already mismatched physically, Jay did his best to make the Red Crew even worse.

As the crews rowed to shore, Jay kept up a pokey pace, allowing the Black Crew to gain a significant lead. But his efforts nearly failed when the Black Crew took a wrong turn running through the jungle, allowing the Red Crew to catch up.

When the teams returned to the beach to search for a chain buried near a giant anchor, Jay was the only person looking in the correct spot. He quietly whispered to Ben to follow the chain into the ocean.

Ben discovered a cluebox on the seafloor, and he had the Black Crew row out and haul it up. The Black Crew used their clue to find the treasure chest -- which was empty. Even though the winning team earned no gold, Christa remained in power, which was all Jay really wanted.

He and Ben celebrated by playing a simple game of "high card." The two of them each picked a card randomly from a deck. The player with the highest card won $500 from the other, each round.

Even after Jay drew the same red queen three times out of four, Ben still didn't realize that Jay was pulling one over on him with some simple sleight of hand. Jay happily took Ben's money and congratulated himself for aligning with such a strong, dumb guy.

Riding high, Jay wasn't careful when he talked with Ben about possibly having to get rid of Christa, who they agreed was smarter than they'd expected. Kendra was snooping on the conversation, vowing to use the info to her advantage.

Her chance came when Christa called the crew in one at a time to nominate two pirates to receive Black Spots. Kendra said that, while she knew for sure she'd be up, Christa ought to think about cutting Jay loose before he did it to her.

Christa's decision this week was made very easy for her. Kendra was a given, and to make sure she'd finally be sent home, Louie heroically volunteered himself for the other Black Spot, counting on the loyalty of his friends to keep him safe.

This was tremendously stupid, because at this point in the game, loyalty means very little. Jay and Ben realized that, as much as they wanted Kendra gone, this was a good opportunity to get rid of another strong player in Louie.

It didn't take long for Louie to realize his boneheadedness, and at Pirates Court he was forced to mumble meekly about how the others should keep him around because he's so slow and nonthreatening.

Jay suggested that Kendra was dangerous because she was sneaky, and that seemed to be the reason that the crew needed to finally get rid of her. The fact that she annoyed all of them hadn't been enough during her five previous Black Spot nominations.

Kendra was cut adrift, saving the audience from the possibility of a thoroughly boring finale.

Next time, Ben and Christa finally realize that Jay cannot be trusted. I hope this realization comes a little too late to get rid of him; Jay's the only real player on this entire show.